Work(ing Title)

Wal-Mart has committed to selling 100 million compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs in the next 12 months. Specifically their aim is for each of their regular customers to buy at least one of these bulbs, and they want to make it the one bulb to change the world. CFL bulbs consume around a quarter of the energy of traditional incandescent bulbs. They should also appeal to the laziness within everyone; CFL bulbs can last up to a decade.

So at this point it feels like a ‘cute’ idea. Use less electricity and replace the bulbs in my house—yippee. Well half of the electricity in the United States is generated from coal-burning power plants, which are therefore the single largest source of greenhouse gases. Wal-Mart’s decision to aggressively sell these bulbs could have a significant effect on the global warming crisis.

I love it when the market forces evolution. To me it’s one of the most beautiful byproducts of our capitalist system, and it happens so infrequently that it’s like a techie aurora borealis. Some people will be boring and quibble about the quality of light and the higher cost of CFL bulbs. To the first point, I say either you put more lights in your room if you want it brighter (or just go outside already). Cost is probably the most short-sighted of any argument here. If you aren’t willing to put your money into something that will ultimately save you cash and benefit the environment then I’ve got two words for you…

via Treehugger

Sounds like some of us are waking up from the coma that is the last twenty years of personal computing. The files and folders metaphor took off like wildfire because it represented a total departure from the command line user interface. The introduction of a GUI allowed a larger percentage of humanity to adopt technology, which in turn made the tech community much more exciting and diverse.

Today our desktops are all interconnected, and a slew of different devices have evolved from the desktop and grown into our backpacks, our cars, and our pockets. Most of the popular uses of these machines no longer involve organizing all our files into folders. All of our memos, timesheets, photos, movies have been left in a petri dish with Email, IM, WiFi, and GPS–It’s all merged together but hasn’t quite gotten the entreprenurial rubdown it needs.

Jeremy Zawodny has talked about three problems that need solving, so he’s certainly clued in. Applications need to be built for the web and the desktop equally, the archipeligo of devices need interoperability, and someone needs to build and support an OS that accepts the networked reality of personal computing.

In more particular terms, Ross Rubin is calling it PC 3.0: the social computer. It would leverage all the bleeding edge technologies to create a more natural interaction method. He reminds us of the double decade old promise of Apple’s Knowledge Navigator concept video (Where did you want to go yesterday?)

Qua?! Last week Veronica published Prizefight: Apple iPod vs. Toshiba Gigabeat S, wherein she concluded that Toshiba is making the more appealing DAP. Yesterday [fake]Steve called out Veronica as nothing but a cute, oratory-impaired journalist.

V’s conclusion would under normal circumstances get me right hungry for a debate on her decision, as the mental tag-cloud of my childhood features Steve’s name fairly prominently. Here however, the more exciting question is this: Are we one step closer to discovering the true identity of the greatest Apple fan site yet?

UPDATE: V has quoted and responded over at Music and Medicine.

To be specific, I’ve misplaced the myopenid credentials I need to log into my Zooomr account. The ‘Contact’ link in the Zooomr about page hasn’t been lit up yet (not the sort of thing you want to neglect if you’re out to win hearts and minds), and the myopenid help hasn’t repsonded yet.

Anyone know how I can get some resolution here? If I can’t figure this out by tomorrow I may have to get on the horn and get Thomas Hawk to help me out!

I got this in my inbox this morning. My favorite new travel tool Farecast has added RSS support. Using this simple form, I can generate a feed that will push their cost predictions to me as they change. Tres cool!