Blogs > Jack Huntress' - Tech Chatter

SEC May Drive MISMO in 2010

Thu, 27 May 2010 15:53:32 +0000

Yesterday I left the MBA Servicing and Technology conference in NYC with some renewed optimism regarding MISMO data standards in commercial real estate. I've been watching this since 2002 and participating since 2004.

A recent development by the SEC in Regulation AB (Asset Backed) is proposing that XML data standards, specifically those that are CMSA and MISMO related, be used for reporting information regarding commercial real estate. Those that have resisted because of unknown factors are now faced with the reality that it is coming and it can't be stopped. My hope is that we continue, as an industry, to do it smartly and embrace this change instead of fighting it. If we do the latter we are in risk of it being done poorly.

Fundamentally I believe the industry will be better if data standards are in place and in use. I believe the industry will grow and there will be opportunity for many. Initially I got involved because I thought it would help grow our data driven platform (PARCEL) but today I stay involved because I know that it will be an interesting and fun ride.

Consider this...William Sellers did not know that by standardizing the nut and bolt that the industrial revolution and the assembly line and countless developments would come of it...DARPA could not have imagined that TCP/IP protocols that they wrote in the early 70s for communication would spurn the internet.

With thousands of fields available for every piece of real estate in the world much is possible. I won't predict what, but I do predict it will be transformative and those who get on early will have great opportunity to do fun and interesting things.

I've even started a new blog here to track MISMO and data standards progress.

Can't Seem to Ignore BloomEnergy (2 Comments)

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:57:39 +0000

Entry by JHuntress

Summary: BloomEnergy is making big splashes this week.

You see one post and you let it go. You see two and you think about it. You see multiple posts, links, 60 Minutes and other stuff and it deserves mention.

Energy is huge and creating energy more efficiently and from sources that are not so reliant on foreign fuel sources is no little matter.

Energy makes the world go round and I can think of no better thing to bring the economies of the world back to boom status than inventions and breakthroughs with energy generation.

No sane person believes that just one thing will do it. Multiple attempts on different fronts:

Clean Coal
Nuclear
Solar
Algae fuels
Wind
Hydro

will all play a role.

This blog is about a venture called BloomEnergy and I couldn't do it better justice than the 60 Minutes piece from the other day.

Bill Gates Shares His Thoughts

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:25:35 +0000

Entry by JHuntress

Entry

Summary: Bill Gates now has a website that offers his thoughts on a variety of issues.

Yesterday Bill Gates launched a website called The Gates Notes (and joined Twitter a short while before). Some people have said that this is an opportunity to share the mind of the richest man in the world but I might suggest that it should inspire us in our own lives.

The site is sort of a spawn of his yearly letter where he outlines what he is thinking and doing within the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

I offer the Welcome Letter below where you can see how he introduces the site.

The topics you'll find include:

Conversations he's having (with some heavy hitters of course)
Things he's thinking about (Innovation, Energy/Sustainablity, Pandemics, Haiti)
What he's learning (he continues to take courses and read - Super Freakonomics and The Teaching Company)
Where he's traveling and what he's seeing (India)
The "Curious Classroom" where he engages with students and answers questions.

Look, Bill's not the end-all-be-all but he is clearly a force in the world. His software created immense value and innovation and his Foundation is doing amazing things (more than most governments).

It does trouble me some that when we ask kids in America who their favorite people are they say Taylor Swift or Tom Brady, and in India and China they say Bill Gates. Nothing wrong with being inspired by a singer or a football player. They both have the power to make us be our best or provide great entertainment. What I am saying is we should also look to great minds as well.

Here are my takeaways:

If you didn't already know it, Bill is a lot more, and cares for a great deal more than computers.
The guy makes learning his life. He continues to embrace the idea that we should constantly learn, especially outside of our career disciplines.
Take time to think. From what I understand Bill periodically spends a week just reading and thinking. Adopting a form of this practice could be very beneficial though of course challenging to pull off at this level.
Microsoft has done mostly 'incremental' improvements since Bill left. We see this in other companies where the founder has left. This is where all the energy is going (not to the website but to what the website talks about).

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Defending Your Online Reputation

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:04:26 +0000

Entry by JHuntress

Summary: ReputationDefender provides a service to monitor your presence on the web.

Privacy...yeah, it is something that the web is changing each day. Google yourself and you'll see the amount of information out there on you - for a number of people it is pretty astonishing.

You can fight it or just do you best to monitor it and control what you can.

Today the company ReputationDefender announced that they have secured another round of funding.

I took this blurb from the TechCrunch site where the CEO discusses the phase we very well may be entering. To read the full post, click here.

ReputationDefender sells four different security products on a monthly subscription basis (MyReputation, MyPrivacy, MyChild, and MyEdge) which lets you monitor information about you across the Web, as well as in semi-private databases, and helps you remove inaccurate information or counter by promoting your own vetted profile. CEO Michael Fertick thinks “we are entering a third phase of digital security.” The first phase was around protecting your devices from viruses and malware. The second was around financial payments and making sure people are who they claim to be. “Now we have a third phase,” he says. “Your whole life is on the Web. You live, work, date on the Web. Nobody has your back yet. Nobody gives you the tools to control your life on the Internet.”

They don't have a free service that I can see, and for $15 a month I am not prepared to to puchase their service but it has me thinking...I do spend $99 a year for LifeLock. To me that is a great deal and a total no-brainer.

-Jack

T-Mobile Relevant?

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:58:12 +0000

Entry by JHuntress

Entry

Summary: The Google nexus one has made T-Mobile relevant.

From the day I bought my first cell phone I considered many different carriers but never T-Mobile. Over the years I've stuck with Verizon but I've definitely considered ATT and Sprint at various times. NEVER T-Mobile...that is until yesterday.

I am truly impressed with the nexus one. My colleague ordered one within hours of the release and it arrived yesterday. The integration, camera, screen, apps, SPEED and littany of other features make it truly smart. It is a phone that really gets it. Google paid attention to detail (they had the right team for the job) and came out in style with their first piece of consumer hardware.

I won't use the term "iPhone killer" because the market hasn't nearly reached saturation. There is plenty of room and plenty of time and with 1 year contracts nothing will die overnight. You may think you see a lot of smartphones out there but in reality most people still have a phone that takes pictures and sends text messages at best.

So for today I say, T-Mobile, you have my attention...that is until March when Verizon gets the phone...

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Pictures, GeoTagging, and Mobile App

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 17:23:46 +0000

Entry by JHuntress

Summary: EveryTrail is another service for those who like to log and share their trips.

There is simply no question that the power provided by mobile handhelds is providing more opportunity for us to log where we've been and share that experience with others.

For the past couple of years sites like Flickr and apps like Google Earth have allowed users to 'geotag' their photos (associate them in geographic space with a latitude and longitude).

Then comes Twitter, the iPhone and mobile GPS in a big way.

Mash it all up and sites like EveryTrail become possible and user friendly.

If you are headed out for a trip through a city, into the woods, in a National Park or just to Grandma's House, you can track via the GPS, log photos and geotag them along the way and share the trip as you go or when you are done.

Why care? Why do this?

Honestly I don't know that I will. It isn't really me to put that level of effort in. This weekend we'll be doing an annual winter hike up Mt Washington and the thought of taking pictures and making notes just doesn't appeal to me. Nor does taking pictures as I wander through NYC looking at the Christmas tree and dodging hordes of people as we did the other day.

But for some, they love it and maybe it is great they do. For if you are in a new area and want to just get out of the house to get some time away from family you may be well served to FIND a trip on a site like this and go for a stroll. If the end result is time outdoors, exploring new things and away from the TV then this qualifies for me as a great addition to the ever connected world in which we live.

Videoconferencing for Christmas

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:20:06 +0000

Entry by JHuntress

Entry

Summary: New videoconferencing units may make it reasonable for Mom and Dad.

To be honest, I've never been a big proponent of videoconferencing. Largely the reason was the technology was spotty or expensive and in either case made the proposition have rather low value.

That said, some new video conferencing phones leveraging the power of Skype have me rethinking the viability.

Take this Asus Skype phone as you can see below. Very few buttons, rather bulletproof technology and reasonable costs ($200).

If you have a computer and camera, you are good to go on your end.

If you have thought this concept a good idea but weren't quite sure how to excecute, I'd encourage you to give this a shot. If you do, let me know, I'll do the same.

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Video in ESAs

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:21:23 +0000

Entry by JHuntress

Summary: Video capabilities likely to be added to ESAs in the near future.

Within the last couple weeks a few people have mentioned the mobile apps called UStream and Qik. These utilities allow you to use your Droid or iPhone to stream video right from the phone to the web where someone can watch it real time (or later).

My brother uses it for showing commercial space to some partners in a studio they are working on and a colleague uses it for showing video of his daughter (password protected).

Watching this I can't help but think that video is not far away from site assessments in a practical fashion.

Do any of you include a video(s) of the site in your ESA/PCA offerings? If so do you deliver on DVD or is it web hosted? Have you used UStream?

Online Learning - MIT Education For Free (2 Comments)

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:43:45 +0000

Entry by JHuntress

Summary: MIT's OpenCourseware offers 1900 courses with no registration.

Although this is not 'breaking' news, the opening of Due Diligence University in two weeks got me thinking that this OCW topic (and education in general) needed revisting.

Here is the skinny: MIT has put 1900 of their courses going back to 2001 (most '04-'08) online where users can download materials at no cost with no registration (that's right - no login needed).

Pretty amazing. Click here to see the entire list of courses.

Here are 5 that I thought I'd highlight:

There is pretty much everything you could ever want to learn in a formalized setting. Video in some cases is offered right along side the notes and can be downloaded via iTunes University

Rembember the parameters:

From one of the best learning institutions in the World
Free
No login required
Anyone with internet connection can have access

No, it won't offer you a MIT degree and there is no verifying that you have completed any of the studies and there is no testing to show your competency. However, this can educate anyone, anywhere at anytime. To me, after Wikipedia, this is the next big step for education that the internet has offered.

Personally I find the knowledge AND ability to think of recent grads pretty deplorable. College has become high school at best.

With all this said, I'll take a stab at what it means to be educated:

Solid foundational knowledge (math, history, literature)
Curiosity
Ability to debate with thought (not feelings - feelings are not debatable)
Open mind - knowledge that you don't know everything
Discipline to persevere through things that are mentally difficult.

Sadly we find someone "not smart" if they can't give you the name of Britney Spears' sister but aren't too worried if they can't convert liters to gallons. In the US kids would probably name Spears as their idol and in China/India many of the kids would name Bill Gates (Friedman).

Collectively, we as a society, need to really understand what is important about the generations that follow. We need to take a hard look at what being educated means. We need to be critical of systems that were built and evaluate them based on how well they are truly performing and how well they will perform into the future. We need to pick the right metric (# of diplomas may not be the most important).

Answer yourself this simple question. If you agree that the five points above are important indicators of "educated" people, then take a dozen recent grads you know/observe and put them to the test.

Technology is flattening education (more expansive, less expensive). GDP or another metric may well be a better indicator of success than college diplomas.

In the Field Communication

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:02:50 +0000

Entry by JHuntress

Entry

Summary: Top new walkie talkies offer 30+ miles of range.

Of course the range listed on these radios is more than you will actually get but even 2-5 miles of good range of communication is a big deal.

Even 5 years ago getting a radio with good distance was pretty difficult however radios of today, for less than $100, enable solid communication.

The most recent Field and Stream tested a few and I offer the link to the reviews below.

It seemed to me that the Motorola pair for $90 was the best bet.

Here is a link to the other reviews:

http://www.fieldandstream.com/gear/20705