Just a quick psa I've been asked to do from time to time, if you don't see the irony, you should call the government immediately. Now on with some stuff I feel like writing.

I've been critical of Microsoft pretty much any time I talk about them but it should be noted that they do produce a lot of really awesome stuff. It just so happens that I'm a programmer/web guy and Microsoft's web endeavours tend to be very shitty and politicky (see Bing, Windows Live, IE), so I talk a lot about that side of the company. I also really dislike Windows having used it for years and realizing and re-realizing that it's just an all round stale sandwich, and from what I've seen of Windows 7 they still can't seem to deliver a good OS. But with that said I do think some of their hardware stuff is incredible. Like the Xbox, Natal, Surface and their labs projects like Photososynth and Seadragon are wow.

What I'm trying to say here is Microsoft Courier. If you haven't seen it just do a video search and watch the demo. Why would anyone use an old school notepad and pencil when you could have a super intelligent dual screen tablet like that? No really I'm asking. And I read somewhere it'll hit the shelves soonish. It looks to me that this form factor at least, if not the Courier itself will become an essential home/business device. Like a toaster or printer.

The other thing is electric cars. If you go to BetterPlace.com you can find out all about this company that's figured out how to make 100% electric cars feasible now. They're starting out with smaller countries (namely Israel, Denmark, and others), they say they'll deploy the first cars around 2011 and go commercial in 2012. In two years there will be places that have fully electric, regular sized cars and more importantly the infrastructure of charging stations and battery swapping... stations, (for when you don't have time to charge the battery) to back it up. They've committed to having at least 100,000 cars on the road and in dealerships by 2016, and they currently have a range of about 170km on a full charge which when you add battery replacement stations - a process that takes about 2 minutes - could potentially be extended infinitely. Oh yeah I almost forgot instead of paying for electricity or new batteries you pay for miles/kilometres you drive, like a pre-paid cell phone.

I wrote yesterday about Light Peak, according to Engadget the specification was dictated [sic] to Intel by Apple who plan on putting it in a line of Macs as early as next fall. The plan eventually being that it will replace all other protocols (see USB, Firewire, DVI, Ethernet, eSATA) so if you've been waiting for USB 3.0 or core i7's in a Mac or you already have one in a PC and thought you were ahead of the curve, the game is about to completely change and you're probably gonna have to replace it all starting next year with new super fast stuff that uses optical connectors. You know, it would be nice if just once they waited till after todays new cool stuff was out and being used before teasing us with the next huge leap in technology. I guess it's more profitable to never actually satisfy the consumer.