I certainly would not have predicted 15 years ago that Apple would have returned to such glory. Apple’s iPhone Builds Huge Lead in Customer Satisfaction - Seeking Alpha – they are building a huge lead in the cellphone space (thanks for the article Cam). Rich points out their financials are awesome, paced by mac sales, and they have a huge opportunity still ahead of them.

I had an Apple ][ a million years ago, I bought a Mac the first day they were on the market, it is great to see them do so well.

Meanwhile I am sorry as hell that I got sucked into Vista and particularly Vista 64 – here is a typical tale of woe – installing most software just doesn’t work.

And to refute Spurrier, how do we really know the SEC is so great? There is so little inter-conference data.

* “Shibumi”:amazon by Trevanian. The first Trevanian I’ve read, a lot of fun. OK the characters are a caricatures but still a fun romp. * “A flag for sunrise”:amazon by Robert Stone. A bunch of Americans stumble around like bulls in a china shop in a fictional central American country during the cold war. They demonstrate just how ineffectual an intrusive foreign policy can be. It is difficult to navigate in and have impact on a culture in which you have no basis. * “The lessons of history”:amazon by Will and Ariel Durant. This is a slim tome, hard to find. Recommended to me by my historian partner Jon Roberts, it is an excellent set of essays on the broad sweep of history and what it all means. A key observation made is this: while we have made all kinds of gaudy technological progress, human nature has not changed, and our societies and governments and current events look a lot like they have looked for the past 4000 years. Of course the particular mixture is always new but the broad sweep of events hasn’t changed much. Nationalism, religious fervor, rich and poor, class strife – none of this is new or surprising. * “Promise Me”:amazon and “The Final Detail”:amazon and “Backspin”:amazon by Harlan coben. Three good bolitar tales. Backspin by Harlan coben. I’ve read a lot of coben’s tales but these are the first in the myron bolitar series I’ve read. Quite fun! Bolitar is a sports agent cum detective with a collection of quirky associates. * “Pandora’s Star”:amazon by Peter F Hamilton. Galaxy spanning epic. A host of unique ideas about human society and alien life, not quite enough character development. A bit wordy in explaining some of the concepts, would have been better served to just let characters make the point, but this is typical for the science fiction genre. Entertaining enough for me to get the concluding book.

* ImaginEERIEing : Mirror – I’ve mentioned this one before, really need to find time to build one of these. next year… * Just a concept – manipulatable mirror

Microsoft Taps Thompson to Run Zune – good luck Rick. Tough job but a great guy.

Smart meters could help you save power ? Coolest Gadgets – ok here is a story about some fancy new smart meter that will help consumers make good decisions. Seems dumb to me – how many of us ever actually look at our meter? OK if I had a webpage for my meter and could see that, maybe.

But what i want is direct feedback on the device I am using. When I crank my thermostat, I want it to tell me right there what my decisions will cost me this month. When I turn on the lights, I want feedback right at the switch. I want a channel on my tv that tells me the energy usage of my tv/video setup. Feedback needs to be embedded right in the device if you really want to make consumers more aware.

Early BCS projections at An early projection of the BCS rankings : Fanblogs College Football Blog and Rich Tellshow. Both in agreement that OSU will be #2 and in the championship game if the season ended right now. Hard to believe. But OSU has showed up for every game and taken care of business, unlike a lot of other teams.

* I really need this – The Missing Sync for iPhone - Synchronize Mac OS X and iPhone – it is a bummer notes on the iphone don’t sync with anything useful * the new itunes store network connection in starbucks is a terrible implementation. Since i am not a paid user of the tmobile network, when i walk in a starbucks now, the itunes store lights up, but every other website dies because the tmobile connection is limited to the itunes store. this is terrible, i can’t sit in a starbucks now and just browse the web, unless i go futz with network settings. really stupid. drives me out of the starbucks store. * lack of select/copy/paste functionality in text fields is terrible * really needs a todo list app

* Headphone Guitar Amp For Quiet Shredding – these are very useful * I wonder if I could run jam sessions through these * Amazonmp3 beta of course.

* Fujifilm Professional Photography - Products - Cameras - Digital Cameras: Fujifilm IS Pro – UV and IR photography, awesome. * Blaupunkt car stereo accepts flash media – this seems pretty cool. * Infolink GE phone – landlines start to catch up finally with cell phones for data services * Car power strip – pretty handy. And plug one of these flashlights into one of the sockets. * Sliding bolt combo lock. No more keys for the shed. * Red One digital videocamera. Clearly overkill for anything I will ever do in my life. * One headset to rule them all – skype, landline, cell. I am actually confused how this really works but seems cool. * A bizarre little lamp from philips * Night vision monocular

* DocuSign Raises $12.4 Million – Jonro is pretty excited about these guys, they seem to be making great progress * Yet more new features at Judy’s Book – the deal quality keeps getting better, the Seattle landing page actually has things I’d like… * Visible technologies raises B round, congrats team and michelle. * Phil moves on from Jobster – looking forward to what Phil does next

* Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen - The Nuclear Option: Resetting The Crap Out Of Your Network Adapters in Vista * Forcing google apps into mobile mode on the iphone – sure the iphone can display big web pages, but the edge network is so freaking slow that you don’t want to get the whole freaking page. * Running multiple versions of the same program on windows – useful * How to start an app in vista with elevated credentials * Firefox user agent switcher

Office of EERE: DOE Venture Capital Technology Showcase Presentations – lots of interesting energy investment stuff here

PowerPoint Presentation - Putting the Fun in Functional – good summary of the basics of game mechanics and how they can be applied to broader classes of software and services