New Swiss Airplane to fly 24×7 on sun juice; is Solar finally coming of age?

Solar Impulse HB-SIA - sailing through the atmosphere on sun power

News.com reports that a new Swiss aircraft will be the first to fly night and day without the need for any external source of energy. All its power needs will be met by the nearly 12,000 solar cells mounted on top of its wings. And those are pretty large wings too, mind you. The span is about the same as a Boeing 747, which stands at about 229 feet.

Borschberg and Piccard (no, not Jean-luc), the project promoters, will be taking the HB-SIA for a test spin this year, followed by a second flight in 2010. Soon after, in 2012, they intend to unveil the next generation of their solar powered marvel, in which they hope to fly around the world.

According to C|Net’s news.com:

MySpace India staff getting the axe; China and Japan offices in-tact

Home page is still ok. 41% of the workforce? Not so much.

MySpace has had its share of troubles recently. Unlike Facebook, they don’t seem to believe that it’s OK to raise hundreds of millions of dollars and never make a cent. But what do I know? Clearly, Smart Investors seem to love Facebook’s business model and their $10 Billion valuation. Previously, Even Smarter Investors couldn’t get enough of the $15 Billion valuation and just had to put in a$240 Million to prove their Smartness. I can just hear the lead investor… “We’re actually 350% positive on this one as compared to an equally sized investment in the Moscow Bourse!”

Anyway, MySpace under News Corp is being downright old world. Believing they need to get their costs in line with their revenue and actually buckle down in the recession. Pshaaaw! How non-dot-com can you possibly be? In pursuit of this dated (like steam-punk dated!), albeit common sense strategy, MySpace is cutting back on the fluff… and about 75% of their international staff. This comes on the heels of their earlier announcement about a 30% reduction in their US headcount.

Pakistan jumps 10 places on A.T. Kearney’s list – BusinessWeek recognizes Pakistan as one of the world’s leading IT destinations

The Centaurus rises in Islamabad. A huge, almost $400M infrastructure project that will be completed next year. Rapid construction in progress.

BusinessWeek just published an article about Pakistan’s rapidly rising stature as an international information technology outsourcing destination. The article cites A.T. Kearney’s May 2009 report which places Pakistan at number 20, up 10 places from the 2007 ranking of 30. This is despite all the rhetoric and nonsense in the media that doesn’t deserve much attention here – but Sepoy can introduce you to the “Talibothra” rubbish I’m talking about.

You have to be completely blind and devoid of any intellect to not recognize the progress that has been unfolding with great rapidity in Pakistan. Granted, the positive news and media glorification you would expect if this were happening in, say Brazil, has been found lacking. Quite the contrary, the NY Times, and the fast-failing industry it represents, has still not quite gotten over the decade old obsession with the Church of the Flying Talibothra Monster.

So, humour me for a moment and subtract the malevolent sensationalism from the discussion. What you’re left with is the story of a country whose GDP continues to grow despite the global recession, where infrastructure is being built and expanded at a frantic pace, a country that has seen its stock exchange go up by 30% this year, a country that is significantly increasing development spend and bringing alternate energy projects online, developing new dams, increasing high-technology exports and expanding its universities.

TechLahore’s waiting for the colour Kindle Reader. Could you hurry it up, Amazon?

Amazon's new Kindle DX E-book Reader

Over the past few years, I have spent the better part of  a King’s Ransom on tech devices. When Compaq’s very first Aero Pocket PC came out, I got it. With a 56Kbps compact flash modem. It cost me more than a PC, but I got it. I even had visions of using it in my PC’s stead. I’m still waiting for that to happen. When the new Sony Clie NZ90 came out, I rushed and grabbed me one… complete with Wifi card. I’ve bought more Windows Mobile and Pocket PC devices then you can shake a stick at. I was also one of the few people who ever bought the Palm VII and subscribed to the unlimited wireless service plan. Cybikos? Half a dozen. Netbooks? Three. Handsprings? Yes. Vtec Helio (What the hell is a Vtec helio, right?!) Yes! I’m sick that way, and yeah, a Kings Ransom is about right.

But, TechLahore, you might ask, why then have you not bought a Kindle Reader yet?

Pakistani users outdo all others in contributing data to Google MapMaker

Lahore is now fully mapped! A cold coffee at Palmer's Cafe at the Royal Palm, anyone?

Here at TechLahore, we’ve covered GIS in Pakistan a few times in the past. We’ve even reviewed indigenous Pakistan mapping services, such as Naqsha.net. Google is obviously still the undisputed champion of open source GIS/mapping and satellite imagery. But where they have been found lacking in the past is the paucity of street maps and location data for the world’s 7th largest country, Pakistan. The good news, ofcourse, is that ever since Google opened up MapMaker allowing users to post location information and map data, individuals from Pakistan have outdone all others in volume and quality! Through the power of crowdsourcing, Pakistani users have corrected Google’s oversight themselves!

Riots break out in India again, Obama slams Bombay, firms losing revenue… what’s next for IT in India?

Yesterday, riots again broke out across Indian cities, causing Wal*Mart to delay the opening of its store

The going hasn’t been very good for Indian IT firms recently. First, there was the Satyam scandal which exposed many of the fundamental issues with Indian IT companies, corporate espionage, board level corruption, scamming of shareholders etc. Then, what was left of Satyam was to be taken over by a Government-appointed board, but there was a loss of customers and soon after came a significant drop in revenues for almost all major IT companies in India. But that wasn’t all, newly appointed US President, Barack Hussein Obama then pretty much declared war on outsourcing to India by making his now famous, “Say NO to Bangalore” speech. Obama’s war on Indian IT has led  NASSCOM to voice fears that, “[the] clouds are getting darker for Indian IT companies“, while the mainstream Indian press is proclaiming that, “Obama torpedoes Bangalore again“. Meanwhile, the anti-Indian outsourcing sentiment is growing in other parts of the world, including Australia.

The importance of imagining the future

Nanotechnology will make space elevators viable in a few years

If you’re in technology and you don’t think about the future – like *all* the time – then something’s probably wrong with you. The future is coming at us fast. And I don’t mean that in the sense of the Sardarji who wasn’t worried about his 14 year prison sentence since, “Koi gal naieen, 14 saal tey do mintaa’n ich guzar jaan gey“. I mean it in the sense that innovation in many important and varied areas is unfolding at a far more rapid pace than ever before. You’ll understand this well if you’re up to speed with any of Ray Kurzweil’s writings, are a Hans Moravec aficionado, an Eric Drexler fan, or even a student of the wider consequences of Moore’s law.

Many of the things that will exist in future will result from parallel technological paths merging to form unique devices, technologies and environments. For instance, nano applications in battery, CPU and screen technology, combined with a software mastery of vision and speech recognition, strung together with gesture based interfaces and large-format interactive displays. What does the fusion of these imminent developments look like?

HD DVD’s already dead, but is Blu-ray next?

Lots of hot stuff based on Blu-ray technology, but will it ever be mainstream?

HD DVD, as well know, was Toshiba’s much-hyped successor to DVD technology. It was competing with the Sony Blu-ray technology, and while it provided slightly lower quality, it was cheaper and had the support of giants such as Microsoft. As a matter of fact, HD-DVD even made its way into the Xbox 360. None of this, of course, prevented the standard from dying a horrid death. Toshiba could not compete with the significant array of movie production companies Sony had lined up behind its standard… and if Toshiba had a distribution vehicle in the Xbox, Blu-ray had one in the Sony PS3. At the end of the day, Toshiba decided to call it quits and the industry was awash with articles reminding us of the Betamax/VHS wars.

So, if HD DVD lost, did Blu-ray win? Well, certainly in the short term. But to borrow a line of argument from former President Clinton, it depends on what the meaning of the word, “win” really is? It’s certainly not clear to me that Blu-ray will ever *really* be the “new DVD”. In fact, I think online distribution is fast making distribution by disc meaningless.

What happened to Si3?

SI3 was doing well... where are they now?

Here’s something I’m getting more and more confused about every day. Whatever happened to SI3? I am referring, of course, to the systems integrator based in Karachi that had raised funds from former Fergusons partners and others. They had some initial implementations going with the Army, UBL and some others, but lately I have been hearing persistent rumours that things might not be going so well. I have received probably half a dozen tips and emails concerning the same… before I jump the gun and base a post on a few inbound emails, let me just ask the question: Does anyone know how SI3 is doing? Are they in business, active, alive and kicking?

TechLahore 200

The last post was the 200th for this blog. It’s been an interesting ride. What’s for sure is that the blog has evolved in ways I didn’t imagine when I started it back in 2007. Many of you might be new readers, and others may have hung around for the ride since the very first post. No matter who you are or how long you’ve been reading TechLahore, today I want to share ten carefully selected pieces from article 101-200.

These are in no particular order (other than the fact that I like #7 the best!).

1. Postmodern Pakistan
2. Calling all Hackers, Makers and Builders in Pakistan
3. TechLahore’s predictions for 2009
4. “Pakistan has the world’s largest WiMAX network – will America catch up?”, wonders TMCnet
5. Pakistan’s growing software expertise increasing its defence capabilities