How interesting that Microsoft feels semi the same way as Jobs about Flash. http://fluentnews.com/s/24235635
I'd support the Green Tea Party and the Radical Center
I like Tom Friedman's idea of the 'radical center'. Too often the loudest voices are the only ones heard. And in today's world, this end up being the radical right and the radical left. The left laughs at and looks down on the 'Drill, Baby, Drill'-ers; at the same time, the right looks at the people who want to move to all clean energy as Loonies. I agree with both! On the energy issue, we do eventually need to move to clean energy. But the most important priority is to stop sending dirty oil money to dictatorships. It is ok to first drill in the US, with two caveats: we should be using less oil overall and this should be a short term solution as we transition to clean energy. Combine this with driving much more efficient cars, and you can reduce the amount of money being sent to these dictatorships by 20 percent in a matter of a decade. Doesn't sound like much? The dictators need the 80 percent they are getting today to pay their bills. It's the extra 20 percent that causes so much mischief. It's also this same extra 20 percent that is sending global warming over the edge. It's the tipping point. Tom Friedman's right: solutions don't have to be perfect. They just have to be effective in the near term. We got to stop looking at things as opposig forces and instead put strategies together to make them stronger. Reducing our dependency on foreign oil by using more US oil and reducing our overall oil use will have a big impact immediately and get us on our way toward using greener technologies and sources. From The New York Times: OP-ED COLUMNIST: Tea Party With a Difference One way to put all the patriotic energy from the Tea Party Movement to good use would be to go green. http://nyti.ms/9l6sWd
Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot Wins Boston Marathon - I hope I finish my half marathon in the same time!
via nytimes.com
2:05?! For a full marathon? I am running my first HALF - marathon in two weeks, and my goal was to finish under this time (actually 2:00).
Beautiful marketing / hype by Apple: Apple Delays Global Release of iPad
Apple and the National Football League are some of the best at marketing and creating hype. I bet Apple had this planned all along. From The New York Times: Apple Delays Global Release of iPad Demand for the iPad in the United States, with 500,000 sold in one week, has exceeded expectations, Apple said. http://nyti.ms/aU5xuG
New Health Initiatives Put Spotlight on Prevention
The new Healthcare legislation, whether you like it or not, is getting ready to take full effect. One of the good parts of the bill (or recent additions to it), is the focus on prevention. As we all have learned, our healthcare system is amazing at treating the sick. However, that is also one problem: everything, including payments to hospitals and doctors, is biased to sick care. As in anything in life, the earlier we can treat a problem (or bug in app development speak), the cheaper and more effective it is. The new legislation puts more money toward healthy lifestyles, annual checkups, and preventative care tests. This will pay dividends in spades as more people enter the health insurance system. However, my concern s though we are creating the infrastructure for people to be preventative, will it be used properly? For example, something I constantly harp on: I cant get my doctor to get a calendar that goes a year out so I don't have to remember to schedule my appointment later in the year. It's all about small, effective nudges, not always about big, booming solutions. From The New York Times: New Health Initiatives Put Spotlight on Prevention With little fanfare, Congress approved wide-ranging plans to prevent disease and encourage healthy behavior. http://s.nyt.com/u/HNg
Scrabble for the iPad: stir in some iPhones and it's the best $1,000 you ever spent on a board game
via engadget.com
Geekerific.
DC Area reduces plastic bag usage by 80% with simple 5c tax. 80/20 rules strikes again!
In its first assessment of how the new law is working, the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue estimated that food and grocery establishments gave out about 3 million bags in January. Before the bag tax took effect Jan. 1, the Office of the Chief Financial Officer had said that about 22.5 million bags were being issued each month in 2009.
Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), sponsor of the bag tax bill, said the new figures show that city residents are adapting to the law far more quickly than he or other city officials had expected.
"While it's difficult to project the annual results based on just the first month's experience, the report shows that residents are making great strides in reducing disposable bag use," Wells said.
The tax, one of the first of its kind in the nation, is designed to change consumer behavior and limit pollution in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Under regulations created by the D.C. Department of the Environment, bakeries, delicatessens, grocery stores, drugstores, convenience stores, department stores and any other "business that sells food items" must charge the tax on paper or plastic bags.
A Washington Post poll conducted in January found that residents were almost evenly split on whether they supported the tax, with 46 percent supporting it and 49 percent opposed to it. Support for the bag tax was highest in Northwest Washington, where about six in 10 residents supported it.
District officials had estimated that the tax would generate $10 million over the next four years for environmental initiatives.
The money will go to the newly created Anacostia River Cleanup Fund, which will spend it on various projects.
But in January, the tax generated only $149,432, suggesting that it might fall short of revenue projections.
According to Wells, large retailers have reported that disposable bag usage has dropped by more than half since the tax took effect.
"I'm thrilled with these results," Wells said. "Not only are we reducing the number of disposable bags entering our environment, but we also have new resources flowing in to help with the cleanup of the Anacostia River."
via ow.ly
Washington DC has done tremendous "damage" to plastic bag companies - by simply adding a 5cent tax for every plastic bag used, they have eliminated 80+% of the problem they were having. The DC area went from nearly 23 million bags per month to 3 million bags per month practically instantly. Now I know there are caveats around needing more extensive data, and will this behavior hold or will people get used to the tax. However, we see here another example of the 80/20 rule - you can usually solve 80% of almost any problem with 20% of the work. Most people want to focus on eradicating 100% of the problem and they get stuck and dont solve anything (this is also known as "Dont let great be the enemy of good."
Though it would be great to get all 23 million bags out of use, it is an incredible impact to get 80% of them out of use. I look at using the same solution at my company every day. By using data, we always look at simple solutions to solve 80% of a problem, getting that implemented, and then focusing on the final 20% problem.
We should be using this for other environment issues too - we dont need to eliminate 100% of our oil use, just 20% of it. We would hit a huge tipping point in the political issues in gathering oil from other countries who have different (and often competing) issues with us, we would make a big impact on allowing the environment to get back into balance, and we would create a lot of jobs in the US.
Now getting back to this article - it looks like the only problem all the success of the 5c plastic bag program has caused is that it is not generating enough revenue as planned because the drop in plastic bag usage has been so dramatic! Great problem to have!
Repost: The anti early adopter crowd pisses me off. They think they are smarter than the rest. You can wait, but I won't. - Sachin's Posterous
Next year’s iPad will be faster, cheaper, less buggy, and have better apps and worthy competitors. Let all the deep-pocketed Jobs apostles be your canaries into the iPad coalmine. Give developers time to fix their apps to work well on the iPad. Give Apple a year to lower prices on faster hardware and fill in all the gaping feature holes. (Remember how long early iPhone owners lived without copy and paste?)
Now this is true. Next year there will be a second-gen iPad and it’ll be superior in many ways to the ones that ship tomorrow. I don’t think they’ll be cheaper, but they’ll be better. (Remember, though, that those who bought the original iPhone got copy-and-paste for free when it was added to the iPhone OS.)
I think the comparison to the original iPhone is perfect. Me? Getting the original iPhone on day one was the best money I’ve ever spent. If you bought an original iPhone and regretted it a year later, though, you probably ought to skip the original iPad.
Yes, next year's iPad will be faster and better. But so will the one a year after that. And a year after that. I guess you'll just be waiting forever then.
Next year's will be less buggy? No. These aren't ancient appliances, they are upgradeable computers. Even today, every single iPhone can be updated to the latest and greatest software.
iPhone 1.0 was a bad choice? I agree with John, it was some of the best money I ever spent. Shitty cell phones pained me for years and years. Others waited for V2, good for them. But I was living an iPhone lifestyle a whole year before them. That's worth the money.
Upgrade from iPhone 1.0 to 2.0 was $199 and you could sell your 1.0 on ebay for double that. Profit!
The initial reviews and demos of the iPad are even more amazing than those of the iPhone 3 years ago. If you still don't want to jump in on day one, that's fine.
But I'll be getting my iPad tomorrow. You can touch it if you want, but please don't drool on it. And don't think you are being smarter than the rest by waiting for version 2.
I am in total agreement with this Founder of Posterous. Incredible, the number of iPad haters out there. It may be first gen, and I may need to upgrade in a year or two, but I upgrade my computer every 2-3 years as is, and they cost more.
Can we finally stop killing trees with all these paper receipts?
Not only do all these paper receipt kill trees, they make logistics so
hard for anyone trying to return an exchange items. Apple got this
right from the beginning - they alwas email me receipts for all in
store buys. Twitter Creator’s Credit Card Scanner Comes to iPad: http://bit.ly/c1ju
ka
hard for anyone trying to return an exchange items. Apple got this
right from the beginning - they alwas email me receipts for all in
store buys. Twitter Creator’s Credit Card Scanner Comes to iPad: http://bit.ly/c1ju
ka
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