Chattanooga unleashes the power of gigabit computing at GigTank demo day

Ever wonder what you can do with a gigabit internet connection? A competition involving teams using Chattanooga, Tenn.’s gigabit network set out to win fame and cash with their efforts, which also showed off real-world applications of extremely fast networks.

Over a dozen teams of entrepreneurs and students worked feverishly all summer in Chattanooga, Tenn.’s GigTank startup accelerator to develop gigabit apps that showcase the power and practical value of the country’s largest gigabit network. On Thursday, more than 500 techies, financiers and business mavens gathered to see the fruits of this year’s “summer camp for geeks.”

The premise was simple. Recruit nationally and internationally to select eight two-to-four-person teams of entrepreneurs and 11 students who formed their own teams. Offer $150,000 in cash prizes as the reward. Turn the teams loose in two- and three-month pressure cookers of accelerated application development.

In a process one participant described as a cross between Survivor and American Idol, we saw two primary outcomes. GigTank unleashed great creativity tempered by a real-world gigabit environment, and it’s helping people understand that apps don’t have to require a gig to benefit from a gig network.

Nicole Newman (l) and Cintia Kotsubo show off their award for Best Student Team. They also won $50,000.

The student team of Nicole Newman and Cintia Kotsubo designed Babel Sushi, a sophisticated translation application. Users speak into a computer or smartphone (think: Scotty of Star Trek) and Babel Sushi instantly translates and broadcasts their words in the language of the country they’re visiting. The application simultaneously does word-for-word translation, includes slang and idioms, and adapts for the dialect of the region where speakers are located. Crowdsourcing features keeps the application current. Babel Sushi was the winning Demo Day student team.

Toni Gamayell, Travis Staton, and TJ Weigel of Banyan are the big winners for Best Entrepreneur Team.

Banyan was one of the entrepreneur teams and eventual winner in this category by resolving a basic but expensive problem. At the moment, it is faster for a university researcher in California generating a terabyte of data to fly to London to deliver it to a professor in person than transferring it over the Internet. Banyan’s application enables users to send and share terabytes of data in minutes, quickly track file authorship, merge and collaborate on research and build research teams. Their target market believes the gig network is key to the app’s value.

Entrepreneur team Iron Gaming took home a bonus prize thanks to Warner Brothers. They received the $10,000 Warner Brothers Digital Media Award for their social gaming model, which will create a new gaming experience through live competitive events and interactive streaming content.

Anthony Broussard (l) and Asher Pembroke let off some steam after putting finishing touches on their Ariagora music marketplace.

Entrepreneur team Ariagora flips the script on Kickstarter to create a marketplace for music that turns would-be donors into investors. Friends and supporters use Ariagora to buy shares in a band’s project. Investors can let their money “ride” and earn money as the band’s music becomes more popular, or trade shares with others on the marketplace. Investors also become a word-of-mouth marketing force. Record labels can mitigate some of their risks when supporters’ investments reduce the amount labels need to put into the band, plus the word of mouth extends the label’s marketing efforts.

A student team of Marcellin Nshimiyimana and Robert Derveloy developed a facial recognition app for stores and shoppers that photographs customers’ faces, processes the images, pulls data immediately from shoppers’ previous transactions, and presents this data to the staff. The app also pushes special offers and promotions to shoppers’ mobile devices. Focus group participants liked the technology’s convenience and opt in/out ability, as well as its ability to deliver tailored coupons and advertisements automatically at the point-of-sale before the purchase.

Anthony Gulielmo of Vigia going through a final run of his presentation before the big gig day.

Entrepreneurs at Vigia produced video-focused mobile apps for public safety professionals and dispatchers, enhancing emergency services for college campuses and surrounding areas. Their apps drive down response times, and also give responders an extra set of “eyes” at the scene so they can address emergency calls more effectively by knowing more before going into dangerous situations. (Read more)

Watching these presentations reinforces the belief that it’s hard to find something truly new because so many core technologies have already been invented. GigTank’s value comes from creative minds viewing the palette of available technologies and using a gigabit brush to paint forward-looking solutions to challenges, or opportunities for people to do important tasks better and faster.

Besides unleashing creative minds, GigTank opens (hopefully) doubting minds. Community broadband supporters often hear “who needs a gig?” and “no one needs a gig!” Two moments in Chattanooga last week brought clarity to why these attacks are shortsighted. A slide in the presentation for the facial recognition app pointed out that having a gig network enables it to scan, photograph and process data for 400 people simultaneously and produce 4,000 photos in a second -– the time it takes to blink.

Dr. Jim Busch, a local radiologist, spoke at a press meeting about how Chattanooga’s gig network helps his medical practice grow. The network enables the radiologists and medical facilities to save 40 hours per radiologist, which represents a sizable monetary savings. Dr. Busch also stated that it is not uncommon for more than 10 radiologists to be sending files simultaneously that are 80 megabits to 100 megabits each.

Individuals rarely need a gig. But with the exception of Banyan’s target users, who move terabytes of data at a time, GigTank teams benefit from a gig because it empowers them to serve hundreds, even thousands, of users simultaneously without worrying about limitations in network capacity. As Dr. Busch stated, many applications move small amounts of data for every transaction, but may generate thousands of transactions every minute. Or there are applications that only do a few transactions a day, but each transaction moves mountains of data, so you don’t need many users to max out the network.

Experiencing Demo Day presentations reinforced this main message: a gigabit is not about killer apps, it’s about applying existing technology in powerful new ways that improve individuals’ lives and organizations’ operations. Their collectively use of the network is what pushes a gig to the max.

Craig Settles is a consultant who helps organizations develop broadband strategies, host of radio talk show Gigabit Nation and a broadband industry analyst. Follow him on Twitter (@cjsettles) or via his blog.

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Need for speed: California’s clean power buildout

California’s three large utilities are building out clean power, like solar, at a breakneck pace. They’ve got a mandate to hit by 2020, and it’s coming on fast.

For those who pay attention to California’s renewable energy development, it’s not surprising to hear that the state is adding a lot of clean power. But how fast is it doing it?

Actually, very fast. Since 2003, 2,871 MW of renewable electricity generation capacity has been installed to meet a state mandate, and about 11 percent of those came online during the first half of this year alone, according to a just-released state report. Another 2,740 MW are scheduled to come online by the end of 2012.

What’s the rush? The state mandate requires its investor-owned utilities to have 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2010 and 33 percent by 2020. The three big utilities – Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric – didn’t hit that goal by the end of 2010. But then, they had a three-year grace period. One of the highlights in the report is that, indeed, the Big Three reached that goal in 2011 (they filed their procurement report to the state in March this year).

Chevron, BrightSource solar oil plant, the tower and the mirrors

It’s been a lengthy and difficult lesson for the utilities and state regulators to figure out what projects are likely to succeed, how much money ratepayers should pony up for clean power and what the overall processes should be in place to distinguish the good projects from the bad. All these efforts are on-going, of course, because unforeseen issues will always pop up that require policy makers to tinker with the rules.

The report focuses only on the state’s renewable energy mandate for its investor-owned utilities, so it doesn’t include clean energy installations that fall under other state programs. For example, rooftop solar installations that serve businesses and homes aren’t counted in the report.

The state’s hunger for renewable energy has made it the home to some of the largest solar farms in the country. First Solar is building a 550 MW project in San Luis Obispo County and another 550 MW in Riverside County while SunPower is working on a 250 MW plant in San Luis Obispo County. BrightSource Energy is constructing a 392 MW solar field in the Mojave Desert.

But large projects tend to take a long time to secure permits and require new transmission lines to transport the electricity, all of which takes a lot of money. Besides, large projects also are more likely to attract strong opposition from environmental and community groups. California policy makers now champion smaller projects, particularly those under 20 MW. In fact, during the second quarter of this year, the clean power contracts approved by the utilities commission averaged 7.5 MW in size.

            Renewable Energy Installed To Meet California’s Mandate

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Keyword Elite Review - The Power of Adwords Keyword Research Tool

If you have some experience in using Google Adwords, you know that the KEY to Adwords success is finding and using the right keywords. But question is how do you find the right keywords? The answer is with Adwords Keyword Research Tool.

One very popular Adwords Keyword Research Tool I came across is Keyword Elite, but at first I wasn't impressed with this tool because I had been using Wordtracker as my keyword research tool. The main reason I use keyword research tool is to find long-tail keywords, it saves me a lot of time compared to if I do it manually.

Both Wordtracker and Keyword Elite are very useful in generating long-tail keywords. But what made me interested to take a closer look at Keyword Elite is its ability to spy on the keywords used by your Adwords competitors. This feature is very interesting but there is much more.

In fact, Keyword Elite consists of 5 components or "project types" as they call them. Each project has its own function. The 5 Projects are:

1. Create a keyword list.

2. Analyze pay per click listings.

3. Select a keyword list.

4. Analyze keyword competition.

5. Spy on AdWords Competition.

Project 1 is creating a keyword list. There are many adwords keyword research tools available in the market that can help you develop a keyword list. What Keyword Elite does is combining all the results from these tools (such as Overture, Google suggestion tool, Yahoo!, Ask and Meta Tags) and put them into one alphabetized spreadsheet. And if you have subscriptions for Wordtracker and KeywordDiscovery, you can add and combine the results as well.

You can do all these manually but it will take up a lot of your time as you need to use each tool individually. With Keyword Elite, you just enter your seed keyword, select the search engines you want to get results from and hit the OK button. You can select how many results to return anywhere from 100 to 10,000 keywords. It's a real time saver as you can develop hundreds or even thousands of keywords in just few minutes. After playing around with project 1 for a while, I began to realize why it’s the top adwords keyword research tool.

Project 2 will show you some interesting data. It lets you see ads and keywords that are currently being used by your competitors. You can see the actual URLs, what ads are being run, the rankings, bid amount, and other important statistics. You use this information to spy and learn from your competitors. Pick out the top 10 competitors, study their rankings, write better ads and out-bid them. You can do all these manually but it probably takes several days. With Keyword Elite, all this information is available in just few minutes. Again, it’s a real time saver.

Project 3 gives you the ability to generate your keyword list from from existing Keyword Elite's database. If your niche subject already has a keyword list developed, you will have your list generated in a flash, just enter the key term and half of your keyword research is done. It's as simple as that.

Project 4 gives you another way to spy on the competition. Here you put in the keyword you want to analyze and request Keyword Elite to show all the sites that are advertising for the keyword. You can request up to 100 sites but normally I just request for the top 10 sites. It will provide information such as PageRank, number of words, keyword density, etc. You can use the information to analyze why these sites are at the top, what are the things they've done right to achieve top spot and optimize your own website to achieve the same result. So far I haven’t seen any adwords keyword research tool that can provide such in-depth information.

Project 5 will help any Adwords advertisers to become successful. As mentioned the key to Google Adwords success is to bid on the profitable keywords. BUT problem is... how do you know what keywords are profitable? Here you can request Keyword Elite to run a report that shows you the number of days a particular keyword has been bid on. The longer that keyword is being bid on means it's more profitable. You can run the report for days, weeks or whenever you want to see if that keyword is still being bid on.

Conclusion:

Without a doubt Keyword Elite is the top Keyword Research Tool for Adwords advertisers. It’s a very powerful software tool that goes beyond keyword research and identifying of long-tail keywords, it also allows users to spy on their competitors and perform in-depth competitive analysis. Most of the tasks described can be done manually BUT doing so will take up a lot of your time. With KE you will save a lot of time in research and analysis, it gives you more time to focus on other more important business activities. If you are serious about making money using Google Adwords, I highly recommend you to invest on this keyword research tool.

Check out more information on Keyword Elite here and download a FREE ebook [http://www.ebiz-quadrant.com/reg/ke/free.html].

Leon is an infopreneur dedicated to sharing his online discoveries across the net. You can visit his site at: http://www.online-business-journey.com

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