A briefing room at the United Nations yesterday morning made a very official setting for an announcement about the international, high-tech, and almost free future of higher education. Shai Reshef, featured in our Most Creative People list, has begun accepting enrollment for his innovative nonprofit online university. "We are opening the gates for students from all over the world, who may not have the means to study elsewhere," he said. "We see ourselves as part of a trend in education of opening information and using what's available."
Indeed, there is a major trend blossoming in the crossover of information technology, the open-source movement, and education. The University of the People will draw on the wealth of free course material that has been made available in recent years under Creative Commons license by the likes of MIT (OpenCourseWare), Rice University (Connexions), and hundreds of other institutions. Students will discuss the material in online forums with other students from all over the world and with volunteer faculty--those who have signed up to teach so far are professors, retirees, graduate students, and professionals in their fields.
Reshef, a small man with a sweet smile whose face turned pink with excitement as he answered questions, has seeded the organization with $1 million of his own money (from his career in for-profit education companies, one of which he sold to the U.S. giant Kaplan) and needs to raise $5 million more. He calculates that the school can become self-sustaining at a scale of 15,000 students, each of whom will pay nominal fees based on whether they hail from rich or poor countries. Currently, the UoP has registered 200 students out of a planned first class of just 300, but they already hail from 52 countries.
The UoP plans to offer accredited bachelor's degrees, starting in
the fields of computer science and business administration, for a price that maxes out at $4000. Can free raw materials be translated into (almost) free education? That's still an open question.
In the May issue I wrote about how the UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center is making efficiency sexy as an investment to Silicon Valley VCs and big companies alike. Now The New York Times has caught on, reporting that Sequoia Capital, which made its name seeding Yahoo and Google, has invested in SynapSense, a UC Davis company mentioned in my story that uses sensors to lower the energy use of data centers; Google's venture fund and top green fund Kleiner Perkins, meanwhile, have invested in Silver Spring Networks, a smart meter company. Investors like that in today's harsh economic climate, companies like these have the potential to be efficient not only with energy, but with capital too.
Image: one of SynapSense's readouts shows areas of heat in a data center.
Cisco CEO John Chambers is "healthily paranoid," he told the BBC today. Maybe that's why he's planning to spread sci-fi, panopticon-esque vigilance across entire cities and even ecosystems, in a collaboration with NASA with the portentous name of Planetary Skin.
"In a nutshell, Planetary Skin is a massive global-monitoring system of environmental conditions that will enable effective decision making in the private and public sectors and in communities, with data that is collected from myriad sources including space, airborne, maritime, terrestrial and people-based sensor networks, analyzed, verified and reported over an open standards based Web 2.0 and 3.0 collaborative spaces for decision makers."
Translation: Electric eyes counting traffic on roads. RFID tags tracing apples from field to market. Satellites in space tracking ice sheets and tidal flows. All of it connected through wireless networks, monitored, measured and managed with the same kind of software that a Wal-Mart would use to provide just-in-time delivery of its products from China.
This is heady stuff; fitting that it would be piloted in the city of San Francisco, launching this Earth Day. EcoMap, a localized, urban version of Planetary Skin, will connect sensors over existing wireless networks that measure what areas of the city contribute most to global warming. Citizens can go online and share their plans for reducing individual carbon impacts.
In what must rank as the mother of all unintended consequences, and in a finding certain to have effects on international policy, NASA scientists have found that a decrease in airborne sulfates--dirty smokestack particles caused by burning coal and regulated by the Clean Air Act since the 1970s to prevent acid rain and air pollution--may account for as much as 45% of Arctic warming. Dr. Drew Shindell of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies reports:
"Sulfates, which come primarily from the burning of coal and oil, scatter incoming solar radiation and have a net cooling effect on climate. Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed a series of laws that have reduced sulfate emissions by 50%. While improving air quality and aiding public health, the result has been less atmospheric cooling from sulfates."
Besides being catnip for climate-deniers everywhere, these findings may be cause for a real rethinking of climate-change policies. Dr. Shindell works for Dr. James Hansen, a star of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth and the world's leading voice making the demon Carbon Dioxide synonymous with all of society's ills. But Dr. Shindell is recommending that focusing on the effects of aerosols rather than carbon dioxide emissions may be the more effective strategy against climate change and especially the melting of arctic ice.
Aerosols--sources range from dirty coal plants to hairspray--include both the cooling sulfates and the ultra-warming, sunlight-absorbing black soot. They appear and dissolve in the atmosphere much more quickly than greenhouse gases, which hang around for centuries, making them an effective target for short-term "geoengineering" type interventions.
[Images: Nasa Image of thunderstorms over Southern Brazil-- researcher discovered that tiny airborne particles of pollution may modify developing thunderclouds; sulfate particles under an electron microscope.]
The user-submitted restaurant and small business review site Yelp has been the subject of some pretty hot debates over its policies as its influence in local markets from San Francisco to New York has grown. Now it seems they have softened their stance on one issue: letting business owners respond to their reviews in public comments. When I interviewed Steve Kaufer, founder of the larger--and profitable--travel review site TripAdvisor, he explained why it's a good idea to let owners continue the conversation:
"Hoteliers don't like it when the one oddball writes a scathing review--this person was inebriated, they thought we were on the beach, but it clearly states on the website that we're 3 blocks away from the beach. So if someone complains about how terrible the pool was, and the restaurant was closed, the hotelier can respond: the pool was undergoing renovation and the kitchen was closed we had a sign on our website but it's all fixed now or whatever the facts actually are."
This is a smart move for Yelp---not only does it get them some positive publicity, but it will lead to business owners spending more time on the site. Smart businesses realize that complaints are, as Kaufer says, "free customer research," and responding to them openly and honestly is a good way to win more customers.
Fast Company likes to cover businesses that do well by doing good. But sometimes the opposite is equally true. Earlier this year, the nation's leading tax-preparing company paid $4.85 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over its "refund anticipation loans"--high interest, high-fee cash advances of consumer's own money that California's attorney general, along with many others, said were deceptively marketed. H&R Block is still selling these loans, only with the effective APR lowered to 36% from the insane heights (500%?!) previously seen. The list of consumer complaints goes on and on--an overpriced IRA product, hidden fees and charges, employee identity theft. And to top it all off, just yesterday, they were ordered to pay $2 million to a software contractor in a fraud and contract fight.
Yet despite all these black eyes, and despite the strong emergence of do-it-yourself online alternatives like TurboTax, H&R Block is going gangbusters in the final sprint of tax season. They're doing twice as well as the Dow Jones over the past year, and their revenues are up this tax season as individuals and businesses cope with a tsunami of tax complications: foreclosures, unemployment claims, and billions of brand-new tax credits and incentives found in Obama's stimulus package. Tax preparers are leasing newly vacant storefronts to cope with the growth.
This is a company that demands you turn over all your financial and personal information for the year. it's hard to think of a business model that depends more on trust. So how long can H&R Block go on brushing off the bad press?
Well, everyone has to do their taxes. And most people would rather not think about them. H&R Block is fast, they have a ubiquitous, easy-to-recognize brand, and best of all, they have the ability to offer money to everyone who comes in the door. Sure, it's the customer's own money, but that doesn't matter. As long as there's a group of Americans--possibly less educated or less digitally savvy--who prefer not to spend time thinking about managing their money, retail tax preparers will probably continue to thrive.
I'll be talking about H&R Block and tax time on WNYC's Financial 411 Podcast today, you can listen here.
Instead of waiting (and paying) for giant solar farms and mega-scale transmission lines to be built, you could start generating your own clean energy tomorrow, for 60% below retail prices! Small-scale privately owned renewable energy solutions are becoming increasingly popular as an approach to fighting global warming and building energy independence. (Efficiency guru Amory Lovins is one fan.) Now household wind could become more of a household name thanks to a $10 million investment by GE with other investors in the world’s largest
manufacturer of small wind turbines, Southwest Windpower.
Southwest's Skystream, shown here, can provide
anywhere from 40% to as much as 90% of a home’s electricity; other models provide up to 3KW for commercial use. This technology is available to homeowners today with a 4 to 5 year average payback (depending on how good your site is for wind and how high your current bills are). Obama's stimulus package just introduced a 30% tax credit to help seal the deal.
GE spokesperson Kevin Skillern sees big potential for small wind: "The market is currently just $100 million in total sales, but has been growing 40 to 50% a year for a handful of years. What we see is really a transition point where the combination of stimulus programs and technology advancements make this a highly economic purchase for nearly half of the U.S. population."
This is a strategic investment for GE--Skillern says a dozen different collaborations are being considered with different parts of the company. For example, the smart grid technologies they are developing help small-scale renewables connect to the grid. And GE, of course, long ago mastered the appliance business--maybe they can help make home power generation as easy as they make it to plug in a washer-dryer.
Carbon cap-and-trade efforts are becoming one long chain of unintended consequences. To whit: Greenpeace released a report arguing that allowing official trade in carbon credits representing forest preservation would crash the price of carbon by up to 75%.
Deforestation is responsible for up to 20% of all carbon emissions, so stopping it would seem to be a pretty effective way to halt global warming, as I chronicled last year. But there are too many forests worldwide, and the oversight and regulation in the tropical, less developed countries where they are located is generally too weak to allow robust verification of reforestation or preservation projects, according to Greenpeace. Polluting countries could meet their targets by buying cheap, dubious forest offsets, instead of investing in clean-energy projects stateside, delaying the hard work required to truly halt global warming.
Now Greenpeace wants to cut forests out of the carbon trade. Instead, they're proposing a dedicated public-private international fund that would invest to protect people and forests without demanding a monetary return. The report will be released at the United Nations climate meetings in Bonn tonight, part of the run-up to the renegotiation of the Kyoto Protocol in Copenhagen in December; Obama's climate adviser, Todd Stern, is in attendance and has signaled that the U.S. is ready to get real.
TRU Organic Spirits is putting the friendly back in environmentally friendly. Not only are its lemon- and vanilla-infused vodkas and their aromatic gin completely certified USDA organic, but the
Monrovia, California-based company plants at least one seedling in Central America (through its nonprofit partner Sustainable Harvest) for every bottle sold--that's 50,000 last year.
TRU commissioned an independent report, to be released next week, showing that each tree planted has the potential to absorb 790 square kilos of carbon dioxide, whereas the carbon footprint of each bottle in its relatively lightweight packaging is merely 1.04 square kilos--making the product an eye-popping 760 times carbon negative!
At that rate, a single glass would be enough to offset your carbon footprint for a day. At the upscale hotels (Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott) and restaurants where TRU is mainly sold, the company distributes certificates showing how many trees the patrons have planted so far that year--a virtuous selling point that may make a $12 vodka tonic easier to swallow.
Of course, these carbon calculations are tricky. Those numbers assume each new tree lives out a full 50-year lifespan and isn't chopped down or burned by ranchers and farmers in Belize or Honduras. But I'm inclined to give co-founder Melkon Khosrovian, who dropped by Fast Company's offices on Tuesday, the benefit of the doubt for taking a holistic approach to making a sustainable product. Indeed, Khosrovian says that "the negative 790 kg CO2 number does take into account trees that don't make it to the end of their lives for any number of reasons. It's reflected in the 50-year lifespan, which would normally be higher."
Khosrovian started the company with his wife Litty Mathew (pictured), who studied French cuisine at Le Cordon Bleu and preferred the delicate flavors of French wine to the harsher spirits his Armenian relatives were fond of hoisting. The couple started experimenting with infusing vodkas, buying their produce at the Hollywood Farmers Market. Khosrovian says their concern for the earth grew naturally out of the relationships they built with their farmer-suppliers. "Our industry has to change just like all industries have to change, to deal nature more of an even hand. If you keep ripping it off eventually it’ll come bite you in the ass."
I would like to drink to that. But Khosrovian wasn't able to leave us a bottle. He promised to send along samples: I'm especially keen to try the enticingly golden-colored gin with 14 aromatics. We'll hold an official Fast Company tasting and report back soon in this space.
A Blade Runner trope come to life: British engineers BMT Group, in partnership with Essex University, have plans to release a trial school of five robotic carp into the waters off northern Spain. The fully autonomous, five-foot-long, battery-powered "fish" move at a maximum rate of 1 meter per second and transmit information from onboard pollution sensors via Wi-fi.
The biomimicking design is intended to make them more energy-efficient--their otherworldly and gorgeous appearance is a byproduct.
Beijing University has its own remote-controlled robot fish project, designed for underwater archaeology, mapping, aquaculture and fishing. IBM has developed some sensor-linked "autonomous underwater vehicles" too as part of its Great Rivers project.
A briefing room at the United Nations yesterday morning made a very official setting for an announcement about the international, high-tech, and almost free future of higher education. Shai Reshef, featured in our Most Creative People list, has begun accepting enrollment for his innovative nonprofit online university. "We are opening the gates for students from all over the world, who may not have the means to study elsewhere," he said. "We see ourselves as part of a trend in education of opening information and using what's available."
Cisco CEO John Chambers is "healthily paranoid," he told the 
Besides being catnip for climate-deniers everywhere, these findings may be cause for a real rethinking of climate-change policies. Dr. Shindell works for Dr. James Hansen, a star of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth and the world's leading voice making the demon Carbon Dioxide synonymous with all of society's ills. But Dr. Shindell is recommending that focusing on the effects of aerosols rather than carbon dioxide emissions may be the more effective strategy against climate change and especially the melting of arctic ice.
Southwest's Skystream, shown here, can provide
anywhere from 40% to as much as 90% of a home’s electricity; other models provide up to 3KW for commercial use. This technology is available to homeowners today with a 4 to 5 year average payback (depending on how good your site is for wind and how high your current bills are). Obama's stimulus package just introduced a 30% tax credit to help seal the deal.
Carbon cap-and-trade efforts are becoming one long chain of unintended consequences. To whit: Greenpeace released a report arguing that allowing official trade in carbon credits representing forest preservation would crash the price of carbon by up to 75%.
