Well done on The Mojave Experiment! For a company with some of the smartest developers in the world, it's good to hear about others at Microsoft doing something smart once in a while, too. The Mojave Experiment is just that. "Microsoft last week traveled to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a "new" operating system, code-named Mojave. More than 90 percent gave positive feedback on what they saw. Then they were told that 'Mojave' was actually Windows Vista."
The Roku is hot! The Roku sells 100,000 units, or 1% of Netflix's subscribers. I'm still very happy with ours. The only thing that could turn me sour on the Roku is if Netflix stops adding new offerings for it or if Netflix doesn't continue to beef up its servers to handle the load causing video startup times and picture quality to suffer.
The Brothers' Books Seller. Look for them on Amazon. If you have a chance to order a book from The Brothers' Books on Amazon or elsewhere, don't hesitate. I buy more books from resellers than I do new from Amazon and am continually impressed by the quality of the sellers. Even with the high-bar set by most sellers, these guys are standouts. I ordered a used hardback copy of A Wrinkle in Time from them. I received a decent copy from them pretty quickly, but it was an oversized paperback version, not a hardback edition. I sent them an email through Amazon's Contact Seller service and within 24 hours they responded with an apology, told me they'd refund the charge (which they performed within minutes after I received the email) and said I could keep the book to enjoy or donate to my local library.
The World is Flat Audiobook Giveaway. The best way to experience The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
by Thomas Friedman is while reading the book during a [NordicTrack] session. But any way is a good way, and Friedman is giving away audiobook copies of the book for a limited time. It's an ingenious marketing plan, because it serves to announce his upcoming book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America
Speaking of a Green Revolution, Al Gore on Meet The Press. Al Gore was the headliner on Sunday's Meet The Press with Tom Brokaw discussing his Challenge to America to meet 100% of our electricity needs through renewable energy within 10 years. One of many excellent points, Tom asks about the trillions required to make it happen to which Gore responds, yes, but trillions will be going to Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and other oil producers anyway (as 70% of all oil used in the US is imported.) Here's the NBC News podcast download page.
And for even more green, check out the Volt! I'm not a Chevy Man, but heck yeah, I'd buy a Volt. My wife and I determined not to buy another automobile until the underlying technology changes, and the Volt fits the bill. This Atlantic Monthly article is a fascinating story on the genesis and ongoing development of GM's electric-based hybrid, the Volt, set for production in 2010. It reminds me of how IBM went about creating the PC. "Early on, word had come down from Bob Lutz and Jon Lauckner that standard procedure was suspended where the Volt was concerned. 'You guys are not going to be held to the normal GM bureaucracy,' Lutz recalls saying. 'You guys spend money when you need to spend it. You have a problem, call us on the phone.'” Here's a good excerpt describing the Volt architecture, "If it meets specifications, it will charge up overnight from any standard electrical socket. It will go 40 miles on a charge. Then a small gasoline engine will ignite. The engine’s sole job will be to drive a generator, whose sole job will be to maintain the battery’s charge—not to drive the wheels, which will never see anything but electricity. In generator mode, the car will drive hundreds of miles on a tank of gas, at about 50 miles per gallon. But about three-fourths of Americans commute less than 40 miles a day, so on most days most Volt drivers would use no gas at all."