T-Minus another year

In the next two hours NASA is going to try to shoot off Discovery into orbit. A couple of weeks ago I was just about this close to seeing the launch in person, standing on the steamy Florida space coast. But a fuel gauge got in the way of our experience, a gauge that apparently doesn't matter that much this morning. The map at left shows one of the less-close viewing sites, along the causeway, NASA offers for a $15 bus ticket. We were going to be even closer.

I talked with pride in the weeks before that July 13 launch attempt, pleased that I'd held onto the NASA launch transportation tickets I'd bought in January, 2003. My brother Bob and I were set to see a rocket launched in Florida, a brothers-only vacation with a tie back to our boyhoods, when we both grew up in thrall to astronauts and the Apollo moon missions. That was a different NASA, the kind that knew deadly risks were just a part of the job. All of its astronauts were military pilots, no strangers to danger. But almost as soon as I got my launch receipt in 2003, Columbia burned up on re-entry over the Texas skies, killing seven including several mission specialists. Bob and I toured the Kennedy Space Center anyway in early March, went to a few spring training games, and had a great time. I kept my tickets to see the launch "close up," knowing they'd try to return to flight eventually. I only hoped they wouldn't attempt in mid-summer.

Of course, as luck would have it the "Return to Flight" attempts unfolded exactly in the middle of a Florida summer. Abby and I took ourselves to the Space Coast two weeks ago after several rounds of rescheduling, moving our airline tickets and hotel reservations and rental cars from May 15 to May 22 and finally to July 13. Once NASA allowed the Delaware North Corporation, concessionaire that runs the Launch Transportation bussses, to send us fresh bus tickets and our all-important parking pass, Abby and I were good to go.

As it turned out, NASA was not. We got very close, at least in time. Distance to the launch pad was six miles from the open field in front of a lagoon out on Merritt Island, where the Kennedy Space Center fires off its rockets. Abby and I had made the bus trip to the viewing site — promised as the closest the public could get to the pad — and had laid out our blanket, opened our umbrella against the beastly mid-afternoon Florida sun, and put on our latest coat of sunscreen. The commentary on the loudspeakers had helped us figure out which of the many towers in the distance was the launch pad. A low peninsula about three miles out obscured the bottom of the pad, a disappointment since it would block the view of the rocket flames at their largest.

But that was not the biggest disappointment our day contained. A few moments later those loudspeakers announced the launch was scrubbed. We consoled ourselves with a free viewing of Space Station, narrated by Tom Cruise, back at the KSC Visitor Center, then plodded through return traffic back to our Titusville Ramada Inn room.

The trip was not a total loss. We enjoyed fabulous beach evenings, afternoons and a morning so stunning it will become a postcard we send to promote our new 3000 NewsWire blog. Yes, Cocoa Beach and the copious Florida fresh OJ squeezed alongside route A1A, sold from roadside stores like Policicchio Groves — that saved our mini-break vacation when NASA lost its nerve. The waiting at the KSC visitor center was not worth the distance to launch pad, as it turned out. We spent six hours at the center before our bus, one of more than 100 headed to three launch viewing sites, finally took us on our viewing attempt. I wouldn't recommend it unless you really enjoy sweaty crowds, $7 hamburgers and lines in front of porta-potties. There were superior launch briefings on the hour at the Shuttle Dome, completely SRO but with powerful air conditioning. We'd risen at 5 AM for the 4 PM launch, because NASA needed us to be at the security checkpoint by 9:30. I suppose somebody had to be on hand to buy those burgers and browse the gift shop. We didn't disappoint them on either count.

On the bus ride back from our scrubbing, a launch viewing veteran regaled us with his experiences and expert opinions. (No more night launches, he assured us, and the whole shuttle thing is due to wrap up in five years.) He lived in Orlando, a city 40 miles from the launch pad where he assured us everybody will be able to see what's set to launch this morning. So why was he riding the bus with us, having endured his own waiting game? He'd seen a dozen launches, though none recently. Hell, nobody had seen a recent launch, which probably explained the over-subscribed KSC facility and the no-empty-seats bus. The truth is that a launch is something you can see from all over the space coast. After our beachside delights, we decided that returning for another launch wouldn't involve the KSC. A blanket on the beach, with a cooler and decent umbrella and the constant kiss of the Atlantic shore breeze, seemed like the better place to view. Close is nice, sure. But once that rocket gets up into the air, the six miles versus 16 miles really doesn't matter as much.

Once they scrubbed so close to launch, we had to get honest and admit NASA really wasn't ready on July 13, or even a week later. The NASA channel, available on our hotel TV down in Cocoa Beach, put the attempt in perspective. After all, most of us have grown up with the phrase, "If we can send a man to the moon, why can't we..." We take space travel for granted. The NASA administrator said in a press conference, "Sending humans into space is still at the very limits of technology here in the 21st Century."

Plainly put, this is rocket science. I hope NASA gets its flights returned today; the agency's head said yesterday that this flight is one of the three most important in the history of the 24-year-old shuttle program. (The other two were the very first, and the previous Return to Flight, after the Challenger exploded above the launch pad.) Like the signboards in front of restaurants and muffler stores all along the coast said during our five-day visit, "Godspeed Discovery." I'll be back, next time on the beach. And because I went, I'll know where to get the best Italian food I've ever had just down the road in Cocoa's outskirts, and where to wait on a launch that still represents the bravest thing we can do with technology.

Wandering the World of Wireless

I'm posting this from the Austin Java Cafe, downtown branch, my first experience with public wireless networks. This sort of access used to be a revenue item for businesses, but now most places are offering it for free. It's the kind of sea change that seems to define our world these days: a business that looked like a lock for growth is just as likely to implode as explode in growth. Starbucks wants to charge you for this, as does Borders. Independent alternatives like this coffeehouse and Austin's great bookshop Bookpeople pitch it in for free. Go independents!

Free wireless access in public can be problematic, I hear from the experts at the computer journals. A story out on the Information Week blog reports that Wi-Fi at conferences and in hotels is pretty abysmal. I'm still pretty new at this stuff, so I don't have first-hand experience to share. But that blogger's picture of dozens of people sitting at a conference, laptops on laps while they "attend" a talk and try to log onto their e-mail systems, is not inspiring. I imagine that teaching anyplace where there's laptops allowed in the classroom also introduces this distraction.

Last night we saw a commercial from HP, advertising this very wireless ability for students now on the lookout for a cool laptop. Needless to say, the connection the TV promoted didn't involve reading professors' books on their screens. No, HP decided to promote the idea that their laptops were fast, so students could watch movies while they were in class.

There are times when staying focused is just the thing that is required. Seems like classrooms are a place for that, as well as on the road while visiting your Mom. I'm headed to Las Vegas in about a week to help my mom move to a new apartment, and since I've gotten this wireless card installed, I imagined a few Wi-Fi sessions while in Vegas to check on the rest of the world. Maybe not a good idea. Visiting mom as she bears down on 80 and changes her living space is at least as important as classroom time. Come to think of it, I guess they're both learning situations. I'm just glad I'll have my brothers and sister on hand to help with my lessons out there in the desert.

Paper Tigers in Publishing

You hardly need to turn your head these days to see an example of how paper's time is fading like a Sunday supplement left out in the sun. The Wall Street Journal reported that advertisers are pumping more money than ever into online communications, at the expense of print ads:

Advertisers continue to aggressively increase spending on Internet ads, with close to half of them cutting spending on traditional channels to do so, according to a new survey from Forrester Research Inc.

Nearly 85% of advertisers plan to increase their online ad budgets this year, with the increases averaging 25%, according to a report from the Cambridge, Mass., research company. More than 40% of these advertisers are cutting spending on traditional ad vehicles such as magazines, newspapers, and direct mail to help fund the online increase.

Forrester forecasts that the online-ad market will grow to $26 billion annually by 2010, more than double last year's $12 billion. The report follows recent blowout earnings from Google Inc. and other Internet companies reliant on ads.

Google hosts this blog, and millions of others, on its Blogger service. Google collects nothing for giving me this forum, and somehow the company has made a killing in publishing giving things away. Advertising has been paying Google's bills, just as it always did in the world of daily print.

You can also get an eyeful of one paper after another being busted for faking their circulation numbers. A couple of stories ran in May that covered the coverage of the circulation fakes, both reported by On the Media, the fine journalism radio show produced every week by WNYC in New York.

The first story looked at how a New York area paper, Newsday, let its own news staff do the investigative work and help the paper come clean about sending newsprint to dead people. On the Media followed with a less cooperative tale from Dallas, where the Morning News had to be caught by the independent weekly Dallas Observer at similar hoodwinking. (It's even more fun to listen to the On the Media stories than read those transcripts. The Dallas Morning News segment, part of the public radio riches we all enjoy today, can be heard though your browser at www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/transcripts_051305_paperchace.html)

Of course, if you use Apple's free iTunes software, available for both Windows and Mac, the world of such radio podcasts is now wide open to you. Hearing voices can be very entertaining.

This all matters a great deal at my house, an address where we've produced a paper newsletter for 10 years, mailed faithfully to a couple of thousand readers every month. I've come to believe that change is already upon us, we who have made our careers and livelihoods putting ink on paper. That's the motivation for starting a blog to convey our coverage of the HP 3000 market, rather than rely on a monthly mailing. We still receive a glut of magazine paper in our mailbox here, but it's been a long time since daily or even weekly newsprint came through the door. It's not the money, either; I can't even be bothered to pick up a copy of the free Austin weekly, The Austin Chronicle. The Chronicle is a fine Austin resource, but only when I need a portable version for a day do I reach for the racks which hold tons of newsprint.

Online communication is rising, but I don't expect paper to disappear as a medium. Its time of ascendency is over, though. Declining numbers of book readers, especially those who read literature, is old news. One year ago this week the National Endowment for the Arts reported a steep drop-off in fiction reading. Not the news this aspiring novelist wants to hear, no. But paper doesn't define publishing. Since I started this blog this spring, thousands of words have surfaced that might have remained locked away. An affordable audience though online access is slaying those paper tigers. Storytelling is still popular. We just have to expand our medium of carrying tales.

So maybe it is rocket science

Yesterday and today we watched the Discovery Network crow about its most famous personality. The Science of Lance Armstrong not only explains why Lance is the human best built to endure the trials of the Tour, but the program does a fine job of teaching the details of team cycling. It shows how a wind tunnel is just as important an element as a Belgian equipment manager who ages the team's tires in his basement, as if they were wines. Team Discovery is riding on five-year-old rubber this month. Here he shakes hands with the American rider who first donned the yellow jersey for this year's race, Tom Zabriskie. Lance is wearing green, for yesterday's second-place finish, but his main squeeze Sheryl Crow said on OLN he was looking forward to putting on the Discovery colors once more after today.

Discovery's interest must have been piqued by its sponsorship of the cycling team. That's an opportunity that might not have come the network's way if the USPS hadn't passed on a seventh year of underwriting the greatest bike team in the world. As I pumped the tires at 6 AM today for this morning's ride, I looked at the US Postal Service arm-warmers I bought two years ago. The Post Office may never see another chance to make its logo so famous. We watched the Tour show on OLN today with Ellen, John, Ron and his wife Sue, and somebody asked what the USPS was sponsoring instead of Lance. Abby quipped, "Stamps?"

We whet our pallets for the TV show this morning as we pushed through a sharp south wind to finish 28 miles in Burnet County, a ride that started at the town of Liberty Hill, home of "The Fightin' Panthers." It's not enough for the town's high schoolers to be panthers, mind you. They gotta be fightin' ones, too. The last seven miles reminded me why they call the town Liberty Hill: undulating road that gave up and retook the same 100 feet of elevation over and over. I breathed hard in the 90-degree heat and gave thanks for the Bicycling Magazine article on climbing. Don't go too hard in the first quarter of a hill. Sit back in the saddle. Stand up on some climbs to vary the use of your muscles. Use your pedaling upstroke as well as the downstroke. Breathe slow and deep. Not exactly science, but it's at least a process tested by more experienced riders.

Jaune Juice to Power Pedals

We're reveling in the return of the Man in Yellow this morning, even if he wasn't wearing le jaune on his back today. Lance Armstrong muscled past Jan Ullrich to catch his major rival on the first Tour de France stage this morning. Ullrich had never been caught on a time trial before today. Lance rode past him like the big German diesel was standing idling. It was an amazing performance from an athlete called "too old" to win his Seventh Maillot de Jaune. Now Ulrich and the other serious contenders for the overall yellow jersey are a minute or more behind Lance.

This is the time of year when the voice of Phil Liggett rings in my ears when I climb onto my own pedals. The race commentator for OLN calls out the incredible feats from this race during July, one of the cruelest months to cycle in Austin. Even before Liggett was raving about the battle between Ullrich and Lance, I got out early with my friend Ron Wilcox, who's training for an MS 150 ride, to pedal 27 miles before 9:30. Fast, for me, with the absence of wind: 16.9 MPH. Try as I might, I couldn't make that bike computer average turn over to 17. When I rolled in, the temperature was already above 90.

It all makes for wonderful early mornings, rising soon enough to pedal before the heat arrives, then cooling off in front of the TV to the coverage of the world's greatest bike race.

There's a podcast network in Austin that will be offering commentary on the race stages. I joined the Austin Podcast Network with a few clicks of my browser this morning. I'd like to contribute to their efforts and help the group organize. The podcasters are part of the group that's putting race coverage onto the cafe deck of Central Market Central, live on 61-inch TVs, all through this month. The attention here in Austin is turned up to an unprecedented level. Last year they covered an Austin city bus in a special decal to celebrate win No. 6. They might have to cover the whole fleet if Lance manages to win No. 7.

If ever there was an event that begs for audio commentary, it would be Lance's epic try at 7, the one to retire upon. Meanwhile, the riders' images from OLN dance across my imagination, visions that power my pedals in the heart of this month's heat.

How Much Is That Doggie in the (Little) Window Gonna Change Markets?

With a title like that, I feel the need to explain. This week my son Nick and his girl Elisha came over for dinner, and afterward Elisha showed me why we need to look through different windows to see how to calculate computer market share. Smaller windows, like those on cell phones, show that markets are getting bigger while they change how we share our lives.

After our pork roast in peaches and cherries — lovely recipe, Abby — we sat and talked. Elisha talked about her dog Corky, and we wanted to see pictures. A high-bandwidth, excellent resolution monitor was in my office, a room about 12 steps from our table. I figured she must've had the pictures online. Instead, she said to Nick, "Honey, would you get my phone?" Because her dog's pictures live on her Samsung mobile phone, taken in all their 600x800 glory — but ready to share anywhere.

The next morning I read a print-edition Wired magazine article that chronicles the fortunes of Lenovo. That's the Chinese company that said, "Give us an extra helping of x86" and bought out much of IBM's PC business earlier this year. (Have a look at a BusinessWeek PDF reprint about Lenovo.) Lenovo's share of the PC market when they made their purchase? Just 2%

When I got into my office I then read a message from Wirt Atmar, a brilliant scientist and longtime programmer who's company has developed lots of business software and an elegant lecture presentation software solution, QCShow. Wirt has also developed a deep skepticism about Apple's future. As a way of proving how out-of-favor the Mac is supposed to be, he said the computer has only a 1.8 % market share. But the Lenovo figure of 2% begs the question: Is Apple's 1.8% really low?

I pose another question: How do you figure a computer market's size, when Elisha's Samsung cell phone steps in to do a PC's task? People like her and Nick, in their 20s and with the full attention of the consumer companies like Apple, have a broader idea of what to use to share their lives. I think the millions of iPods, which now display photos, track calendars, and this week can play independent radio podcasts — these count as parts of the market.

Apple's not going anywhere, not as long as it keeps redefining the iPod as an information platform. I disagree with Wirt. Intel-Apple alliance I mentioned a month ago won't change this fundamental part of Apple's identity: Thinking different. Lots of portable hard disks were on the market when the iPod surfaced. Apple was the first to decide a tiny disk and an easy interface could open the gateway to sharing. Yesterday I put my calendar on my iPod, so when I go to a Hill Country Ride for AIDS planning meeting I don't double-schedule anything. Easier than lugging a laptop, and an information habit well outside the idea of "market share."

As a customer I don't give a damn about market share. This isn't movie box office we're talking about here, it's computing tools. Maybe the future will show improvement for Apple's Mac. If the Mac can manage to increase its market share by just two-tenths of a point, then using the math above, it will be as successful as Lenovo.

The comparison won't convince some people. They'll think Apple will be ready for a fall, since it's Apple, doing something different than selling a PC enslaved to Windows. Difference can cause concern for pragmatists.

All I know today is that the size of that doggie in Elisha's window — small, compared to a PC picture — makes the market for computing a lot bigger than just the number of desktops or laptops. We want to share everywhere.