This computer replaced a five year-old Mac Pro; the very first tower Mac that Apple shipped with Intel CPUs.

In a nut, the Mac Pro had been a trusty computer, and actually still works splendidly. The only trouble is that it takes up a bunch of floor space, guzzles electricity, and – most painfully, during a NYC summer – kicks off a ton of heat. I was looking to lower all three profiles.

As part of my intention to use less electricity, I also picked up a Digital POWERCENTER 650G “GreenPower” surge protector, by Monster. It looks like this:

For anyone unfamiliar with Monster’s “GreenPower” products, they describe the line as follows:

Monster GreenPower™ is a revolutionary new way to automatically reduce energy waste and save you money. Simply plug your computer into the GreenPower Control socket. When it’s turned off or goes to sleep, the other GreenPower sockets switch off, automatically eliminating energy wasted by peripherals, like your monitor and scanner, when you’re not using them. When your computer turns back on, the GreenPower sockets automatically power up again.

The gist is that the surge protector has one “master” socket (labeled above as “computer”), into which you’re meant to plug the “primary device”, and a number of “subordinate” sockets (for the various accessories attached to the computer), which only get juice when the device on the “master” socket is consuming 17 Watts or more of power. The surge protector also has a single “independent” socket (labeled “modem” in the photo above), into which you can plug a device that isn’t part of the “master / subordinate” equation.

So, following the direction suggested by the labeling, I plugged the Mac Mini into the “master” socket, and plugged the monitor, printer, speakers, and USB hub into the “subordinate” sockets. The “independent” socket remained unused.

Then I turned the computer on. The “subordinate” devices remained off for a few seconds. But once the startup process was in full swing, the monitor came to life, I heard the printer begin to do its “wakeup dance”, and the speakers popped as power flowed to them!

Then the login screen came up, and the monitor, et al lost power.

I figured that I just needed to get past the login and start using the computer, and that this would keep everything juiced up. So I typed my password and hit the ENTER key. Immediately the monitor came back to life, the printer did it’s initialization dance, and the speakers popped to life again, while the Finder launched, my “startup items” got spawned, and Lion restored my application state from before I had shut the computer down in order to replace the old surge protector.

As I reached to the trackpad, however, the monitor and the rest of the devices plugged into the “subordinate” sockets all shut off again; the Mini simply did not consistently draw enough power to meet the 17 Watt minimum required from the “master” socket in order to activate its subordinates.

Remember when I mentioned that i5 Intel CPU back at the top? Apparently they are particularly energy efficient.

No wonder Apple put ‘em in the Air.

I started to wonder, however, if I’d just bought some new but utterly useless thing, destined to merely collect dust.

So I plugged the monitor into the still-free “independent” socket, and managed to safely shut the computer down again. While was clear to me that the Mini couldn’t be the device plugged into the “master” socket, it simply wasn’t safe to plug it into the “subordinate” sockets. So it had to take the “independent” socket, while some other device was to be used to drive the “master” socket.

At first, I tried plugging the monitor into the “master”. It seemed like a reasonable selection, given that putting the computer to sleep would cut the video signal, hence putting the monitor into standby mode.

Switching it on, I learn the monitor had no trouble driving the master socket. At all.

But now I had two devices (the Mini and the Monitor) which would be sipping power 24 hours a day, even in standby mode. My savings were diminishing. I also keep a clamp light next to my desk, which I always turn on when I’m using the computer. I’ve presently got a 60W bulb in it; which uses far more than the 17W minimum required to drive the “subordinate” accessories. And it draws ZERO Watts when switched off.

And so I’d found the winner.

So, in the end, the device powering setup on the surge protector looks like this:

There is also no longer a Mac Pro on the floor, claiming 6″ of space between the wall and my desk; and the corner remains much cooler, letting me run the AC at lower levels.

The pic in which I’m smoking a Davidoff cigar is the one Google seems to consider my profile photo, as it’s the one I see in all the settings management screens, and yet that silly cactus shows up all throughout my activity streams.

If anyone has any sort of clue on this one, please do advise.

I’m noticing a significant difference in the angle of elevation that the Android adoption curve is showing, amongst the different carriers. Specifically, I’m looking at how it’s showing the flattest rate of growth on AT&T, the only carrier on that list that’s also offering the iPhone.

Clark writes [emphasis mine]:

Email has grown gnarly in the decades past, as we’ve started receiving dozens or hundreds of spam and bacn messages a day. I have multiple server side rules and filters just to keep it in check, and an inbox policy of flagging anything I care about before running a slightly-modified version of John Gruber’s Inbox Sweeper to keep things tidy.

Reply-all gaffes, top-posting etiquette, plaintext versus HTML, attachment limits, inbox limits… everybody hits them. By comparison the simplicity and clarity of Facebook mail is impressive. A Facebook message requires (privacy controls pending) a symmetrically-acknowledged relationship between parties, and on top of that spam-murdering convenience it’s self-threading, low friction, and lightweight.

In a nutshell, Facebook is better than email unless you’re some kind of email expert. And for email’s successor to support all the expert features of email, none of its myriad problems would be solved.

It’s been a recurring theme this week, but the Pro users of yesteryear’s products, the people with the biggest investment in old technologies, are not the people who should be calling the shots in the design of their successors. These are the people who complain that an iPad can’t have third party software installed from anywhere but the App Store, ignoring the massive convenience and security gains the policy affords average users. These are the people who are still using slotted screwdrivers and Edison light fixtures and manual transmission cars.

I would specifically add that I find Clark’s argument that Facebook messaging improves upon e-mail only within the context of social communication; I find their messaging model incapable of replacing e-mail as a tool for work (email’s ability to run filters and rules, organize, and archive information comes a big workflow helper for email).

That having been said, however, maybe e-mail as a personal communications tool is for power users now (or, perhaps more aptly, once again).

My parting thought here isn’t to close your e-mail accounts and move to Facebook. Rather that – as we enter a new year, reminding ourselves to take fresh perspectives – is that it’s terribly easy to over-value past investments in our efforts build today what will stand tomorrow.

[Via Daring Fireball].

1. Achieve maximum supply volume,
2. Place large enough bulk orders to minimize its component costs, and
3. Sap the global 10″ LCD market of supply so that their competitors in the tablet market are forced into constrained supply situations, preventing them from competing with Apple at the iPad’s price points.

On a personal note, I’d be bummed to be right on this one; while FaceTime is quite spiffy, that Retina Display really is the killer iPhone 4 feature for me.

While iPhone OS 4.0 — due out this summer — will finally deliver the long-requested ability to allow users to listen to their Pandora or Last.fm radio streams in the “background” by virtue of its new “multi-tasking” capabilities, the solution I’ve stumbled upon works (in slight variations) today with any device running iPhone OS 3.x.

Although this little trick won’t work with Pandora, since you must be using a Pandora client to stream their music, you can use it with any radio station which exposes its MP3 or AAC music stream via a multimedia playlist file URL (which will typically end in .pls); basically any radio station you’ll find on Live 365, Soma FM, and more.

I’m a fan of Soma FM’s Secret Agent radio station, so we’ll use that for our example; feel free to try this out for any station you like.

The process is super easy, but slightly different between the handheld iPhone OS devices (eg, iPhone and iPod Touch) and iPads (for which it’s actually a bit spiffier), so I’ll take you through the steps for doing it on each one.

iPhone / iPod Touch

Launch Mobile Safari, and head to the following URL:

http://somafm.com/secretagent48.pls

You’ll see the following:

Safari fetches the PLS file URL

Once the playlist file is loaded, Safari will find the URL of the music stream, and start playing the music, and you’ll see this:

Safari has started playing the audio stream

Now — click the Home button and, say, check in on your email. Note that the music continues to play.

Isn’t that fantastic?

Just one caveat, though: you won’t be able to browse other websites in Safari until you click the “Done” button (top left), which — as you might expect — causes the music to stop playing.

One workaround is to use an alternative browser, like iCab, Opera Mini, or any of a number of other web browsers (some paid, some free) available in the App Store.

iPad

Things get a little cooler on the iPad. The steps to get you listening to the music stream are the same, but we can do a few more things once the music starts playing on the iPad.

Once the music starts to play, you’ll see this:

Safari playing the audio stream

Note one key difference to note, however: unlike the iPhone’s Mobile Safari app, the iPad’s Mobile Safari continues to show you the browser chrome up top.

For starters, this means that you may continue browsing other websites in Safari on the iPad by simply tapping the tabs icon at the top:

Change tabs or create new ones.

What’s more you can actually create a bookmark for the radio station, so you can quickly listen any time:

Create bookmarks for your favorite stations

But — and this is where I started to get a little verklempt — it gets just slightly more fantastic: you can bookmark it to your Home Screen.

Now I can fire up Secret Agent FM from my Home Screen, just like Pandora or Last.fm.

Looks like the folks at Soma FM went the extra mile to specify a Home Screen icon for their website. Your mileage will vary with the availability of your favorite station’s dedicated icon for your Home Screen, however, depending on the site publisher.

Meanwhile, go forth and enjoy streaming some music while you’re sending those texts or reading the Times.

So one of the thoughts that naturally occurred to me is that there’s at least some small chance that Cylon.local won’t be coming back; perhaps the resurrection ship was simply too far away when the dreadful moment arrived.

I’d just bought a Mac Mini for my parents this past Christmas, so I already know the value proposition of replacing it with the latest model.

But, while I’m entertaining the notion of replacement hardware, it occurs to me that Dell rolled out a competitor a few months ago, called the Inspiron Zino HD. Now don’t get me wrong: I’m quite happy with the Mini’s performance over the last four years, and I’d be happy to keep it for as long as it’ll stick around with me, but any sensible man would think to check in on his options.

So I Google mac mini dell and learn the product’s name. Another query with its name serves up a link that takes me directly to the Zino’s product page on Dell’s website.

I’m checking out the product description, the product porn (the photos gallery), the product video, and their convincingly-constructed selling points — everything’s looking pretty swell. “Not bad-looking,” I find myself thinking, “It’s got native support for HDMI… it’ll run Boxee and iTunes… what’s it cost?”

And then it hits me like a brick between the eyes:

There’s no way to buy this computer from this page. While many manufacturers have individual “catalog” and “shop” pages for any given product, it’s astounding just what a pain it is to actually get from the Zino’s “catalog” page, to its “shop” page in Dell’s online store — there wasn’t a single link on that page to take me straight to a purchase opportunity.

Here’s a screenshot of the full page, so you can hunt around for yourself:

Salesmanship fail

And what makes this perhaps most embarrassing of all is the fact that Dell’s primary sales model has been direct-to-consumer, from the day they opened their doors for business.

The forum is a series of round table panel discussions, featuring executives from the private sector (CEOs, CTOs, etc), as well as government officials brainstorming, sharing their experiences, and making recommendations.

One of my favorite parts comes at 0:56:25:

If the inefficiency isn’t captured and measured, and staring you in the face, it isn’t gonna be tackled as a project in the first place… If the government takes on a culture of streamlining, and attacking inefficiency, and looking for resource maximization, you’re going to start looking introspectively and measuring things that will — for the first time — put a line of sight on the inefficiency.

Watching all of these isn’t exactly an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride, to be sure, but think about how many times you or I have even had the opportunity to be a “fly on the wall” during official government discourse. The very idea that this forum was live-streamed and published for free public access is a fantastic example of the sorts of operational practices that I deeply hope to see continue growing in practice, particularly even after the present Administration has completed its term in Washington.

And only now, at the end of December 2009, Firefox 3.5 — the latest release of the software open sourced twelve years ago — has at long last eked out ahead of any single version of rival Internet Explorer.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Version Market Share

It’s been a long road, Mozilla; congratulations on this hard-earned milestone.

• The Open Government Directive (download as pdf, txt, doc or view on Slideshare)
• The Open Government Progress Report to the American People (download as pdf or view on Slideshare)

The post also includes a video of the live online chat in which federal CIO Vivek Kundra and federal CTO Aneesh Chopra announce the Open Government Plan, during which they fielded some questions in realtime from Facebook and Twitter.

Speaking of the value proposition of the initiative, Chopra explains:

So it’s having the conversation with each of our leaders to find out what are the big objectives that they wish to tackle on behalf of the President’s agenda, and in support of the American people. And how can the principles of Open Government, and in particular the datasets, allow others in the ecosystem to support — and advance on — those activities. We just can’t afford to have a federal government solution for every issue. By relying on the ingenuity of the American people we can advance these policy priorities in new and more creative ways.

I also particularly appreciate their speaking to an attempt to raise the quality of published data, particularly after it was discovered that some folks had provided shoddy data to Recovery.gov earlier this year.