I screwed this up the first time I moved abroad, but learned my lessons and want to share them with anyone who cares to listen.

The Problem: You are moving abroad, perhaps for a year, maybe two, and currently have an AT&T wireless phone.  You do not want to lose your phone number, which all of your friends have saved.  You also want to be able to use your phone when home for the holidays.

The Solution: In a nutshell, convert your post-paid plan (i.e. your monthly contract plan) into a pre-paid one from AT&T “Go Phone“, load it with $100 worth of credit every 365 days, and rest assured your phone number will be waiting for you when you return home.

The Details:

• You must be out of contract, or you will most likely incur penalties for breaking it
• Call AT&T, and ask to switch to a “Pay as You Go” plan (NOT a “Pick Your Plan” pre-pay account)
• Ask to add $100 worth of credit to your account, using your credit card.  When you add $100 or more in credits, these credits don’t expire for 365 days (instead of one month, otherwise)
• Use your phone while home on holiday, etc. so that you use up those $100 of credits.  If you are nearing the 365 day mark since you last added credits, you can add another $100 and extend the life of ALL credits another year.
• You cannot (at this time) get mobile data or blackberry services on Go Phone.  When you move back to the country you will have to upgrade to a regular monthly plan to get these.
• When you move back home to the US, any unused pay as you go credits can be converted to a credit on your new monthly plan once you upgrade.

Not with AT&T?: While I cannot say with certainty, I believe this approach would work for T-Mobile customers and other GSM phone subscribers as well.  You would first need to port your number over to AT&T Go Phone, but otherwise all of the steps above should work.

The California Clean Tech Open, a business plan contest with considerable, hefty backers, this morning announced its list of finalists.  I found the list of technologies and business ideas so interesting I decided to share it here to help bring attention to these impressive entrepreneurial ventures:

Air, Water & Waste Category Finalists

• Clean Coal Inc.: Removes contaminants from coal
• Over the Moon Diapers: High performance reusable diapers and service network
• Porifera: Carbon nanotube membrane for reverse osmosis desalination
• PURE-T: Salt free water softener using nanobeads
• Purite: Zero-energy chemical-free whole house water filtration
• SequesCO: Microbial CO2 capture and conversion to biofuel
• Waste Water Works (WWW): Microbial wastewater treatment also generates electricity

Energy Efficiency Category Finalists

• Atomic Precision Systems Inc.: New semiconductor process for ultra-cheap LED lighting
• Enovative Group: Smart pump for hot water circulation
• NexChem: Energy-saving process improvement for zinc galvanizing
• Transoptic: Solar energy assistance for conventional water heaters
• Viridis Earth: Domestic HVAC retrofit to improve efficiency
• WicKool: Energy efficient water recovery for existing rooftop air conditioning

Green Building Category Finalists

• BottleStone: Ceramic stone countertops include 80% recycled glass
• en-vis-age: Green, modular and customizable buildings
• Green Design Systems: Straw wall building panels
• GreenHomeAnswers.com: Home improvement website for green products and services
• GroundSource: Residential geothermal system with installation services
• ISTN: Eco-friendly building insulation
• Parco Homes: Manufactured green (zero net energy) home kits
• Solar Red: Low cost rooftop PV installation system and components
• Team Wawa: Water-conserving shower system

Renewables Category Finalists

• Covalent Solar: Organic thin film solar concentrators
• Focal Point Energy: Solar thermal water heater for industrial processes
• IEM Applications: Landfill methane accelerated recovery
• Renewable Fuel Technologies: Agricultural waste biomass converted to Green Coal
• Solar Ice: Solar powered ice maker
• Solindis: Optical solar concentrator for thin film PV

Smart Power Category Finalists

• 1ARC Energy: Higher capacity lithium-ion batteries
• Cooler: Carbon calculator to allow B2B targeted advertising in LOHAS
• Energy Empowered: Home display and control to reduce standby power usage
• Enverity Corporation: Greenhouse gas tracking and compliance
• Power Assure: Data center energy management software service
• Renewable Voltage: Treat organic waste to provide hydrogen and energy storage
• Tangerine Network Devices: Home energy display and control

Transportation Category Finalists

• AAA Fleets: Turnkey electric vehicles and solar charging systems for fleets
• E-Chargers: Plug-in hybrid charging station
• ElectraDrive: Gas to electric drivetrain auto conversion
• Electric Drive Research: Plug-in/gas hybrid 2 person, 3 wheel sports car
• ElectronVault, Inc.: More efficient traction battery for hybrids
• Enhanced Vehicle Acoustics: Flexible engine sound generator for quiet cars
• FuelMotion: Series hybrid conversions for the developing world
• Goose Networks: Hosted dynamic scheduler for carpools/vanpools
• Philo Fuel: GPS-based audiovisual cues to help drivers optimize fuel efficiency

Based upon these short snippets alone, I think I will have my eyes on BottleStone, 1ARC Energy, and ElectronVault.  These all play on existing market demands (countertops, batteries, hybrid vehicles) and don’t require the kind of massive market shifts needed to make ideas like Energy Empowered or IEM Applications viable businesses.

• First, getting MUNI and other public transit networks to share their data.  Releasing this data would be potentially embarrasing to the transit authorities, since it could reveal just how often their services fail to arrive on time.  Then again, argued Brendan and Justin, by sharing the data with an application like theirs, users would be better equipped to react and make alternative arrangements.
• Second, how to monetize the application.  If MUNI doesn’t even want to share the data in the first place, it would be a stretch to think that they would be willing to pay a software developer for delivering it in a user-friendly form to riders.  We discussed alternatives, including helping public transit systems without GPS-enabled networks get online.  The two could serve as a center of excellence in deploying the technology, and deliver the technology to analyze the GPS data on a fee-for-service basis to help the transit authority cut costs and optimize its network.  They could then also push that proprietary data out to riders in the form of a application, perhaps with a small monthly fee.

We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account, effective September 1, 2008. Each additional Profile Queue will be unavailable after September 1, 2008. Before then, we recommend you consolidate any of your Profile Queues to your main account Queue or print them out.

While it may be disappointing to see Profiles go away, this change will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.

You will not be able to transfer your Profiles data to a separate new account Consider moving all DVD titles in your Profiles Queues to your main account Queue

• Users will now have to pay two bills where they used to pay one
• Users will lose all of the data they have built up over time while using Netflix, eliminating the barrier that once kept them from switching to a competitor, such as Blockbuster
• Users who decide to stay with Netflix will be forced to spend hours re-entering their movie ratings and rental queues
• Users who have been too lazy to close or downgrade their accounts won’t renew their accounts, killing the “momentem” that once kept them paying every month
• Users who do decide to turn their single account into two different accounts will feel like Netflix is nickle-and-diming them, forcing them to pay more for a less convenient, equivalent service that they used to pay less for
• New customers that might have been attracted to the idea of a single Netflix account per household (it’s easy to convince a new roomie to pay $3.00 a month to move from a 2 to 3 disc account, when they might not have been willing to pay $9.00 a month to get an account of their own)

• Traditional competitors who can take advantage of the mass of new potential customers shopping for a DVD rental service (e.g. Blockbuster)
• New competitors (e.g. iTunes movie downloads) who will open their arms to an influx of users who no longer have any reason to stay with Netflix and its old DVD-by-mail technology

I fervently believe that gay marriage is the human rights issue of my generation that will be most deeply regretted and pitied from the future. It is the black rights issue of my lifetime. It is giving women the vote, more than eighty years on.

My generation’s children will read about these moments in their history books with equal parts fascination, horror, and surprise. We will answer their questions with shame, frustration, and discomfort.

Is it too optimistic to hope that California’s acceptance of same-sex marriages is the Rosa Parks moment for the gay rights movement that finally awakens this country to the hypocrisy of its laws and views on marriage?

• Gizmodo
• GeekSugar
• iTWire

the stronger winds out at sea can generate more electricity, and hence more revenue: wind blowing at 10m/s can produce five times as much electricity as wind blowing half as fast, and this greatly favours building more offshore wind far

YOU only have to look at waves pounding a beach, inexorably wearing cliffs into rubble and pounding stones into sand, to appreciate the power of the ocean.

Alas, harnessing it has proved to be unexpectedly difficult. In recent years wind farms have sprouted on plains and hilltops, and solar panels have been sprinkled across rooftops and deserts. But where the technology of wind and solar power is established and steadily improving, that of wave power is still in its infancy.

A recurring problem, ironically enough, is that new devices underestimate the power of the sea, and are unable to withstand its assault. Installing wave-energy devices is also expensive; special vessels are needed to tow equipment out to sea, and it can be difficult to get hold of them… Another practical problem is the lack of infrastructure to connect wave-energy generators to the power grid. The cost of establishing this infrastructure makes small-scale wave-energy generation and testing unfeasible; but large-scale projects are hugely expensive.

In December Pacific Gas & Electric, an American utility, signed an agreement to buy electricity from a wave farm that is to be built off the coast of California and is due to open in 2012

Each Aquabuoy is a tube, 25-metres long, that floats vertically in the water and is tethered to the sea floor. Its up-and-down bobbing motion is used to pressurise water stored in the tube below the surface. Once the pressure reaches a certain level, the water is released, spinning a turbine and generating electricity.

I recently returned from another Memorial Day weekend spent in Boulder, and was pleasantly reminded of what I have pretty much always known: this is the best time to see Boulder. On this trip, you see, I had the unique need of impressing a special certain “someone” that my hometown was indeed a beautiful and pleasant place to live and visit, and that those epic snowstorms that shutdown the airports and trapped us in Boulder two years ago were indeed an exception, and not the rule.

Let me also say that although I am a “Colorado Native” and lived in Boulder for nine years before leaving for college on the East Coast, returning to visit is in many ways an act of re-discovering a city I once thought I knew very well. After all, a city is a very different place for a teenager than for a twenty-something.

While our visit to Boulder was wonderful on numerous levels, I want to focus on the two real attractions that make Memorial Day weekend uniquely well-suited for a visit: the Bolder Boulder and the Boulder Creek Festival.

The Boulder Creek Festival

The Creek Fest is an annual rite of summer. For three days, the public park space along the Boulder Creek, the library parking lot, and the surrounding downtown streets are taken over for carnival games, local food, art displays, and a healthy dose of Boulder Hippie-ness. Most things are organic, will help you purge your body of toxins, boost your energy, and help you come into balance with your inner chi.

It’s also just a lot of fun. Bands play, people sponsor rubber duckies in an annual race (dumped in the Boulder Creek, with prizes for the first 50 finishers a few blocks downstream), and free samples are handed out in abundance.

Oh, and it’s free.

This year we enjoyed free samples of a number of different energy bars, sampled locally produced kombucha tea, sipped on the latest brews from Boulder Beer, and even test drove the hybrid Toyota Highlander, to see if it drove any different than Ellaine’s own Scottish SUV (it did – but it was also five years newer).

The Bolder Boulder

This massive event is one of the largest 10k races in the country, and attracts both truly talented athletes from around the world (who enjoy the challenge of racing at high altitude and the large prize-purse) and local runners/joggers/walkers alike. This year, 53,000 people participated, making it the largest Memorial Day event in the country.

It’s a good race, with a lot of happy spirits all around. Local schools send volunteers in abundance to hand out water, locals along the route camp out with music and cheers aplenty for those passing, and more than a handful of runners make sure to try and outdo each other in the absurdity of their costumes (ourselves included).

We decked ourselves out in full-body pink spandex we had left over from the Bay to Breakers in San Francisco the week before, and ran with Smurfs, Crayola Crayons, Pirates, and even a guy who managed to juggle while jogging for all 6.2 miles.

What Else to Do:

While the festival and race will keep you busy for a good amount of time, there is also plenty to see and do during the rest of the three-day weekend. Below I offer a few personal recommendations, but nothing close to a comprehensive list:

Nature:

• Chautauqua Park
• NCAR
• Eldorado Springs
• Views from Flagstaff Mountain

Local Attractions:

• Pearl Street Mall, including:
• Art Mart
• Into the Wind
• Boulder Arts and Crafts Cooperative

• Coors Brewery Tour
• Celestial Seasoning’s Tour
• CU Boulder Campus

What to Eat:

Breakfast:

• Moe’s Bagels

Lunch:

• Illegal Pete’s

Dinner:

• Southern Sun
• Old Chicago Pizza
• Dushanbe Tea House

Ellaine was accepted last week into the University of Sydney’s Masters program of Applied Science in Molecular Biotechnology and will begin her studies on July 28. What an impressive title! I am extremely excited for her, and am more than ready to fulfill my part of our bargain to follow her to Australia for at least a year.

While I do not yet know what I will be doing once we land in Sydney, I do plan on working. My hope is to continue to shift my career focus on working with entrepreneurial startup companies, in strategy or corporate development, or as an investor.

I recently began working for Zecco, the fast-growing online securities brokerage where my good friend and flatmate Tony Leach is a Product Developer, as a project consultant for their product development and marketing strategy teams. My work there is expected to carry through the rest of the summer.

And then, come late July, Ellaine and I will be moving to Oz. I can’t wait.

Over parts of January, February, and March of this year (8 weeks in total), I lived in a one-bedroom apartment in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg while working for a consumer products client of the Monitor Group. Unlike my experience in Riyadh, which was defined both by international travel and treks to parts of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia rarely seen by foreigners, my experience in Johannesburg was largely spent in the northern suburbs of that city, mirroring the lives of most of my South African colleagues. During those eight weeks I did escape for a weekend safari in Madikwe Game Reserve, and for a relaxing exploration of Cape Town, but even these were not uncommon destinations for locals.

While short, my experience in South Africa left me with several important and lasting impressions of the country:

Living the Good life in the Northern Suburbs

One of the striking elements of my day-to-day life in Johannesburg was its high quality. While it certainly didn’t hurt that I was there during the South African summer, escaping London’s dismal rain and chill, the quality of life went beyond good weather.

Diverse restaurants and lively night spots abound in what is described as the most “first world” of cities on the “dark continent.” While it is true that persistently high crime rates require most restaurants to be located in fortified centers, complete with fences and parking lot guards, the most popular are focused inward on well-decorated and lushly planted courtyards.

The threat of crime kept me on my toes while I was living there, but didn’t result in any real significant impact on my ability to enjoy life as I normally would. In fact, it was the car culture of living in the suburbs which caused the greatest concern. The need to drive everywhere, and the fact that people lived in apartments scattered all over the northern suburbs, led to many more risky situations of driving home after a few drinks than I was really comfortable with. This problem, however, is really no different than you experience in the suburbs of the US.

Beauty and Diversity of the Country

In my brief weekend adventures outside of Johannesburg, and in the planning I did for potential future trips, I came to appreciate the immense diversity and beauty of South Africa. Prior to arriving there, I had assumed that in order to go on safari I would need to take a trip to the middle of the continent - someplace like Kenya or Tanzania. The opposite was true.

South Africa in fact is a land of myriad environments. Its offerings range from tacky and exuberant gambling centers (Sun City) to sunny beaches and natural beauty (Cape Town) to metropolitan and suburban (Johannesburg). It contains desserts, lush mountains, grassy plains, and forests.

South Africa’s national parks, from the famous and massive Kruger to smaller private game reserves and the vast rural landscape of the middle of the country, host incredible populations of wildlife. When visiting Madikwe Game Reserve near the border with Botswana we encountered nearly every variety of native African wildlife we could have hoped for. The only creatures missing in our weekend safari were a Buffalo and a Leopard. From conversations with others who had traveled more of the country, our experience was not entirely unusual.

Unfortunately, in addition to wildlife and landscapes, South Africa’s diversity also includes a range of impressive wealth and devastating poverty.

Apartheid Museum and Race

One sleepy afternoon I took a trip south of the city to visit the country’s lasting testament to its dark past: the Apartheid Museum. The two hours I had to spend there were not nearly sufficient.

The museum starts by educating the visitor on the history of South Africa, and the long road to Apartheid. It explains the country’s initial inhabitation by the British, the conflicts of the Boers, and the discovery of gold in Johannesburg. It documents the injustices that were enforced through the system of apartheid, which echo elements of the Nazi persecution of the Jews and US oppression of African Americans and the Japanese in World War II. It goes on to explain the roots of organized opposition, the rise of Nelson Mandela, and the importance of the ANC political party.

The sad reality is that understanding many elements of Apartheid is possible without ever visiting the museum: its traces are etched in the racial divides of the city. Soweto (South West Township) was one of many ghettos into which Africans were forced to live after they were ejected from their homes in the center of the city. Even many years since the collapse of the apartheid system, this and many other townships remain densely populated with blacks who continue to live an impoverished and difficult life there. The Northern suburbs also remain much as they were during apartheid: enclaves of wealthy Caucasian life.

Concerns About the Future

Perhaps the most enduring memories from my experience in Johannesburg were related to the challenging questions raised about the country’s future. In the first two weeks that I was in Joburg, the city (and whole country) experienced a series of devastating blackouts, eventually causing the weeklong closure of the world’s largest gold mines, and causing the price of gold to skyrocket. As a professional, I became suddenly and painfully aware of my reliance on both a computer and communications technology to accomplish even the most slightly productive tasks. Several-hour-long blackouts wrought havock on our work schedule, despite the fact that we were unusually well protected because most of our work is done on laptops which bought us a couple hours of productivity before they too died.

Colleagues, clients, and newspapers were harshly critical of the government in failing to adequately maintain the electrical system. They blaimed the government of taking for granted the high quality of infrastructure that had been put in place under the Apartheid governments, and not investing in upgrades or its continued upkeep. These critiques mushroomed into speculation about what other elements of basic infrastructure might be next to collapse: water? sanitation? transportation?

While I was pleasantly surprised by the country I had encountered, few people who had been there longer had similar sentiments. They described growing crime and increased “white flight” to other English-speaking countries, in particular Australia. I only hope the comments were alarmist. South Africa and its people have an immense amount of cultural and natural wealth to share with the world.