As discussed in my previous post, GM is betting a lot on the Chevy Volt as a potential savior for the company. GM plans to deliver the Chevy Volt in November 2010.However, yesterday, I came across two articles in the Seattle Times that cast additional doubt on whether the Chevy Volt will be the savior that GM thinks it will be. The first article was about how Chrysler is currently developing three electric or extended range electric vehicles for release in 2010. Chrysler did say however that it will probably only deliver one of the three vehicles on that timeline. But which one?In a related article it was announced that Toyota plans to introduce a plug-in version of their Toyota Prius hybrid next year (2009), a full year before the debut of GM’s Chevy Volt offering.I had previously theorized that Toyota would get to market before GM, and now it … Continue reading →

I came across an interesting online/offline service called MagHound yesterday that probably falls into the category of useful but not valuable.Translation – While it may be a good idea, it is likely to fail to make money.Why do I think it will fail?Here are ten reasons:Do enough people really want to try lots of different magazines at once or actively manage switching amongst different ones every month?Maghound must build not only brand awareness, but also customer understanding of a new way of buying magazinesEven if they succeed in building awareness, customer inertia is a powerful force to overcomeAnnual subscriptions are cheaper (I get a lot of $10 offers these days)Potential Supplier Revolt – The kind of customers Maghound may be most likely to attract, may not be the kind of customers that the magazine companies want (people who sign up for a short time and then quit or switch)Ultimately, magazines … Continue reading →

I came across an interesting article highlighting that the global power consumption of the data centers comprising the Internet consumed 1 percent of the world’s electricity in 2005. The growth in broadband and multimedia usage would put the 2008 number closer to 2-3% of the total by my estimation. According to McKinsey, the carbon footprint of the Internet will be larger than that of air travel by 2020.The other focus of the article was how:- Sun Microsystems is putting a data center in an abandoned coal mine to cut electricity costs in half of what the would be at ground level- Microsoft is investigating putting data centers in the cold climate of Siberia- Google is investigating the creation of “data barges” that would utilize wave energy and escape property taxes by being stationed seven miles offshoreIt is good that big data center technology consumers like Microsoft and Google are looking … Continue reading →

I came across an InfoWorld article the other day that warmed my heart.For far too long, especially on the PC, software developers have been building applications with a feature arms race mentality. Because of rapidly expanding memory and hard disk space on customers’ machines, developers have not had to write tight code in the same way they had to in the early days of the PC. Now, hopefully Symantec’s focus on creating Norton applications that install in under a minute and consume far less memory will spread to other industry players. Just because I have 4gb of RAM and 160gb of hard disk space does not give software developers the right to consume it thoughtlessly or to make my computer run slower.Why can’t software developers give us adaptive software?If I don’t use a feature of a product in 30 days, it should uninstall itself.Why can’t I choose lean and …