The ‘air’ car…1,000 miles per fillup and reaches speeds up to 96 mph
February 23rd, 2008 § 1 Comment
A car powered by compressed air and fuel that gets up to 1,000 miles per fillup and reaches speeds up to 96 mph could be arriving for sale in the U.S. as soon as late 2009. Witness the Air-Car. 
Firefox and IE
February 23rd, 2008 § Leave a Comment
It used to be Netscape and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) 
.
Netscape died this month 
. Firefox 
reached 500 Million downloads this month.
Firefox has the best and most web-useful add-ons anywhere. IE doesn’t even go there. I stopped using IE about 8 months ago. I’ve used Firefox before that, but not in a dedicated way like I am now. The add-ons did it for me. Next week, I will list some of the best I’ve found. My guess is that unless Microsoft takes their browser ‘where it’s never gone before’ , they might begin to look like Netscape has in the last few years. Even Safari is more interesting than IE.
The biggest brands in the world – Coke, Microsoft, Nike or GE? Nope, you’re not even close.
February 23rd, 2008 § Leave a Comment
Umair Haque, the new Director of Havas’ Media lab had a great discussion about the value of brands which got me thinking about all of this over the weekend – and he’s on to something. The greatest and most popular brands in the world have been around for decades. Things that we almost take for granted; Coca-Cola, 
Microsoft, 
Intel, Nokia, GE, 
Nike, 
Toyota, Disney, McDonalds, and the list goes on. These are big companies that all have been around for many years, some for nearly 50 years. Each of these companies spend millions of advertising dollars every year to ‘promote’ their image. However, the world is changing and rapidly. Consumers are being bombarded and exposed to new and ever changing media on the web. When I think about any particular brand, what I believe I’m getting no matter what kind of material object I buy is an expectation of or a standard of quality. For instance, if I buy Nike sneakers, I know what I can expect or if I purchase a Coach wallet, I expect the wallet to last at least 2-3 years (or longer than most every other wallet) because its a Coach wallet. Coach leather is a brand I have come to know and the quality of their products are far superior to other manufacturers (at least that’s what I think). Its an expectation I have or a benefit I expect from a product or service. I know in advance what to expect. So, for years, we’d see advertising on TV or in magazines, on billboards or in newspapers about those brands. Not necessarily advertising the actual products, but big, full page ads proclaiming GE as the company that thinks about your future, etc. Big ads, big dollars and it reached most of us through the media mentioned above. It was and still is expensive, but it worked, that is until now. Enter the internet. The web has changed the game for these brands and it will stay that way for the foreseeable future.
Think about this one – the biggest brand in the world has never spent a nickel to advertise itself. That brand is Google. Why? It doesn’t have to. But why and how did Google manage to become the top or if not the top, one of the top brands on the planet? Through the internet and its commonality of use and discussion among us. A huge, online community emerged that had something in common – they ‘googled’. Google has never spent any money on advertising itself. Its talked about, discussed, and in a short period of time has become a brand by doing nothing more than delivering what it suppose to deliver to us – results. No promises of this or that to listen to or read. The free ‘use’ and global access has created a brand with no advertising. Bigger than most firms over 40 years old that have spent millions every year to keep its ‘brand’ in front of all of us. Information does not need to be contained into slogans or cute commercials during the Superbowl. Its amazing to me that in less than 10 years, Google has built one of the worlds most best known brands without spending a dime on advertising on TV, newspapers, etc. Think about it…its really quite amazing.
Even Yahoo advertised. Maybe they shouldn’t have.
Satellite Internet is dead…bye-bye Directway and Wildblue
February 23rd, 2008 § 17 Comments
We moved outside of Los Angeles 2 years ago and I was forced to subscribe to Directway because there was no broadband coaxial cable nor DSL through the phone companies. Cell service was spotty, so I reluctantly bought a package from Directway (DirectTV sister company that supplies Internet access). I purchased a ‘professional’ package (or what they call a ‘business’ package) with a larger dish ( nearly $2,000 all in including installation ) and all. Supposedly I was going to get 500mbps upload and 2.0 mbps download for…$200.00 per month (Yikes!). The speed wasn’t even close. While I was spoiled by my TimeWarner connection when I did have broadband (3 mbps download) , Directway was barely better than dial-up for $ 200.00 a month. What a joke! Even after calling Directway many times for many months to complain, the service never came close to this kind of speed they claimed it could get . I was maybe getting 500mbps download. To top it off, they had a download ‘threshold’ that was suppose to dissuade people from downloading music and movies. They didn’t need that, because who could or who would want to download anything with the way (slow) their service worked. Then WildBlue came along (a bunch of guys from ATT and Direct got together to form this company). So, I switched. I had to purchase their dish (now I have 2 dishes growing in my backyard). But first, I had to get out of my 2 year contract with Directway which was not easy without paying a disconnect fee of about $ 200.00. So I decided to complain directly to the corporate parent. After a few weeks, I got through to someone there and they reluctantly agreed to let me out of my contract. So, I installed the Wildblue dish (only $250.00 cost) and bought their most expensive package $79.95 for the ‘Pro’ pack. Speed of 1.5 mbps download and 350mbps upload. It worked faster than the 2.0 mbps speed I was suppose to get at Directway. I thought I was in heaven. Until I met with WildBlue’s ‘FAP’ or Fair Usuage Policy’ which was no more than 17,000MB down and 5,000MB up. Since I blog and test various new pieces of software I quickly met that threshold’s ‘upload’ limit. Not download mind you, but upload. Must have uploaded too many blog text entries?? This was just plain stupid. So I called them and they told me that this was a 30 day ‘rolling’ policy and I’d have to reduce my uploading to be less than the 5,000MB for more than 30 days. Well, for $ 80.00 a month this was just unreasonable. So, I turned to Sprint who had just released a new EV-DO modem for plugging into a laptop or desktop. I could get my Internet access through a cell phone tower. So, I signed up, installed the modem at home and guess what. I have no threshold limits, and it works better than either satellite services for $60.00 a month. I then promptly called Wildblue back and lowered my monthly bill and speed to $49.00 a month (as low as I could get it). I will be disconnecting this service next week. Thanks Sprint. So, for anyone who is struck with either of these dinosaurs, drop them and disconnect, get as far away from them as you can as fast as you can. Try anything else but these services. I’m sure you’ll be much happier. Its just a matter of time before wi-fi and wi-max cover all of the rural areas that cable can’t and then hopefully these lame services will go out of business. Its just a matter of time. I plan on writing both of these companies again and I will include a link back to this blog. Hopefully others will read this and NOT send any business their way.
