Tretakoff Musings

More great news from the killing paper front: another team in the NFL has decided to shift from paper-based playbooks to the tablet (in this case, like so many, the iPad). The Denver Broncos have decided to join the Baltimore Ravens and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in tossing out the massive, obsolete and frequently outdated complicated NFL playbooks in favor of an iPad. This is a trend that needs to continue. Now, maybe Denver feels the time is right, as they have a new quarterback who is known for calling his own plays at the line, but the fact that this is updateable, and can be enhanced with actual video of the team running the play, means this is a trend that's here to stay. And who knows? Much like videogames have trained an entire generation to be future Air Force drone aircraft operators, or have influenced cockpit display design , who's to say that the next Bill Parcells won't use their version of Madden on the iPad to parlay into an NFL head coaching job? It...

As regular readers of this blog know, I am a big fan of two things: comic books and the transition from dead tree publishing to digital. Even in my post on why I was not a big fan of the iPad , I mentioned that one area it could potentially dominate is the digital transition of comics, something that Kindles and iPhones simply cannot really capture. In the months since, ComiXology has released several versions of their digital comics app, including the "Big Two" of DC and Marvel. I have happily purchased many a comic since this way, and read them on my iPhone (and yes, it does make me yearn for the tablet size). But yet, maddeningly, the offerings consisted of a microscopic sampling of the titles published by both. Why? This month's Wired magazine answers it very well . In essence, comic book publishing is a razor-thin symbiotic affair, with the slightest threat to the retail stores having a disastrous effect that becomes a maelstrom that pulls down the whole industry t...

If you haven't heard by now, Amazon has launched their Kindle Reader for the iPhone , and it's free. Better than that, it's good . How good? I downloaded the app in moments. Amy is an avid Kindle reader, so I put in her access info. In literally 2 seconds, every book she ever bought on her Kindle was available for me to read on the iPhone. The app itself is excellent, offering superb readability, and intuitive controls. It remembers where you are, or where you started reading on one device, and picks up on another. It is easily the most seamless syncing I have experienced on the iPhone. So what does this mean? It means every iPhone is now an eBook reader with Amazon's expansive Kindle-based selection and incredibly inexpensive prices. Yes, the e-ink of the Kindle vastly trumps the iPhone, but as a close second, it's pretty good. Not to mention the install base of iPhones is far larger than Kindles (though I have documented many Kindles in the wild on my Facebook alb...

I have an admission: I hate paper. From printouts of emails, to handwritten notes, I detest paper in almost all forms. It has become the trash and detritus of our daily life: credit/debit cards have nearly replaced paper money, but they leave behind the droppings of indecipherable receipts that we, as a society, are terrified to leave behind for fear that our entire identity will be stolen from that innocuous pizza payment. As we have moved to a digital world, complete with multifunction scanner/printers and both enormous hard drives and online storage, paper is simply a crutch to be finally snapped in favor of bits. It looks like the New York Times is noticing. The article points out how a Google engineer has already eliminated paper from his family's life; I have been fighting this battle for nearly a decade. My weapons of choice? Visioneer's line of sheet-fed scanners and both CD burners as well as Moxy . I scan EVERYTHING: receipts, photos, notes, legal documents, even r...

Amid the strange doings at Tesla Motors, the first all-electric, 250 mile range, stunningly fast production Tesla Roadster arrived stateside today , with the "P1" (Production, 1st model) making landfall at Tesla HQ for its happy owner, Tesla chairman Elon Musk (of PayPal and SpaceX fame). "P1 was flown from the Lotus manufacturing plant in Hethel, England; its battery pack came from Tesla’s plant in Thailand and is being installed this afternoon at the company’s California headquarters." Tesla, located in the Bay Area, has been a darling of the technorati, but has recently gone a bit off the rails. Many of the key personnel have left; the Roadster was long delayed (despite having sold through the initial run in preorders); the transmission was scrapped for a "temporary" 1 speed that will be replaced in all of the cars when the new one is perfected. But even odder comes the news that the fabled WhiteStar sedan, which was always Tesla's secret weapon (th...

As I avail myself of ferry transportation every day, I am always fascinated with the genre and it's twists and turns. For instance, on the ferry I take, I continue to be frustrated by their lack of vision. Two key runs sell out in the morning, and all others continue to be a dramatic money loser; rather than cut service in those dead times and offer a third run in the peak times, the Golden Gate Ferry continues to plod along without changes. Heck, contract the onboard beverage service to Peet's or Starbucks, and take a piece of the revenue! However I complain about my ferry, it is still a magnificent way to commute. Folks in Sydney seem to feel the same, as they have started to experience not just great ferry service, but eco-friendly ferry service. With a combination of flexible solar panels and wind harnessing, they commute with half of the emissions of a traditional high-speed ferry. Nice work, down under. On the flipside, there are my friends at Hawaii Superferry. A massiv...

As a resident of a fairly windy area, I am always amazed at the level of resistance people offer to wind power. It's free, sustainable, clean, and cheap. There are usually two reasons that anyone actually offers against wind power. The first is noise (from the spinning turbine blades); that one is solved with moving the turbines to remote locations, like unpopulated hillsides or offshore. The second is the one that gets most people up in arms: birds cannot see the spinning blades, and are cut to pieces. This leaves most environmentalists at odds with their bleeding hearts, as clean power that is borne on the back of dead avians seems to be a real gut wrencher. Luckily, along has come this article , which correctly points out that the United States' incredibly large feral cat problem easily eclipses the amount of bird deaths caused by wind power. Windmills? An estimated 40,000 birds each year meet their ends from these power producers. Feral cats? "Hundreds of millions...

Ladies and gentlemen, have a look at the man on the left. Looks fairly unassuming, right? Hardly what you would think of as a revolutionary? Well, prepare to bow down before him: he has created a zero emission home and car ecosystem that he lives by. As the Christian Science Monitor says, "On sunny days, solar panels on the roof of Strizki's detached garage generate more than enough electricity to power his home. The excess electricity powers a device inside the garage called an electrolyzer, which transforms a tank of water into its base elements – oxygen and hydrogen. "The oxygen is released into the atmosphere, while the hydrogen is stored in 10 1,000-gallon propane tanks on Strizki's property. In the winter, when the solar panels collect less energy than the home needs, that hydrogen is piped to an air-conditioner-size fuel cell, located just outside the garage, which generates electricity." That's zero emissions, and as much power as you want. Better, h...