Interactive Population Map - Business Data

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Business Data Tools : http://www.census.gov/data/data-tools/cbb.html

3 min read +  2 min video:

In graduate school, one of the things I learned about giving presentations was to "know your audience". This is very relevant to know as you can adjust your story and the presentation style to match the needs of high school students or undergraduate sophomores or a room full of post docs | professors | subject matter experts.

I learned to apply the same principle when it came to selling products or services. Know your audience, translates to "know your customers, potential customers". Where students and scholars look for knowledge alone, customers might look for knowledge and a product, or just the product, or just the knowledge alone.

In any case, it is crucial for you to know who your market segment is and how they are spread out through geographical or other territory. A great way to find a lot of such information is through maps. If I wanted to look at age groups, then I look at US Census data.

Below, I picked five major metro areas (Pennsylvania as it is a home state and other just out of certain trade considerations for a product under development. Here's a comparison of five states from US Census Bureau.

Clicking the different tabs on the map yields the comparison data for different parameters. It is interactive, go ahead and check it out.


Make your own map at http://www.census.gov/2010census/popmap/

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BioSolar Announces Major Battery Advancement

"By integrating our high capacity, high power and low-cost cathode with conventional anodes, battery manufacturers can create a super lithium-ion battery that can double the range of a Tesla, power an iPhone for 2 days straight, or store daytime solar energy for nighttime use."

The inventors of the jointly owned patent application include Dr. Alan Heeger (Nobel Prize winner 2000) and Dr. David Vonlanthen of UCSB, and Dr. David Lee, the Company’s chief executive officer and Dr. Stanley Levy, the Company’s chief technology officer.


From the Press Release
BioSolar is developing a breakthrough technology to double the storage capacity, lower the cost and extend the life of lithium-ion batteries. A battery contains two major parts, a cathode and an anode, that function together as the positive and negative sides. Today's state-of-the-art lithium-ion battery is limited by the storage capacity of its cathode, while the anode can store much more. Inspired by nature, we are developing a novel cathode based on inexpensive conductive polymers and organic materials that can fully utilize the storage capacity of conventional anodes. By integrating our high capacity, high power and low-cost cathode with conventional anodes, battery manufacturers can create a super lithium-ion battery that can double the range of a Tesla, power an iPhone for 2 days straight, or store daytime solar energy for nighttime use. Founded with the vision of developing breakthrough energy technologies, BioSolar's previous successes include the world's first UL approved bio-based back sheet for use in solar panels. 

This post was originally published on Tansa Tech's blog.

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Ransler and Sinha: Husk Power

A cool little video on  rice husk based systems and a company that is providing microgrid solutions along with local employment opportunities in rural India.


2008 PopTech Fellows Chip Ransler and Manoj Sinha present the achievements and plans of  Husk Power Systems (HPS), a for-profit company that’s created a proprietary technology to cost-effectively convert rice husks into electricity. HPS delivers electricity – and dramatically improved lives – to India’s “Rice Belt.”


Ransler and Sinha: Husk Power

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Tesla Motors Open up Patent Portfolio

In a somewhat altruistic move and a clear move to promote more innovation in the electric car segment, Tesla Motors (NYSE: TSLA) announced that their patents are now available for anyone to use.

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you

Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.

Musk goes on to say and take a dig (rightfully so) at the (solely) materially minded folks in the legal profession:

 I thought patents were a good thing and worked hard to obtain them. And maybe they were good long ago, but too often these days they serve merely to stifle progress, entrench the positions of giant corporations and enrich those in the legal profession, rather than the actual inventors.

and

Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis. By the same token, it means the market is enormous. Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day. 

A great way to locate these specific Tesla patents is to use the google search:

https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=pts&hl=en&q=inassignee:%22Tesla+Motors,+Inc.%22

(hat tip: negativo17@gmail.com )

Good luck to Tesla Motors and also to highly efficiency electric cars!

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Efficient Urban Mass Transit

Bogota, Colombia has one highly efficiency and urban mass rapid transit systems, at very low costs. 

Read more about how this city of about 8 million people (comparable to New York city USA)

Key facts: 

• Buses have a dedicated lane through the major roadways in the city (usually placed in the center/median of the roadway with access ramps and overpasses to connect pedestrians to the median). "troncal" is the term.
• Bus stations have platforms that line up with the bus threshold for easy access to all passengers including those on wheelchairs.
• Up to 1400 main buses (long buses - people pay a fare with card) and over 400 feeder buses (that run free) that connect to the main lines.
• Will add financial info soon, so far all the budget data we looked at are in spanish so we are working on translations.

One other cool thing to note (in a traditionally male dominated field like transportation engineering: their current CEO is a female.

Sources: 

1. Street Films Vlog on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/StreetfilmsVlog
2. Transmilenio Authority http://transmilenio.gov.co/
3. http://transmilenio.gov.co/en
4. Transmilenio's Youtube channel: https://youtube.com/user/OFICIALTRANSMILENIO
5. Transmilenio on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TransMilenio
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransMilenio

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