Between the Poles

Moblin V2.0 Released for Intel Atom Netbooks

Over a year and a half ago I blogged about buying an ASUS EEE, the first netbook, even though the term netbook had not been coined yet.  Since then a whole new industry segment has been created, with just about every major laptop manufacturer participating. Netbooks and similar mobile devices have become such a big market that Google created a new operating system Chrome OS for these devices.  Some folks are expecting that Android will also be a player on these devices. Now there is a Linux distribution specifically for netbooks and mobile internet devices.  The Moblin steering committee has announced the release of Moblin v2.0 for Intel Atom Processor based netbooks.  Moblin is an open source Linux-based platform optimised for mobile devices including netbooks, mobile internet devices, and in-vehicle information systems. A key aspect of the architecture is that it provides a uniform way to develop applications for these devices. The Moblin Core is layered on top of the Linux kernel and h/w device drivers, and above the Moblin Core is the user interface for the target device. The Moblin user interface was developed from scratch for mobile devices.

At IDF 2009 Intel, Microsoft, Adobe, and Dell announced support for Moblin.  Dell asked Canonical (of Ubuntu fame) to create a Moblin developer edition for one of its netbooks, which you can buy from Dell with Moblin pre-installed.  Intel has demonstrated the next version of the OS, Moblin 2.1, running on a smartphone and from early next year, Moblin will be supported by Microsoft's Silverlight and Adobe's Air platforms as part of Intel's Atom Developer Program.  You can download Moblin v2.0 here.

The mobile space is seeing a tremendous amount of innovation including ultra low-powered ARM processors, that are in the Palm Pre, in some Dell laptops and in the just released AlwaysInnovating netbook called Touchbook, which I am expecting to arrive at my door any week now.

Parametric Constraints

As I blogged about a while ago one of the really earth shaking new functions in AutoCAD 2010 is parametric constraints.  If you want to understand what types of constraints are supported and how to use them, there is an excellent introductory video for using parametric constraints prepared by Tom Stoeckel, that I would highly recommend.  In my opinion parametric constraints is one of the most important changes in AutoCAD since 3D.

Tidal Power Generation in the Bay of Fundy

According to the The Canadian Hydrographic Service the Bay of Fundy is tied with Ungava Bay for the highest tides in the world with a tide of 17 metres (55.8 feet), measured at Burntcoat Head in the Bay of Fundy.  During the 12.4 hour tidal period, 115 billion tonnes of water flow in and out of the bay.

An Irish firm OpenHydro intends to place a 10-metre turbine on a tripod in the Minas Passage off Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, in late October or early November.  The turbine is capable of generating one-megawatt of electrical power.  Nova Scotia Power, which is supporting this test project, foresees that tidal power generation could provide up to 10 % of Nova Scotia's power requirements with about 200 to 300 tidal turbines in the Bay of Fundy.

 

The Government of Nova Scotia and the Department of Fisheries have given environmental approval for tidal turbine test projects for three companies, Minas Basin Pulp and Power, Nova Scotia Power, and Clean Current (BC).

Canadian Stimulus Report Card

Prime Minister Stephen Harper tabled a report that said that 90 per cent of the funding for the 2009 stimulus has been committed and that of the 7,500+ projects that are on the drawing board across the country, 4,000 have actually begun.  At the beginning of the year the government's budget provided a $40 billion stimulus to be spent over two years.  The government believed that the stimulus would create or protect 265,000 jobs by the end of 2010.

The stimulus included almost $12 billion in new infrastructure stimulus funding for roads, bridges, broadband internet access, electronic health records, laboratories and border crossings and $7.8 billion to build quality housing, stimulate construction and enhance energy efficiency.

Canada's Economic Action Plan (Jan 27)

                                                           2009 2010 Total

                                                                 (millions of C$—cash basis)

Help Canadians and Stimulate Spending 5,880 6,945 12,825

Stimulate Housing Construction                  5,365 2,395    7,760

Housing leverage                                     725    750    1,475

Immediate Build Infrastructure                  6,224 5,605 11,829

Infrastructure leverage                                  4,532 4,365    8,897

Support Businesses and Communities          5,272 2,255    7,527

Sectoral leverage                                  1,300            1,300

Total federal stimulus                                 22,742 17,200 39,942

Total stimulus (with leverage)                 29,298 22,316 51,613

    As a share of GDP                                                    (%)  

Total federal stimulus                                      1.5       1.1        2.5

Total stimulus (with leverage)                      1.9       1.4        3.2

LEED for Neighborhood Development

The LEED for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND) Rating System is the the first national certification system for neighborhood design. LEED certification provides independent, third-party verification that the location and design of a neighbourhood development meets environmentally responsible, sustainable development objectives. The objectives of LEED-ND are to encourage healthy living through the creation of walkable, mixed use neighbourhoods, reduce urban sprawl, protect threatened species, and increase transportation choice and decrease automobile dependence.

LEED-ND is a joint effort of the US Green Building Council (USGBC), the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). USGBC intends LEED-ND to be designated as an American National Standard (ANSI). LEED-ND has progressed through a pilot program which began in the summer of 2007 and is terminating. The pilot resulted in the creation of a 1st Public Comment Period Draft. A second public comment period closed on June 14. The final LEED-ND rating system will be released after USGBC and its two partner organizations (NRDC and CNU) complete their approval processes.  I blogged earlier about the new LEED v3 which was releases on April 27.  Apparently, v3 will not affect LEED-ND, but when LEED-ND launches, the new LEED Online v3 will be used for submittals.

If you're an architect or engineer working in an AutoCAD environment, Mike Schlosser has prepared a video that will suggest some tools that will help you with LEED-ND certification.

MapGuide and Google Earth

Jackie Ng has tested MapGuide with different versions of Google Earth and his recommendation is to use GE 5.1 and to avoid GE 4.3 through 5.0.

Camouflaged Cell Phone Towers

Some time ago I blogged about a cell phone tower in Abu Dhabi I had come across that was camouflaged as a palm tree, to which I received several replies pointing to similar structures in other parts of the world. 

I just came across a site that has collected 19 photos of camouflaged cell phone towers.  Among them is the Montjuic Communications Tower in Spain near Barcelona designed by Santiago Calatrava, which is a knockout.  It doubles as a giant sundial.  (Image Carlos Lorenzo)

New Geospatial Blog auf Deutsch

Grüezi wohl und O'zapft is!

Exakt zum Münchener Oktoberfest 2009 und zur INTERGEO gehen wir mit unserem Blog 'THE GEOSPATIAL NAVIGATOR' an den Start. OK, zugegeben, die INTERGEO war das eigentliche zeitliche Ziel für unsere ersten Posts, in denen wir nun regelmäßig zu Neuheiten, Tipps und Tricks rund um die Autodesk Infrastruktur Lösungen navigieren. Und das natürlich in deutscher Sprache, eventuell mit etwas Schweizer Akzent!

Also O'zapft is und los geht's!

Matthias Liechti & Marcus Briglmeir

Green Rankings for Utilities

NEWSWEEK has published rankings of 500 companies scored according to green criteria, including environmental imapct score, green policies score, and green reputation score.  Newsweek worked with with three research companies to compile the rankings incluidng KLD Research & Analytics, which tracks environmental, social and governance data on companies worldwide; Trucost, which specializes in quantitative environmental performance measurement; and CorporateRegister.com, the world's largest online directory of social responsibility, sustainability and environmental reporting. 

The 500 companies included in the ranking are the largest U.S. companies as measured by revenue, market capitalization and number of employees.

The environmental impact score estimates the total cost of all environmental impacts of a corporation's global operations. The green policies score is an analytical assessment of a company's environmental policies and performance. The green reputation score is derived from an opinion survey of corporate social responsibility professionals, academics and other environmental experts. The overall Newsweek Green Score was calculated as the weighted sum of three Z-scores: 45 percent for the Environmental Impact Score, 45 percent for the Green Policies Score, and 10 percent for the Reputation Score.

Utility Green Rankings (company and green score)

1.PG&E → 79.77

2.Pepco Holdings → 75.07

3.Northeast Utilities → 74.45

4.NiSource → 72.08

5.Integrys Energy Group → 71.92

6.Consolidated Edison → 71.91

7.CenterPoint Energy → 71.75

8.Sempra Energy → 70.66

9.Spectra Energy → 69.38

10.Oneok → 68.46

11.Exelon → 67.96

12.Questar → 66.83

13.Pinnacle West Capital → 66.08

14.Atmos Energy → 65.47

15.Calpine → 65.43

16.UGI → 64.70

17.Edison International → 64.09

18.Public Service Enterprise Grp. → 62.96

19.Xcel Energy → 62.39

20.FPL Group → 61.01

21.Constellation Energy → 60.37

22.DTE Energy → 60.04

23.Entergy → 59.57

24.Wisconsin Energy → 59.37

25.Dominion Resources → 56.27

26.CMS Energy → 52.79

27.Scana → 51.57

28.AES → 47.89

30.PPL → 46.23

29.Progress Energy → 46.23

31.Duke Energy → 44.91

32.FirstEnergy → 43.15

33.Southern → 36.54

34.American Electric Power → 33.17

35.Ameren → 31.63

36.Allegheny Energy → 25.04

37.NRG Energy → 22.75

For those folks from California, Edison International is the parent of Southern California Edison and Edison Mission Group.

Telecom (excluding cable) is included in the technology sector along with general IT companies, and software companies (among which Adobe, Microsoft, and Autodesk are the top three).

Technology Rankings (company and green score)

1.Hewlett-Packard → 100.00

2.Dell →98.87

3.Intel → 95.12

4.IBM → 94.08

5.Applied Materials → 91.79

6.Cisco Systems → 88.59

7.Sun Microsystems → 88.11

8.Sprint Nextel → 88.06

9.Adobe Systems → 87.88

10.Advanced Micro Devices → 87.86

11.Motorola → 86.09

12.Texas Instruments → 85.89

13.Xerox → 84.12

14.Microsoft → 83.79

15.Virgin Media → 81.91

16.Autodesk → 80.72

17.Yahoo → 79.55

18.EMC → 79.35

19.Google → 78.80

20.Verizon Communications → 77.09

21.Seagate Technology → 76.25

22.Symantec → 76.22

23.AT&T → 75.45

24.Micron Technology → 75.40

25.Apple → 75.18

26.Qualcomm → 73.08

27.Oracle → 72.92

28.Analog Devices → 70.74

29.Pitney Bowes → 69.96

30.Harris → 69.22

31.Western Digital → 69.22

32.Intuit → 68.85

33.Qwest Communications → 68.65

34.SAIC → 68.34

35.Nvidia → 68.32

36.Juniper Networks → 67.84

37.NetApp → 67.17

38.Corning → 66.91

39.MetroPCS Communications → 66.85

40.Broadcom → 65.78

41.KLA-Tencor → 65.61

42.Computer Sciences → 65.59

43.CA → 65.46

44.NII Holdings → 64.45

45.Windstream → 64.42

46.Marvell Technology Group → 62.50

47.Citrix Systems → 61.97

48.Ingram Micro →61.60

49.Cognizant Technology → 60.49

50.BMC Software →60.34

51.American Tower → 59.99

52.Cerner → 59.39

53.McAfee → 59.16

Autodesk and SpatialInfo Announce Partnership for Telco and Cable Network Design and Management

Greg Foster, CEO of SPATIALinfo, and Alan Saunders

, Utility and Telecom Industry Manager at Autodesk announced the next stage in the partnership between Autodesk and SPATIALinfo at the SPATIALinfo User Conference this morning.  SPATIALinfo is Autodesk’s first Preferred Industry Partner in the cable/telco space.  SPATIALinfo has been developing telco/cable industry solutions to work with Autodesk products since 1997, and their

primary network design and management tool spatialNET is AutoCAD-based and is designed for network engineers to design and manage fiber, coax, copper and power networks, and supports both inside and outside plant.

SPATIALInfo and Autodesk also demonstrated a workflow showing design information flowing between SpatialNET, Autodesk Design Review, and Microsoft Office using Autodesk Buzzsaw to manage the workflow including email notification.