mPhase takes its power to the people

During my short, less-than-meritorious career as a nanotech pitchman over the course of the last couple of years, here's one recurring theme I tried to get across to employers and clients: Public relations is no longer only a matter of begging major publications to write about your company. RSS and cheap distribution of videos like the one above are the great equalizers.

Companies can produce messages themselves, bypass traditional media and take their message directly to their audience. That is exactly what mPhase has done here with a video about its nanobattery, and in this one released a week later on its magnetometer.

I had no takers on my proposals, along with other strategies that made use of "bottom-up" citizen-enabled media -- largely because most of the companies I worked with, in the end, were just not ready to take the next step. mPhase took a chance and, with 13,312 views so far, and the discussion continuing on YouTube and other sites, this no-brainer concept is more than proven. You just can't get better PR for the price. I'm glad at least one nanotech company finally "gets it."

Backgrounder
My other life as a nanotech pitchman
March goes out like a Li-Ion

Jim Carrey and Conan talk quantum physics

OK, all you real quantum physicists out there (and I know some of you are indeed closeted NanoBot readers), are Jim Carrey and Conan O'Brien saying anything that makes any kind of sense here (at least, as much sense as can be made in quantum physics)? And is Max Weinberg really wrong?

Update: NBC turned out the lights on the YouTube clip, but click here for links on my server.

Backgrounder
Einstein's dice and the nano Sopranos

A sneak peak at next week's quantum leap

Thanks to nanotech venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, we get a sneak peak at the core of a new quantum computer, which will be lovingly unveiled a day before Valentine's Day -- Feb. 13. Yes, you read that correctly. There is real work going on in the mind-boggling multiverse of quantum computing, where a shave and a haircut can cost anywhere from one to 65,536 bits (or qubits) at the same time.

I remember when Jurvetson's firm first invested in D-Wave Systems Inc. back in 2003. I was news editor at Small Times back then, and we just ran a brief on it because even we -- who had chugged the nano Kool-Aid -- found it difficult to believe that a quantum computer would be anywhere close to commercialization.

I also remember my surprise at Jurvetson's investment, since he has long maintained that while he's a believer in the long-term promise of molecular nanotechnology, come to him for money only if there's a short-term commercialization plan.

I should know better than to doubt Steve Jurvetson, who consistently proves the truth of a phrase credited to Alan Kay, whose work at the Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s can be traced directly to the computer revolution of a decade later. "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

Or, in Jurvetson's case, to fund it.

Backgrounder:
Einstein's dice and the nano Sopranos