1. It’s primarily a content delivery tool…

A lot of people seem to be having trouble imagining themselves getting work done on an iPad. But they’re forgetting it’s more or less a content delivery tool for consuming content, not producing it. You’ll still be able to equip an iPad with some great productivity apps for doing serious work if you have to, but the iPad shines at delivering content. The iPad’s a quick and easy way to view your photos, watch video, read publications or surf the web. Imagine trying to do all those things on a clumsy little netbook :S …and yet netbooks still sell like hotcakes.

2. The trendsetters can’t put 2 and 2 together…

Apple manufactures a lot of stylish, highly functional products. A lot of people feel like they’re buying into that sense of style when they purchase an Apple product. But the lukewarm response has a lot of people questioning how trendy the iPad’s going to be when it hits store shelves… what’s the point of buying an Apple product that’s not at least hip or trendy right? Easy there Tiger, before you get ahead of yourself about deciding whether or not its going to be popular, lets not forget the iPad’s nestled right between some of Apple’s most popular/ best selling products; the 13-inch MacBook(Pro) and the iPhone. For a lot of people, the iPad represents some of the best features from both worlds. Considering how well those two other products sell, it’s hard to imagine why the iPad won’t.

3. Freedom from contracts…

More than anything, I want to be able to take the internet with me wherever I go. Some days I want an iPhone and mobile internet so badly it hurts. The only thing holding me back is the thought of becoming tangled up in a long term/ expensive contract. Even usb internet sticks require cumbersome contracts that worry me about penalties for going over data limits. Which is where the iPad’s implementation really impressed me… hassle free “pay-as-you-go” 3G connectivity. Going on a road trip for a couple of weeks, but can’t be bothered with long term data plans or hotel wi-fi? No prob, just pay about $30 for 30 days of unlimited data while you’re away. I’m personally looking forward to being able to rent movies through my iTunes account the next time I bike up to the B&B for the weekend.

4. It makes the Amazon Kindle look like a kids toy…

’nuff said.

Granted, competitive markets aren’t perfect. Every now and they they need a little intervention to set them in the right direction – like government policy for instance. Competitive markets can create a lot of “externalities” (an economics term for repercussions) which can be positive or negative. For example, lets say some outside contractors are brought into your city to build a large plant facility. Third parties like hotels or restaurants appreciate the business the contractors bring them, and so the building of the facility contributes to the local economy (an external benefit). On the other hand, if the completed facility happens to burn fossil fuels, it creates toxic emissions that we all have to deal with (external costs).

Up until the introduction of carbon credit trading markets, companies producing toxic emissions could profit at the expense of the environment. They rake in “X” amount of dollars and spew out “Y” amount of emissions. The problem is, little to no amount of “X” goes towards reducing or cleaning up “Y”. Companies could make their money using “dirtier” technology, and we’re all left with the consequences.

By introducing carbon credit trading markets, governments can help compensate for these negative externalities and encourage a little healthy competition. It forces companies to purchase credits for the emissions they produce, leaving them with two main choices; they can either continue paying out large sums of money to obtain carbon credits, or… change & adapt by becoming more efficient and less harmful to the environment.

Competitive companies will reduce their emissions by investing in greener technology as well as innovation, and as a result won’t need to purchase as many credits. Dirtier companies face the increased costs of paying for their higher emissions and gradually loose out due to their decline in competitiveness. Essentially, companies who would otherwise be polluting, are forced to become more efficient (greener) in order to reduce their costs and remain competitive. In some instances, companies who create fewer emissions can even sell the credits they don’t use to further fund innovation and acquire even more green technology.

So if carbon credit trading markets are so great for the environment, how come they’re so highly contested? Ironically, it boils down to remaining competitive with other providers. Particularly companies in other economies who may not be subject to such programs nor the subsequent hit to their bottom line. Not to mention, If a company’s initially forced to pay out a substantial sum of money purchasing credits, on top of investing in cleaner technologies, they’re probably going to end up charging the consumer a little more to cover their costs too. While companies adjust to the new standards, energy prices rise, the economy slows down, and consumers begin shopping elsewhere for the cheapest deal. Unfortunately, there aren’t many politicians who want to be responsible for slowing down the economy. And who really wants pay more for their energy?

That’s why it’s so important for us to see past the relatively short-term costs, and look towards the long-run benefits of becoming greener. I’ll phrase that last sentence a little differently because its an important one… Biting the bullet now, equates to a greener future down the road for you and your children.

Asking companies to bite the bullet on their own is a lot like trying nudge a large elephant – you may be familiar with Newton’s first law of motion: “A body at rest stays at rest, and a body in motion stays in motion, unless it is acted on by an external force”. What I’m trying to say is, emission generating companies are going to keep on doing what they do unless an outside force gives them reason enough to change, and a little government imposed competition (via carbon credits trading) will do just the trick. It will encourage players within industry to invest in greener, more efficient technology in order to remain competitive.

Competitive market-forces in action… talk to the “invisible hand” Microsoft

If I ever feel like I’m paying more than I should for something or a product isn’t good enough, I’m quite often surprised at how a competitive economy corrects the situation, because someone out there wants my business. To economists, this is really just Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” taking effect, which is a metaphor used to to describe the self-regulating nature of markets. This invisible hand as it were, is continuously shaping the world around you and it can be fun to watch it take effect.

For years, I wanted to purchase a Microsoft wireless adapter for my xBox 360 so I could keep it in my room and be able to play online. I’d been running a long unsightly LAN cable through my house, ironically from our wireless router to the gaming console. I held off on equipping my console with Microsoft’s wireless adapter because I felt their product was far too expensive. Its price has been fixed firmly at $99 for years and doesn’t appear to be budging. I took issue with this because similar technology found in wireless cards for laptops (which serve virtually the same function) sell for considerably less. Perhaps Microsoft feels they have a monopoly in the market for xBox wireless adapters.

Frustrated by this, consumers ended up finding a way to connect their xbox to their laptop, effectively using the laptop itself as a wireless adapter. Seeing as how I keep my laptop in the same room next to my xBox, all I have to do is run a small three foot cable from my laptop to the console. If Microsoft sold their adapter at a more reasonable price in line with similar technology (laptop wireless cards at less than half the price!), I would have been inclined to buy one from them long ago. And so would a lot of other people too. But the market corrected the problem and found another way. Talk to the invisible hand Microsoft. In the process, I saved $99 because my laptop already had a built in wireless card, and if it hadn’t, anyone could buy one for less than half of what Microsoft’s adapter retails for.

I suppose you could say I’ve created another externality; using my laptop as an adapter comes at the expense of increased power usage. But the fact remains, Microsoft lost a sale, which could be detrimental to a less fortunate company. Its an important lesson for businesses out there; you could sell an absolutely wonderful product or service, but if its not priced competitively, potential customers are almost sure to go elswhere. And besides, I love blogging on my laptop between rounds of Halo.

I can think of lots of other areas where competition has brought us better goods and services… safer cars, declining cell phone rates, faster more efficient computers, and now a growing number of environmentally friendly products & services.

In any event, you could say innovation springs from the clash of competition… much the same way wit springs from the clash of opinion. Which is precisely why competitive markets and economies will continue to be key attributes among the world’s leading nations, and continue to reward the most innovative business among them.

About a year ago at WWDC ’08 (Apple’s annual World Wide Developers Conference) they announced something special; they were working on the next version of their operating system, called “Snow Leopard”. Without being specific, they briefly mentioned some of the new technologies they were developing which would tap into the power of the GPU (graphics processing unit), greatly enhancing Snow Leopard’s performance. Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs said it would be out in about a year (*wink* the upcoming WWDC ’09), and the company’s been tight lipped about it ever since.

Now I know what you’re thinking – just about every technology company out there says they’re going to deliver increases in performance. But I’ll get to what makes this announcement particularly important in just a moment.

Many computers contain both a CPU (central processing unit) running the vast majority of their operations, as well as a GPU inside a graphics card which accelerates anything graphics related. The CPU contains 1, 2, 4, and sometimes 8 cores capable of running several applications at once. Your GPU on the other hand, has dozens, if not hundreds of cores! The problem is, unless you’re doing something like playing a video game, all those GPU cores sit idle in your computer. Completely untapped processing power.

Granted, each GPU core isn’t as powerful as a main CPU core, but they don’t need to be for a lot your everyday computing tasks. Tasks that the CPU finds intensive, like editing/ rendering HD video for instance (which can take your computer hours to complete) are really just a lot of the same simple operations (algorithms) being performed over and over again, until the video is finished. This is where harnessing the potential of the GPU and its parallel processing abilities comes in handy. Instead of having 1 or 2 CPU cores running the same simple algorithm over and over again for hours (nearly dragging your computer to a halt), why not divide the task up and hand it over to the hundreds of GPU cores! The Mythbusters demonstrate an interesting way of showing how the CPU & GPU differ from one another in the embedded video below… its quite entertaining!

Nvidia, a GPU manufacturing company partnered with Apple, has already demonstrated the parallel computing capabilities of its graphics cards using an architecture called CUDA. Inexpensive Nvidia graphics cards coupled together, combining several hundreds, even thousands of cores, are able to reach near supercomputer performance in a single desktop unit. Researchers using Nvidia’s CUDA technology have reported being able to do things that used to take them several days, in just a matter of hours!

You wouldn’t normally find more than one or two graphics cards in today’s average computer, but the added performance of a few hundred cores from an off-the-shelf card should still offer substantial performance gains. Apple’s Snow Leopard is touting two new built in technologies, “Grand Central” and “OpenCL” which will utilize the Nvidia GPU’s inside Macs for general level computing, much the same way CUDA does. Who knew the parallel processing technology driving video games would some day surpass giants like Intel.

For Mac users, it’s going to offer a huge leap in performance. As someone who edits a lot of HD video, I can’t wait to be able to render videos in minutes rather than hours. When Snow Leopard finally hits the store shelves (which could still be a couple of months away), I think we’ll see Macs drawing in Windows PC users at an increased rate, or anyone for that matter who’s looking for more computing performance.

The keynote address kicks off WWDC ’09 next week on Monday, June 8th, where many expect to hear specific announcements about Snow Leopard, as well as the next iPhone & iPod Touch.

However, as I learned more about how to run a “successful” blog while building my first one (Tremblant360.com), it became increasingly apparent how difficult it was going to be running 7… especially when you consider how important it is to keep your site up to date with lots of fresh new content in order to develop a decent readership. I was having a difficult time deciding how much effort I wanted to put into blogging, and which ideas had the greatest potential. Ideally, I think it would be fantastic if I could quit my day job and become a full time blogger, writing about the things I really enjoy. At the same time, I want to have enough time to actually do the things I enjoy – that is, I don’t want to spend all my free time away from my day job writing about the things I used to enjoy doing outside.

So, feeling a little discouraged about being able to meet my goals, I put developing the other blogs off for a while. Until I realized how stupid that was, and how important it is to get the ball rolling if you ever want to meet your goals. As it turns out, there was a silver lining too, because it formed the basis for this blog, ChrisProuse.com, as a place to share my experiences along the road towards achieving my goals. I hope to touch on a variety of useful subjects, and from time to time, I’ll also post content relevant to the sites I’m building here in this blog, until those topics have a place of their own.

So if you’re having trouble finding where to begin your new site, blog, or idea… set some goals and make a conscious decision to start working towards them. Here we go!