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Trumba , the shared calendar and events communications software company has added the ability for users to attach "custom objects" to their Web calendars and other websites. These "objects" are in essence tables that unfold graphically, keyed to links, or can stand on their own as pages. Trumba's customers use the company's software to publish interlinked calendars and provide other modular features to their websites. Clients include media companies like the New York Times and Ottaway Newspapers, academic institutions like Kansas State and Emory Universities, and groups like the City of Seattle and the New Orleans Saints. Sponsor The custom objects advance the inherent modularity of Trumba's offerings. From Trumba : "To quickly grasp the idea of an Object, think of it as a table. Each record is represented by a row. Each attribute is represented by a column. Because Objects are tables, you can use them to store any collection of data that you might want to publish on your website." Dan Hickman, Trumba's president, wrote us: "Some of our competitors offer a canned venue or performer features that let you track and publish that information along with your calendar but our custom objects feature lets you create any type of content that might be associated with your events. The feature can even be used to publish a connected database of information that's not even related to your calendar." Examples include attaching venue descriptions and pictures to events, to provide detailed listings of departments in a sleekly retrievable fashion and the ability to solicit and utilize user-generated content. Disclosure: The author helped Trumba start their first blog many years ago. Discuss
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Trumba Offers Custom Objects to Calendars
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Researchers at Stanford University have just made a major breakthrough that may impact the technology industry for years to come: they've built a better battery. The project, an attempt to use lithium-sulfur in place of the lithium-ion technology that is used in batteries today, has been in development since 2007. Recently, the scientists' efforts were rewarded when they created a battery that lasts four times as long as its lithium-ion counterparts while also having the benefit of being "significantly safer" than today's batteries which occasionally explode after short-circuiting. Although still a ways off from commercial viability (and availability), the lithium-sulfur batteries promise advances like 80% more capacity, 10 times the power density and, theoretically, the ability to last four times as long as modern batteries. Sponsor The new battery technology represents the final step in our quest for always-on connectivity to the mobile web. We already have Wi-Fi hotspots, 3G and 4G networks for Internet everywhere and a host of mobile gadgets from netbooks to iPads and mobile phones to notebook computers. But what we haven't had yet is a way to keep our gadgets powered up for more than a day or so without a charge. That may be soon about to change. An Always-On Mobile Web With these sorts of improvements, lithium-sulfur batteries could lead the way in the next phase of the mobile revolution. They could allow us to fully enjoy the web from anywhere in the world, without having to worry about dying batteries, access to power outlets or having to carry around battery replacements when planning long-lasting mobile computing sessions. Far more than just a convenience, better battery technology would impact how our mobile devices are designed and how they behave. For example, Apple currently imposes numerous restrictions on members of their mobile device lineup for the sake of battery performance. On Apple iPhones, iPod Touches and the forthcoming iPad, applications aren't permitted to run in the background and Adobe Flash technology has been banned altogether, supposedly for its CPU usage which rapidly drains battery juice. Other mobile smartphone makers, while not necessarily as restrictive as Apple, still have to weigh the benefits of providing these same types of features with the performance hit their gadgets will take if they do so. And as anyone who regularly fires up their smartphone web browser knows, too much Internet surfing during the day means a phone that dies out before nightfall. Another example of the technology's potential impact: e-Readers. Today, if you want to pack your Kindle or Nook device to take with you on vacation, you still have to go through the thought process: how long will I be gone? Will my battery last? Should I pack the cord? Now imagine that you could just throw your e-Reader into your bag without a second thought, just as if you were packing the paperback novel or newspaper these sorts of gadgets aim to replace. Would that encourage more people to make the switch from the analog formats to digital? The Impacts of Better Batteries What if, in the future, concerns like these were no longer a worry? What if phones, netbooks, e-Readers and other mobile devices could be used for days on end without the need for a charge? That would radically impact the way we think about and use our mobile devices. There are a million other use cases that could benefit from this technology change, too, including sensor networks, computing from remote areas, faster news dissemination from areas impacted by disasters (either natural or man-made) where power outages have occurred, gadgets for hikers, campers and other explorers who spend weeks away from civilization and, therefore, away from electricity, mobile location-based services that run in the background on smartphones and other personal mobile gadgets and - OK, we'll admit it - the ability to Twitter all day long without a recharge. For the nitty gritty technical details about this new battery technology, MIT's Technology Review explains everything from the cathodes to the conductivity as well as the challenges still ahead for this breakthrough technology. Most notably, the scientists still need to figure out how to maintain capacity. After five discharge/recharge cycles, the batteries lost one-third of their initial storage capacity and after 40 to 50 cycles, they ceased to function altogether. However, if the researchers can overcome that final hurdle and a few others, the new technology could one day become commercially viable. It's too soon to know if that will actually occur, but as gadget lovers ourselves, we're hopeful. Discuss
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Battery Breakthrough Could Revolutionize Mobile Computing
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On Wednesday, BusinessWeek released their list of the top 25 angel investors in the tech industry, naming Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon ahead of veteran angels Ron Conway and Reid Hoffman. Conway and Hoffman are two of the most influential angels in tech, and have invested in some of the largest Internet companies known today, including Google , Facebook , Twitter and Digg . Dixon, a younger, less experienced investor than Conway and Hoffman, snagged the top spot due to both his diverse investment portfolio and the superior financial performance of his investments. Sponsor The list was curated in partnership between BusinessWeek and the startup tracker YouNoodle , which took a three pronged approach to ranking the tech angels. First they analyzed the growth of the angels' investments based on the amount invested, the number of employees, and the number of "companies operating at valuations greater than $100 million, and the sale of any companies for more than $50 million." Leadership was the next key factor which BusinessWeek and YouNoodle took into account. "The importance of each angel was measured by looking at the network of co-investments between angels, as well as at the ability to act as a bridge to other angel groups," writes BusinessWeek's Ira Sager. "From the perspective of an entrepreneur, the ability to attract other investors is critical." Lastly, they compared each angel's portfolio for diversity, which helped push Chris Dixon above his fellow angels. Dixon, an early investor in Skype , and his Hunch co-founder Caterina Fake (ranked 20th overall) hold the top two spots in terms of portfolio diversity. Despite being ranked 11th in terms of influence, Dixon was crowned the king of the angels thanks in no small part to the range of industries he has invested in; however the overall success of his investments seems to have played the largest role. The financial performance category seems to have been given the most weight by BusinessWeek and YouNoodle. The top seven angels also fall within the top eight best financial performers; Paul Graham (No. 11 overall) is the outlier here, ranking seventh in terms of financial performance. The category with the least weight seems to be portfolio diversity, as Conway and Hoffman achieved their high ranks despite placing 12th and 24th respectively in diversity. Their cause was undoubtedly helped by their 1st and 3rd place finishes in terms of influence. In fourth place overall is Esther Dyson, an investor in Delicious and Meetup , and behind her is Peter Thiel, who helped Yelp and Zynga get off the ground. Rounding out the top 10 is Marc Andreessen, Jeff Bezos, Chris Sacca, Mike Maples and Andy Bechtolsheim. Y Combinator's Paul Graham found the #11 spot, Digg's Kevin Rose came in at #15, Naval Ravikant is #22, and Google's own Eric Schmidt is #24. What are your thoughts on BusinessWeek's list? Do you think the measuring sticks they used to rank the angels are fair? Or would you use different metrics to determine the best of the best? Let us know what you think in the comments. Discuss
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Chris Dixon Bests Conway, Hoffman For Top Tech Angel Spot
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The Windows Phone 7 news kind of threw us a bit this week. It had almost no mention about how it would serve the enterprise. It almost seemed like Microsoft had given up. Now we are starting to see some reports about how Windows Phone 7 would fit for the mobile enterprise. And it makes us wonder. Will the Windows Phone 7 better serve the enterprise than the iPhone? Sponsor The Blackberry is the leader in the market. For our purposes, we are looking at how the challengers compare to each other. Android may become the biggest rival to the Blackberry with its tight integration into Google's enterprise suite and the ability to use multiple applications at the same time. I's the iPhone that looks a bit vulnerable. Without a doubt, the iPhone is showing success in the enterprise. Apple had a robust earnings report for the fourth quarter thanks in good part to sales of the iPhone to people who use it for work. But here's the catch. We really have not seen any bona fide use of mobile collaboration tools as of yet across any device. People are using smartphones to check messages and use applications. The applications they do use are services like Twitter. When mobile collaboration does find its place in the market, it's not going to be a one application world. It will require the ability to mashup data, pulling information from multiple sources. Our daily work requires us to use multiple applications simultaneously. That's not possible with the iPhone. And it will not be possible with the iPad. This issue will become even more pronounced as more enterprise applications enter the mobile market. In comparison, Windows Phone 7 is an information centric device. Information is stored in hubs and you can view the different hubs as a panorama on the device screen. That makes it potentially better than the iPhone or the Nexus One, which do not have that capability. People want to see the information without having to go from application to application. A panorama is more akin to the experience we get on a device like a laptop. That's far more suitable for the enterprise. Gizmodo: "Out of the box, this information is organized into areas called hubs, which follow the user's areas of interest. Accessible through live tiles in the home screen, the Me (the user), people, pictures and video, music, and games--plus the omnipresent search--hubs give views into several data sources, connecting and presenting them into an interweaved panoramic stream. These hubs dig heavily into many databases, both locally and into the cloud." Ironically, Microsoft often get labeled as a company that creates silo environments. From our view, the mobile applications of today have a certain silo effect. Windows Phone 7 and its hub structure means that it can draw from deep databases from on-premise and the cloud. That to us seems like a powerful combination that is well suited to an enterprise world. Discuss
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Will Windows Phone 7 Be Better Than the iPhone for the Enterprise?
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