Via Lab Notes I read about the PML electric hybrid Super Mini:
All braking is performed by the wheel motors acting as very efficient electrical generators which return almost all of the energy back to the battery system.
Because the wheels are high performance motors, ABS comes as a standard function built into each wheel’s software. Now anti-skid can also be applied to acceleration since the motor can smoothly control torque delivery to/from the road in both cases.
Each wheel develops 160bhp - 640bhp in total. The original Mini One develops less than 100bhp with an engine that weighs nearly double the weight of the four electric wheels! Apart from wheel bearings there are no wearing parts in the electric wheels; this means the horsepower stays for the life of the vehicle - and beyond.
The great part is that the wheels and battery/generator assembly can be retrofitted into more or less any chassis so hopefully we'll see other adaptations soon. I could certainly see myself buying one of these (in a more financially stable future) in, say, an MX-5 body.
One thing I noted from the PML page is this disclaimer:
BMW (UK) Ltd has requested that we mention they have no involvement with this project and that such conversions invalidate warranty!
I think BMW should have seen the choice of a mini as a golden opportunity to support such innovation -- A hybrid car people might actually want to buy!
Not sure where I got the link now but a good, flippant, guide to not bombing in Web2.0. I'm kind of keen that PAOGA don't bomb for obvious reasons. Here are the headlines:
- Have a revenue model
- Be a complete business not a feature
- Affect real people not just bloggers
- Get a real memorable name
- Don't intertwine your fate with Web2.0
- Get honest feedback
- Make sure your revolution really is coming
- Make sure your market can support you
- Don't expect to be (or be bought by) Google
- Have fun
Number #4 is a real thorn in my side. I've disliked the name PAOGA ever since I joined the company (which, a long time ago, used to be called ClearCurve). The company started as a B2B enabler so the acronym People Are Our Greatest Asset kind of made sense. For a company, you could argue, it's employees and customers that are the real asset (okay I don't like the word asset but I think the point is valid).
But around the start of the year we began changing direction. Recognizing that the individual is both the key to the relationship (moving from CRM to Supplier Relationship Management where the individual lives at the centre of his or her many relationships with suppliers) and the key to proving the marketplace we changed focus to support individuals in taking back control of their lives; Enabling them to manage their information and share it with whom they want, when they want, and - critically - to have an audit trail that lets them work out what's happened to their information.
But from this perspective the PAOGA name doesn't really make any kind of sense and we'd like to change it. But you try finding a new name that you can register as a domain... I've tried over 300 different domain names since June and not a single (good one) has been available.
Suggestions welcome!
I think by now we're all pretty much aware of the idea of an End User License Agreement (EULA) for software. This is the means by which companies try to limit what rights we have with respect to software we pay them for. Setting out our rights in clear terms is a sound principle. The problems tend to occur where EULA's are unclear (either deliberately or otherwise) or EULA's are drafted by a party in a monopoly power position and thus unfair to one party.
Usually that party is us.
Pretty soon I'm hoping to have a version of PAOGAperson (our application for managing your life online) which will support publishing subsets of the information that is securely stored.
The idea is that you have your core identity that, over the years, will become very wide and deep as it covers all aspects of your life. At different times, and in different contexts, you're going to want to share subsets of this information. We're calling this ability persona's. Ultimately you will be able to create a range of them (business persona, family persona, patient persona, employer persona, job seeker persona, friend persona, public persona, deceased persona, etc...)
Now it occurred to me back when I was first scoping out this stuff that it was a great opportunity to turn the tables on businesses that have been exploiting us. Our persona's should come with an EULA that determines the rights those businesses have with respect to the data we are publishing (which might turn out to be no rights at all).
So for example I imagine at some point we'll have some kind of dialog when you come to publish a persona that will (if we don't already know) help us to understand your tolerance to risk, the context in which you are publishing the information, uses you want to permit, and then suggest one of a range of licenses to attach to the data and which will either be embedded in the data or which will have to be accepted by the information-consumer before they get their hands on your goodies.
As a jumping off point I've wondered about using the Creative Commons licenses. For example if I am creating a persona to publish my email address for friends and relatives then perhaps an Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivatives license would be appropriate?
I'd love to hear what people think of the idea of turning the tables and using an EULA to control the uses that can be made of your data and about using Creative Commons licenses in particular.
