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.

Google is working on Google Chrome Frame, which is a plugin for Internet Explorer. Think of it like the Flash plugin, except instead of Flash, it gives IE the ability to read modern Javascript and HTML and even more importantly the ability to read Javascript without failing, throwing errors and the incompatibility that Internet Explorer innately has with all other browsers, code, and between versions of itself. Google Chrome Frame is a WebKit/V8 plugin - for browsers who's developers refuse to follow the standards. You can now easily prompt IE users to install the plugin and the page renders like it would in Chrome and Safari. It's still early on in the project, and requires XP SP2 or greater. I don't believe anyone still using Internet Explorer has the where with all to install a Service Pack, but if they did they'd also have upgraded at least from IE6 and yet there are still plenty of people stubbornly using it.

I think Google Chrome Frame is ingenious, but doubt it will be the silver bullet needed to kill off IE. I'd like to see some accurate market research on browser/os share, who's using what and why. I believe people still using IE fall into two categories. Those that are ignorant, hate the web, or themselves; and those who are forced to by stuffy silly IT guys at work who outrageously believe that IE with all it's gaping unpatched security holes and incompatibilities is somehow a good choice for their IT environment.

Also on the Google side is Google Analytics for Flex/Air applications. There's been workarounds for a while where you could bridge to Javascript from Flash to trigger Analytics events. Now you get some Actionscript tracking code and classes which you can call as part of your navigation/deeplinking procedures. Next step is to be able to index Flex/Air apps... hmm...

Also from Google, I've stumbled across it before but if you haven't go have fun in their Code Playground

Next up is Intel, who've developed a new technology to replace copper wires called Light Peak. Essentially Fibre Optics for the wires inside your computer, and possibly everywhere else. Capable of transmitting data at 10Gb/s (1.25GB/s) with future versions being capable of up to 100Gb/s (12.5GB/s). At those speeds you could copy the entire contents of a 1TB hard drive in under 2 minutes. Wow, pretty soon YouTube will be in Blue-Ray quality and Blue-Ray will go the way of VHS.. anyone surprised?

Also Intel related are the new Core i7 chips that are slowly being rolled out. And the rumours surrounding Apple's October Special Event, where word on the street is they'll be unavailing Core i7/i5 chips across the board and price reductions to compete for the holiday season. If only they'd get better screens on the iMac... here's hoping.

In the open source world I was introduced to FLARToolKit today. Augmented reality for Flex developers. The demos have you print out an image marker that the code looks for. You turn on your webcam and it calculates the 3D space based on the marker and superimposes a 3D animation that in real time follows the marker around rotating tittling and putting on a really impressive show.

There was other stuff but I'm writing this when I should be coding, and I could have done without the 30 articles I just read too..