@Randem

How does Wal-Mart manage to keep their prices so low? I mean besides outsourcing the US economy to China; besides shorting employees on labor to keep them from earning benefits; besides selling lower-quality, inferior products; besides employing people who are uneducated, elderly, or illegal immigrants, to keep their labor costs low?

I mean really… what lengths do they really go to, in order to save you 11 cents on a warped bookshelf made of particle board? Just how far are they willing to go to roll back the price of an obnoxiously over-scented candle from $6.29 down to $5.88?

What if they were to recoup their medical insurance expenses by suing employees who use their medical insurance to buy frivolous things like… oh, I don’t know… medical care? Gosh, now that would be a great way to pass on savings to shoppers.

Take the story of Mrs. Deborah Shank, for instance, who was permanently brain-damaged and confined to a wheelchair after a collision with a semi truck. She was an employee of Wal-Mart - one of the lucky ones, with health insurance - and her insurance was used to cover $470,000 worth of medical expenses. Later, she and her husband won a settlement of $700,000 from the trucking company. After legal expenses, that settlement shrunk to $417,000, and went into a special trust to cover Mrs. Shank’s care.

Shameless, I know. But never fear, Wal-Mart is here to save us from the little guy. They sued the Shanks for the original $470,000, and a federal judge ruled in their favor. It’s good to know that the federal courts are looking out for us too. After all, why should we be forced to pay an extra penny for generic toilet paper when some villainous woman is hoarding hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Watchismo has a holiday watch gift guide, offering gift suggestions in every price range from $100 to $100,000.

I just stumbled upon this list of 301 useless facts, including:

37. Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark’s stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.

56. The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.

81. Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.

122. Title 14, Section 1211 of the Code of Federal Regulations (implemented on July 16, 1969) makes it illegal for U.S. citizens to have any contact with extraterrestrials or their vehicles.

Have a look.

Here’s a great way to deal with that cable clutter at home, and do a little bit to help the environment, too: charge your phone or iPod on the go with a solar-powered messenger bag. Not only are they cool and gadgety, but they’re also rather stylish, not to mention green.

The only catch is this little bit on their product page that says “6 volt boost required for some cell phones“. It sure would be nice if they gave more information about what that means. If you have to carry additional hardware, or worse, a battery pack, it would just be defeating the whole purpose of buying this rather expensive bag.

Maybe I’ll have to pay a visit to Noon Solar and find out.

David Pogue neatly sums up my thoughts on eBook readers:

Sure, the idea has appeal: an e-reader lets you carry hundreds of books, search or jump to any spot in the text and bump up the type size when your eyes get tired.

But the counterarguments are equally persuasive. Printed books are dirt cheap, never run out of power and survive drops, spills and being run over. And their file format will still be readable 200 years from now.

So e-book readers keep on coming and keep on flopping: the Rocket eBook Reader. Gemstar. Everybook. SoftBook. Librius Millennium Reader. The Sony Reader is in stores even now, priced at $350 and making literally dozens of sales.

Then he goes on to (*cough*) praise the Kindle:

So if the Kindle isn’t a home run, it’s at least an exciting triple. It gets the important things right: the reading experience, the ruggedness, the super-simple software setup. And that wireless instant download — wow.

Even though most people will prefer the feel, the cost and the simplicity of a paper book, the Kindle is by far the most successful stab yet at taking reading material into the digital age.

No, it’s not the last word in book reading. But once its price comes down and its design gets sleeker, the Kindle may be the beginning of a great new chapter.

You can dress up your criticism as nicely as you want. Saying they didn’t get it right is still synonymous with saying they got it wrong.

I thing I like Robert Scoble’s straight-to-the-point summation:

1. No ability to buy paper goods from Amazon through Kindle.
2. Usability sucks. They didn’t think about how people would hold this device.
3. UI sucks. Menus? Did they hire some out-of-work Microsoft employees?
4. No ability to send electronic goods to anyone else. I know Mike Arrington has one. I wanted to send him a gift through this of Alan Greenspan’s new book. I couldn’t. That’s lame.
5. No social network. Why don’t I have a list of all my friends who also have Kindles and let them see what I’m reading?
6. No touch screen. The iPhone has taught everyone that I’ve shown this to that screens are meant to be touched. Yet we’re stuck with a silly navigation system because the screen isn’t touchable.

Would I buy it? Yes, but I’m a geek. I can’t really recommend this to other people yet. Sorry.

It’s obvious that they never had this device in their hands when they were designing it.

Look. When the rubber meets the road, it’s still just a gadget. It’s not practical. It does some cool things, but so did Apple’s Newton, Microsoft’s Bob, and countless other neat, geeky, failed technological wonders.

It comes down to this: eBook readers are motivated by evil, and consumers see through that. These companies are trying to invent a need for a huge, low-overhead revenue stream.

Inventing a need doesn’t work. Necessity is the mother of invention, not the other way around.

After riding the back of Thomas Jones all the way to the Super Bowl, the Bears repayed him by letting him go, putting all their eggs in the basket of top draft pick Cedric Benson.

This is a classic case of holding on to a bad investment, no different than the phenomenon seen every day in the stock market, where investors watch a stock plummet and, rather than dumping it to minimize losses, they hold on to it as if it owed them something.

Benson did was all bad investments do - he continued to disappoint. He’s been the league’s worst rusher, with a dismal 3.4 yards-per-carry average. Meanwhile, Thomas Jones is on pace for a 1000-yard season in spite of his new role on the anemic New York Jets offense.

Poetic justice came Sunday. The Bears offense struggled all day, with only the heroic efforts of Devin Hester keeping them in the game at all. In the second half, the Broncos took a commanding 14-point lead. But then Benson went down with a season-ending injury.

Amazingly,  as soon as Benson was out of the game, a Bears offense that had only made two first-downs in three quarters, suddenly marched down the field and scored a triumphant touchdown. Then, on their next possession, they did it again, tying the game and going on to win in overtime.

When you take off the bad wheel, the bus starts rolling again.  Adrian Peterson (unlike his namesake in Minnesota) is no stud, and I’ll bet the Bears wish they’d kept Thomas Jones. But perhaps now that Benson is off the field they might start winning again. Hopefully it’s not already too late for their season.

In the year 2000, Stephen King drew tons of media attention when he released Riding the Bullet exclusively as an eBook. In the first 24 hours, more than 400,000 copies were sold, at $2.50 per copy. That works out quite cleanly to revenue of $1-million in one day, with no cost for printing, binding, or shipping.

From that point on, the idea of eBooks has been imagined as a hidden source of unlimited revenue — a license to print money. The question is, if the eBook revolution began nearly eight years ago, why do people keep buying printed books?

How many eBooks do you have? Maybe you got suckered into some self-help book online, or the great strategy guide for how to pick up women, or a cheat sheet for your mid-term… but these are things you can’t easily find anywhere else. How many of those 400,000 people who bought Riding the Bullet actually read it?

I’m tempted to think that people were willing to spend $2.50 for the privilege of being on the cutting edge, or maybe just trying it out and seeing if they would like it. For that matter, there are probably a good number of people who proudly claim to have everything ever written by Stephen King, and they couldn’t continue to wear that identity if they didn’t get his eBook.

So is a revolution coming?
Gadget gurus and über-nerds have all played with (or maybe even purchased) a Sony Reader, for $299, and gotten on the bandwagon. And today, Amazon announced the launch of Kindle, their new eBook reader, for $399.

Wait a second. Did you read that right? Did I really say $299, and $399? Hmmm… well, as long as books are cheap, it could still work out in the long run, right? A quick Google search for Stephen King eBooks turned up eBookMall.com, who are asking $16.99 for Cell, a book that can be had at Amazon — in hardback, no less — for $9.99, and could probably be found on the shelf at chain stores like Target or Walmart for even less.

Okay, let me get this straight. I have to pay $299 for a device that reads a file which, in spite of its lack of printing, publishing, and shipping, still actually costs more than a paperback book? Hmmm, well, there must be some advantage to reading electronically, right? What might that be?

Buying the reader, of course, means you’re not stuck in front of your computer reading a PDF. Thank God, because there is little in life that is worse, in my opinion, than sitting in front of a computer and clicking through a PDF file. But I can carry a paperback with me, so portability is still no advantage for eBooks. And the advantages for printed books don’t stop there…

I don’t have to recharge my paperback book, nor buy batteries for it, before I can read it. It goes everywhere easily, and I don’t have to put it away when I’m on an airplane. If someone bumps into me and I drop my paperback on the ground, I just pick it up and keep reading. If I drop it into a puddle of water, I may have to pay $9.99 for a new copy.

Printed books also have hidden benefits. A shelf filled with books serves as a status symbol — a social indicator of intelligence. Books can be loaned, sold, or donated, without intellectual property hounds knocking on your door. And if you happen to find yourself in a blackout in the middle of winter, books burn nicely too.

Imagine you’re just getting to the part where the killer identifies himself as the hero’s brother, and as you excitedly read along wondering if his wife is really dead or if it was all just a trick, suddenly a red light comes on and a little beep starts telling you that your battery is low. Spoiled!

If you take your eBook reader on vacation with you, you also have to take along the charger and cords. You have to turn it off for 15 minutes while the stewardess tries to convince you that some black magic in your electronic device could mess up the computers in the cockpit. If you drop it, you don’t pick it up and keep reading… you instead spend 20 minutes inspecting every inch for cracks. And if you manage to damage it, you don’t get a new one for $9.99.

A license to print money
And most insulting is, of course, the fact that eBooks are priced so high. Do these people think we don’t know the difference? There is a major printing industry being fed by the marginal costs in paperbacks that we buy for $9.99 per copy, but there is no such industry involved in the manufacture of an eBook. The author could write it and publish it himself!

If good eBooks were available for $2, the avid reader of one or two books per week might see a financial incentive to switch, but it would still take him over a year to break even on the proposition and there would have to be enough desirable titles available at that price to make it worth it to him.

Of course this avid reader with real incentive to switch would be the one who other people see and whose opinion other people trust, so getting the avid reader would get you the casual readers, gradually over time.

But there is no way on earth that it will ever work in the other direction. Gadget gurus buy every gadget that comes along, while everyone else waits to see what pans out. The nerds get their cool points and geek status for having the coolest, newest toy, but the paperback reader will continue to read paperback books.

After a very good shoot with Danielle last week, her roommate decided she also wanted to give modeling a try so this weekend I worked with Carla, and once again had a great time.

This serves to underscore the power of word of mouth. There are plenty of creeps out there, but there are also plenty of legitimate people. In one week, I’ve gotten calls from two different people thanks to Danielle’s word of mouth. If you’re fun and respectable and nice, word gets around quickly. I imagine it would have gotten around just as quickly if I’d been weird or perverted.

After the shoot, I was like a kid with a new toy, editing the photos in Lightroom.

A few weeks ago I got an iPhone and was unable to use it with my computer. Last week I got Adobe Lightroom and then was unable to use it with my computer. The time had come to do something about that. So Friday I went to the Apple store and I got OS X Leopard.

I was unsure if Apple was still supporting G4 computers, but I was able to find that answer on their web site: they are. What I was not able to find, however, was any indication that I could upgrade. In other words, I was not prepared to do a clean install and wipe out my computer. The representative at the Apple store confirmed that I could do an upgrade.

The upgrade process took nearly three hours, and used almost all of the 10GB of free space on my hard drive. I hadn’t expected that. But I’ve found some ways to recover some space, so that’s not an issue. In fact, there really aren’t any issues. It just goes in and works. All of the upgraded software kept my settings and kept on working as I expected.

The only thing that stopped working was the driver for my Wacom tablet, but Wacom has provided almost a dozen driver upgrades on their web site in the three years since I first installed it, and after downloading and installing the new driver, my tablet worked like a charm.

The new features, going from 10.3 to 10.5 are amazing, and seem to run quite well on my iBook, even if it’s not a dual core Pentium. And yes, I took a few minutes to play with the new features of the OS, but only a few minutes, because what I really wanted to do was play with Lightroom… which is awesome.

And what about the iPhone? No dialogs popping up when I plug it in. No device listed in iTunes. I think something must have gotten set to ignore the iPhone when I tried it on 10.3.9 and it didn’t recognize it. Time to Google it.

Last week I was talking to Matt Medlen about new Adobe products when he asked if I had heard of Lightroom. I had not.

We went to Adobe’s web site and watched the video demonstration, and I knew immediately that I had to have it. Photo editing software designed for photographers by photographers? They’re not kidding. It works exactly the way I do!

Where Photoshop can be thought of as a digital darkroom, offering all the tools you need to make a single photo great, it is unfortunately quite cumbersome for any task involving more than one photo, and its tools are extremely technical and powerful, but this comes at a major price of user-friendliness. Anything I want to do to a photo can be done in Photoshop, but it takes a great deal of time, and comes with a high learning curve.

Enter Lightroom. The first, and most important feature of Lightroom is that it is 100% nondestructive. You can edit a photo all day long without ever altering the original. This not only allows you to preserve the maximum original quality of the photo, but also makes possible some space-saving ideas like burning a session to CD, and then working with the photos right from the CD rather than having to use hard drive space.

Because the edits are non-destructive, they’re treated as a series of actions, and that brings to mind another killer feature of Lightroom: if you have a series of photos all shot in the same conditions (for example, low light), and you make the necessary edits to one photo, you can then highlight the rest of the photos and apply those actions to the entire session.

The cropping tool actually overlays a rule of thirds grid onto your photo to assist in finding the best crop. And better, if you have to correct the horizon, the crop is constrained to the boundaries of the photo, rather than having those triangle-shaped white (or black) strips of background color on each of the corners.

And another huge feature for me is that exporting the session as JPEGs does not force you to do a bunch of math in order to calculate dimensions. You choose a maximum width and a maximum height and click export, and it will resize your photos for you, to within your constraints, while maintaining your aspect ratio.

This is all just the tip of the iceberg, but it was enough to make me certain I had to have this software. So now I have it. Of course my iBook was running OS X 10.3.9, and Lightroom requires 10.4, so after it installed, it refused to run…