While exchanging rants this week with Marcus Pradel, he brought up the idea of Online Quiet Mode.  One of the reasons AT&T wants to restrict laptops tethering to iPhones and such is because they will agressively use bandwidth because they believe they have broadband connections.

A feature missing from laptop and netbook operating systems is the ability to dynamically turn off background updates and other things that will eat bandwidth and battery life.  Truly mobile devices and most tablets ( tablets are portable but not really mobile aka in your pocket ) understand that you may not want to download attachments or other 'heavy' usage.

This feature would be primary triggered when the device goes onto battery power from wall power as least as an option and perhaps triggered more agressively if battery levels drop.  In this mode, background applications or downloads would be signficantly throttled or restricted both in CPU and Internet access.

A programming heirarchy would allow multiple tiers of access or throttling based on types of connection.  This could be manually set or automatically determined in the way that many p2p clients determine available uplink speeds.  Ping times over mobile networks typically are higher to the next hop and contain high jitter.

The current problem is that most operating systems or devices assume the speed from the link connection.  Just because you have a full speed 802.11n connection, does not mean you have 300Mbit of bandwidth past one hop.

Similar to how some programs like Norton 360 allow you to select which programs run at startup or delay startup, Online Quiet Mode would allow you to select or preference which applications can be used with bandwidth or power needs to be conserved.

Vertical Tidal Generator for Slack Water

Most tidal generators depend on current or ebb and flow and some implement power from wave action.  This generator could be used in situations where tides cause the water to rise and fall but without signficant current or abilty to damn and focus that current.  Simplified, a float system tied to gears or a pulley attached to a dynamo.  When the tide rises, the float with leveraged gearing would spin the generator system to be delivered directly, or stored as kinetic or potential such as a flywheel, water pumped to a tower, or an energy storage system.  When the tide falls, the weight of the float could be used to add additional power.  

Solar collecting as part of screen unit for a mobile device.  Put a solar panel or film behind or on the surface of the screen or translucent film perhaps polarized to collect light from some angles, but pass light on others for viewing vs collecting.  Even if the device is active the panel could slow down the drain of the energy storage system, battery or otherwise.

A second method might be to adapt technology such as found in auto diming mirrors or glasses to change the properties of the light collection when the screen is off or asleep.  When the screen is activated for viewing, the solar or light collecting charging would disable or be reduced in effectiveness.  

Optimal Margin Routing is a method or system that allows backward feedback from the network to optimize routing decisions. The majority of systems available route calls from a matrix generated from least cost, commonly known as least cost routing. This is based on the general business rule that infers the best routing choice for the call is the cheapest one.

This system has many shortcomings, the most common being sending calls down a dead or congested route in order to try to achieve the best margin. Often these systems cause extra congestion, especially during busy hour, by trying to jam too many calls for the destination capacity.

The second problem with this method is that it fails to take into account that some customers may be willing to pay more in order to complete the call with better quality, or in many cases, to complete the call at all.

Optimal margin routing seeks to avoid these pitfalls by allowing the operator to define a set of rules based on quality as well as price. During periods of congestion, the system will penalize destination routes for clients who are requesting higher quality.

Read more: Optimal Margin Routing