The NVA Blog

Firefox 2.0 came out recently. It’s got some nice new features, and seems pretty good so far. The thing that I’m most excited about is the integrated spell-checker. This blog is powered by WordPress, which is is great software but has lacked a built-in spell checker. (at least version 2.0.x). There are a number of available plug-in spell checkers for WP, and I’ve tried a few of them. I haven’t really been happy with any of them. They either don’t work at all, are clunky, or simply don’t catch the errors. Cutting and pasting into and out of Word to do the spell check stinks because you lose the links and the formatting of the online editor.

Firefox 2.0 has a spell checker built-in, and it seems to work quite well so far. So now when I write blog articles in FF (as I am right now), the browser handles the spell checking rather than the blog itself. The benefit here, aside from the obvious ones, is that the checker allows you to add words to it’s dictionary. So you get a universal dictionary you can take with you to any web page or blog you may be writing or commenting on. Handy, especially if your work is littered with industry-specific jargon that most spell checkers don’t know off the bat.

Firefox 2.0 is not without it’s issues. Some due to newness (many plugins have not been updated yet), and some bugs. Read up before you install, or run it side-by-side with your existing browser at first. I’ve been waiting for a year WP to add an elegant built-in spell checker to the WYSIWYG writer, but FF 2.0 solves the problem!

I’ve had Sonos in the house for over a year now, and blogged about why were impressed here. They released version 2.0 of the software recently, and after playing with it for about two weeks it definitely gets the thumbs up. The biggest new feature is that Rhapsody is now integrated into the controller so that you can browse and play everything in the Rhapsody library as if it was in your own library. The integration is quite nice and performs well. They give you a free 30 day trial, and the service is $10 a month. It’s worth it for many reasons, but the easiest justification is that it will save you money in the long run. (cost of the Sonos system notwithstanding). How many times have you bought an album because you liked 1-2 songs but ended up not being all that impressed with the entire album? How many times have you bought some music, loved it for 3 weeks and haven’t listened to it again since? Rhapsody has a pretty big library at 2+ million songs (iTunes is 3.5m) so the likelihood of them having anything new from a major label is good. You can listen to tons of new music, decide what you like enough to pay for, and purchase media you want the CD or digital files for your iPod, car, etc.

Some other useful Sonos tidbits…

1. Wall Street Journal — last week WSJ gave Sonos the technical innovation of the year award for consumer electronics. Cool!
2. Alarm clock — The new 2.0 software update allows you to use your Sonos system as an alarm clock. Nice stereo fidelity instead of that harsh clock radio sound. Also able to set a different alarm for weekdays vs. weekends, multiple alarms per day, snooze, cancel, wake to music/playlist, etc. Now you have a reason to get another Sonos Zone Player for the bedroom.
3. Rhapsody Playlists - you can save tracks and albums to playlists just like with your own library. My wife love this feature because it makes it very easy to “bookmark” a song or album she liked while listening to one of the Rhapsody radio stations.

Fred Wilson also blogged about the 2.0 updates here and included some good screen shots to boot.

FYI - the 2.0 update is free if you already have the service, you can update the entire system from the controller

There has been an increasing buzz in the electric car industry in the last year (destruction of the EVs nonwithstanding), and it is great to see progress being made by private companies, start-ups even, in bringing commerically viable electrics and EV-hybrids to market.

You hopefully have heard of the Tesla electric sports car. It’s a $90k, 0-60 in 4 seconds sportscar built by a slicon valley start up. It’s powered by laptop batteries. (Bring a fire extinguisher with you if you take a test drive - ha!) check out some videos of it here. Pretty impressive!

Another interesting project is the conversion of a BMW Mini to electric (with a gas generator to charge the batteries) by a British company, PML Flightlink, that makes high-power electric motors. The specs are impressive and scary. A 160 hp electric motor at each wheel, with a 0-60 of 4.5 seconds. No mechanical brake (motors provide ABS-powered braking). Can run 900+ miles with the help of the motor, or 4 hours in an urban setting on the batteries. Some blog commenters are quite suspect about the whole thing, but if the company stands behind the numbers then I’ll play along for now.

This car will not go to production, but is a great example of forward thinking and technology convergence. It’s a proof-of-concept that helps demonstrate the viability of electric+ICE cars that are not sluggish and slow and that these systems can be adapted to existing vehicles. There are certainly some issues with this car (blog commenters are having a field day).

• the motors add unsprung weight to the vehicle - bad for driving and handling performance
• the ICE (internal combustion engine) that charges the whole thing doesn’t run on a non-carbon fuel like biodiesel
• it’s a prototype, which is great to help advance the industry but doesn’t get “green” vehicles into the hands of the consumer
• no mechanical brake! what happens when the driveline firmware hits a bug or the thing runs out of juice?

There are some fundamental economic and political issues still impacting the adoption of green and electric/hybrid vehicles it seems. Conflicting reports come out frequently on Ethanol as a alternative fuel, and what happens in 50 years when there are millions of leaking batteries all over the street?

It is great to see silicon valley get into the mix along with the more traditiona players. I’m hoping cars like the Tesla can be brought to market for the masses. If we can manage to charge our electric cars with wind or solar…we might be on to something.

Big thanks to Amy Gahran for putting together this group. We held the inaugural meeting tonight at the Trident in Boulder. It was great to meet a variety of local bloggers out there. I’m sure there are many more of you in the area - come join us! Topics ranged from “why do you blog?” to “help - I can’t get xyz to work!”.

During the discussion I stated the obvious by commenting that blogs have enabled millions of people to self-publish online without having to learn html or become a webmaster. While everyone has their own reasons for blogging, it seems we can all benefit from each other’s experience to get the most out of it. I’m glad this group was established, and I’m thankful that Boulder’s got a diverse blogger community that was willing to come out and play.

You can join, or just check out the group’s meetup.com page here. The meetup.com page is also a blog, and our plan is to post tips, tools, and best practices on the page for everyone to benefit from. Members list is here.

While working on my post about Apple and Leopard I found this on c|net. Perhaps its not brand new or earth-moving, but I found it to be a useful, usable tool and a cool way to see the relationships between stories or content subjects. Here is a live example It looks like liveplasma.com is the actual tech provider, and they have done a nice job of repurposing software they developed for music relationship mapping to news content. I like it…