For large companies that have a long list of suppliers that they work with, it’s not only difficult to manage communication with all of them, but understanding the environmental impact of each supplier is next to impossible. It’s not a sexy space to work in by any means but the addressable market is comprised of Fortune 500 companies and the government itself, which is bound to mandates involving environmental sustainability when working with suppliers.

SupplyShift is a backend tool for those companies and organizations to track everything that’s going on with suppliers, which are usually scattered throughout the world. These buyers are collecting sustainability data but don’t currently have the tools to help them reduce risk exposure.

What SupplyShift really is is a network which allows them to understand their “supply chain footprint” which will make suppliers actually care more about how they present themselves, heating up competing among them. The team, led by CEO and cofounder Alexander Gershenson, has been working on these problems as a consultant and it was time to build their work out as an actual product.

Currently, Ecoshift, the consulting arm for the team, is already hosting panels with companies like Microsoft, Target and Sprint on supply chain management.

The type of risk that companies experience with suppliers are the situation that Mattel went through with lead paint, where 1M toys had to be recalled. As far as how suppliers can affect how the public thinks about your company, look no further than Apple’s relationship with Foxconn, regarding their labor practices. You get the point. SupplyShift will track all of these potential risks, sharing them among the network of companies that use it.

Why now? Gershenson told me: “The market situation changed radically in the last three years, and sustainability is becoming a key part of corporate strategy, but corporations and the government do not have the tools to address that need. SupplyShift takes care of that.”

The main component that makes SupplyShift different from its competitors is that the companies who use the service are also paying to enroll their suppliers. This is key, because suppliers either won’t, or can’t afford to enroll themselves in similar services. By putting this in the hands of the companies who are selling goods, the database of suppliers will grow at a more rapid rate.

This isn’t a social network for professionals, photo-sharing apps for tweens, but it’s a product that provides important information that could save companies millions of dollars in bad PR and lawsuits due to critical mistakes made by a supplier.

Learn more here: http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/30/supplyshift-helps-companies-understand-the-environmental-impact-of-their-supply-chain/

Editor’s note: Sal Cangeloso is the editor of Geek.com and wrote a new book on an odd topic. It’s called LED Lighting: A Primer to Lighting the Future and it focuses on the upcoming explosion in LED manufacturing, offering a basic understanding of the technology and an interesting look at the history of LED lights.

You can buy LED Lighting: A Primer to Lighting the Future here and the first three commenters below get a copy of the book. Here is an excerpt from the first chapter of the book discussing the growth of lighting from old-timey incandescents to modern LED technology.

The incandescent bulb is a good place to start with any talk about lighting. This design has had tremendous longevity (over 130 years) and it makes for a cheap, versatile bulb. Unfortunately, this design is also power-hungry, inefficient, short-lived (with some exceptions), and fragile. They produce a minimum amount of lumens-per-watt, though they’ve made appreciable gains over the years, and are highly sensitive to power conditions. For example, a 5% reduction in voltage could double the life of a bulb while only decreasing light output by 20%.

One of the most notable strengths of the incandescent is the quality of the light it provides. This isn’t as easy to define as some of the other characteristics that will be covered, but it’s an important one when it comes to consumer adoption. After all, it’s nice to try to sell people on longevity and power savings, but if they think that the new bulbs are ugly or are too different from what they know, you’ll find them hoarding 75W and 100W incandescents before such bulbs are removed from the shelves.

Quality of light means that in order for people to be comfortable with the light these bulbs provide, the bulbs will need a color temperature that they find to be in an acceptable range, a high degree of color accuracy (usually measured by CRI), and a usable light pattern, to name a few qualities. The bigger point, as any early CFL or LED bulb buyer could tell you, is that if the bulbs don’t produce attractive light that people are comfortable being around, it won’t matter how long they last or how little power they consume.

Incandescents have good qualities, but ultimately their inefficiency means they are not a viable solution moving forward. Even modern incandescents can turn about 90% of the energy they take in into heat, which is obviously wasteful and inefficient in the extreme. Physicists might argue that this isn’t wasteful at all, and you might enjoy the heat they provide, but most of us want to leave the lighting to the lights and the heating to our furnaces. Before we demonize the long-standing bulb design, it’s worth noting that there is such a thing as efficient incandescence. While these are in fact more efficient versions of the incandescent bulb, they are still not at the level of top CFLs and LEDs. In fact, GE was working on a high-efficiency incandescent (HEI) for about 18 months, but gave up on it in order to focus its efforts on LED and organic LED (OLED) bulbs. HEIs were said to produce about 30 lm/W with the ultimate goal of doubling that amount.The halogen lamp is a type of incandescent that operates hotter and lasts longer, but its efficiency gains are minimal.

The much-maligned CFL solves some of the efficiency problems of incandescent bulbs, usually producing around 50 lm/W. Unfortunately, each bulb contains a small amount of mercury (about 4 milligrams per bulb), so disposal can be a problem, especially if the thin, usually helical, glass breaks. The bulbs have reasonably long lives, usually rated for 5,000 to 15,000 hours—but they don’t last nearly that long if they are used in short time spans as rapid cycling is bad for the bulbs. That means a CFL in a bathroom or closet might not last much longer than an incandescent bulb, despite what it says on the package. In fact, a CFL that runs for an average of 15 minutes at a time might last just 40% of its rated lifespan. Alternatively, a CFL that is used continuously from the first time it was turned on might last close to twice its expected lifespan.

CFLs saw a big jump in marketshare in 2007, capturing around23% of the market, but have been in decline over the last year or so, despite the bulbs being widely available, affordable to purchase, and much cheaper to operate than incandescents. Part of this is due to an increasing number of consumers learning about the CFL’s use of mercury, but current economic conditions also indicate that people have simply been looking for a more affordable option. In that respect, incandescents still cannot be beat.

One of the most important characteristics of LED lighting is that they are solid-state. “Solid-state” might be a term we normally associate with computer parts (as in the solid-state drive) but it’s not something the casual LED buyer will ever consider. The concept is quite simple: rather than generating light through burning or gas-discharge, LEDs use semiconductors. The is the most fundamental and important distinction that determines why LED lights have their unique characteristics and will be able to have such an impact on the lighting market. As seen in other industries, semiconductors improve at an exponential rate and have a way of taking over wherever they are used. Lighting should prove to be no different.

Of course, LEDs are just one type of solid-state lighting; there are also organic LEDs (OLEDs) and polymer LEDs (PLEDs). Right now, the LED is the main focus of SSL adoption and its future looks quite promising, thanks to the efficiency gains it brings to the market. OLEDs and their carbon-based semiconductors have potential, but high costs mean they won’t be a viable option as soon as standard LEDs.

The advent of solid-state lighting doesn’t just mean more efficiency. Just as with the introduction of high technology to other parts of our lives—from our phones, to our mail, to our televisions—light is now high-tech. In this case, it’s not the tech that makes the difference, it’s that this latest step means our lights could soon be gadgets. Today’s technology brings with it intelligence and connectivity, which makes way for lights that can be tracked, controlled remotely, and designed to work with other devices. While the humble incandescent was just a conduit for electricity and output both light and heat, a modern-day bulb can be and do much more.

What does this all mean for the LED lamp? Basically, the time is ripe for growth. LED adoption is low at the moment, but not because purchasing one won’t pay off. An LED bulb will pay for itself many times over thanks to its energy savings, but the high initial cost is just too much of a hurdle for many businesses and is unpalatable for even more consumers. As prices drop we’ll see a dramatic growth, just as CFLs grew when it was clear that they could lead to long-term savings and could, in fact, provide acceptable light for our kitchens and living rooms, not just offices.

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/30/up-close-with-the-next-big-home-commodity-led-lighting/

Después de cuatro meses en tierra por problemas en el sistema de baterías, el avión Boeing 787 Dreamliner por fin volvió a los cielos estadounidenses de la mano de United Airlines, lo que supone que las demás aerolíneas alrededor del mundo podrán hacer lo propio en las próximas semanas.

Los problemas del 787 empezaron a mediados de enero, cuando una de las unidades de la compañía japonesa All Nippon Airways tuvo que aterrizar de emergencia tras presentarse un serio problema en el funcionamiento de la batería, lo que pudo haber desatado un incendio en la cabina a más de 30 mil pies de altura.

Ante este panorama, la Administración Federal de Aviación estadounidense (FFA, por sus siglas en inglés) determinó que el avión debía quedarse en tierra hasta tener más información sobre el problema y no existiera peligro alguno para la tripulación o los pasajeros.

Dos meses después, en marzo, Boeing comenzó a realizar las pruebas de su nuevo sistema de baterías, y en abril, la aerolínea Ethiopian Airlines se convirtió en la primera compañía en llevar el avión al cielo luego del incidente en Japón.

Pese a que la suspensión ya ha sido levantada por las autoridades, aún tendrán que pasar algunas semanas más para que las otras aerolíneas puedan utilizar el 787, pues se requiere de varios equipos de técnicos para hacer el cambio de batería correspondiente en todas las flotas.

Por ahora, United sólo realizará vuelos domésticos dentro de los Estados Unidos, pero anticipan que para la segunda semana de junio puedan reabrir operaciones en sus vuelos internacionales.

Después de lo sucedido, ¿volarías en un 787?

Link: Grounded United Airlines 787 Dreamliner Finally Takes Off Today (Ubergizmo)

Este artículo, fue publicado originalmente aquí: http://www.fayerwayer.com/2013/05/boeing-787-vuelve-a-los-cielos-estadounidenses/

Google has long had an interest in renewable energy and has now invested more than $1 billion of its own money in alternative energy projects. However, as the company notes in a blog post and white paper today, it’s not always easy for companies that want to buy renewable energy to do so, given that most utilities don’t yet offer a renewable power option yet. In its white paper, Google lays out a plan that would make it easier for more companies to buy green energy.

Currently, Google says, businesses have the option to install on-site generation (like the solar cells on its Mountain View headquarters’ roof), buy renewable energy certificates or to sign power purchase agreements. All of these approaches, however, Google argues, have significant downsides. On-site generation usually can’t produce enough energy to power a facility 24/7, for example, and renewable energy certificates don’t “provide assurance that the price paid for RECs is being used to support additional investment in new renewable power generation.”

For the most part, companies also have to accept that at least a part of their generation mix includes some carbon-intensive sources. Currently, if a company wants renewable power — and is willing to pay for it — it still can’t get it in most places because it’s simply not being offered.

The reason for this, Google argues, is that historically, utilities never designed their rate schedules around a specific category of power generation (though it’s worth noting that at least some utilities recently started offering this option). Instead, the focus was always purely on cost and reliability.

So how does Google plan to change this? The company wants utilities to offer companies like Google the choice to buy renewable energy through a new class of service. The service would be voluntary, provided only to those companies that request it but open to all customers that want it and meet basic criteria.” The cost of procuring the renewable energy would only be passed on to those customers who select this option and not impact anybody else.

You can read more about the exact details of the proposal here, and we have embedded the proposal below.

Google also plans to put this plan into action. As part of the planned $600 million expansion of its Lenoir, N.C. data center, the company has partnered with Duke Energy to develop a new program based on its ideas. Duke Energy still has to file this plan with the N.C. state commission, though, which Google says it will do within the next 90 days.

Google’s Renewable Energy Options Proposal

More: http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/19/google-utilities-green-energy/

¿Proyecto con conciencia social o simple experimento con cobayos humanos? Este tipo de interrogantes son los que nos solemos plantear cuando leemos noticias sobre acciones que, a pesar de tener una interesante base teórica, en la práctica suelen chocarse contra obstáculos de la vida real que terminan por vencerlo.

Es por esto que quizás el proyecto Last Mile (última milla) tendrá el desafío de lograr superar esas barreras para demostrar que pueden haber alternativas para personas que se encuentran cumpliendo una sentencia en la cárcel y que en muchos casos y por distintos motivos, ya nunca podrán reinsertarse en la sociedad en forma normal porque esa marca los seguirá por siempre.

En la cárcel de San Quentin en San Francisco, una pareja de emprendedores decidió trasladar toda su experiencia en el mundo de los negocios y de su aceleradora de proyectos KickLabs, a un programa destinado a brindarle herramientas concretas a los reclusos para crear sus propios emprendimientos y lograr una exitosa reinserción social.

Este proyecto combina capacitación en tecnología, marketing, comunicaciones y finanzas con el objetivo de que los seleccionados logren crear un plan de negocios sobre una idea propia y que pueda tener sustento en el mundo real.

Click aqui para ver el video.

En relación a los costos que supone capacitar y acompañar un proyecto en sus primeros pasos, las autoridades que aprobaron el proyecto consideraron que mantener a prisioneros reincidentes implica un costo mucho mayor, ya que estadísticamente, el 30% de los prisioneros que cumplen su condena reinciden en un período de no más de tres años.

En Estados Unidos, el costo de mantener a una persona en la cárcel es de USD$31.286 al año, lo que implica que una inversión en un programa como The Last Mile podría significar una interesante inversión a futuro para reducir esos costos.

La experiencia creada por Chris Redlitz y Beverly Parenti inscribió a siete interesados en el proyecto piloto de 2012 y ya tiene a los inscriptos 2013, pero planean hacerlo más grande y en otras instituciones del estado. Según sus creadores, el objetivo es “utilizar la tecnología para producir un cambio social”, y está apoyada en su nombre, que alude a ese último tramo de reclusión que viven los prisioneros antes de quedar en libertad y los interrogantes que se les plantean por tener que readaptarse al mundo exterior.

¿Crees que un proyecto como Last Mile podría lograr resolver una problemática tan compleja como la reinserción social de personas que cumplen condenas por delitos y que la tecnología podría ser la llave para esta reinserción?

Link: This startup accelerator for prisoners is creating the next generation of entrepreneurs (policymic)

Este artículo, fue publicado originalmente aquí: http://www.fayerwayer.com/2013/05/the-last-mile-proyecto-para-convertir-a-prisioneros-en-emprendedores-tecnologicos/

Google just announced that it has invested $75 million in a 50 MW wind farm in Rippey, Iowa, a small town an hour outside of Des Moines. This is Google’s second wind energy investment in the state. In 2010, Google entered a long-term contract to buy green energy for its Iowa data center, but this is the company’s first direct investment into an Iowa wind project.

The wind farm, Google notes, is already in operation and has been contracted to sell all of its energy to the Central Iowa Power Cooperative, which will use it to provide electricity to about 15,000 homes. It looks like none of this electricity will be used for Google’s local data center.

With this investment, Google has brought its total committed investment into green energy projects to just over $990 million. The company’s other wind energy investments include a $157 million investment in a Southern California wind energy farm and a $100 million investment into a wind farm in Oregon that is anticipated to be the world’s largest at 845 MW. Google’s first wind energy investment was worth $38.8 million and involved two North Dakota wind farms. Besides the wind farms themselves, Google also owns a 37.5 percent stake in the Atlantic Wind Connection backbone, a project that aims to build transmission lines for green energy along the mid-Atlantic coast.

More: http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/15/google-invests-75m-in-iowa-wind-farm-bringing-its-total-green-energy-investments-to-almost-1b/

Mozilla retrasó su proyecto de bloquear las cookies de terceros por defecto, que originalmente se pondría en marcha con Firefox 22. La idea es bloquear estos archivos, que permiten recolectar datos de los usuarios. Esto no significa que la organización haya cambiado su postura al respecto, aseguró el CTO Brendan Eich.

La razón del retraso es que se necesita más trabajo sobre un parche desarrollado por un estudiante de Stanford llamado Jonathan Mayer, que permite el acceso de cookies de los sitios que estás visitando, pero bloquea las que corresponden a terceros sitios que no estás viendo (como cookies insertadas a través de avisos publicitarios).

El parche se está probando en la versión Aurora y Beta del navegador, y Mozilla está preocupado por algunos “falsos positivos” y “falsos negativos” en el sistema.

En el primer caso, se bloquearían cookies de sitios que no estás visitando directamente, pero que corresponden a la misma compañía. Por ejemplo, si visitas un sitio llamado “foo.com”, que inserta una cookie de un sitio llamado “foocdn.com”, Firefox aceptaría las cookies de foo.com pero bloquearía las de foocdn.com porque nunca visitaste directamente esa URL, aun cuando ambos sitios corresponden a la misma compañía.

Por otro lado está el caso de los falsos negativos. El que visites un sitio una vez no significa que estés de acuerdo con que te rastree en todo Internet y sitios no relacionados para siempre. “Nuestro desafío es encontrar una forma para lidiar con este tipo de casos. Estamos buscando mayor definición que decidir automática y exclusivamente en base a si visitaste un sitio o no”, explica Eich.

De este modo, la opción por defecto en Firefox 22 será de permitir las cookies de terceros, tal como ha funcionado hasta ahora, hasta que se logre superar estos problemas. Esta versión del navegador está programada para el 24 de junio.

El plan de Mozilla de bloquear las cookies ha sido criticado por las empresas de publicidad online, que utilizan los datos para entregar avisos a los consumidores.

Link: C is for Cookie (Brendan Eich)

Este artículo, fue publicado originalmente aquí: http://www.fayerwayer.com/2013/05/mozilla-pospone-su-plan-para-bloquear-cookies-de-terceros-por-defecto/

Kickstarter might be better known for funding films and hardware projects, but it’s now getting its first synthetic biology proposal. A Singularity University alum, a Stanford post-doc and a Stanford Ph.D. are looking to use synthetic biology and software from startup Genome Compiler to creating plants that glow.

While the first several generations of plants might be weaker at emitting light, the long-term idea is to replace electric or gas lighting with natural lighting from plants.

“We live in a world that is generating too much carbon dioxide,” said Antony Evans, who is one of the three people behind the project. “Nature has figured out ways of creating energy that don’t require so much CO2 use, and what we really want to do is awaken people to the potential of that. Instead of having all these expensive street lights, why don’t we get plants?”

With the project, they’re inserting bioluminescence genes into a small flowering plant called Arabidopsis that’s part of the mustard family.

They’re looking for $65,000 in funding to print DNA sequences they’ve designed using the Genome Compiler software and then to create rewards for backers like “Maker” kits that let you create your own glowing plants. The startup associated with the project, Genome Compiler, lets people easily design genetic sequences and order them online.

The project comes at a time when costs around both genome sequencing and DNA printing are falling precipitously. Printing DNA at this points costs at least 25 cents per base pair. So for an 8,000-character sequence, they’re looking at at least $2,000 per unique sequence.

They’ll test a number of experimental sequences and print them with partner and Silicon Valley startup Cambrian Genomics, which has made a DNA laser printing system that cuts the cost of DNA synthesis dramatically. Then they’ll use bacteria as a vector to insert the new DNA into the plant.

Evans, who doesn’t have a background in biology at all, got into the field through Singularity University and Biocurious, a bio-hacking space down in Sunnyvale.

His bet is that the next decade will usher in a new era where it’s as easy to hack on animal or plant genomes as it is to build software with Python or Rails. The cost of sequencing a full human genome is falling even faster than Moore’s law would suggest at a current rate $8,000 down from $100 million in 2001. Not only that, DNA printing is getting cheaper as well with companies like Genscript.

They’ve also gone through the regulatory process to ensure that the project is compliant with U.S. law. Regulators from the USDA and EPA are naturally concerned that synthetic plants could become pests and crowd out or compete with natural plants for resources. They check for whether newly designed life forms have genes associated with pests; Evans has cleared this. The third agency that regulates synthetic biology experiments, the FDA, isn’t really involved here because these “Glowing Plants” are inedible.

Reference: http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/23/glowing-plants/

Google Wallet ahora está integrado con Gmail, de modo que los usuarios de este sistema de pagos podrán transferir dinero directamente desde el correo electrónico.

“Es gratis enviar dinero si tu cuenta bancaria está enlazada con Google Wallet o si estás usando tu saldo de Wallet, y se aplican tarifas bajas si envías dinero usando tu crédito asociado o tarjeta de débito”, explicó la compañía en un post. Aunque se dio a conocer hoy, el anuncio no fue parte de lo presentado durante Google I/O.

El envío de dinero sólo está habilitado parra Gmail desde el escritorio y no desde móviles aún. La opción desplegará en Estados Unidos durante los próximos meses.

Link: Send money to friends with Gmail and Google Wallet (Google Commerce)

Este artículo, fue publicado originalmente aquí: http://www.fayerwayer.com/2013/05/google-integra-wallet-con-gmail-para-transferir-dinero-por-e-mail/

Apple’s patent filings today reveal one concept outside their usual product-focused applications, detailing a method for harnessing wind power in a manner different from that employed in traditional turbines. Electricity gathered from a wind turbine would be converted to heat energy and stored in a “low-heat capacity fluid” in Apple’s patent, allowing it to be tapped on an as-needed basis whenever the wind dies down.

It all gets pretty technical, but painted in broad strokes, the system would potentially use the motion of the rotor shaft moving against a “low-heat capacity fluid” (such as ethanol or mercury, for instance) to generate heat through friction between the two surfaces. This can then be transferred from the storage fluid to a working fluid which is then boiled off to release steam. The steam powers a turbine, converting the energy to usable form.

Apple’s system differs from basic wind-power generators that are highly subject to variances in wind power, as well as systems that use batteries to store energy made through rotational energy for later use when wind isn’t actively making that much power. Instead, it is designed to make wind power available on a more “on-demand” basis, which is of significant importance for facilities requiring a constant, uninterrupted power supply. That likely explains why Apple is pursuing this kind of tech: Its massive data centers have huge power requirements, and the company has stated its commitment to harnessing wind, solar and other alternative energy sources to help keep these facilities running smoothly.

So far, Apple has been working mostly on building solar farms and biogas generators to help fulfill its energy needs at data center locations like the one it has in Maiden, NC, and competitor Google recently revealed that it has powered a data center with wind power for the first time.

In a second filing published today, Apple is back on track with its more consumer-oriented patents, this time detailing an evolution of the mouse that would bring more gesture controls to the input device. The additions would allow a mouse to detect tilting, tilt-sliding, lifting and other gestures to add additional command capabilities to the mouse’s basic clicking, movement and scrolling. It’s sort of a Wii Remote-lite, which is likely an easier control paradigm for traditional desktop computer users to adopt than anything more drastic.

This is interesting is because Apple is still showing an interest in iterating on its input device design, which still requires a lot of improvement. The Magic Mouse, while promising with its multitouch surface, is in practice a frustrating device to use. Apple traditionally hasn’t done great with mice, and it’ll be interesting to see if it can do any better while adding motion control into the mix, if this patent ever turns into a shipping product.

Learn more: http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/27/apple-exploring-alternative-wind-power-technology-and-motion-control-mac-mice/