Automobiles should come with several USB ports that provide the 5V pin to power or charge devices.

Most devices have standardized on USB for charging. It makes charging and data transfer a snap with one simple port. With the depth of penetration it only makes sense that automobiles also provide a means of power.

Creative manufacturers could provide additional interactions, for example allowing entertainment to play through the automobile stereo system.

The old power adapter designed to light cigarettes in automobiles is showing its age, and needs replaced with a new standard. Instead of developing something from scratch automobile manufacturers could easily adapt USB power outlets.

The primary problem with cigarette power outlets is their size and reliability. The large size limits the amount of adapters available and the possible suitable locations to conveniently locate them. The connection was not designed as a power source is often temperamental and unreliable in that role.

The auto industry or an interested third party could easily develop a new standard from scratch, but adapting the USB standard has many advantages.

• Designed as a power outlet and thus more reliable.
• Simple to implement for power only.
• OEM and Third party power cords readily available at low costs.
• Allows creative extensions (i.e. play music from mobile device).

When the auto industry stumbled many bloggers and zines penned articles stating that the industry needs a visionary driver similar to Apple’s Steve Jobs. If Jobs was at the helm of a manufacturer the legacy cigarette connectors would already be relegated to their initial purpose, and only as an expensive build to order smoking accessory option.

Steven Troughton-Smith writing on his High Caffeine blog this week describing how easily the Palm Pre is to jailbreak.

The entire UI and all the apps are written in javascript, which in essence means the source code is available for you to modify at will, without recompiling anything.

Hardware is easy to copy, especially when you have a working example to tear apart.  The expense is in designing and testing the hardware not the actual hardware itself.  Early tear down reports are estimating hardware costs in the $140 to $170 range.

Software is much more difficult to copy.  Witness the myriad iPhone copies that have equal and sometimes arguably better (if using a checklist to compare) hardware specifications, such as the Hiphone T32.  Without access to iPhone, software clone makers are relegated to using the aging Microsoft Mobil OS.

Apple’s iPhone OS, Google’s Android OS, and now the Palm Pre differentiate on software and the subsequent usability, not simply bolting on the latest hardware.  It is the concert of software, hardware, and services all working in tandem to produce a truly great usability experience that consumer’s desire.

Google has developed Android OS as an alternative but to date the hardware and software combination’s lack inspiration.  This may change soon with many phones under development.  Google has made the source code for Android OS downloadable with an open source license and customizable.  It certainly has the potential to dominate the phone market the way windows has on the PC side for this reason alone.  It also has the potential to splinter and destroy the user experience.

Palm has made the source code easy to copy and extend, although not licensed to legally do so via open source.  Personally, I’m curious if Pre clones will start showing up with genuine Pre software, able to use the same services such as the Palm App store.

I have photographed professionally but our adventures in video are better described as “modest”.  But also not completely new, as we have owned the very first Canon miniDV digital camcorder model, and a non-digital tape version prior to that.  Do to the hassle of importing and exporting video, we had never bothered editing together compilations or stories and distributing to family and friends.  Until Now.

Around the first of the year, we purchased a Kodak Zi6 video camera that shoots 720p h.264 high def video on SD cards.  For the first time ever, the camcorder is often in a pocket and therefore handy for when those timeless moments happen.  The lack of zoom or other features  cannot offset the convenience factor for us.  The digital files are simple to move onto a computer for quick editing.  Fun * 2.

Apparently, we are not alone as 9 of the 10 best selling camcorders on Amazon are similar pocketable camcorders from Flip, Kodak, and Creative Labs.

The 720p resolution leads to a unique problem… how to distribute our best video to friends and family?  After a few hours researching with Google and chatting with friends,  the problem is still considerable.

The most obvious answer is Blu Ray.  None of our laptops have a Blu Ray burner and upgrading is cost prohibitive.  If we were able to burn the discs a quick pole revealed only one member of our family has a Blu Ray player (PS3).  While HD televisions are becoming commonplace in our family, none are even considering purchasing a Blu Ray player in the near future.  Perhaps in a year or two this will become a viable option, but it is not today.

I assumed that a stopgap format was developed to play 720p video on normal DVD discs using the up converting DVD hardware.   Several members of our family have purchased up converting DVD players to go with their new televisions.  With the hardware becoming common,  all that is needed is the correct software loaded into the firmware.

After hours of research, the closest I could find was Divx HD.  A visit to the website revealed the latest Divx version 7 utilized the same h.264 codec as our camcorder and most other high definition devices.  A quick glance near our television revealed that even our personal up converting DVD player has a Divx logo on the front.  Quickly my hopes were dashed upon discovering that not a single DVD player on Amazon will play the high definition version (Divx HD).  It appears Divx was slow developing a very obvious solution

I was really hoping for a  solution built by the open source community or Quicktime.  I fear the open source community was a non start (or was unable to find).  I really didn’t expect forward looking Apple to develop a near term solution using Quicktime.

Perhaps looking to “shiny discs” as a distribution method is simply too dated?  We re-purposed an old computer with an upgraded graphics card and new hard drive into an inexpensive media player.   With a $9 Nnetflix subscription, Boxee (Alpha), and Hulu, we canceled our cable subscription.  I have read countless blog posts on utilizing Apple TVs, Mac Mini’s, Xbox’s, PS3’s, and even $100 dedicated media players to fill a similar task.  However, a quick poll of our family revealed our household stood alone, ruling out simply distributing the 720p files on digital media.

To date we have “punted” and given our friends and acquaintances (i.e. teachers) old fashioned DVD’s with downscaled video.  It is disheartening knowing the video  is downgraded to approximately half its native resolution.  At this time, a better solution has yet to present itself.

Marvell has introduced an Arm based computer in a wall adapter sized housing for $99 called a Sheevaplug.  The possibilities are endless.  Linuxdevices.com explains it well here.