Ronald Gerald Wayne (born 1934) is the often forgotten “third founder” of Apple Computer (in addition to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak). He illustrated the first Apple logo and wrote the Apple I manual. While at Apple he also wrote their partnership agreement.

Wayne worked with Jobs at Atari before co-founding Apple Computer on April 1, 1976. He was given a 10% stake in Apple, but relinquished his stock for $800 only two weeks later because legally all members of a partnership are personally responsible for any debts incurred by any of the other partners.

Later that same year, venture capitalist Mike Markkula helped develop a business plan and convert the partnership to a corporation. In its first year of operations (1976), Apple’s sales reached US$174,000. In 1977 sales rose to US$2.7 million, in 1978 to US$7.8 million and in 1980 to US$117 million. By 1982 Apple had a billion dollars in annual sales Wayne’s stake could have been worth as much as US$1.5 billion; he claimed that he didn’t regret selling the stock as he made “the best decision available at that time”.

According to CNET, as of 1997 Wayne was working as an engineer for a defense contractor in Salinas, California. From Wikipedia here:

A logo he sketched out is to the right. So Ronald was a guy who was risk adverse, to the extreme. He was worried that he would be somehow responsible for the debts of the partnership, and baled. Cost him more than a little. Hank

Pinch Media builds free tools for iPhone SDK developers, allowing them to focus on the core features of their next-generation mobile applications. Pinch Media was founded by Greg Yardley and Jesse Rohland in April 2008, and is based in the NYC area. Pinch Media’s seed funding comes from Union Square Ventures, First Round Capital, and several strategic angels - Dave Morgan, Jerry Neumann, Mike Yavonditte, and Sharkey Goldstein Capital. [From their "about" page here.] Below is a very interesting video of a recent presentation by Greg. - Hank

A gallon of gasoline is 3.79 liters, with energy of 130 MegaJoules, which is 36 kiloWatt hours. At 15¢ a kWh, the same amount of energy from the electric company would cost you $5.40. Here in Indiana, we’re more like 10¢ a kWh, which maps to $3.60. So depending on your local electrical rates, the same amount of energy from the electric company bridges the current cost of a gal of gas. 

HOWEVER, a gasoline/diesel engine is going to be at absolute maximum around 40% efficient and an electric motor can easily push 90% efficiency, so you can’t just compare kWh of energy stored in the fuel. Because the electric-driven vehicle is more than twice as efficient in converting energy in the form of kWh to motion, it wins over fossil-fuel hands down.

I expect Jim to have something to say about this? Hank

Allan Heegar won the Nobel Prize in 2000 and didn’t stop there. He is behind a company named Konarka Technologies that is about to knock the socks off of the solar power industry. He has developed a process that uses formulated inks to coat all kinds of surfaces, converting them into functional solar energy sources. Extant mass produced solar panels cost on the order of $2.40 per watt; Konarka’s are currently less than $1.00/watt, and are on the cost curve toward $0.10/watt. The video below describes the material [5:37 in length]. The first page of the company brochure is embedded below. I strongly suggest you watch it and browse the company link. It is well worth your time. Hank

No kid every stops to think about what’s going on behind the scene as they consume huge amounts of bandwidth watching YouTube videos. Nor do the coeds think twice about loading up their Facebook pages with tons of graphics and embedded videos. The Y and upcoming generations have come to expect massive amounts of Internet assets to be readily available to them at a moment’s notice, and did I say, FREE! But in the back office, things are not so rosy at all! Matt Nauman reporting in a 6/27/08  SiliconValley.com article reports “the cost of powering data centers worldwide could grow from $18.5 billion in 2005 to $250 billion by 2012…. The problem starts with the incredible expansion of data-center usage, size and energy demands. In 1972, a typical data center might have been 500 square feet and used 50 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Today’s typical data center can measure 500,000 square feet, and use 50,000 kwh…” A copy of a preliminary report on this subject by accenture is here:

Along with big problems comes opportunity, opportunity for entrepreneurs to jump in and alleviate the situation. This has already started in data centers by making more efficient RAM for center computers. Where it leads is anyone’s guess. Hank

As you can see from the photo, the “special” SDHC  eeePC application specific and the 2 gig SODIMM arrived from Geeks [$30.50 for the 8GB SDHC, and $39.50 for the memory, S&H $11.00, $81.00 total].  As fast as the two screws over the memory slot could be removed, the memory was installed, and the SDHC installed in the eeePC SD slot. A  quick look @ Help in the Control Panel verified 2 gigs of memory, and going to My Computer showed the 8 gig Drive “E” to be working under FAT32. We’re good to go with these two upgrades.

I have been noticing that the wireless network capability of the eeePC is whimpy. All of the other wireless notebooks and my iPhone work great on my LinkSys wireless “G” network. Today I popped for a LinkSys “N’ system, and a Wireless USB - N Network Adapter for the eeePC. I had to move the installation files from the provided CD to a thumb drive, but other than that, the install went without any glitches. The USB-N device is shown in the picture at the bottom right.

My installation of Office got clobbered when I was deleting Windows files to reduce the footprint so I’m reinstalling it as we speak, on the new SDHC,  in a minimal configuration. From here on in I’m going to keep tweaking Windows with the idea in mind of size reduction, and perhaps set up a RAM drive, now that we’re phat with 2 gigs of memory.

Stay tuned. Hank

So there is this little agency in NYC named Epoch Films. They in turn do creatives for the 100 pound guerilla in the ad game, Saatchi & Saatchi. One of Saatchi^2’s clients is JCPenney. Seems Epoch created a little fun project involving “Two teens practice putting their clothes on quickly in anticipation of making out in the basement later” [from link below-picture @ left also] which has caused an uproar, coverage by none less than Bill O’Reilly on Fox, and has JCP’s knickers in a knot. The short was up on YouTube, but has been pulled. It is a mov file, which I could get to play in Quicktime, but would NOT convert to flash.

Here is the link, where you can watch the fun for yourself, assuming it stays up. And you thought you were having fun! While you’re @ it, check out the catch below! [Thanks Char!] Hank

The following article from here: is interesting on several fronts. Hank

Chrysler to turn vehicles into wireless hotspots

By Tom Krisher
Associated Press

Article Launched: 06/25/2008 10:53:10 AM PDT

DETROIT - People who buy Chrysler vehicles next year will have the option of turning their cars and trucks into wireless Internet hotspots.

The company plans to announce Thursday that the feature will be available as part of its “uconnect” system that will debut in most 2009 Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep models.

The wireless Internet will come as a dealer-installed option and will work over cellular telephone links. It will come with a monthly fee which has not yet been determined, spokesman Todd Goyer said.

Goyer said people will be able to use laptop computers in their cars and trucks just as if they were in an office or home.

To access the Internet, vehicles will need to have “uconnect” hardware, which Chrysler will unveil to compete with Ford’s “Sync” and other in-car electronic systems.

The uconnect system will link cellular telephones and personal music players to the car’s onboard electronics, with the ability to control an Apple iPod with radio and steering wheel controls. The system also has navigation and real-time traffic features, controlled by voice recognition or a touch screen.

It also includes the company’s in-car 30-gigabyte hard drive, with options for three-channel satellite television service and satellite radio.

Goyer said the wireless system will work while vehicles are moving so they can be used by passengers.

Henry John Heinz is credited with saying “.. do a common thing uncommonly well brings success.” IMHO, Asus has done just this with their subnotebook, the eeePC. Over the last couple of days, my youngest son installed XP-Pro on the box I bought from NewEgg last November - one of the first available. While not a task for the common  masses , by hitting Google for help, and via a thumb drive setup to boot, he got the job done. What I’m seeing so far is a computer that boots as fast as if not faster than a “normal” laptop, even with a normal load of Avast etc running at boot. I’ll run some benchmarks on it and post them in a latter blog.

I used a thumb drive to install selected components of Office 2007 [Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook] on a SD card which resides in the eeePC’s card slot. They are running as well as if not better than from a desktop. Now that windows is installed, I plan on upping the memory to the max of 2 gigs, and have ordered a 8 gig SD card, both from www.geeks.com [$81.00 shipped]. The 8 gig SD is a “special” card certified by Asus for use in the eeePC.

I found a hacked set of drivers that were only about 60 megs total, and had absolutely no trouble installing them. Asus is on the verge of coming out with a desktop eeePC also. See picture. What’s not to like? Hank