BMW’s official video regarding design-futures of the 6 Series Gran Coupé concept.
Anders Warming, Head of Exterior Design BMW, provides the overview about the exterior design and the future of the 6 Series and BMW design directions.
Tags: BMW, BMW 6 series, innovation, design directions, concept, ideas, business, trends
FireFox is set (soon I hope) to launch an innovation called Tab Candy. This will permit Firefox to act more like a OS. Kinda Chrome like if Google has their way. The focus of Tab Candy is multitasking and sharing. Tab Candy is managed by Aza Raskin, the Head of UX at Mozilla Labs. Raskin is the son of Macintosh creator Jef Raskin.
Tab Candy features:
Organize tabs into groups that you can name and position on a desktop-like view
Search and Save tab groups to look at later
Have multiple profiles so that you can sign into the same site with different logins in two different tab groups
Share tabs or tab groups between users, computers and devices (Smartphone supported)
Yesterday BMW announced it will support Apple’s iOS 4 in their BMW and Mini product lines. By integrating iPod Out in iOS4 users of iPhones 3G/3GS/4 & iPod Touch 2nd/3rd generations to output and display Apple’s iPod interface on the vehicle’s dashboard display and controlled by the vehicle’s controls.
To no surprise BMW’s controller is called the iDrive….a perfect fit for Apple’s iProducts. Drivers will be able to control music playback and browse playlists, podcasts, and Genius mixes.
Tags: BMW, Apple iOS4, innovation, product launch, interface, ideas, business, trends
Today small K12 school districts and colleges with less than 1,000 students are accustomed to accessing email around the clock. Email is habit forming at best and compulsive at worst. The digital economy proves funding in-house email services can be staggering. Hidden IT costs remain as budgets are slashed.
Annual IT costs to run legacy back-end email servers, software licensing including (anti-spam, anti-virus, filtering and backup) must run 24/7 from multiple vendors. Annual people costs include training and technical support especially in a high turnover environment.
Some legacy email solutions actually require a dedicated server that cannibalizes the CPU. They are not virtualization friendly. Think OpenText’s WorstClass FirstClass email server.
So what is the largest overlooked annual cost forgotten by IT and financial managers? Electricity. The cost to power all enterprise servers 24/7 can be rather shocking. The first time I collaborated on a private college’s annual budget I was surprised to learn total energy costs for just three buildings on a small campus ran above $260,000/year. Same rates apply for K12 districts with multiple buildings.
If your organization is running real industrial servers (1U or even 3U units) there are significant costs, regardless of rack, blade or tower servers. Many schools on tight budgets re-purpose legacy Pentium desktops into “servers” along with old, energy sucking CRT monitors. Not a good idea. Don’t be swayed by marketing and PR efforts for “green” servers because they run all day and still cost a surprising amount over a five year lease….you do lease your servers right?
Want to confuse customers? How about taking the “if ya can’t beat`em, join`em” approach….
I wonder what Bezos thinks about when you pull this type of capitulation. I cannot help but wonder about Amazon’s own statement: NO KINDLE REQUIRED. If anyone sees this add and is deciding which to choose, this move by Amazon cements the iPad as the choice.
BTW: Did you catch the color image in the book?
Tags: iPad, Kindle, ebook, price war, ebook sales, reading, trends