After doing a bit of investigation, I discovered that the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) website. They have a Wind Energy Fast Facts (.pdf) document that states:

• U.S. wind energy potential: Estimated at 10,777 billion kWh annually--more than twice the electricity generated in the U.S. today
• Industry growth rate, U.S.: 29% average over last five years (year-end 2002 - 2007).
• Four out of the top five wind farms operating in the United States are located in Texas (Horse Hollow, Sweetwater, Capricorn Ridge and Buffalo Gap
• Operating characteristics of a wind turbine: A wind turbine runs 60% to 80% of the time, and operates at its full rated power output level 10% of the time. On an average day, it generates 30% to 35% of what it would generate if it ran at full power all the time.

According to the Global Wind Energy Council, the countries with the highest total installed capacity are Germany, the United states, Spain, India, China and Denmark. Wikipedia has a list of wind farms operating or under construction. It's amazing to me that we still live in an era where the vast majority of the world's power is produced by fossil fuels. Hopefully the collective brain power of green technology companies can begin to erode that dependency.

1. Microsoft Vista. Sadly, I have not met a single person that is happy with Vista. There was a time when I had very high hopes for Vista. As far back as 2003, Microsoft demonstrated WinFS, a technology that would fundamentally change how information was indexed and accessed. This technology never wound up shipping with Vista as was true of other major components that Microsoft had been talking about for years. Apple, if you know story, countered Microsoft by including an advanced search engine called Spotlight into the operating system.
   
2. Microsoft XBox 360. Yes, truth be told, the XBox 360 deserves a significant amount of credit for greasing the wheels and making it easy to switch. For years, one of the primary draws to Windows had been its success in attracting the top game developers in the world to its as gaming platform. Whether it was Castle Wolfenstein, Doom, Warcraft (original series if you can remember that far back), MechWarrior 2 or The Sims, if you wanted to game, Microsoft was far and away your best bet. Though originally rather cynical of gaming on the couch instead of at a desk, Microsoft has blown me away with the XBox 360 -- it's the greatest gaming platform ever created without question. And by doing so, they've essentially eliminated my dependence on a desktop operating system for my gaming entertainment.
   
3. Apple. In the past year, I've purchased two iPod Shuffles: one for myself and one for my wife. When I thought I had lost my Shuffle recently (for the second time), I decided to upgrade to an iPod Nano. It's an absolutely incredible piece of technology. While Apple has done a fairly good job porting iTunes to Windows, I still encounter glitches here and there when syncing files. The allure of hooking up iPod hardware to a Mac is difficult to ignore. Also, Apple's decision to extend the hardware capabilities of the iMac has really put it in direct competition with Dell's flagship desktop products like their XPS line. I was very close to buying my third Dell computer (an XPS 630) prior to my iMac awakening.
   
4. Media Management. It's truly shocking to me that Microsoft has not improved the user experience with Windows Media Player (WMP). Something about the design of WMP has always felt exceedingly video centric as opposed to library focused. Playing an .mp3 will force most of the screen to be taken over by an annoying visualization. To Microsoft's credit, I did recently download the Zune desktop software which is absolutely beautiful. It feels like a Rich Internet Application (RIA) with its fluid transitions and vivid color scheme. Unfortunately, it's an optional download and also has stability problems. In addition, the lack of basic photo management in Windows has been the source of tremendous grief.
   
5. Windows XP. While many claim that XP is vastly superior to Vista, I'm not sure that I agree with that. My current Dell XPS has suffered the typical Windows aging process that many of us have become accustomed to. Initially, Windows machines are blazingly fast but within a couple of months, once the registry begins to get mysteriously overloaded and random startup processes start firing at launch, the drive becomes exceedingly fragmented. Also, there feels like there is additional resource overhead in simply installing so many security patches. In my experience, typically within a year, an XP based machine will run at 20 to 30 percent of its original clean installation speed.
   
6. Most applications are now on the Mac. Nearly all of the applications I use are now available on the Mac such as Firefox, the Creative Suite (Dreamweaver, Flash, etc.), Office, Stellarium, AIM, Google Earth, etc. If the tools you use and depend on are portable, then it makes it even easier to make the switch.
   

Lately, I've been spending a fair amount of time working with our engineering team to get the Adobe AIR for Linux runtime and SDK alphas out the door. At long last, just a couple hours ago, we pushed the alphas onto our Adobe Labs website where developers can download and begin exploring this early technology. Though not feature complete, most of the features are working. The release notes provide additional details on what features are enabled, which are not, and known issues. There are still many bugs to fix at this point (it is an alpha), but we're releasing this to the public to get feedback from the community . We've also provided sample applications with source code to help people get started.

This announcement is exciting for many reasons including:

• A Flash developer, who built an AIR-based desktop application that originally targeted Mac or Windows, will likely be surprised to learn that the application now runs on Linux even though they probably never considered building a Linux-based application to begin with. This is core to the "write once, run everywhere" philosophy of Adobe AIR.
• An Ajax developer can now use a framework like YUI, Dojo, Ext, or MooTools to build Linux-based desktop applications.
• The barrier to entry is fairly minimal at this point. the AIR runtime and SDK are both free. The Flex framework is now open source. Flex Builder for Linux is currently free for download and can be used to build AIR applications, but a developer could use their favorite Linux IDE -- whether its Eclipse-based or vi/emacs.

In addition, today Adobe was also welcomed by the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux, as its newest member today which is also very exciting.

Long live Tux! Image courtesy of Ryan Stewart.

For the most part, I've tried to steer away from topics on this blog that related to my day job. The truth is, I require like that level of separation between work and hobby. However, today marks an important milestone on a project I've been working on: Adobe AIR 1.0 is now available for download. It's been the most challenging project I've ever worked on, but it's been an incredible experience working with such a talented, passionate group of people working on it.

Related Links:

• Adobe AIR Product Page
• RIA Website
• Download the Adobe AIR SDK
• Download Adobe AIR
• New York Times: Adobe Blurs Line Between PC and Web
• Adobe AIR showcase applications
• Adobe AIR Developer Center

I just noticed that several members of the Adaptive Path team including Brandon Schauer, Todd Wilkens, David Verba, and Peter Merholz are about to release a new book titled Subject to Change: creating great products and services for an uncertain world. It's been quite awhile since I've picked up an enticing book on customers/design/product development and so I'm eagerly anticipating its arrival. The team at Adaptive Path always seem way ahead of the curve when it comes to identifying patterns in product design. I'll share my thoughts on the book once it arrives from Amazon. The last book I read in this general category was Scott Berkun's The Myths of Innovation, a marvelous exploration around the history of innovation that I'd encourage any engineer or designer to read.

Last year I had the great pleasure of attending Adaptive Path's MX Conference in San Francisco. They are offering this event again this year and would encourage you to explore the event site to see if it might be of interest to you. It was the source of tremendous inspiration for me last year between the various sessions and networking with other attendees.

In the December 6th issue, The Economist published an article titled Reality, only better that explores the futuristic world of "augmented reality" (AR). AR is, in a sense, the opposite of virtual reality (VR). Whereas virtual reality requires an individual to view a computer generated landscape using a screen such as a monitor or special glasses, augmented reality involves superimposing digital imagery onto objects in the real world. As the article states, "For some things, it turns out, computer graphics can be much more effective when viewed not on screens, but superimposed on the real world."

The article details several examples of this is being applied today including locating veins for surgery. Though the article does not mention the relationship between holographic technologies and AR, these two seem to go hand in hand.

Not surprisingly, there is a Wikipedia article on augmented reality. For other interesting futuristic use cases, see the "future applications". One such application that stood is the following:

Virtual gadgetry becomes possible. Any physical device currently produced to assist in data-oriented tasks (such as the clock, radio, PC, arrival/departure board at an airport, stock ticker, PDA, PMP, informational posters/fliers/billboards, in-car navigation systems, etc. could be replaced by virtual devices that cost nothing to produce aside from the cost of writing the software. Examples might be a virtual wall clock, a to-do list for the day docked by your bed for you to look at first thing in the morning, etc.

While still certainly decades away, it seems likely that some future incarnation of an iPod like device might be nothing more than a virtual gadget powered by AR technology.

Software

• Adobe Fireworks. Fireworks is the most powerful vector image editor out there. There is no substitute. Back when I first started using it around version 1.0, I found it very rough around the edges when compared to the also 1.0 Adobe ImageReady (since folded into Photoshop). In those days, Fireworks and ImageReady centered their value around optimizing images for the web. Shaving an extra 5k here or 10k there of a JPEG or GIF would ensure those viewing your web content on a 28.8k modem had a decent experience. By Fireworks 2.0, it became very apparent that it was the definitive vector drawing tool for the web -- far surpassing even Flash and Freehand in terms of utility for web developers. Over the years, I've relied on it for creating mock-ups, specs, prototypes, websites, and diagrams. It's really only getting better with time as well. A little known fact is that Fireworks was used to create the logo for Firefox. Today, I use it to primarily create prototypes and specs -- particularly for AIR-based applications. The only thing it's missing is the gorgeous new work space that Flash and Photoshop introduced in CS3. However, my guess is that this will be addressed in CS4.
• FolderShare. This is an incredibly valuable P2P file/folder synchronization application that runs in the background. It's very dependable, secure, blazingly fast and lightweight. I've been using it for years and I still depend on it to get my work done. A few months back I urgently needed to share a private build with a person writing an article for the Adobe Developer Connection. Within minutes, I had a folder setup on my local machine that allowed us to securely transmit files back and forth. Interestingly, the development of FolderShare has been fairly dormant since Microsoft bought it, but fortunately the feature set is rich enough. It's also available on the Mac.
• Aptana. When it comes to free IDE tools for building Ajax-based applications, nothing comes close to Aptana. The icing on the cake would be if they offered advanced PHP support. That said, the fantastic support for Ajax frameworks keeps me more than happy.
• Mozilla Firefox. I've been a loyal Firefox user since somewhere around version .1. During the past year, I've been increasingly disappointed with how it manages memory. That said, there are so many great plugins for Firefox I cannot imagine switching anytime soon. For instance, Google Browser Sync and Joe Hewitt's indispensable Firebug. I'm also a fan of Yahoo's YSlow extension which helps evaluate bandwidth inefficiencies in your code. Also, I depend on the parameterized keyword capabilities. If I need to perform a quick search on Wikipedia, I simply type wiki PHP in the URL field.
• Google RSS Reader. Google Reader is basically my dashboard to events of the world. I use it daily to track particular subjects using custom Google search RSS feeds, competitors, emerging market news, photos from my friends' Flickr feeds, and so on. That said, it's a double-edged sword because there's simply too many interesting things happening in the world. I can easily spend a couple of hours trying to catch-up on feeds instead of doing something more productive. In my industry, it's critical that one have the latest information -- industry news is happening 24 hours a day and last weeks' news is often ancient history.
• Trillian. Like Firefox, I've been using Trillian since it was in an early beta release many years ago. I have mixed feelings about Trillian -- most of the functionality I use was available in the early versions and occasionally I find it more buggy than it should be given its maturity. Since some of my contacts use Yahoo and others AOL for IM, Trillian helps me make sure I'm available to both without having to log into a separate system.
• Adobe Flex Builder 3 Beta. Definitely the tool of choice if you're building Flex-based AIR applications. Flex Builder 3 also introduces support for a profiler revealing tips on memory allocation thereby allowing you to tune your Flex/AIR applications.
• Adobe AIR. Yes, even if I didn't work on the product, I'd still be using AIR-based applications like Finetune Desktop or BuzzWord <grin>.
• Launchy. While not nearly as powerful as QuickSilver for the Mac, Launchy does provide almost instantaneous access to your applications. It offers advanced functionality such as piping commands together,. It's open source and a must if you're a Windows user though it's also available on Mac and Linux (hooray for cross platform software!).
  
• Adobe Acrobat. Whether I'm providing feedback to the marketing team on early drafts of messaging material or submitting my expense report, Acrobat plays a key role in my PDF workflows. The most recent version features some improvements like a new interface and faster performance.
• Dreamweaver. I often use Dreamweaver to write my blog posts before posting them to Movable Type or updating the websites that I maintain. This past year, I've done very little original website design on the side. If I need to upload a file to share with someone, I also tend to use Dreamweaver as my FTP client -- though I also have an older version of CuteFTP I purchased from several years back.
• Movable Type. Though technically I don't use this blogging software for work purposes, I do use it to maintain my personal blog. I upgraded to 4.0 this year and have been pleased with the improvements.
• MediaWiki and Confluence. To make it as easy as possible to access notes and important information, I run a personal copy of MediaWiki -- the same web software that powers Wikipedia. This has proven to be a major productivity booster since I can usually find what I need within a few seconds (again using Firefox keyword shortcuts). Confluence
• X1 Desktop Search. I have a major love/hate relationship with this desktop search software that indexes all of your emails and files. A few years back, when I first started using this software, it worked flawlessly. Now, however, it runs slower than molasses and frequently crashes. In fact, it's no longer even indexing my email due to several bugs. I've played with al of the settings -- reducing the frequency at which it indexes -- but I believe my Outlook files may be pushing it over the edge. However, I really do think the software has declined in quality which is very unfortunate especially since Yahoo used to give it away for free. Google Desktop Search is a little too clunky and the Microsoft one is better but seems to run slowly though it may be time to give it a second look.
• Microsoft Outlook. I don't have a choice. For better or for worst, this is the tool that I depend on for setting up meetings, ripping through emails, and managing tasks. If there is one tool I'd like to replace, it's this one. However, my company has standardized on it and so it's open about 90 percent of the time on my work machine.
• Microsoft Excel, Word and PowerPoint. Again, not much of a choice here. I like Word's revisioning feature and the data analysis features of Excel. However, in general, I feel like all three of these products of stagnated in terms of offering new capabilities.

• LinkedIn. The first time I used LinkedIn, I knew that it was destined to change the rules of business relationships. For years, I had collected business cards only to be disappointed by the fact that they became out of date as individuals moved between companies. If I met an interesting contact, I always wanted to know more about that person. So while LinkedIn didn't kill the business card (or resume), it helped create a workflow where it suddenly became more useful. When possible, I attempt to add people I meet to LinkedIn. Quite frequently, old contacts will follow-up with me or vice versa. I no longer have to track people when they move between companies as LinkedIn handles that for me. I've also used it to find interesting people and perform background checks on candidates.
• Adobe Acrobat Connect. Formerly known as Breeze, Acrobat Connect allows you to setup online meetings with coworkers and business partners. There are many similar types of software out there, but I like it the best because it's fast, cross platform (Mac and Win) and has advanced features such as polls and URL based meeting rooms. Disclaimer: Price isn't a consideration for me since this is free to me through my company. .
• Wikipedia. Need to know some obscure detail about h.264 or information on a competitor? Wikipedia to the rescue. It seems to only be getting more valuable with time. While I'd never make a business critical decision, I find it significantly more reliable than other forms of web research.

There are a variety of other "recreational" tools that are not required by my job including:

• Stellarium. A free open source planetarium for your computer available on Mac, Windows and Linux.
• Google Earth. Endlessly interesting, I use it to check out trails or Geocaching sites.
• Geocaching.com - Bottomless source of real-world puzzles that force you to beat your feet.
• PHP/MySQL/Ubuntu - PHP/MySQL are used to power this website as well as other web side projects I've created. I'm hopeful that Ubuntu may become my primary desktop environment, but today I run it as a virtual machine.
• Replay Media Catcher. Have a favorite online radio station that you want to make sure to record? This is the best tool I've come across for capturing mp3 streams -- even though embedded within Flash movies.
• iTunes. Now on version 7, I have to admit that this software really hit its sweet spot, at least for me, around version 2.0. My needs tend to be pretty simple when it comes listening to music and features like smart playlists and burning to MP3 CD's keep me happy.
• Mozy. A super cheap online back-up service. Although I wish the UI was a bit richer for rolling back to earlier version, it's hard to beat the price.

Back in my developer days, I used to use more developer tools like Perforce, Visual Studio.NET and CodeWarrior. These days, I tend to have them installed (except CodeWarrior), but rarely use them much due to the scope of my current job.

Celebrity endorsements have been a popular technique to market new products since the dawn of man (see "testimonials"). That said, credit to the marketing team at Tesla Motors for enlisting Michael "Flea" Balzary of the Red Hot Chili Peppers to author a guest blog post. Between the amateurish photograph of Flea greeting his new car and the genuine, seemingly unedited writing style of the post itself, I think this is the perfect approach for marketing this beautiful new product. Though I'm not even a fan of Flea or the Red Hot Chili Peppers, there's just something absolutely rockstar about a a rockstar talking about a zero emission vehicle like this. One can't help but share in his exhilaration over the purchase of his new car stemming not only from the design of the vehicle, but the fact that it's 100% electric. Flea says that his purchase of the Tesla was prompted by watching the film Who Killed the Electric Car?.

Flea writes about his first experience with the vehicle:

I get into it and pull away from the curb......dead silence wow!!!!.... man it was unbelievable. it drove like nothing i have ever been in before, made my porsche feel like a golf cart! It took off like a rocket ship, handled so sensitively, it was just amazing and fun and thrilling. I am so happy i went with my gut and bought that car. Yeah it is a long wait, but man, the thing is awesome. The silence makes ya feel like you are floating, and it just rocks, it was the funnest car, i have ever been in, with the possible exception of Hillel Slovak's Datsun B210 in 1979, he was the only guy i knew who had a car, and we listened to lot of zeppelin in there....

On November 6th, Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues announced the discovery of a start system that has at least five extrasolar planets. While most extrasolar planets are detected using the Doppler effect, in this case, due to the number of planets and complexity of intermixing wavelengths of light, a technique known as Fourier analysis was applied to isolate the individual planets. Incidentally, I found an excellent wiki article titled List of stars with confirmed extrasolar planets tonight that is quite detailed. The discovery of the first extrasolar planet called 51 Pegasi b ("Bellerophon") was announced in 1992, and, since that time, there are 36 extrasolar planets of which the true mass is possible to estimate and 216 candidates of which their true masses are unknown. Note: the photo in this entry is obviously of the Milky Way and not the star system. I was just looking for a beautiful image to spice up this post. At this point in time, we do not have imaging technology powerful enough to see planets with visible light.

Since I'm a bit of an astronomy kick tonight, I'll mention that it's worthwhile to explore the PBS website mini-site Seeing in the Dark. Timothy Ferris, author of the book of the same title and writer/producer/narrator of a recent film broadcast on PBS, has created a variety of great tools and videos for those interested in astronomy. The book, by the way, is excellent and highly recommended. I had the pleasure of purchasing a signed copy at a lecture Ferris gave at the Silicon Astronomy Valley Lecture Series back in 2003. For those interested and living in the San Francisco Bay Area, the lecture series is still taking place. This Tuesday, November 13th, Jeff Moore of NASA's Ames Research Center will give a non-technical, illustrated talk on "New Horizons at Jupiter (and some Saturn News)" that sounds quite interesting.

Other things you can do to explore astronomy:

• Listen to Seth Shostak's (SETI) brilliant "Are We Alone" radio show
• Install Stellarium, an extremely useful and open source (free) astronomy application
• Watch NASA TV when shuttle launches and landings happen
• Join and support SETI
• Study up on the active NASA missions
• Compete for the Lunar X Prize
• Geek out and buy a Drake equation T-shirt

In his TED session, Wright cites many on interests such as astronomy, science fiction and astrobiology as having a major influence on the development of the game. Since I share many of these similar interests, I'm clearly looking very forward to this game and it might ultimately lead to an upgrade of my home computer. It's funny how interesting games have always played a catalyst in my decision to upgrade my computer. I can tell you exactly when the last time I upgraded my computer -- it coincided with the release of Half Life 2.

Be sure to check out this video in which Wright, soon to be awarded a Fellow of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) this month, comments:

Basically the reason is that I make toys like this is because I think that if there's one difference I can possibly make in the world, that I would choose to make, it's that I would like to give people a little bit better calibration on long-term thinking because I think that most of the problems world is faced with now is the result of short term thinking and the fact that it's so hard for us to think fifty years, one hundred, years one thousand years out.

Two weeks back I was in Chicago for MAX North America where we announced Beta 2 of Adobe AIR. This week I'm in Barcelona attending the Adobe MAX 2007 conference where I'm enjoying the chance to meet with various Adobe customers from through out the region. Though this is almost entirely a work trip, I did have the chance to enjoy some amazing seafood paella, see some of the Roman ruins and get lost in Salvador Dali's imagination. The image to the right is Dali's last painting from 1982 titled "Warrior".

... But the key is just realizing the world that your business partners come from, whether they're looking through a lens of finance or of operations or management, and being able to understand the issues they are dealing with. Having empathy with the issues that they come to the table with and actually being able to resonate with those by having read similar topics, having an appreciation for what their needs are and listening to them just as you would listen to a customer when you go out to do your research can really change how you work together.

If you use Adobe Flash CS3, you can now create AIR applications using a new beta extension available on Adobe Labs.

Today's San Francisco Chronicle featured a fascinating story on several designs for the proposed Transbay Terminal. Soaring 1,225 feet, the proposed tower will replace the Transamerica Pyramid as the tallest building in San Francisco and will likely influence architecture in the city for the next 30 years. The concept designs range from awe-inspiring (see Skidmore Owings and Merrill's design ) to rather soulless (see Rogers Stirk Harbour's design) -- at least, in my view.