Regular readers know that I have often written about Intellectual Property in this space. IP is increasingly important in the valuation of all enterprises. I provided a historical context to this trend here, and later talked about Ocean Tomo, one of the companies that is helping to create the IP marketplace.

As mentioned in one of the earlier columns, the percentage of the aggregate value of the S&P 500 companies that is IP has gone from 17% in 1975 to 80% in 2005. The transactional process of IP, until very recently, has largely been the same as it was 20 years ago. This inevitably means that a more fluent, liquid and transparent marketplace for IP must develop. One of the initial developments over the past two years has been the IP auction. While there are a number of these auctions, I have been privy to the Ocean Tomo auctions and using the results from these auctions alone the trend lines are very clear.

Two weeks ago, Ocean Tomo had its’ spring auction in San Francisco. Once again record prices for IP portfolios were reached. One of the lots up for auction sold for $6,600,000, setting a new world record for a patent lot at a multi-lot live auction. The lot was for processing digital data in bit streams In addition there were three other lots that resulted in seven figures sales. What is interesting about these numbers is they are solidly going …

Regular readers know that I have often written about energy conservation, alternative energy and innovative ways that people are working to make all that we do more energy efficient.  I recently wrote here about how a simple keycard technology employed around the world could save the U.S. hotel industry money and conserve a great deal of energy.  The most recent column was about how a Brazilian company has been working with Intel, a U.S. technology giant to find ways to reduce and even eliminate heat from laptops.

There are two themes I would like to explore in this column.  The first is how, just by trying to rethink our existing use of energy, we can find ways to immediately lower energy usage. Lowering energy usage today, when the majority of energy in the world comes directly or indirectly from fossil fuels, is a direct tactic in the effort to slow global warming.  The second is how companies that are industrial age or second wave companies are, through innovation, reinventing what they do to better help address the energy crisis and global warming.  This is one of the developing themes of the Shift Age, the linkage of entities that might not initially be thought of as complimentary or compatible.

I wrote here some 18 months ago about how Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched two initiatives: one that could save some 40 billion kilowatt hours within three years and the other that could cut 1% of annual U.S. energy usage.  The first …

Technology has been the defining force of the Information Age.  Technology has given us an appreciation for speed, global communications, connectivity, miniaturization and of course computing power.  We embrace new generations of computers, cell phones and digital content players.  Many of these innovations, as they increase in power, generate heat. As they decrease in size there is often a proportionate increase in generated heat.

Decades ago, the large main frame computers were housed in large refrigerated rooms.  Today server farms reside in similar cooled environments.  Heat can cause computing and networking equipment to malfunction, slow down operating speed and in extreme cases to simply fry.  Any of us who have actually put our laptops on our laps when working know how fast they can heat up.  Desktop PCs have more powerful fans built in to keep them cooler and therefore operating closer to the maximum speed of the installed processor chip.  We are, however living in a world of increasing mobility where the laptop is fast replacing the desk top.  This means that often the laptops we use are not operating at peak efficiency due to generated heat.

This is not something to which I had given much thought as I had accepted this as one of the accepted limitations of mobile computing.  Laptops provide mobility but must sometimes sacrifice performance due to heat generation because of the demands for compact computing.  Last week however I was given much to think about.  As mentioned in my prior column I had traveled to …

Amazon’s introduction of the Kindle electronic book reader feels momentous. It is the first time that the long anticipated, much debated future of the ‘ebook’ feels ready to begin in a meaningful way.

During the past ten years there has been great debate about the ebook.  Generally speaking there have been three points of view on the subject.  The first one comes from the true believers that the ebook is inevitable and that it would ultimately gain a noticeable and then sizable market share of publishing.  The second viewpoint is that while there would be a market for the ebook it would never really capture more than a marginal market share.  The third viewpoint was that the physical experience of reading an actual book is such an integral part of the reading experience that the ebook would never really catch on.  I am one of those that hold the first point of view.

In a column here last summer I wrote:

“e-books will ultimately gain significant market share.  This will occur when there is an ‘iPod moment’; when a device comes out that is low priced, wonderful to use and perceived to be cool or hip.  Once this occurs there will be a rapid increase in the percentage of books sold digitally, probably leveling off around 40 — 50% by 2025. Impulsive buys, such as at airport book stores will become “purchase, plug-in and download’. While those of us who have grown up with the wonderful tactile experience of ‘curling up with …

In the 60 year history of computers, there has been a constant improvement of computational speed.  Ever faster has always been one of the driving metrics of the industry.  Moore’s Law has been manifested with desktops and laptops to the point where the computers we use are as fast as we need.  The machines we use today are incredibly faster that those we used at the turn of the century.  The power of these machines however is dwarfed by the super computers now being developed.

It is in the arena of super computers that both the outer and inner reaches of reality can be explored.  The advanced computer modeling and the running of complex scenarios and of course the ability to beat a human chess grandmaster is the realm of super computers.

The world’s fastest computer is being built and installed at the Argonne National Laboratory in the western suburbs of Chicago. IBM Corp. and the Department of Energy, which owns Argonne, have contracted for a new supercomputer that is now being installed with a peak capability of 445 teraflops, or 445 trillion calculations per second. The current record-holder is the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, which has an IBM Blue Gene/L with a peak capability of about 360 teraflops.