Entrepreneur Watch

Do cell phones cause cancer?

Maureen Dowd and Gavin Newsom, both people I respect, think we need to be concerned about radiation from cell phones.

Personally, I'm more worried about radiation from flying saucers. Been thinking about lining my hat with foil.

Dowd harkens back to the time when we didn't know that sun tans and cigarettes were harmful.

Yeah, well, we did as soon as we ran some studies.

There have been many studies on cell phone radiation and cancer. The very few that suggest there may be a link look as authoritative as BP spokesman touting Big Oil's safety record.

Dowd cited "one Swedish study" that showed a 400% increase in brain tumors among people who started using cell phones as teens a decade ago. She doesn't say which Swedes did the study.

Right. How many people were in the study? How many in the control group? And just how many got cancer? Were any of them wearing aluminum foil in their hats?

If you want to see a good summary of studies about cell phone and cancer, check out Environment Health and Safety Online (ehso.org)

My summary of their summary:

Four studies concluded there may be a correlation between cell use and cancer. 

    -- One was done by the World Health Organization, but we have not seen the results of the study yet. Only says it may increase risk. Hostile aliens may land in my back yard, too. But we'll wait for further info.

    -- Another was conducted by an Australian neurosurgeon who reviewed studies others had done and concluded there was "an increasing body of evidence" for a link. But this paper was self-published and was not peer-reviewed, so I'd give it about as much authority as my college paper on Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock." I hated that class.

    -- The third, from the Swedish National Institute for Working Life, concluded that heavy cell phone users had a 3.7 X higher risk of brain tumors. But it was criticized because it required the subjects to recall how heavily they used cell phones a decade ago, at a time when anyone with brain cancer figures the cell phone caused it. The subjects may have been biased. Maybe this was the study Ms. Dowd referred to.

    -- The fourth is another Swedish study. Very specific, this one. People in rural areas who use digital cell phones "may be at greater risk for brain cancer." But the authors admit their study was small and some bigger ones are needed.

Other studies have shown no cancer link. Ehso.com cited five.

    -- the first was done at the Florida Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, and found that cell phones may protect against Alzheimer's. Wierd. I guess if you use cell phones you'll get cancer, but at least remember that you have it.

    -- Another involving four Scandinavian countries found no increased risk at all. But the researchers say their population study of 16 million people may have been too small to determine a slight increase in risk. 16 million? The study also only covered five years, and it may take longer for cancers to develop.

    -- Tokyo Women's Medical University surveyed 322 brain cancer patients and 683 healthy people and found no correlation between cell use and the cancer.

    -- Scientists in Denmark followed 420,000 cell phone users over 21 years. Again, no correlation.

    -- A four-year British study of 966 people with brain tumors and 1,716 people withpout tumors showed no correlation. 

And finally, a big meta-study involving a bunch of researchers and medical organizations, (the study is here) went through 465 articles, 23 case-control studies, involving 38,000 people to find a link. The conclusion:

"The current study found that there is possible evidence linking mobile phone use to an increased

risk of tumors from a meta-analysis of low-biased case-control studies. Prospective cohort studies

providing a higher level of evidence are needed."

So this isn't exactly comparable to our ignorance of sunbathing and smoking. Lots of studies, inconclusive results, but generally hard to find a link. So choose your own paranoia.

And one other thing should be added: If cell phones are causing cancer, nobody knows why. The radiation they produce is NOT ionizing radiation, which can cause cancer. The radio frequency cells use has never been shown to cause cancer.

My feeling: 

Use a phone headset. Just to be safe. It's easier than the aluminum-foil route.

Marc Benioff: Microsoft, IBM, Oracle are dead meat

Marc Benioff gave a talk at the GigaOm Structure conference today. He's never shy of giving his opinions.

He mentioned that he was talking to his friend, Craig Mundie, a Microsoft executive, at the World Economic Forum this year. Marc mentioned that his company, cloud computing leader Salesforce.com, has over 77,300 customers now. Just to show how efficient cloud computing is, he asked Craig how many servers 77,000 Microsoft customers would require. Craig figured each company would need at least one, and some a couple more, so guessed at least 100,000.

Benioff boasted that Salesforce.com has only 3,000 servers (Dell computers) to run all those companies' needs – and that half of them are not even turned on. The other half are to handle peak demand. Ouch.

“The Microsofts and IBMs of the world are just going away” because they can't wean themselves from selling software, rather than renting it out in the cloud, he said. “CIOs want change,” he says. “They're demanding it. They're finally deciding they don't want the same old stuff. They're looking to Google, to Amazon, to us.” And his final dig: “That's why Microsoft's stock has been flat for the last ten years.”

Conference organizer Om Malik asked what he thought about Oracle's boast that it is now into cloud computing. He pointed to Oracle's “Iron Man” ads, with the slogan, “Software, hardware, complete.” (Oracle recently bought Sun Microsystems for its server hardware.) “That's their strategy,” he says. “Sell you more software, sell you more hardware.”

That's not cloud computing. “Our strategy is to sell you no hardware or software,” he said. Cloud computing has to be at least an order of magnitude cheaper to be considered “real” cloud computing, he added. Otherwise, why bother? That's the difference between real cloud computing and “the false cloud.”

To illustrate the difference, he mentioned a recent trip to Japan where he attended a conference. Japanese companies are not on the cloud yet. One company with a huge display was boasting on enormous banners that it is offering cloud computing. So he took his translator to the booth and asked to see their approach to the cloud. He was shown a rack with a lot of hardware and software on it. How is that cloud computing? Benioff asked. The response: Well, we can put the rack in your facilities, or in ours, or in someone else's!

So Benioff came up with the idea of talking about “the false cloud” to illustrate that a lot of companies claiming clouds are just wrong.

What's the next step in the cloud? Mobility and social networking. “Why isn't all enterprise software like FaceBook,” which has a billion users? Now that's efficiency. He calls it “Cloud Two.” To that end, he says Salesforce.com is rewriting its software platform, its applications, its call centers and more to incorporate mobile capability and social networks into the system. “This is going to create more value and capability than Cloud One,” he said. “We have to transform, and we're working on that.”

The new technology for social networking at Salesforce.com is called “Chatter,” described as “The real-time Collaboration Cloud.” The status of important projects and deals are automatically pushed to you – kind of like email alerts from FaceBook, I guess. The Web site says “Updates on people, groups, documents, and your application data come straight to you in real-time feeds.”

Sounds great. My question is, can he keep out the spam?

You can check out the video of his talk here.

For more articles on this and other topics, please visit my website, http://www.richardlbrandt.com/

Send a spine to Congress

I got a notice today from the Post Carbon Institute, which opines on alternative energy issues. The organization thinks President Obama's speech on the Gulf oil spill was a tepid bow to Tea Partiers. 

Clearly, our politicians need to get a backbone. If you believe that oil addiction is something we need to wean ourselves from, the PC Institute will send some spines to congress if you send them a sawbuck.

My opinion is that we're probably stuck with Big Oil for years to come, no matter what. Too entrenched, difficult to replace cost effectively, makes too many billions of dollars for powerful corporations. But until oil drillers can demonstrate that they can deal with disaster, they should be held liable for the billions of dollars of environmental cleanup, habitat restoration, and lost jobs from any spills they cause. Political backbone might help.

Here's the Post Carbon Institute plea for bucks for backbones.

What's it Going to Take to Beat BIG OIL? 537 Spines.

The horrific Gulf oil spill disaster has clearly shown that our nation's leaders need us to show them what it means to have a backbone. So let's do just that - let's send one directly to President Obama, Vice President Biden, and each and every member of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

For every donation of $10 we will send President Obama or a member of Congress a spine with your name on it.

In his oval office address last night on the BP oil spill, President Obama took an important, though long overdue, step in acknowledging that the days of cheap and abundant energy are essentially over.

"For decades, we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered. For decades, we have talked and talked about the need to end America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels. And for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires. Time and again, the path forward has been blocked‚ not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor."

But the President failed to follow these words with any proposal or plan.

Not since Jimmy Carter has one of our nation's leaders shown the backbone to really take on our addiction to fossil fuels--afraid, perhaps, to suffer the same political fate as Carter--while with each passing day and year we run out of time and resources to avert disaster.

In his recent response to President Obama's speech Post Carbon Institute Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg wrote:

Maybe the Carter Curse is real. Perhaps straight talk about energy is political suicide. But if nobody at least tries - if no one has the courage to make specific proposals that are commensurate with the scale of the challenge that faces us - then the political survival of the current office holder is essentially irrelevant.

Clearly our nation's leaders haven't found the backbone to stand up to Big Oil and break our addiction to fossil fuels, so we're asking you to lend them yours.

Our nation's leaders need 537 backbones. With your help, we'll drop ship a big box of fortitude on Washington D.C.

Along with a toy spine sent in your name, we will also include an optional statement from you, to our leaders, about what you are doing in your life to kick the fossil fuel habit. We'lll be documenting our backbone shipments in pictures and videos that will be uploaded to thePCI Facebook page, so keep an eye out on this campaign's progress.

We need to send 537 spines to Washington D.C. pronto. This means we'lll need help, so please help us spread the word.

For more of my columns on green tech and other issues, please visit my web site.

New Google Earth version 5.2 released

Google is releasing new versions for Google Earth for both professionals and casual users today. 

The blog announcing the release is here. 

It looks pretty cool. The big change is in its enhanced GPS tracking ability. In version 5, Google allowed you to connect your GPS to Google Earth and import your track. In version 5.2, you can now also see elevation, speed and other data as a graph.

Playing back the trip becomes more interesting by clicking on the time animation button. That brings up an icon that represents you, which then moves through the landscape that you traveled. It's like "fly[ing] along your journey from a bird's eye view," says Dan Barcay, a software engineer who worked on the new version, in his blog entry.

Both blog entries show animations to demonstrate the new tracking ability, and give instructions on how to use it.

The Pro version adds:

Parcel, demographic, and traffic data layers for the US

Improved GIS importing

Automatic generation of super-overlays for very large image files

Automatic regioning of large point and vector data sets

Support for MGRS grid system

Download it at http://earth.google.com

Google Free Trade argument: China censorship is "also used as a way of keeping multinational companies disadvantaged in the market." http://bit.ly/a4iqqX Wish there were more explanation of how it hurts free trade from foreigners, though.

Google "Caffeine" search index speeds sites into search. CW gathers blog quotes. http://bit.ly/9rn9VL

Google releases beta of Chrome Frame, turning Internet Explorer into Chrome. http://bit.ly/aKVdF7

Apple convinces Wired that banning Google ads from iPhone is not stupid. http://bit.ly/9fS1QO Yeah, well, unless you want your users to have the most relevant and useful ads.

Google homepage background test fails - "remove google background" 7th most popular search on Google. http://bit.ly/bG7PkG

Steve Jobs takes revenge on Google, knocks AdMob off iPhone

I've said it before:

"Steve Jobs does not like Google these days. What if he were to decide to ban Google apps from the iPhone or other products? It would hurt Apple users, but I can imagine Steve Jobs giving it a shot."

Well, Steve Jobs has modified his iPhone advertising in a way that seems to me to be designed specifically to weaken Google ads on the iPhone.   

Steve is limiting the ability of iPhone advertising systems to collect analytics about users when, for example, "an advertising service provider [is] owned by or affiliated with a developer or distributor of ... mobile operating systems." They have to get Apple's permission first.

Gee, now what mobile advertising system is owned by a developer of mobile operating systems? Besides Google, AOL and Microsoft appear to be excluded from collecting user information, according to the Wall Street Journal.

ComputerWorld points out that "Of all the ad requests [AdMob] served in April, nearly 32% went to iPhones and iPod Touches." That's nearly four times the number of ads it serves on Android phones. So far. 

No analytics = less effective, less relevant ads.

This hurts Apple users. Less effective competition in advertising. Steve Jobs exercises his imperial control over his devices.

It's revenge on Google for competing with Apple. Jobs (inadvertently, I'm sure) single-handedly got the FTC to approve Google's AdMob purchase when he acquired Quattro. The FTC, thinking (without evidence) that Apple would provide significant mobile advertising competition, used it as an excuse to approve the Quattro acquisition. 

Well, if Apple wasn't going to be a significant advertising competitor with  Google, I guess it will be now.

The Wall Street 

sers.

"Steve Jobs does not like Google these days. What if he were to decide to ban Google apps from the iPhone or other products? It would hurt Apple users, but I can imagine Steve Jobs giving it a shot."