Monthly Archives: November 2004

Sonoma Apple Farmer on their declining market

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George Snyder:

Walker and his extended family — kids and grandkids who help him with the annual apple harvest, which is just winding to a close — are among the last of a hardy breed who for decades put Sebastopol and the fertile hills surrounding the town on the map as the apple capital of the world.
“Thousands of tons of apples used to be shipped out of Sebastopol all across the country,” said Walker, who produces about a thousand tons and 25 varieties of the fruit annually, 70 percent of it processed into juice or vinegar and apple sauce, with the rest sold as fresh fruit. “I grew up with my dad raising apples,” he added, “and it’s very difficult to keep up changing amid all the changes. There’s been a tremendous change in the last 15 years in terms of keeping up with regulations and agriculture and the markets,” he said.
“There used to be a lot of people to sell to, like food stores, but a lot of the chains have consolidated and often demand more volume than many growers can provide. There’s been a disruption of the whole industry,” he said.

Save Obsolete Business Models of the Traditional Phone Companies

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From “the Empire Strikes Back” department, Tuesday’s tri-cities referendum on a municipal fiber to the home plan for three Illinois cities (Batavia, Geneva and St. Charles) was defeated, largely, according to Northwestern Business Professor James Carlini by a massive misinformation campaign, funded by the incumbent telco’s:

?According to SBC and Comcast, virtually 100 percent of the region can sign up for DSL and access the Internet via cable modems. In addition, T-1 service is available to businesses throughout the Tri-Cities over existing telephone lines and wireless service is available from several dealers.?
T-1 service has been around for years. To be accurate, the first T-1 circuit was put into service for Illinois Bell in 1963 in Skokie, Ill. We?re not talking about what could be available today. People aren?t looking for 1.544-megabit service if 10-gigabit service is available.
Bast?s small knowledge of network technology seems to have been spoon fed to him by SBC and Comcast. His arguments lack depth of knowledge and it?s very clear from his position paper that he doesn?t know much about fiber-optic capabilities once they are in place.

Carlini also notes that local journalists ran with the wrong message… Read the article here. James Carlini links. Working on the road recently, a group adjacent to me was discussing Verizon’s larger than expected subscription success of their fiber to the home initiative….. Our politicians need to push the SBC’s of the world, or more practically, truly open the networks we all paid for.

SBIR – A Source of Funds for Small Businesses

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Elizabeth Olson summarizes the federal government’s SBIR programs:

But for high-technology entrepreneurs, there is another source of financing that can be as generous as it is little known: grants from the federal government’s Small Business Innovative Research Program.
The biggest fund, by far, is run by the Defense Department, which parcels out some $1 billion a year to independent companies with fewer than 500 employees. The goal is to stimulate research into novel technologies that can benefit military operations, but with a twist. The department is not paying for exclusivity for the ideas it finances; rather, it wants those ideas to go commercial as quickly as possible to assure a stream of reliable and cost-effective suppliers.
Martin Klein is one of its emerging success stories – at least that is what he hopes. A chemical engineer by training, Mr. Klein has spent 40 years in the battery and fuel-cell business. In 1970, he founded the Energy Research Corporation, since renamed Fuel Cell Energy Inc., and later sold his stake in it. Today, it employs 500 people.
Then, in 1992, he founded Electro Energy Inc. to develop batteries for the military, and that same year submitted a proposal for a grant for research into what he calls a rechargeable bipolar nickel-metal-hydride battery. What sets it apart from traditional batteries, Mr. Klein says, is its design, which stacks thin flat wafer cells atop one another to improve the flow of current while taking up less space. His eventual aim, he says, is to produce a battery that is 30 percent smaller and cheaper than conventional batteries yet provides 50 percent more power.
The Defense Department, which is always on the prowl for better batteries, particularly for its communications equipment and aircraft, liked his idea. It awarded him $50,000.

Passing time at O’Hare

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Walking from gate to gate at O’Hare recently, I observed two mischevious fellows (dudes?) using a string to tempt travellers with a $1 bill tied to a string – tied to their cell phone. They told me that during the past 45 minutes, 20 people chased the dollar bill…… click on the photo to view a larger version

Dubuque & David Maraniss

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Madison native David Maraniss updates us on the post election situation in Dubuque, Iowa:

In the river city of Dubuque, Iowa, deep in the political battleground of the upper Midwest, sunrise came at precisely 6:39 a.m. By then, the wisecrackers in the John Deere Retirees Coffee Club had been awake for an hour and were settled into their Wednesday morning seats, shooting the breeze in the back room of Breezy’s Cafe. Hours would pass before Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) conceded defeat, but these old guys knew the final score.
“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it!” Walt Pregler, a retired toolmaker, muttered at one end of the gathering, repeating a refrain common among the more than 55 million voters who tried but failed to bring an end to George W. Bush’s presidency.
As Pregler’s lament continued, Pat Nordhues, known as “the sensitive Republican” in the gathering, rose at the other end of the table and stormed out of Breezy’s, an uncomfortable minority there, though not in the country. “The bad thing about it is that you guys are gonna cry like babies for six months ’cause you lost the election,” Nordhues bellowed as he walked past Pregler.
Roger Hantelmann, neatly sprinkling sugar on his pancakes and wearing an “OBC” (Old But Cool) baseball cap, laughed at Nordhues and picked up for Pregler and the Democrats.