New Tools for Keeping the Lights On

Now, a decade after the largest blackout in American history, engineers are installing and linking 1,000 of those instruments, called phasor measurement units, to try to prevent another catastrophic power failure. When the work is done, the engineers say, they will have a diagnostic tool that makes the old system seem like taking a patient’s pulse compared with running a continuous electrocardiogram.

Gilbert C. Bindewald III, a program manager at the Energy Department, which has spent about $200 million to encourage their installation, said the instruments were “shedding light on the science that’s occurring behind the scenes, within the grid.”

Phasor measurement units work by measuring the rhythm of current at different points on the power grid. Readings at every point within each of the three North American grids — one covering the eastern two-thirds of North America, one covering the West, and one covering Texas — are supposed to be basically the same. If the measurements differ, it can be a sign of imminent collapse. When the current is flowing properly, phasor measurement units record normal readings — about as exciting as “watching paint dry,” in the words of Peter K. Lemme, a senior electrical engineer at the New York Independent System Operator, which runs New York’s grid. As Mr. Lemme spoke, he looked at a real-time display of phasor measurement units across the state.

But then he replayed New York records from an afternoon three weeks ago when a capacitor, a device that helps maintain voltage, suddenly failed at a substation near Utica. In response, measurements taken at an electrical substation near Rochester registered an enormous shock on a graph. In Leeds, south of Albany, the disruption was considerably milder. The disturbance gradually petered out, like a playground swing that slowly comes to rest.

If that glitch had been large enough to threaten a statewide power failure, the new devices could have alerted the engineers to the impending crisis and given them time to react, for example, by shutting down a part of the system to avoid cascading power failures. Tracy A. Flippo, the vice president for transmission operations at the Tennessee Valley Authority, said the devices could provide “precursor information” before a collapse.

The hope is that they could help prevent or at least limit a large-scale blackout like the one that happened a decade ago.

In 2003, as northern Ohio ran short of generation and transmission because of a combination of neglect, mismanagement and human error, circuit breakers took major transmission lines out of service. The power failure then cascaded across 600 miles, eight states and Canada. New York, Cleveland and Detroit went dark, as did Toronto and sections of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts. In New York office buildings were evacuated, thousands of commuters were stranded, and hospitals were flooded with patients suffering in the stifling heat.

“Somebody in Ohio could have recognized that we either need to raise generation or shed load,” said Richard Dewey, senior vice president of the New York Independent System Operator. Or, he said, New York could have seen trouble coming and insulated itself. The two units scrutinized after the blackout, one in Detroit and one in Cleveland, showed the strain.

Other changes to the grid should help, too. The federal government, for example, has given an industry group the authority to set standards. That group, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, has levied substantial fines against companies that failed in tasks like trimming trees or testing equipment. Untrimmed trees and improper procedures for testing equipment have caused widespread power failures in recent years.

Joel deJesus, a former director of compliance enforcement at the corporation, said that in his view the large fines had been effective. “Wrists have been slapped pretty hard,” he said.

The network of phasor measurement units offers a technological advantage.

So far hundreds of phasor measurement units have been installed across the country, including 48 in New York.

Before then, the operators of the New York grid had only scattered data points within the state. For years they have been mostly blind to the grid outside New York, receiving only a few readings from devices at the borders with New England, Quebec, Ontario, and a region that includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland.

But by the end of 2014, officials at the Energy Department said, they anticipate that all 1,000 phasor measurement units will be in operation and linked to one another. The next step, they said, was to figure out how to better present the flood of data to human operators in a useful way.

“The question is, How do we cue them to an event that a computer might be able to see coming?” said Mr. Bindewald of the Energy Department. Initially data will be integrated into computer displays, and later it may be used to set off automatic protective actions that would prevent or limit blackouts.

Experts argue that such a system could easily pay for itself. The 2003 blackout cost billions of dollars in lost economic output.

Tool Kit: Keeping Wi-Fi Always Within Range

An important business report could go unfinished. Access to a customer list could be cut off. And any number of items you’re accustomed to using on a laptop computer could be rendered unreachable.

But there is a growing list of options, including turning your cellphone into a Wi-Fi hot spot or buying small independent devices, to ensure a constant link to the Web.

Start with the basics. Before buying a hot spot device or paying for a plan that adds this sort of capability to a cellphone, consider the coverage area for data. Review a map that shows how well the services provided by, say, the Clearwire network, which is owned by Sprint, work in certain areas.

This map is usually on the carrier’s Web site or at its store. Network speed is important, too: a 4G network is faster than 3G, for example, and while 4G is about the fastest available, some 4G networks are faster than others. This is important, as the Wi-Fi options can be dizzying.

One of the newer and more novel options is a mobile hot spot from Karma. As the name suggests, owners of a Karma device are encouraged to share their Wi-Fi hot spot with anyone within range, including strangers. There is a reward for this generosity: 100 megabytes of free data if someone else logs in and signs up.

“Any new customer that buys our hot spot is also immediately an evangelist of our service by emitting an open Wi-Fi signal,” said Robert Gaal, Karma’s chief executive.

The Karma service uses the Clearwire data network. It offers coverage in 80 cities and provides a 4G connection. The Karma device ($79) is compact, and the first gigabyte of data is free. After that, each gigabyte costs $14, on a pay-as-you-go plan, with no time limit for using the data. That gigabyte can accommodate the downloading of about 170 music files of typical size.

FreedomPop also takes an unusual approach. After buying the FreedomPop Photon mobile hot spot ($99), users get up to 500 megabytes of data a month. While that’s not enough for downloading lots of videos, it’s plenty for basic e-mail and simple Web browsing. After that, monthly plans cost $18 for two gigabytes of data and $29 for four gigabytes. There is no contract and users can switch among plans as needed. The device gets six to eight hours on a battery charge.

As with Karma, the FreedomPop device provides a 4G connection from the Clearwire network. For $4 a month extra, the network’s full speed is unlocked. Otherwise, downloads are capped at about half speed.

The company recently began offering a device called the FreedomPop Overdrive Pro ($40), which provides a larger area of coverage by using both 4G and 3G networks. The 3G network coverage is provided by Sprint, and a plan with two gigabytes of data is $20 a month.

Chances are, smartphone owners already have a hot spot in their pockets. Most newer models of the iPhone, Android phones, BlackBerrys and Windows phones have built-in hot spots. Enabling the feature, known as tethering, is straightforward; on an iPhone 5, for example, select Settings, then General, then Cellular. To wall off interlopers, you can secure the connection with encryption and a password. But a word of warning: using the hot spot feature puts additional strain on the battery, so don’t stray too far from the charger.

The major carriers offer the hot spot feature in their smartphone plans. T-Mobile includes it at no extra cost in its Simple Choice offering. Plans start at $50 a month and include 500 megabytes of high-speed data use on the phone or in tethering. That also includes the phone’s talk and texting services. The data can be increased for an extra $10 a month for each additional two gigabytes, to a maximum of 12.

Verizon includes the hot spot feature in its Share Everything plan at no extra cost. A plan with one gigabyte of data costs $50 a month, plus $40 for the phone’s other services, like talking and texting. It provides access to Verizon’s 4G LTE network for both the phone and tethering. Users can move up to two gigabytes for an extra $10, or four gigabytes for $20.

AT&T’s Mobile Share plans include the hot spot feature, starting at $40 for a gigabyte of data plus $45 for the phone’s talk and text services. A $70 option, with four gigabytes of data, and several others are also available.

Sprint charges an add-on fee to use the phone for tethering; $20 a month for two gigabytes of data, or $50 for six gigabytes. That’s in addition to the data plan and other services for the phone. The same plans are available for tablets, allowing users to turn an iPad or Android tablet into a hot spot. Other carriers also offer the hot spot feature for tablets.

Stand-alone devices are another option from the major carriers. Some have a contract while others are month-to-month or pay-as-you-go. Verizon offers the Jetpack 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot MiFi 5510L at no cost with a two-year contract (four gigabytes for $50; 10 gigabytes for $80).

Unlike the Karma and FreedomPop Photon devices, it has a screen that shows information like remaining battery life, connection speeds and number of devices attached. AT&T and Sprint also offer MiFi devices with different features and pricing.

T-Mobile offers the Sonic 2.0 Mobile HotSpot LTE, the company’s first mobile hot spot for its 4G LTE network. It has a screen, supports up to eight Wi-Fi-capable devices and costs $150 (or a $30 down payment with $5 monthly payments for 24 months). Data plans start at 500 megabytes for $20, or two gigabytes for $30, and other increments up to 12 gigabytes for $80.

The other option is to hunt down public access points. If no free option is within range, Boingo, with more than 600,000 hot spots worldwide, may have one nearby.

The company offers a variety of plans at boingo.com/wifi-plans. Customers of Comcast, Cablevision and other providers of home Internet access can use more than 100,000 public hot spots in many major cities. Subscribers of most Comcast Xfinity plans can use the hot spots at no additional cost (more information is at cablewifi.com).

AT&T offers free access at Starbucks and other locations. And apps like JiWire’s Wi-Fi Finder, which can find both free and fee-based hot spots, can also display the locations of hot spots while a phone or tablet is offline.

So don’t fret. With the correct tools and planning, you’ll never have to be in a wireless desert.

Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Keeping Adobe Flash Player Secure

I frequently get notices that Flash Player needs an update — why does it need so many new versions? Can I skip some updates?

Adobe updates its Flash, Reader and Acrobat software for several reasons, including bug fixes, performance improvements and security issues. While the Flash Player is a common plug-in that Web browsers use to display video and animation, the program has become a popular target for hackers.

To fix vulnerabilities in the software when they are discovered, Adobe releases security updates for its programs as needed to keep computers protected. For the curious, Adobe’s site has a page that explains what each new security update addresses. Hackers have also disguised malicious software as updates to Adobe programs, so you may want to check Adobe’s site anyway to make sure the software-update notice you have received is legitimate.

Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Keeping Files in Sync on Microsoft SkyDrive

I use Microsoft SkyDrive software on a Mac and I notice the folder doesn’t always update itself immediately when I copy files to it. Sometimes I’ve even gotten to work and realized that the files I need didn’t sync up online and are still on my home computer. Is there a way to manually force SkyDrive to update and sync so I can make sure my files are there?

Microsoft’s SkyDrive is a storage service for storing files online and keeping them up to date on multiple computers and devices. In addition to the SkyDrive.com Web site, Microsoft has free desktop software for Mac OS X and Windows that can be used for managing files directly on the computer instead of having to upload them through a Web browser to store them on the SkyDrive servers.

The desktop apps are supposed to monitor the activity in your SkyDrive folder as you copy and update the files inside — and then sync them with the online server and any other computers or mobile devices you have linked to your SkyDrive account. While the app usually syncs up the contents of your SkyDrive folder within a minute or two of your most recent change, Internet disruptions or other glitches may prevent the software from grabbing the latest files. (You should also check to make sure your Mac has the latest version of the SkyDrive app.)

If you have the SkyDrive toolbar icon installed on the Mac, click it to see a menu showing when the app last updated the folder. If it does not look like the folder has been updated since you last made changes to files in the SkyDrive folder, select the Quit SkyDrive option from the toolbar menu and then restart the SkyDrive app from the icon in your Applications folder or in the Mac’s Dock. Restarting the SkyDrive app should force the software to scan the folder for changes as soon as it starts up again.

Although it is a slower option, uploading your critical files directly to the SkyDrive.com site is another way to make sure you have copies online that you can get to from other computers and devices. Microsoft’s site has other troubleshooting tips for syncing files on SkyDrive.

Gadgetwise Blog: App Smart Extra: Keeping Track of Everything You Own

You will enjoy this week’s App Smart column if you’re detail-obsessed and like to keep track of your possessions, because it is all about home-inventory apps.

Inventory Droid is one more popular full-featured home inventory app for devices using the Android operating system. Like many of its type, it lets you log all the salient details about your items, like brand and price, and you can also associate a photo with the entry. It can read bar codes, which can help you quickly locate an item’s entry in the database.

The app has several extras, like an alert to remind you that you’ve lent an object to someone. It’s even slightly more attractively designed than the average Android app. The main drawback may be the $4.99 price.

If the idea of logging every single item in your home seems like overkill, but you would still like to catalog your extensive and expensive DVD archive, then Movie Collection and Inventory, costing $3.99 on Android, is the app for you. It’s designed to be straightforward to use, and though it may appear overly simple at first glance it does pack in a lot of features, including the ability to add photos of your DVD boxes, to rate each movie and to log the number of times you’ve watched each one.

The app can also read bar codes, so you can quickly scan a DVD’s bar code and find its entry in the database you’ve created. However, the app is very tightly limited to just creating inventories of your movies.

For Windows Phones, one popular app in this category is HomeCloud. It’s more photo-centric than rival apps, but still lets you log all the various details of your possessions, like serial number and price. The app allows you to back up your archive to Microsoft’s SkyDrive (which may be handy if your smartphone itself is damaged or lost!) and it costs just $1.49. It may not be quite as sophisticated as rival apps on Android or iOS, but it is attractively designed.

These apps may be useful for keeping track of items in your home or items you loan to a friend. And if there’s a theft or some other disaster they’ll be handy for an insurance claim. If you’re mainly concerned about logging your library of valuable books or a wardrobe of expensive clothes, a quick search of the app stores show many different options. Give them a whirl and see if they fit your needs.

Quick call

Wahwah is a new free streaming music app in the iTunes App Store that, like other apps of the same type, offers prearranged song selections to match your activities like working in the office or exercising in the gym. But it also includes a very novel social networking trick, which lets you not only see what music your friends are listening to, but lets you listen to the same songs at the same time.

App Smart: Tech Reminders for Keeping Those New Year’s Resolutions

This year it’s different. I’m using some apps to help me stick to my resolutions. We’ll see whether the best 21st-century motivational companion is the smartphone or tablet. If you want to try the experiment, too, here’s where to start.

The Astrid Tasks/To-do List app (free on iOS and Android) is not specifically meant for keeping resolutions, but as its name suggests it’s both a to-do list app and a reminders app. To use it for resolutions, just enter them as tasks and set repeating reminders. With all your data inside, Astrid becomes your portable digital conscience, gently nagging you to hit the gym, practice the piano, leave work on time and so on. (Ah, if only my smartphone knew when I was picking up a piece of chocolate.)

The app’s interface is simplicity itself. It’s a list of the tasks you’ve entered, with icons that tell you if each one has been completed or if it’s a recurring task. Entering a task (or a resolution, in this case) is easy: click “add,” type in the resolution and select a reminder alarm if you need one. In my case, the app is going to ping me at 9 a.m. every day to remind me to take a morning jog. If you need moral support, you can tell the app to share your goals with friends via e-mail or Facebook.

The iOS and Android apps differ a bit. The iOS version is cuter, thanks to its icons and cleaner design; the Android version is trickier to operate (I found it hard to see the little “save” icon when setting the time for a reminder, for example). But both versions work well, and both integrate with a cloud-based database so you can sync all your goal data among your devices.

Lift, free on iOS, is a similar motivational app, but with a community angle. The core of this app is a social network: you join groups that help you achieve a goal. For example, if your New Year’s resolution is to quit smoking, several groups can help you do so. You check in with these groups and comment on your actions and the group’s activity, and you can even earn a thumbs-up from group members for your progress.

The app lists existing groups in categories like “popular,” “fitness habits” and “learning habits,” or you can create your own group and invite friends to join you. For those who need a bit of social encouragement to stick to their resolutions, this app may be the best option.

While Lift does have reminders, they’re not the app’s main function, which means it will require a degree of willpower to remember your resolution, turn the app on and check in. The forgetful may not find it the best choice for keeping resolutions.

A new fitness or health regimen is one of the most popular New Year’s resolutions, and Fitocracy (free on iOS) is an app that can help you stick to it. It has a social group setup similar to Lift’s, but it’s exercise-centric, with a much jollier design.

For example, during setup the button to advance to the next settings page is labeled “go forth!” rather than a boring “next.” This playful attitude is really what the app is all about. It awards you points when you finish activities and has gamelike features like reward badges and even “level ups.” This combination of lightheartedness and a sense of community spirit may be exactly what you need to help you keep exercising.

For a simpler, calendar-based app to help you keep a resolution, try Streaks — Motivational Calendar ($2 on iTunes). After you’ve added a goal, you tap on the app’s calendar to cross off a day when you achieve the goal. It’s a little like playing a game; the app keeps track of the longest streak of days you’ve managed, and your current number.

Though it is much less sophisticated than the others mentioned here, it’s ideal for those pressed for time, because interacting with it is so fast. Momentum Builder is a free Android app similar to Streaks, though its design is not as polished.

I look at a bunch of other resolution-binding apps on the Gadgetwise blog.

Happy New Year from me to you! May your apps help your resolutions come true.

Quick Calls

Google’s Zeitgeist app, free on Android, is a great way to look back at 2012. It’s an interface to Google’s report on how the world searched during the year, and it’s crammed with fascinating data. ... Nokia’s free Xpress, which compresses Web data so your phone doesn’t consume so much of your 3G or 4G data allowance, has been updated to be compatible with all Windows 8 phones. It had been limited to Nokia handsets only.

Gadgetwise Blog: App Smart Extra: Keeping Fitness Resolutions

This week App Smart was full of apps that can help you, one way or another, to stick to any New Year’s resolutions you’ve made.

Making a resolution to keep healthy is pretty common, and like me you may have resolved to improve your fitness by going for a regular jog. The iFit Running app ($2 on iOS) is great for this because it can track your runs using GPS, help you keep note of your timings and even measure your daily calorie intake. To keep you motivated when you’re running, it has voice prompts, or you can turn on a metronome to help keep your pace steady or play music.

Stopping smoking is another common health resolution, and the free and highly popular Android app Quit Now! (free on Google Play) could be ideal for helping you kick the habit. This app’s main trick for motivating you is a list of statistics about how long it’s been since you smoked your last cigarette, and roughly how much time and money you’ve saved — the dollars will rack up very quickly! There’s also a social networking system so you can chat with other people battling the habit.

For a really simple iOS app to help you commit to keeping your resolutions, try Commit ($3 on iTunes). It’s very cleanly designed. You simply enter your goal, and when you’ve achieved it each day you can tap on the giant tick mark button. Several goals can be entered, each accessed by a simple swipe gesture, and the app displays a progress bar to show you how many days in a row you’ve clicked on the tick for each goal. There’s not much else to this app, but the simplicity may keep you using it. Commit really only takes a second to fire up and click on the button.

Learning a language is another popular New Year’s resolution, and newly updated app TripLingo (free on iOS) could help you with the task — and also when you’re vacationing in another country. It’s not designed to be an exhaustive dictionary, but it does have an extensive offline dictionary system and it has several tricks for teaching you useful phrases, including slang words.

Good luck keeping your resolutions, folks!

Corner Office | Sandra L. Kurtzig: Sandra Kurtzig of Kenandy, on Keeping Companies Focused

Q. Tell me about your approach to leadership.

A. I think that one of the most important things in working with anybody, whether you’re the boss or the person being managed, is that you have to have mutual respect. I’ve always been very open and down to earth. I’ve never taken myself very seriously. I show self-confidence, and I think that if you don’t show self-confidence, no one is going to buy from you and no one’s going to want to work with you.

I’m transparent, and I ask people on a regular basis what they like about their job and what they don’t like about their job. What can we be doing better? In your previous job, how did you do it? What worked better and what worked worse than what we are doing now? I’m constantly asking people for their opinions.

A key thing is surrounding myself with people that, No. 1, I respect, and No. 2, I like. Then I ask their opinions and really listen to them. Two-way conversations are an important ingredient for building a company. Nowadays, I hear that so many younger people who are starting companies are so used to working on the Internet that they tend to send only e-mails and communicate with their screens more than they communicate with people around them. You need to interact with people and not just your computers.

Q. How has your leadership style evolved over time?

A. I’m more self-confident now, and I make decisions faster. I know what information I need because I’ve been there, done that before. I’m also more willing to change the decisions and modify them so that we get to the end faster.

I don’t run after “shiny objects.” That’s a mistake that a lot of people make in running a company, especially in starting one. They tend to get a lot of opportunities from people who want to partner with them. And these are just shiny objects, because there are very few partners that end up being right for your company. So I’m much more selective. If I hear something, I’m very quick to think, ‘Hey, that’s a shiny object; let’s get back to work.’ I think that’s what’s so distracting to a lot of companies — they see a big customer or some other distraction, and they spend too much time on it and they lose their way.

Q. What else?

A. I’m willing to take risks. If you don’t have some fear of failure, then you’re not taking enough risks. I probably was much more conservative the first time around.

But I am conservative in hiring. I don’t over-hire. The reason is that you can get a lot more work done with fewer people. If you have a lot of people, you have to give them something to do, and you have to give them something to manage, and then you have to manage them. You can get a lot less done. So you want to have a core set of people while you’re really trying to discover your product, your direction, your market. And the more people you have, the more difficult it is to take risks because it affects a lot more people.

I’m also at a point in my life where I like to choose customers I want to work with, because if I don’t like working with them, we’re not going to be very good at it. And we’ve actually fired two customers. That’s something that I think is important and might be very strange and surprising to people. We had some customers when we first started and we were trying to make our way and figure out the market, and not all of them were ultimately right for us.

Q. How do you hire? What questions do you ask?

A. I would certainly ask people: “Why are you here? What do you know about our company that made you want to interview for this job?” If they haven’t done their homework and don’t even know why they’re there, then that’s a real red flag for me.

The second thing I’ll say is: “Why do you want to leave the company you’re at right now? Looks like you’re doing a pretty good job, and you’re doing well. What is it that you don’t like there?”

It’s always very eye-opening to know whether they don’t like it because of politics, because I always think that people can create their own politics to some extent. So that sort of makes me nervous. They’d better have a pretty good answer to those two things. Otherwise, we’re near the end of the interview at that point.

Q. Tell me more about your point that people can create their own politics.

A. If they say they don’t like the politics at their current job, I’ll ask them, “How’s that affecting your ability to do your job?” Then I would evaluate whether I think that they should be able to handle that and get around it, or whether it really is a serious political situation.

I interviewed somebody and he was telling me all about the politics within the company. The longer we talked, the more I thought he was the one creating the politics.

Q. What qualities are you looking for?

A. You hire people in your own style. If you hire people in your own style, they will in turn hire people in their style. So I want somebody who I feel is open and smart. I’m not saying I’m that smart, but maybe I am a little bit smart.

And I want people who are self-deprecating, who don’t take themselves too seriously.

And are they willing to work hard? If they have just too many outside interests that are going to take away from their ability to focus on the job, then I’m probably a little less likely to hire them.

Q. In those cases when someone doesn’t work out, what’s usually the problem?

A. They’re just in over their head. They painted a picture in the interview that they know certain things, but they really aren’t up for the task. And you can never demote somebody. Sometimes the people that you hire are good, but they’re just not good at the job they’re in, and a demotion doesn’t work. So you have to move on.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Keeping an Android Device Secure

Do I need to get an antivirus program for my Android tablet? How much of a threat is out there?

The amount of malicious software aimed at mobile operating systems like Android is growing. Although Google scans its app store regularly for malicious apps, malware has been entered it before.

Security-software businesses, which have a considerable interest in the topic, issue regular studies that include sections on threats to mobile devices. Companies like McAfee, Symantec and Lookout have reports online that will give you an idea what is out there.

Installing a security app on your tablet may help protect against certain threats. Some programs designed for tablets and smartphones include recovery and remote-wipe features that you can activate to protect your personal information if your device gets lost or stolen. If you are shopping, there are plenty of Android security apps around. Norton, McAfee, Trend Micro, Avast, Kaspersky, AVG, Webroot and others now offer security software for mobile devices. Many apps are available in the Google Play store, along with user reviews.

EA ‘Keeping a Very Close Eye’ on Wii U

During its first quarter earnings call today, EA commented on its plans to support Nintendo’s upcoming Wii U. According to EA chief operating officer Peter Moore, the publisher is interested in the console and has plans to make announcements in the future.

“We’re keeping a very close eye on the platform,” Moore said before acknowledging the “lackluster response” Nintendo received coming out of E3. He added that EA has learned to “never underestimate Nintendo, as proven by the last generation.”

Moore noted that EA has “great franchises poised to be on that platform,” but that no announcements are ready to be made at this time. “We’ll probably announce more in the future,” he said.

During E3, EA announced that Mass Effect 3 is headed to Wii U. Since then, BioWare confirmed that the Wii U version will integrate Mass Effect 3’s extended cut endings.

The publisher is expected to make additional announcements leading up to Nintendo’s launch of Wii U later this year.