First, take a look at the demo. The cool part of the demo starts at about 50 seconds in and goes a little past 3 minutes. Watch at least that and you’ll be up to speed well enough to understand the following. It does help if you’re also familiar with Qik and Photosynth

Reading some of the comments on TechChrunch’s post, I found several people calling this “a solution without a problem” so I figured I’d give some potential “problems” this could solve. You just have to think about how this technology can be combined with other technologies we already have available, as well as how this kind of stitching technology can be evolved. Two game changing applications spring to mind immediately:

Sports and Live Event Broadcasting

Just think outside the box a little bit. Sure, they’re using camera phones in the demo, but that doesn’t mean you can’t scale up to using 1080p high definition video sources. Or 2K, 4K and even higher resolution sources for that matter. At that point you’d need extremely heavy computing power to do the processing, but it isn’t like we aren’t seeing the silicon showing up to provide the number crunching horsepower. Newspapers think they have it bad because of the internet, just think about the implications of every football stadium installing arrays of high definition cameras around the field. Traditional broadcast single-feed TV won’t be able to compete…

Subscription satellite TV services already allow viewers to jump between different angles of a play. How much would the sports fanatics pay to access a real-time stream that would allow them to “fly” the camera to any vantage point around the field that they wish to view? A custom camera viewpoint for each viewer of the stream, always getting to see what they want to see instead of what the guy in the production studio wants them to see.

And eventually the three dimension mapping abilities of Photosynth will be applicable in real-time as well. This would not only allow you to pan the camera around the field, but also through it. Want to see what a play looks like standing 20 feet from the sideline, thirty feet in the air, on the 50 yard line while zoomed in on the wide receiver? Not a problem. How about watching the play while tracking over the head of the quarterback? Not a problem.

Emergency Response

How would the outcome of disasters like September 11th and Katrina have differed if we had technology such as this in place? Well, if we had enough people on site with high resolution video phones, these citizens could have been a vital part of information gathering for first responders. Granted, we don’t need bystanders getting in the way and hindering rescue efforts. But, if executed properly, these cameras could provide a logistics team with a real-time three dimension view of a disaster site. This kind of information would allow for an unprecedented level of organization among emergency response crews.

And again, this does not have to rely on people with camera phones. A team in a van filled with monitoring equipment could harness the streams coming in from any available networked camera equipment. Any civilians in need of assistance could be identified so their position and any other vital details can be radioed to the closest responder able to provide assistance. Extra sets of eyes on the situation could also identify threats that may not be immediately visible to personnel “on the ground” such as overhead debris that is likely to fall.

Then there is also a whole new level of information that could be made available to emergency personnel when you combine this technology with augmented reality heads up displays, HUDs:

• Overlay data about the locations of all civilians in the area who need assistance and provide information about their injuries, vitals and triage priority.
• Pass various instructions along from off-site support staff such as doctors. This would allow personnel in the field to perform treatments they may not have prior training to perform in situations where the civilian won’t survive without immediate treatment.
• Off-site civil engineers would be able to provide live structural consults to help avoid unnecessary structure collapses and identify problem areas.

However, I am getting a bit off topic at this point, these were just a couple of related ideas that popped up that I wanted to suggest.

So hopefully this gives the naysayers something to chew on. I’ve learned to never question a new technology’s worth. Solutions with out problems don’t exist. We just haven’t found the problem yet.

For those who aren’t familiar with Qik, definitely check it out. Think live-action YouTube—you never know what you’re going to find! And be sure to read TechCrunch’s post about the demonstration.

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Business name: Freelance web design as Randall A. Gordon, sub-contracting web development to Vitaliy Mikitchenko; Soon to be partners of Mind Kitchen Media LLC

When was the business started: I’ve actively prospected clients since November of 2007; I’ve taken on various projects since the age of 16.

Names of owners: Mind Kitchen Media LLC will be owned by Randall A. Gordon, Vitaliy Mikitchenko and Marta McCasland

1. Describe the business

Although I work as a freelancer currently, I am in the process of setting up an LLC with a partner who, to date, I have simply subcontracted work to. Also in the mix is my fiance who is actively and passionately learning the ropes of the business both from and with me. As such I’ll mainly be speaking from the viewpoint of a soon-to-be LLC owner with insights from my work as a freelancer.

I seek out clients in the local area who I can assist by bringing their communications abilities with their customers and within their business up to date with what is possible using today’s technologies. This means I am far more than just a web designer. I have to be a multimedia maven who can take on many hats.

I have to understand how a business operates so that I am able to identify deficiencies and lay out plans to correct them. Sales and marketing are important to master, not only to get my own company’s name out there, but because the larger part of my work involves marketing and connecting a client with their customer base. Not to mention the very wide variety of talents that development for the web requires in today’s technology landscape.

2. Reason(s) for starting the business. Why?

Ultimately, the freedom to create the way I wish to create. I have grown up living side by side with the internet, using it as a tool every day for more than a decade. It is now time for me to add my creative touch to the internet community. I have a vision for what the future of the world can be and wish to do what I can to forward that vision. I want to leave my imprint on the landscape of computing and user interface and interaction design on the internet.

3. Type of business organization (sole proprietor, partnership, corporation)

I currently freelance as a sole proprietor. However the near term goal is to set up shop as Mind Kitchen Media LLC. At the moment I am learning the last few things I wish to add to my repertoire before I officially “open the doors” for Mind Kitchen Media.

4. Why did you choose this particular organization for your business?

I’m comfortable freelancing as a sole proprietor only because I’m selling an intangible product and the projects I’ve taken on to date have presented few opportunities for mistakes and oversights that could result in lawsuits. However, the plan is to set up Mind Kitchen Media as an LLC which has many advantages.

First and foremost is the protection it affords. Even on the internet there are potential dangers that we must avoid in the form of stepping on someone’s copyright, mistakes in our code causing customer data to be corrupted, security problems allowing customer data to be compromised and the list goes on… It is the new Wild West in many ways. An LLC ensures that when a mistake is made, our personal assets—homes, cars, savings—are not at risk. This one is a biggie. There are far too many stories of good people who lose their homes over small mistakes. Since no one is perfect lawsuits are only a matter of when, not if.

Beyond that, an LLC affords us tax benefits, we get to deduct expenses from profits just like the big boys. That lets us grow our business faster—taxes do a good job of sucking away hard earned money. Corporations are great vehicles for keeping that money growing for you.

Also an LLC will allow us to more easily bring new talent aboard as we need to grow. Freelancers on the internet do an amazing job of networking to get impressively large projects completed, but bringing the myriad necessary talents required in today’s world under the one “roof” of an LLC can assist in fostering more productive relationships. It does this by centralizing a lot of the paper and legal work that every freelancer on the team would otherwise be required to do on their own.

5. What were some of the issues during the start-up process? Why?

For me I have to say organization, setting schedules and education. As I am working a full time job on top of freelancing as a footstep to building my design firm, keeping my “free” time well scheduled has been a particularly difficult task for me. But, I always try to learn from past mistakes and this aspect of my personality is improving. I’ve simply had to learn to rely on a great tool—pen and paper! For the time being, technology still has a hard time beating keeping a Moleskine notebook and a pen nearby to take quick notes. And there’s a great lesson, never forsake good solutions simply to put technology to use!

On the education end, I’ve been teaching myself the ins and outs of designing media for the web for years. There are a massive number of disciplines and technologies which must be mastered in order to excel in this field. It is also difficult to find other people who have dedicated themselves to a never ending education, but thus far I have been blessed with an expert programmer in Vitaliy and Marta is a huge help when it comes to keeping us on task.

6. What are the positive aspects of owning this business?

For this one I’ll switch voices and speak from the perspective of why my partners in this wish to see our business become successful. From the standpoint of in house projects, we have the freedom to go after any idea we believe will produce something fruitful. Absolute freedom…to a point. Ultimately we have to produce products which result in covering the bills, but we get to choose which projects we take on.

There is also the inherent joy that comes from the act of creating something which did not exist before. We get to join together to make something which is “ours”.

Personally, I like helping other people succeed, learn and grow. Being the owner of what will become a large firm with many employees and clients gives me plenty of opportunity to do just that.

7. What are the negative aspects of owning this business?

So far, the only thing that I would call negative is the time commitment, and I only say that because I’m split between two jobs. Beyond that, I am lucky to work in an industry that I love all aspects of. But to pick a particular downside, you will inevitably run into situations where you have to deal with dissatisfied customers. However, I tend to look at such situations as an opportunity to gain a client for life. Nothing changes minds like a sour situation being remedied beyond expectation. Always exceed customer expectations.

8. What is your time commitment each week? Has this changed over the years? Why or why not?

Realistically, an entrepreneur should come to the table expecting to devote a large portion of his or her time to forwarding the mission and reaching the goals of the business they are growing. This is not an easy job. A lot of people like to think that being your own boss is the ultimate freedom, and it can be. But you have to accept the reality of what it takes to succeed.

Expect to put in 80 plus hour weeks when there is no one else around to get the job done. You’ll be giving up your weekends to do research to stay competitive in the marketplace. You won’t be able to watch the game, instead you’ll have to be learning new skills to remain relevant in your field. It is no picnic, but when you do succeed and reach your goals, there is no greater feeling in the world.

For me, my time commitment won’t change over the years. I am living my dream and my work is my life. I don’t fear burnout because I’ve positioned myself to do a myriad of things each day. Nothing leaves me more content than learning something new and what better place to learn something new each day than in media production?

9. How do you deal with employees and the issues they bring to the table?

Everyone’s ideas are important. We will embrace new communications tools as they become available. While other businesses are struggling to get ideas moved between their people, we’ll be using twitter and facebook to connect. I regularly get real work done by text and instant messages with my partners. This communication is the groundwork for being able to effectively deal with problems in the business and more importantly bring stellar ideas to fruition. Just remember what I said before, be careful not to use technology for technology’s sake, there are often better solutions that already exist!

Never undervalue anyone’s contribution to the team. If someone has something to say, be it a problem or a solution, ensure that they have a voice. When you take someone’s voice away from them, you take away their freedom. That is not exactly good for morale.

10. What are the major fixed and variable expenses related to your business?

To date my expenses have been extremely low. I’ve been able to do everything I have needed with the computers and software I already own and relatively low monthly payments for internet access and web hosting. That’s the beauty of delivering a virtual product. The lion’s share of our expenses will simply be the payroll for “mind share”—the time it takes our creatives to generate the final product.

But down the line, there will be many more operating costs. Better hosting services will be required that could rapidly scale into the thousands of dollars if we have a “hit web product” from one of our inside projects. New equipment will be in order. Every employee will require a desktop and a laptop to be productive, likely a smartphone as well. Cameras for both photos and video, audio equipment, printing equipment. If we’re going to embrace the future that is a truly multimedia world—where it is so ingrained that using the “multi” becomes irrelevant—then I intend to provide my creatives with a world class production environment to get the job done.

11. Do you provide health insurance for yourself and/or your employees? Why or why not?

This is on the plate once the LLC is set up. Unfortunately I am not well read on this area and must concede that any answer I could give wouldn’t be worth the words to say it. I can say, this is an important topic, and the Objectivist in me says that I’d rather seek methods to educate and assist employees in finding their own plans, leave the choices with them. I also believe in paying people what they are truly worth and only the best talent will survive in our company, so the salaries we pay will cover the expense of healthcare adequately. And I define adequately as health care I am personally willing to use.

12. How do you deal with the paperwork and tax issues? Are there any tax advantages in owning a small business? If so, what are they?

H&R Block. At this point, that’s all I need, but again that changes when the LLC comes in to play. The plan is to have a lawyer and account on retainer. Expensive, but a cost that inherently must be part of any business that is planning to succeed.

13. If you could go back in time, what would you do differently?

I would have believed in my abilities from the beginning. I have been involved in self-organized groups since the age of 15 when I first connected to the internet. I’ve been training and educating myself for this position all my life…but there is always something new to learn. I tend to let that manifest as self doubt. The best thing I have learned in the last two years is that I don’t have to know it all myself. I only need to make sure I surround myself with people who can fill in the blanks as expertly as I know my own skill set.

14. What is the most important advice you would offer a young entrepreneur?

Understand what money really is. It represents your hard work. It is the representation of time well spent, time spent intelligently, time not squandered. But remember that it is only a representation. The true value is in what you create. Money just allows me to civilly trade the motive power of my will and ability for the motive power of your will and ability.

In our (mostly) free market remember that you do not determine the value of your product—your customer does. Always sell it for more than it costs but not more than it is worth. This is a basic concept that is often overlooked. Determine how much it costs to produce your product—all costs, so that means shipping, inventory and storage, manufacturing, logistics, human resources and the list goes on. Then set the price so you’re not losing money on your product. If that price is above what the product is truly worth, then you need to go back to the drawing board to cut costs and increase value.

Go big or go home. Never accept mediocrity when you know you are capable of producing better work.

15. Have you set-up a retirement savings plan? If not, do you plan on starting one at some juncture? Do small businesses receive incentives or tax breaks?

I have a high-yield personal savings account (still 5%!) and intend to start putting money away into index funds in the near future. I choose index funds for their ability to closely follow the market as a whole. While the economy is in a downturn, I am willing to hedge my bets on the lot of us being able to continue to create and innovate for a long time to come. The market averages an 11% increase year to year and has remained reliable since the beginning. What goes down, must come up eventually in this case.

Once the LLC is running, I feel that a similar approach as I would take with health care is appropriate. Passing along education as to how to use money is more valuable than putting it in a sub-par investment vehicle for an employee.

In the near term, if the promise of synthetic organisms which turn carbon dioxide into octane and coal into methane comes to pass, we may have solved most of our energy problems. This one move forward will eventually come to be known as a baby step in the field of synthetic biology. But it could take a major cut out of the cost of energy at the same time as providing a way to offset the emissions produced in the burning of the fuels. Lower cost of energy results in lower cost of manufacturing which translates into lower cost of goods (or higher profit margins! *bah dum, chhh*).

And not to mention, as we move toward a society even more permeated by electronics, we’ll need fewer and fewer physical goods. While it has been a long time coming, eventually there will be a technology which properly replaces paper. A big portion of the pulp product industry could literally go down the…well you know. And these electronics are sipping fewer and fewer watts each day. That’s a huge contributor to lowering costs—simple energy conservation.

But further out—fifty, a hundred or more years down the line—what happens as technological advances in all fields bring us closer to dropping the cost of energy close to zero? Solar, tidal, wind, bio…fuel.  Energy, energy everywhere. Now combine that with manufacturing techniques which could literally pull much of the material necessary for producing goods straight out of thin air—that’s right, carbon dioxide to use in the production of carbon polymers. Graphene for our electronics, nanotubes for durable structures…

As I’ve said, these technologies won’t come to their full potential for many decades, potentially centuries, but their implications could be huge. The future could bring us a world where it costs nothing to make anything. Realistically, we’ve got the same constraints we’ve always had. We’re still limited by what energy and raw materials we can pull from our environment. But the solar system has this wonderful nuclear oven called the sun that puts out massive amounts of energy. And if we run out of materials here on Earth, there’s always the asteroid belt.

So thinking way out—way, way out—into the future, assuming the technology comes to pass, my questions are… What are the implications of being able to manufacturing anything at no cost? How does the economy change? Does our entire economy become based on intellectual property? Will the open source and collaborative communities provide a truly free world in all senses of the word?

I have my own thoughts on how to begin answering these questions, but, of course, they’re only beginnings. Only time will tell and we have a lot left to learn in the mean time. But I am interested in what you come up with in answer to these questions. Leave a comment and let me know!

First, we have more and more processors popping up with multiple cores. It started in 2005 with the first dual-core chips from Intel. Then AMD got in the game so Intel fired back with a quad-core. Now…all hell is ready to break loose. Intel’s new processor, once known only by the codename “Nahelem”,  the Core i7 comes out of the gate with four cores. Add to that Intel’s HyperThreading and you’ve got eight “logical” cores. Then, just to add the cherry on top, expect an 8-physical core, 16-logical core, version of the chip to drop on the market sometime later in the year.

But it doesn’t stop there.  Intel is working on multi-core chips that go far beyond just four or eight cores. Instead, try eighty of them. You read correctly, that would be an eight followed by a zero. Eighty cores to crank away at whatever computing whim you might have. These chips push out computing power in excess of one teraflop—more than one trillion “floating point operations” per second. And they do it using less than 100 watts of power.

Now, some people are naysayers and argue that graphics cards have been up in the teraflop range for a couple years now, however these cards use GPUs, Graphics Processing Units. While not inherently different from any other processor, it is only a recent development that this computational horsepower can be used for anything—not just graphics. But really, who cares where the computing power is coming from as long as we have it? The point is, the common consumer now has access to computing power that is mind-boggling even to seasoned geeks.

Second on my list is the wonderful interface that is a multitouch monitor. No longer are we tethered to our keyboard and mouse. Instead we will be able to directly interact with the objects we see on the screen before us. The iPhone has already proven that such interactions are both more natural and allow for a higher level of productivity—and that’s only one device with the innovations from one company. Once multitouch monitors begin reaching ubiquity the geeks of our world will be able to show us what this new paradigm of input devices is truly capable of. Just take a look at Jeff Han demoing his take on multitouch at the 2006 TED conference.

The following year innovator Anand Agarawala also made an appearance at TED to demonstrate the BumpTop desktop environment. BumpTop is a physics based desktop environment that words simply can not encapuslate, so please pause for a moment to watch the following video.

Now, simply take a moment to imagine BumpTop on a multitouch monitor…

Organize your desktop by “flinging” your files around. On large screens, gather your family around to view photos “together”, everyone can touch and move photographs, it isn’t one person controlling one mouse. Place your palms on the screen and watch a virtual keyboard appear before your eyes to allow you to type…

Multitouch interactions will unlock a vast array of methods for controlling the computers we use in our everyday lives. The multicore chips of tomorrow will allow these multitouch interactions to be as lively and enveloping as the objects we interact with in the physical world everyday.

Even the issue of screen size becomes diminished by multitouch. You will be able to seamlessly utilize workspaces that are much larger than your screen by using two-finger zoom gestures to adjust your view. Whether your screen is three inches or thirty, you’ll be able to interact with the same workspace with the same interactions, the only difference is how much of the workspace can be visible at a given time.

Third and last, we are soon to have access to truly broadband wireless Internet connections anywhere we stand. There are plenty of new technologies competing to bring such a connection into existance. But whether it is WiMAX or LTE or any other standard is of little consequence so long as the connection is there. Likely we’ll see a combination of these technlogies that will automatically switch to the strongest available signal.

However, the full ramifications of such an Internet connection are beyond the scope of what I wish to talk about in this article. But, I promise I have much more to add to the topic in the future, so stay tuned.

The combination of these technologies can push us towards an existence that promises to forever alter the way we interact with computers—and each other. We’ll soon have the computing horsepower to simulate a virtual environment on a screen that is intuitive and lively to interact with. And thanks to that always on, always available Internet connection—we’re all there.