Diminishing Returns

Stone monuments served as the earliest computer guiding the planting of crops in the spring.

Stone monuments served as the earliest computer guiding the planting of crops in the spring.


The planting of crops was of critical importance to early societies. At Stonehenge an early computer was built to determine accurately the correct date to plant the crops. As a tourist you can visit and see for yourself the stones that were erected. Visually sighting the position of the sun at dawn establishes the season. Over many generations this computing instrument evolved into the smaller Astrolab.DIMastrolab Standing on the backs of giants, the concepts of the earth as a spinning sphere orbiting the sun were reflected in matching Astrolab geometry. Today using the accuracy of cesium atomic clocks we can use our computer technology to calculate the arrival of spring to the nearest billionth of a second. Diminishing returns have set in. Choosing the correct time to plant crops is every bit as important to our society as it was to early societies. Using more sophisticated computer techniques to calculated the date to higher accuracies has ceased to add any value to the original task of choosing a planting date.
Maybe the answer is “Big Data” Most farmers use long range weather forecasts to hedge their bets. This is all great until a volcanic eruption like the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa fills the upper atmosphere with reflective dust. No amount of current computer horsepower can factor in climate change, solar light emission variation, soot deposition on snow, or other causes we haven’t fathomed yet.
The pendulum swings. After a long run of disruptive computer based changes to society, more of the disruption will come from other sectors. In true “overnight” fashion advances in battery technology, materials, coatings, biology,medicine will splash onto the scene. Yes, the computer will have some role in these advances but it will not have the primary role. We are seeing the season start to change. Many of the new offerings being showcased at start-up conferences like South by Southwest include hardware becoming more than just software. My own www.mileagetrakker.com is based on a connected car hardware device which overcomes many of the frustrations of using an APP. This is not to say that there isn’t some good APPs among the 12 million or so offerings on Apple and Google. Most creators of APPs fight the “discoverability challenge.” Diminishing returns have set in.

User Invisible

We all appreciate the tasks that are completed for us invisibly

We all appreciate the tasks that are completed for us invisibly


The best companies know their customer so well that they are able to provide their offering almost invisibly. This is refreshing in an era where we are bombarded at every turn by another ad message seeking our attention. There are a couple of so called recruiting firms that spam my e-mail daily, to the point where I will have nothing to do with them — ever. If they show that level of insensitivity to the candidates whom they believe should buy their service, I can imagine how they appear to the companies who are hiring.
Texting is a good example of user invisible. The using public is very comfortable with text messaging because it has been around for a long time. In 1933 RCA Communications, introduced the first “telex” service between New York and Europe. My dad’s best friend, a NASA electrical engineer HAM radio enthusiast, carried on a radio telex conversation with a friend in South Africa long into the night when the fickle strength of the nighttime ionosphere permitted it. The rest of us had to wait for texting to become a feature of our cell phones. In 1995 Telecom Finland and Radiolinja in Finland offered cross-network SMS (Short Message Service) functionality which began the modern back bone for cell phone texting. Today, in countries such as Finland, Sweden and Norway, over 85% of the population use SMS. The European average is about 80%, and North America is rapidly catching up with over 60% active users of SMS as of the end of 2008.
The brevity of the text message is appreciated by the users and the carriers alike. The 160 character size (invented in 1985 by Friedhelm Hillebrand while he was working for Deutsche Telekom) of a text message enables transmission of 350 text messages in the bandwidth required to send a single phone call. The users experience this simplicity as an affordable price. Text messaging services can feel particularly intimate because they talk like humans. Digital users who type “thank you” after the software executes a command instantly get a “you’re welcome.” The barriers to using a new service are also lower, because there’s nothing to download. In a February blog post, Jonathan Libov, an analyst at venture capital firm Union Square Ventures, recounts standing at a New York City bus stop and having another passenger tell him about Bus Time, which lets people text the Metropolitan Transit Authority to find out how long they’ll have to wait for the next bus. His first thought: “Thank God I don’t need to download another f—ing app for this.”
When we were inventing http://mileagetrakker.com we chose a hybrid approach. Our beta testing proved that the users wanted to choose an interface that matched their lifestyle. The nice part of a connected car service is that we know when the vehicle is actually driving. Our cloud based interface does not get the users into trouble by having them text and drive. Selected users find it easiest to record the business purpose of the trip as they walk away from their vehicles.
Capture your full mileage deduction

Capture your full mileage deduction


Product Hunt introduces 10-20 new smart phone applications every day. This is a lot more than will ever fit into my smart phone. Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney said in a statement: “Our analysis shows that most mobile applications are not generating profits and that many mobile apps are not designed to generate revenue, but rather are used to build brand recognition and product awareness or are just for fun. Product Hunt now lists over forty offerings that use text instead of an application as a user interface. Text is a trend that is growing.