South African bloggers were among the first to report on South Africa's first electric car. On the blog Urbasprout, Glen was among the first people to post pictures of the car and detail on the company that made the car, the designer, design specifications and expected availability dates.

Battery range has previously been the biggest limiting factor with electric cars, but that looks set to change. The Joule will sport two lithium ion battery packs that will ensure the car has a range of 400km. The recharge time will be approximately 7 hours so it can be charged over night. Regenerative braking, where the battery is charged by the energy generated in braking, will add to the car's range.

As for where the car will be manufactured, Glen notes that:

Predictions are that 50 percent of the Joule's materials will be local and that it should be available towards the end of 2010 at a cost of R200 000. It is likely to be manufactured in Gauteng, but will also be available in Durban and Cape Town.

Laura of the Treevolution blog points to the IOL story, highlighting the description of the car by Edwin Naidu
a compact six-seater that looks like an uncluttered mix of a Renault Scenic and a Citroen Picasso

She notes that the general public will have to wait until the Paris Motor show in October to see the electric car.

Carl of Greencars.za.net adds more detail on the Joule, answering important questions regarding the availability of electricity to power electric cars in South Africa.

Independent analysis of Eskom, the country’s sole electricity provider, has confirmed that the South African grid has enough capacity to supply electrical energy to millions of cars without affecting its customer base or requiring any additional infrastructure. Eskom has vast amounts of excess energy between 11 PM and 6 AM (GMT +2); this will be the recommended recharging time. Electric cars only require about 20 percent of the energy that conventional cars require; this means that the total emissions are much less, even if Eskom’s coal dominated electricity is used. With the global trend of electricity generation becoming more renewable and cleaner, total emissions caused by electric cars will continue to shrink.

He also includes more information regarding the cars' battery, brakes, body, chassis, integrated vehicle computer, propulsion system, performance styling and suspension.

Last but not least, Rory of Carbon smart reminds readers that the factors that ‘killed the electric car decades ago' are still in play. He wonders how far this local initiative can get. He considers the recent article by wired magazine about Shai Agassi's model of selling electric cars. Rory points out that this model deals with the power storage problem that prevents wider adoption of electric cars.

Power storage is the biggest technical issue preventing rapid adoption of electric vehicles - primarily the weight of batteries, and the recharge time - and that's what this proposal addresses. The gist of it is that companies could be set up to sell electricity along with the cars. Buy yourself a contract that allows you to recharge your vehicle from a grid of power points, or simply by swapping batteries. The batteries are owned by the power supplier, making a battery swap an easy way to eliminate recharge time if you need to extend your travel range over one day, thereby eliminating the need for a costly backup internal combustion engine. And if you are not travelling far, you can keep fewer batteries on board to reduce weight. The car itself could even be free with a five-year contract for people who travel a lot, while others might buy the car and get electricity on a pay-as-you-go arrangement. Sound familiar? Yep, it's the cellphone contract model.

Caroline McCarthy / The Social:
Analyst: Half of ‘social media campaigns’ will flop  —  Adam Sarner, an analyst with market research firm Gartner, has projected that over 75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies with Web sites will have undertaken some kind of online social-networking initiative for marketing or customer relations purposes.

FUEL (Frequently Used Entries for Localization) aims to solve the problem of inconsistency and lack of standardization in computer software translation in a new and unique way. Initiated by Red Hat, the project is trying to give a better experience to end users of a localized desktop by resolving the issues of standardization and inconsistency.

Mixing together a m?lange of services, software and marketing, IBM's announcement this week of its Cloud Services Initiative is about putting an organizing construct around all of its cloud offerings, according to one IBM executive.

[ Confused about what cloud computing really means? Find out in InfoWorld's definitive guide to cloud computing. ]

Along with Bluehouse, IBM also announced SameTime Unyte, a Web conferencing offering. Unyte is also part of Bluehouse.

In addition to Bluehouse, the four-part initiative adds to IBM's SaaS platform offerings, whereby IBM hosts the delivery infrastructure for software vendors. What's new is not technological but marketing: IBM has broadened the definition of a partner, expanding it to mean any software vendor that uses two out of three products IBM delivers: middleware, hardware, and managed hosting. Partners are also the beneficiary of joint marketing efforts.

Services to integrate cloud components into an organization's business environment are also available for IBM customers.

The fourth component will provide a datacenter environment based on IBM's Cloud Computing Centers around the world. This will give customers remote access to computing power in an on-demand environment.

Looking past proprietary clouds Although the Bluehouse effort appears to be something IBM has been doing for a considerable number of years through its data center services, Mitchell hinted at doing something more, resolving an issue that has recently been swirling around the use of cloud solutions. "We are working with our partners using SOA to develop open clouds as opposed to proprietary clouds as in the past."

This comes on the heels of recent statements by Richard Stallman, for example, founder of GNU? and a well-respected industry watcher who was quoted in the British newspaper The Guardian as saying cloud computing is nothing more than a "marketing hype campaign" and a "trap which will lock users into proprietary systems."

The difference between what IBM is offering and others, says Mitchell, is that an open cloud environment will give users more interoperability and more connections to partners.

This is part of an ongoing series about government 2.0 written by Dr. Mark Drapeau. To view previous posts in the series click here.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.” These words are no less true today, over 150 years later. But now there are many new technologies and tools available that can be used to measure and influence public opinion. One thing I have been thinking about a lot lately is how the government can use these tools to further its existing goals, and enable novel ones as well.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, known by most people as NASA, is a government agency heavily covered by mainstream news media – when things go wrong. But there is an interesting new experimental initiative at NASA called CoLab, the goals of which are to act as “advisor and consultant to groups within NASA, building direct and open collaborations between the public and NASA scientists and engineers...[and] use technology to facilitate public contributions to NASA activities.”

At the recent INTERACT08 event on media and technology held in Washington DC, John Bell of Ogilvy PR pointed out that great “emerging” brands like eBay, YouTube, and Netflix are authentic, adaptive, relevant, transformative, fresh, immersive, and social. So when Peter Gray, the NASA CoLab Program Manager, met with me on a recent trip to Washington, DC and said that their big buzzwords were “participate, collaborate, and innovate,” that sounded a lot like emerging NASA brand – and Government 2.0 – to me.

NASA CoLab is trying some innovative things to reach out to the public. There is currently a co-working space in Silicon Valley open seven days a week. Eventually they hope to host co-working spaces in major U.S. cities that are “the NASA equivalent of an Apple Store” as Mr. Gray put it. That would be very hip indeed.

Additionally, the “Luna Philosophie” series, held at San Francisco’s Yahoo! Brickhouse incubator (in coordination with the full moon, no less), is a series of open conversations on different topics broadcast using USTREAM.TV. CoLab has also participated in national conferences, and held Camp CoLab brainstorming sessions with NASA staff about how to change and adapt CoLab across the ten or so different NASA facilities around the country.

Leaving the real world for a minute, there is an elaborate NASA presence on “CoLab Island” in Second Life, providing information about all sorts of activities with an additional emphasis on having “launch parties” and the like (a great description can be found here). However, despite this high-quality (and perhaps necessary) presence, because Second Life has very few habitual users, I wonder about the effect it has had.

If the goal is to promote NASA activities, are there not simpler ways to reach more people? And if the goal is to make personal connections with techies and influencers, one might question the ultimate value of Second Life outreach in comparison with having scientists and astronauts at (for example) the recent DEMOfall 08, Web 2.0 Expo, and BlogWorldExpo events simply chatting with people and handing out CoLab swag. As I heard over and over at INTERACT08, sometimes “old school” can be a great tactic even as part of a high-tech strategy.

More disappointing is the lack of presence of NASA CoLab on popular social networking services, where it is arguably easier to listen to and engage with people. On Twitter and Pownce, they have under 300 followers. A quantitative breakdown for the last few months shows they are following zero people, posting once every 3-4 days, and not engaging in @ replies with other users. Ironically, a key CoLab staffer, Ariel Waldman, is well-known for her work at Pownce. The CoLab presence on Facebook (108 total group members) isn’t much better, with the main page still advertising an ‘upcoming’ event in June 2007. (It should be noted, however, that other NASA brands do very well on Twitter).

This is clearly a work in progress and isn’t yet an outstanding model of government “CoLab-oration” with its citizens. Nevertheless, with an agile, lightly-funded staff, CoLab must be given a lot of credit for experimenting with new ideas, reaching out to the public, and doing more than most any other government agency in taking advantage of new media.

As Richard Edelman, President and CEO of the highly-regarded eponymous public relations firm, recently pointed out on his blog, government public relations is a tricky business. Along the lines of his statement that, “Effective PR is about facts, but also ease of access and compelling examples,” the government could use CoLab as an exemplar, a program giving citizens access to information, and providing people with compelling examples of the good things government does every day.

Dr. Mark Drapeau is an Associate Research Fellow at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy of the National Defense University in Washington, DC. These views are his own and not the official policy or position of any part of the U.S. Government.

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