Open up your mind and say, ahh...

By Michael Kanellos, Greentech Media

In the future, your plug-in hybrid may be able to read your mind — and save you gas in the process.

Ford, which has been at the forefront among auto makers when it comes to integrating software applications into cars, is experimenting with an application that aims to leverage data amassed about your driving habits to increase the mileage of plug-in hybrids and standard hybrids.

Extending car mileage has become job number one at automakers now that the U.S. plans to raise the fleet vehicle average standard to 54.5 mpg by 2025. Ford and Toyota announced Monday that they will collaborate on hybrid technology for pickups and SUVs, and also work together to develop common standards for in-car Internet connectivity.

While the two companies focused Monday’s announcement largely on gas-electric trucks — Ford is No. 1 in trucks and Toyota is No. 1 in hybrids — software could become a more pervasive part of the relationship because it will become a crucial part of most new cars.

Ford’s latest project, codenamed Green Zone, taps Google’s remarkable Prediction API to create software that can determine where you’re going by examining where you’ve been. Say it’s 8 a.m. Tuesday. Your car knows it is the second in a five-day sequence in which you drive 23.5 miles to the same destination. The software crunches data about your driving habits, the topography of the drive, details about traffic and time-to-destination and information about how the car performs.

Then it attempts to maximize the power drawn from the battery pack and minimize use of the gasoline engine. When you get within a certain number of miles of your likely destination, you enter, from your car’s perspective, a “green zone.” Beyond that, it might go fully electric.

Further, if you typically charge up after the morning drive and don’t leave again until 5:00 p.m., the car can try other methods to squeeze out a few extra miles on electricity.

“We have this massive amount of data. The question is what to do with it,” said Ryan McGee, technical expert on vehicle controls architecture and algorithm design at the company.

The car continually refreshes its data by interaction with cloud-computing services.

The probabilistic principles underlying the experiment are similar to predictive algorithms exploited by search engines. In addition to using Google’s predictive APIs, Ford also works with Microsoft on in-car telematics and, like General Motors and others, has developed applications that let EV owners interact with their cars.

Quite a bit of work remains. Right now, Green Zone is in the proof-of-concept stage. The software designers also have to figure out ways to readjust predictions in the face of surprises.

Image: Ford

With the launch of 501 Mission Place comes the same conversation about whether it’s right to charge a nonprofit for education. My thoughts on this have always been the same: nonprofits are businesses with a cause in mind. They consume services and products just like other businesses. They deserve some consideration in such matters, but free isn’t the only price point with a nonprofit.

Nonprofits Need Money to Run

The same people who complain that someone charges a nonprofit for a product or a service are the same people who hit me up multiple times a month for donations or support for their cause. Yep, at the very heart of every nonprofit is a need to sustain itself through donations and grants. I donate plenty of my own money every month to various causes (mostly homeless, children, autism, and cancer). One goal of 501 Mission Place is to help people improve their ability to raise more funds in a sustainable way. After another conversation with a CFO for nonprofits, we’re even going to look into conversations of budget and money management.

Nonprofits Buy From For-Profits All the Time

Having talked to people who run charities and nonprofits, there are all kinds of operation and infrastructure expenses built into such organizations. The goal is to minimize overhead so that more of the donated money goes to the target cause, but there’s always some overhead. Education is a decent kind of overhead because it’s the kind that hopes to provide a yield for the expense. As I run into nonprofits at events all the time, I know that they buy conference tickets and airfare and hotels and pay for meals. 501 Mission Place is a for-profit platform that offers a reduced rate from most online education community platforms (most of the other HBW platforms will cost $47 a month, so we took almost 50% off the rate to be sensitive to a nonprofit’s budget).

Ultimately, it’s a Decision

You don’t have to pay for 501 Mission Place. You can visit several great free resources all over the web. chrisbrogan.com is free, by the way. I write about nonprofits here every once in a while, and other stuff I write for businesses is still applicable to nonprofits. I’m a huge fan of NTEN, so check that out, too. Whether or not you decide to spend your money on 501 Mission Place is your choice, and I respect your choice.

Money Isn’t Evil

Every nonprofit and charity I know needs money to exist. They shut down all the time from lack of money. Seems to me that money is the lifeblood of every nonprofit I know, because just sitting around wearing ribbons and wanting to change the world isn’t really helping many people, is it? Systems need resources to survive. I charge a small amount of money per month with the goal that you’ll figure out ways to make much more than that for your organization based on the information the group gives you.

Decide for Yourself

I invite you to join 501 Mission Place, where we help nonprofits figure out how to grow, help with your specific challenges, and give you a network of engaged people seeking to take on the world’s issues and bring them to a new level. With our leader and facilitator, Estrella Rosenberg, and a bunch of smart minds like John Haydon, Marc Pitman, Rob Hatch, and you, we’ll do what we can to improve your cause’s effectiveness.

It’ll cost you $27 to figure out whether it’s for you. That’s the cost of a hardcover book. Sometimes, books are great but don’t apply to us. Not everyone got what they needed from Trust Agents, and that’s okay. So, you decide. Swing by 501 Mission Place and see what’s taking shape. We’re already hard at work trying to give people their money’s worth.

Marketing isn’t bad. Bad marketing is bad. Email marketing isn’t bad. BAD email marketing is bad. With me?

I’m not about to tell everyone to run out and quit their job if they are sick and tired of doing it, but you control how you spend your time in your seat. If you’re frustrated with this or that, try focusing on the parts you can improve from the seat you’re in. That’s one really great way to start it going. (Oh, and if you’re just sick and tired of where you are, check out Escape Velocity – it’s where we talk about how to get to what’s next.)

Stop Phoning it In

If you’re responsible for your company’s newsletter, stop looking at it as a burden. Ask yourself this question: “What would be MOST useful to the people getting this newsletter?” And then ask yourself this question: “What else besides my company’s pitch can I put into this newsletter?” Then ask yourself this question: “Would I share this with someone in my family or with my friends?” That’s one way to figure out how to fix newsletters.

If you’re looking for new buyers, don’t just lamely ask people. Figure out how to find them. Use social tools. Use old fashioned search tools. Create interesting content that would appeal to the kinds of people you need, and figure out ways to promote that. Look OFFLINE. It’s amazing how few people do that last one, by the way, if they’re getting deep into the online world.

If you’re responsible for improving coverage for your company as a public relations professional, put more time into building your relationships with your network before you have a new story. Connect with them about their own things. Ask them about their own passions. Get to know them outside of the article. Ask them how you can help them, or much better still, just figure out a way to be helpful and do it, gratis.

Stop phoning it in.

We All Get Tired

We all get tired. We all get shy. We all lose our way. We all have a lot of reasons why our efforts slump into something less than stellar. But does the recipient of your output care? Do you think they’ll give you a pass for very long? No. Be the top of the charts. Be remarkable. Be exceptional.

And if you can’t, hang up the phone.

What’s your take?

If you sell at the top of the market (luxury travel, services to Fortune 500 companies, financial services for the wealthy…) you might be tempted to figure out ways to cut costs and become more efficient.

After all, if you save a dollar, you make a dollar, without even getting a new customer.

Resist.

The goal shouldn’t be to reduce costs. It should be to increase them.

That voice mail service that saves you $30,000 a year in receptionist costs–it also makes you much more similar to a competitor that is more efficiently serving the middle of the market.

Go through all the ways you serve your customers and make them more expensive to execute, not less. Your loyalty and your market share will both grow. People who can afford to pay for service often choose to pay for service.