Monkcast #11: Green APIs, open sourcing discontinued software, and more

The boys from Redmonk (James Governor and Michael Cote) and I recorded our 11th MonkCast today and as usual, we were all over the technology map. Being the hot topic that it is just about everywhere, we covered a wide range of "green" subject matter. As a part of their GreenMonk initiative, the 3 Musketeers Governor, Cote, and Stephen O'Grady (who wasn't present for the call -- but who did get relocated to the Asia-Pacific region, unbeknownst to him) are looking into the idea of green APIs. They've nicknamed the effort GreenForge. Although they're not exactly sure what a green API is, it sounds like a good idea and my hunch is that they'll know one when they see one. One API that could qualify according to Governor and Cote is Amazon's Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) API.

The more companies, including Fortune 500s, consider transitioning their data centers to compute utilities like Amazon's, the greater the likelihood that global utilization could come close to matching global capacity. Today, the two are completely out of whack. Capacity far outstrips utilization and a lot of energy gets wasted as a result. Why would outsourcing to a utility stand a better chance of bringing the two in line? I thought about this after the podcast call and realized that when it's your business to run a utility like that, your profit is every much dependent on squeezing as much efficiency out of your infrastructure as possible.

In some ways, it's like an airline. I marvel at how good some airlines are getting at matching utilization to capacity. Virtually every flight I've been on over the last couple of years has been packed. In fact, I was nearly bumped from my last flight due to overbooking (and was NOT happy about that). But I also was silently surprised at how close American Airlines came to getting it right: I was the only one on the "bubble" and I did in fact get on to a packed flight with one seat left five minutes before they shut the door.

Speaking of green (and in response to my Technology Shakedown series), we covered the subject of leaving PCs on. As a result of shaking down some tech this week on video, one ZDNet reader commented that they like the idea of how Vista's auto defragging feature pipes down its activities while you're at the keyboard doing work (so as not to slow the system down). But then again, they weren't too sure if having to leave a PC on so it could defrag when you're not there is the eco-friendly thing to do.

Somewhere out of that discussion came the question of whether Governor actually powers down his notebook before getting on a plane, or does he just close the lid and suspend it. Cote admitted to suspending. Me too. Governor says he shuts down because if he doesn't, his Lenovo X60s gets too hot to touch. Ditto that. I have an X60 Tablet that also gets hot enough to fry an egg on (where your palms are supposed to rest). Based on my discussions with Lenovo, they're taking measures to make sure that's not a problem with future systems -- but maybe they'll be taking a break to celebrate their recent "13-fold" success first.

Speaking of China (Lenovo is a Chinese company), in the course of praising the design of his BlackBerry (Governor is quite impressed by the way the same USB cable that connects his BlackBerry to his PC also connects his BlackBerry to the power charger -- yes, that is cool), James told us of how USB-based power is now a government ordered standard throughout China. Wow. I wish they'd do that here.

Somehow, we got onto the topic of a management company that's shuttering operations: Klir Technologies (see Cote's blog on the closing here) which begs the question of what should happen to a company's intellectual property when it shuts down. Going back to my Tech Shakedowns, one ZDNet reader said he wished that discontinued versions of Windows would be open sourced. He felt that was the fair thing to do for customers getting left behind.

So, what about when a company shuts down? What happens to the customers? What happens to the IP that those customers may need continued access to? What does that say for doing business with a startup? Particularly for something so bread-n-butter like IT plumbing and systems management. Users of BlackICE are probably thinking the same thing. According to InfoWorld, now that IBM acquired the vendor of BlackICE, it's going to bury the product next year. How about open sourcing it?

Finally, James recounted his ordeal tackling a home invader that came to rob his house. Although he got away, the robber apparently left his eyeglasses behind -- not much else was needed for the coppers to find the thief and put him behind bars. Where did this conversation end? Cote and Governor agreed that the most coveted possessions in their homes were their Macs. How 'bout them Apples?