Zack Mahdavi's Blog

Imagine having a box in your backyard the size of a power transformer.  This box would be filled with hundreds of little fuel cells that would power your house for cheaper than your electric company.  If all goes well, the future could be here within a decade.

A startup called Bloom Energy has built an amazing SUV-sized box designed to do just that.  It’s filled with thousands of solid oxide fuel cells pumping out electricity with only a minimal carbon footprint.  The cost currently is $800,000, but the company hopes to get the cost of the device down to a few thousand dollars within a decade. Ebay purchased the device recently and claim to already have saved a couple hundred grand off their electricity costs.

A device like this could really alleviate the growing problem of our decaying power grid.

60 Minutes covered the amazing device this past weekend, and it’s definitely worth a watch.

Very interesting Infoworld article about the new software strategy being deployed by Microsoft’s chief software architect, Ray Ozzie.

It can’t be easy being Ray Ozzie. Microsoft’s chief software architect is just 18 months into the job as Bill Gates’ handpicked successor, yet depending on whom you ask, his tenure will either signal a bold new era for the company or mark the beginning of its terminal decline.

компютриoffice furniture in Bulgaria

I think by now, it has become apparent that 60 Minutes is one of my favorite shows on television. I try to watch every week, since there is usually at least one story that fascinates me. This week, it’s about NASA.

If you didn’t know by now, NASA is working on sending a man to the moon again by 2020 and to Mars by 2030, and they’re working at full speed. Personally, I’m excited that the US is finally working again on ‘deep space’ exploration. First of all, this will motivate children to study science and engineering, which might fix the engineer drought that American companies are facing. Secondly, this may reignite hope into the heart of humanity, so that we start thinking about the future again just like how we did in the 60s. Finally, it will once again show that if humanity sets its mind on a goal, it can and will be achieved.

The video is 11 minutes, so if you have time, give it a watch. Oh, and I’d like to hear your thoughts about sending a man to Mars.

Today, Amazon.com launched their ‘important for the industry’ Amazon MP3 download service. This is a big deal…

Why? Amazon is offering 2 million songs for download (Apple offers 6 million through their iTunes Store) that are completely DRM-free. Yes, there is no protection of any kind built into these songs.. so this means you can play the songs on your ‘Plays For Sure’ mp3 player or your iPod or anything else that can play mp3s. In addition, the songs are encoded at a very high quality of 256kbps… Apple encodes their songs in 128 kbps AAC, which is supposed to be equivalent to 192 kbps MP3.

If DRM-free isn’t a big enough selling point for you, then how about this? Amazon guarantees that their top 100 songs will be $0.89 each, and the other songs are in the $0.89 to $0.99 cent range. In addition, full albums are $8.99 or less. A great deal!

When you click “Buy Now” on a song in Amazon, a small program will launch on your computer that will download the song and automatically import the song into iTunes. The process is seamless, although it still doesn’t compare to the absolute ease of use you get out of the iTunes Store.

For a few weeks, I’m going to try to make AmazonMP3 my goto site for music. Let’s see how it goes. For now, I’m jamming away to my new Apples in Stereo album.

Maria linked me to this YouTube video presented at SigGraph. It uses a new algorithm to smart resize images. Instead of just cropping or scaling, the algorithm looks for parts of the image with the ‘least amount of energy’ and smartly clips those portions out as you resize the image. The result is simply amazing.. this is the future of web page resizing and image resizing in general. No wonder Adobe just hired this researcher!

So this will be the first time I’m writing a review on this site. I couldn’t resist though, especially regarding a company that makes such amazing products, Waterfield Designs.

If you’ve never heard of Waterfield, they are known for their amazing SleeveCases. If you have a Mac laptop (or even a PC laptop), you have to check out their sleevecases. They are very well made and offer lots of protection.

Anyway, this review isn’t about the Waterfield sleevecase. It’s about a new product they recently introduced, the iPhone Suede Jacket. Now many other companies are making cases for the iPhone, but most of them are bulky or take away from the pure elegance of the iPhone.

The iPhone Suede jacket is different. It focuses on pure simplicity. This case is really well made, and the suede (it’s actually a very soft microfiber called ultrasuede) is very soft and nice. At first, the case felt a little too tight for the iPhone, but after using it for about a day, it loosened up just the right amount. Also, the suede is a great material because it actually cleans up the smudges from the screen every time you slide the iPhone in and out of the case.

In terms of protection, this little sleeve will not protect the iPhone if you drop it, but it will protect the iPhone from the various objects you have in your pocket or purse (keys, etc).

The cost was $9, but there’s a whopping $7 shipping charge. However, they really listen to their customers, so I’m hoping they’ll drop the shipping charge soon enough.

If you’re looking for some basic protection for your iPhone that adds no bulk, I highly recommend this case!

I’ve had my eye on the beautiful piece of glass and metal known as the iPhone since the day it was announced by Steve Jobs. Unfortunately, the price ($599) was just too much for me to bear. Also, the iPhone was only available on AT&T. Well, two weeks ago, both of those problems disappeared.

It’s only been two weeks since Apple announced the $200 price drop on the iPhone (making the 8GB model $399, and the little sib 4GB model $299 until it’s gone). $299 didn’t seem like a bad price, but it was still a little out of reach since I didn’t really need a new phone. Then again, when do you ever buy an Apple product needing it? Well, Maria helped sweeten the pot by giving me the $100 Apple rebate she got for being an iPhone early adopter! Thanks Maria! So that brought down the price to a sweet $199 (the price of an iPod Nano), which is an amazing deal.

The next problem was that the device was locked to the AT&T network. Luckily, about a week ago, a free software unlock was unleashed on the web, which would allow me to use the iPhone on the T-Mobile network! Woot!

So there you have it… I am now running an unlocked iPhone on the T-Mobile network. Talk about the best of both worlds.

The phone is absolutely amazing. Apple has totally rethought the phone by combining the advanced features of a smartphone into an interface that’s easier to use than most cheap cell phones. I am such a happy camper right now.

And once again, I have succumbed to Steve Jobs’s reality distortion field.

In case you’re interested, I am selling my old T-Mobile Dash on ebay now.

Boing Boing posted about a prediction made in 1966 regarding the future of computing in 1999. The documentary was sponsored by the Philco-Ford Corporation, and it does a pretty accurate job at predicting the future of computing. For example, they predict that shopping and bill paying will be able to be done via computer.

Boing Boing points out that the video failed to predict we’d still be using keyboards… I argue that keyboards provide a much faster method of text entry than any other input method to date. Try writing a URL in a browser window using a Tablet PC, and you’ll understand how painfully slow handwriting is. However, this doesn’t mean that all input methods have been invented already; for example, I’d like to see a computer “listen” to my internal “voice,” so that the computer just “knows” what I want. That may mark the end of the keyboard, but who knows.

Let’s wait and see what computers are like in 2040.

P.S: The documentary also predicts the kitchen of the future!

It’s that powerful?!?!? Who knew?

More amusing iPhone wallpapers…

Nikon has received many awards for their awesome D200 and D2X high-end digital SLR cameras, but today, Nikon raised the bar with the new D300 and D3.

First, there’s the D3. Nikon advertises it as having the fastest SLR startup time (not usually a problem with an SLR) and shortest shutter lag (awesome!). It sports a 12.1MP full-frame CMOS sensor, a 51 point autofocus system, a 200-6400 ISO range (!!), and a beautiful 3 inch 920,000 pixel LCD screen! What’s really amazing is that it can take 11 frames per second…. 14 more, and this thing will be able to capture video. Price? $5000 for just the body… eek.

Next up is the D300. I consider this the camera for the high-level prosumer or an entry-level professional. It’s also been fully loaded with a 12.1 MP cropped CMOS sensor, a 3″ viewfinder, 200-3200 ISO range, 51 autofocus points, and 6 frames per second burst. Another cool feature is a ‘live view’ mode, where you can preview the picture on the display before taking the picture (I know regular digital cameras have had this feature for an eternity, but this just wasn’t technically possible to do on an SLR…). Price is $1799 for just the body.. much better price, but still “eek”.

If you’ve been looking to upgrade to an SLR, make sure you research your cameras very thoroughly. SLR specifications are full of acronyms, so spend some time to learn what they all mean and why each item is beneficial. For most of us, a D40x or D80 will be plenty, but if you want to take tons of low-light action shots, the D300 might be better for you. Of course, this is assuming you want a Nikon body. Canon makes great bodies too, but I don’t know much about them.

UPDATE: Nikon also introduced a bunch of new lenses today.