The (Unofficial) Tesla Commercial

"Tesla 'Not a Dream'" is an independently created commercial, using the words of inventor Nikola Tesla to extol the virtues of Tesla Motors's vehicles and their presumed ability to lead the US to a future that's free of the pollution and destruction of fossil fuels. It's visuals are a little extreme, but I'm sure that those passionate about the problem and/or the car will find the video moving.

It's worth noting that Tesla Motors doesn't advertise very much. The fact that fans are willing to create content like this for them is impressive to say the least.

And for any geeks out there it's like 1984, all over again. 

So what does Tesla Motors CEO think of the video? He digs it.

 

When You Don't Want Windows 10

Every single time I turn on my 2010 HP Envy 14, I'm assaulted by a huge pop-up telling me that I should join 110 million other users and upgrade my machine to Windows 10. 

MS is aggressive -- too aggressive about forcing this older hardware to adopt their new software.

Case in point-- my 2010 HP Envy 14 doesn't want Windows 10. I know this because I popped Windows 10 on another older machine to see how well it does on older hardware. It's fine, but it's far from any sorta performance improvement.

Now I don't advocate that anyone interested in computing performance spend a lot of time on a 6 year old laptop. I'm looking to upgrade but frankly, the machine is more than adequate for classic gaming, writing and working on the web.  That means that in its current state, as long as security updates still keep on coming, the Windows 7 system is a good thing for this computer-- especially when I think about passing it on to a child or someone else in need of a reliable, if not crazy fast machine.

So if you're like me, and want to save your windows 7 experience by stopping upgrade-focused pop-ups and stopping  auto-upgrading, then check this site out.

 

Amazon Will Open Physical Bookstores Because Life Is a Practical Joke Played On Us All →

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"Amazon is working on plans to open hundreds of brick-and-mortar bookstores, according to a new report from CNBC. Yes, following in the footsteps of chains like Borders, Amazon apparently thinks that the future is in dead trees.

Amazon already has one physical store that opened back in November. The Seattle store was dismissed as a “vanity project” when it was first announced, but apparently it worked out well enough that Amazon is willing to bet big money on it. It ain’t cheap to open 300-400 retail stores."

People said that Apple was crazy to open up retail stores back in 2001, when Dell and others were experiencing extreme costs savings with the Direct-To-Consumer business model. Still, people went crazy when it opened and Apple remains the most productive retailer, measured in revenue by square foot.

I've had a chance to check out the Amazon Bookstore in Seattle. It's probably the only public place other than CES where you could really try out the Echo; a device that's hard to explain but easy to love. Add to that the fact that there's something about being able to touch and hold a book before purchase.

Report: Google is the default iPhone search engine because it paid Apple $1 billion →

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Caitlin McGarry, writing for PCWorld:

"Apple has admonished Google for violating user privacy with practices like mining emails for keywords to generate ad revenue. Now we know that Apple financially benefits from Google’s ad-targeting practices."

This quote (and  the article's headline) strikes me as bothersome. First-- Google has a revenue sharing agreement with Apple on search ad revenue. They didn't cut Apple a check for $1 billion up front to exclude other search engines. The arrangement is performance-based. It doesn't seem as if there's any sort of barrier to MS's Bing outbidding Google for the same arrangement. 

As for the quote-- this statement simply doesn't ring true. In fact, Apple's making money on search ads-- ads that have context based not on scanned emails but on terms that users input to a search engine for the purpose of receiving a contextually relevant response as output. The ads they receive are based on the search terms, not on scans of email or browser tracking.

Disappointing.