Busy Thinking

On energy consumption of electric cars

We hear about electric cars more and more. Apple showed a Nissan Leaf iAd in their latest keynote. Australian agencies a looking forward to electric cars (CIO article).

There’s also talk about charging stations and distance one can travel on a 100% electric car. I am all for an electric car that drives quietly and without emissions.

However, as I think about it I realize that with electric cars we will need to take many more things into consideration while driving.

With petrol-powered cars electricity was free - it was generated as a by-product of the engine spinning the wheels. You can have as much electricity as you can consume (or as your generator can produce). Nobody ever hits the limit of available electricity when the engine is on. Nobody says “Oh, I can’t play my iPod because there’s not enough electricity”.

Heat production is a given, too. Radiator was invented to get rid of heat. When it’s cold outside and you want to heat your car, you just let the heat from the engine in.

On a hot day we turn on air conditioning. Cold air, unlike hot, does not exist anywhere inside a car for free and needs to be generated. Many of us understand that aircon eats up petrol and affects the distance we can travel.

What about heat and energy in an electric car?

It’s pretty simple, really. You will have to take everything into account. I mean everything. Kilometers or Miles per gallon will not make sense anymore. Kilometers per dollar will not make much sense either.

All of the things described above will consume electricity.

How far can you drive on a dollar? That depends on whether you want to listen to the radio, have a GPS plugged in, keep the air conditioner or heater running. I hope you get the idea - everything needs to be taken into account. The louder your stereo is on, the smaller is your travel distance. If you are driving at night,  you will need more energy to get places. If you think you need your high beams on, you’ll need even more energy. What if it rains? Turning on the wipers is costly too. Freezing outside? Time to turn up that heater. And you know how that affects your home electricity bill.

In the end, it will depend on the size of your battery. And the size of your battery, just like the size of your petrol tank will determine how far you can go and what lifestyle choices you will make while driving.

Even with all these considerations I am all for the Electric Car. Can’t wait to be part of the future.

Last photo is taken from The Motor Report article which says Nissan Leaf is coming to Australia in 2012.

NearlyFreeSpeech.net DDOS effect

I’m using NearlyFreeSpeech.net (NFS) for some web and DNS hosting. It’s pretty cheap and has plenty of controls - just right for the technical person like me.

However, the recent DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack has shown me that their network is not resilient at all. Particularly, I’m concerned with DNS service. Commercial DNS offerings are meant to use geographically distributed servers NOT all on one network.

Couple of weeks ago, there was a network hardware failure at CrazyDomains.com.au. All of their web sites were down, but the DNS kept going. This is the way it’s supposed to be done.

Now, I’ll probably move all the domains to Zerigo.com and take advantage of their API and domain templates. I was thinking of using the DNS service offered by Linode.com when you sign up to one of their VMs. However, I feel I should go with a dedicated DNS hosting provider this time, not some free or cheapish add-on to hosting.

To conclude, I would like to say that there really aren’t many good DNS hosting services available.

Monetization idea for Vimeo, YouTube and others

“Paid Videos“  is where online video should be going. You can only get so far on advertising. Revenue share models based on ads don’t quite work. Main problem is they don’t encourage or sponsor original content. Another problem is that people don’t want ads everywhere.

Call me a cherry-picker, but I’m surprised big players like Vimeo and YouTube haven’t ventured into the land of allowing uploaders to charge money for videos. They have already built the platforms and fine-tuned the interfaces to user’s liking. Now it’s time to make it interesting for people to contribute original content. The infrastructure is all there. It’s time to make video profitable for the little guys just like Apple’s iTunes store.

Idea is simple:

• I make good video and upload it
• Visitors pay to view it
• I get a cut of the earnings from the service provider

What could be simpler?

Right now Vimeo is trying to make money by getting me to pay to upload videos. This may work for a business that wants to embed a bunch of videos on their site and have Vimeo host it. But it doesn’t work if I want to make money off those videos. This encourages me to upload a small chunk of my new creation to Vimeo or YouTube and try them to buy a DVD or an iTunes movie or app.

It could be simpler.

I upload a short teaser trailer and show it for free on Vimeo. If you like it, you click and pay to view/download/rent/subscribe to the video. Easy. The trick to making money online is to let the end users pay for stuff. You cannot make money on free stuff. Nor can you expect advertisers to cover the bill. For the millions and billions of consumers our there there are only thousands or hundred of thousands of producers. If you focus on getting producers to pay to showcase their creations, you’re doing it wrong.

If monetization was offered, we would see new movies appearing on YouTube and Vimeo the same time they do on Netflix or Cable TV.

Video Formats

YouTube and Vimeo are not just sites. They are the media formats of the future. Forget MP4 or OGG or H.264 - they are just technical specifications. Nobody says “I watched that video in H.264 format”, they say “Have you seen this YouTube video?”. YouTube will deliver the video in whatever format the user can see with maximum quality, be it OGG, H.264 or whatever new standard may appear in the future. YouTube will also fight for distribution. They will make sure it can be played on the iPad, Android and the new Sony TV. You just have to make the movie. YouTube and Vimeo will also work hard to protect the movies against piracy instead of simply providing vehicles for it.

YouTube logo will soon be the thing you’ll be looking for when buying the new gadget. It will replace the “DVD” or “BlueRay” logos sooner thatn you think. Devices with that logo will be certified to play YouTube content by adhering to the API. There will be no licensing fees to be paid for using the logo because YouTube will be making the money by other means. This is no BetaCam or MiniDisk - excellent technologies of the day crippled by patenting and licensing.

Piracy

How many people know how to download a video from YouTube and later play it on the home entertainment system? Not many. From those who can, not many would be willing to go through trouble of doing so.

Consider this: If YouTube is one of the few de-facto video playback interfaces AND they guard against copyright infringements what are my chances of being able to upload a pirated video back to YouTube? Very close to zero.

If all your purchased data is stored online and managed in an official player, there’s no way for pirated stuff to get in there.

In another scenario, all pirates get together and create their own PiraTube. They invest billions to host and serve the content. They build custom apps that can be pushed to iPads and Androids. All the content is available for free. Then Apple rejects their app and the videos cannot be played on the shiny new device with the YouTube logo on it. Question: Why would pirates invest billions?

Monetization

This is the easy bit. Let the uploaders decide on the payment schemes. YouTube and Vimeo might have “premium” subscriptions that get access to select content without having to pay extra.

Media Storage

Buying a movie would add it to the customers set of items FOREVER. Say for $10 you get 10 playbacks for a lifetime, with extra $10 getting you another 10 playbacks. So if you buy a movie today, you can be sure that you can watch it next year again if you have the urge to do so. Players on devices like iPad and TV would report playbacks back to base.

ISP Access Fees

YouTube would partner with ISPs or give them rev share if they don’t count my traffic. Thus, by paying for the video I would be paying for my internet connection fees as well. Apple is already doing it for iTunes store.

Premium Content

I love TED talks. I wish I had access to all of them. I would pay a monthly subscription to view them all. I prefer to watch TED talks on YouTube because its less choppy and I have one less site to log into.

Free Content

Just like it happens with Free-to-air TV, a movie may be shown for free on a network like YouTube after it has been available for a fee for a while. Spiced with the right amounts of advertising and promotional content, it may be possible to occasionally make content available for free. It can also be bundled with a new release.

The future

For some, I may be stating the obvious. I suspect the big platforms like YouTube and Vimeo have plans for this. If they don’t, I would recommend they get a grip and get out of the Twitter business model of “Let’s build it very big and then somehow we will make money”.

Final Notes

These ideas are not new. Paid content is successfully used by many online businesses, including the book stores. There’s no reason to confine the video to a physical format to control piracy. Digital convenience is what people are willing to pay for.

If you run a video hosting platform and cannot summon the strength to pull something like this off, get in touch with me for some magic potion.

Graphic: Wet Paint Poster for PaintAccess

Today is my graphic day. After the iPhone printable sheet I created a couple of graphics for PaintAccess.com.au. The result is available in the online store at this URL: http://www.paintaccess.com.au/products/wet-paint-warning-poster-set

Visitors can buy the printed graphics or download the PDF to print on their own printers