future

I'm always curious about technology products and product launches, but an interesting thing happened recently with the launch of the latest Google Phone (i.e. the Nexus One).

Release date prediction market on Hubdub

I created a Google Nexus One Release Date market on Hubdub. Hubdub is a play-money prediction market system, a wisdom-of-the-crowds tool to help gather ideas about the outcome of a specific event. The market was created on December 15th and almost immediately it was showing a 94% likelihood of release in the first quarter of 2010.

When will the Google Phone (Nexus One) be available to consumers

Hubdub lets people make predictions on a question and when they do so they choose whether that prediction will be public or private. In the case of this market there is currently over $18,000 of play-money at stake and just over $3,300 of those positions are public. So 80% of the play-money is hidden, but the effect of those positions is totally public. While hiding their identity is possible the world still can quite easily see the sentiments of the people involved: early 2010!

You may be wondering what's going on with IKEA in Colorado. I know I am. I was in Los Angeles for Thanksgiving this year and visited an IKEA out there and was reminded how nice it is to have high quality, reasonably priced household items within driving distance.

According to this article in the Denver Business Journal

"This is a very complicated project, and will take some time," said Joseph Roth, spokesman for IKEA Group’s U.S. headquarters near Philadelphia. "There’s still no time frame for groundbreaking or opening, but we are committed to the project and moving forward."

Once a construction timetable is fixed, the store will take 18 months to build, according to Roth.

Here's the scenario: all of our music is stored as mp3s. We want to be able to control music from a laptop as we sit in our kitchen or back room and have that music broadcast to speakers all over the house and back yard patio. Ideally we'd rather not have to run speaker wires from a central amplifier to the rest of the house. There seem to be 3 or four solutions to this problem.

Apple Airport Express and iTunes

Now that we're a family of Mac users, this seems like a decent solution. We buy a handful of Airport Express units ($100 new or as low as $60 used/refurbished) and install them in a power outlet near the speakers. The speakers have to have their own amplifier and accept a headphone mini-jack input for this to work. I'm also not 100% sure that the airports would all be synchronized in terms of what they play at the same time, though there are multiple articles which claim that it is possible. So, it probably works ;)

Bonus: Each of the airport express units expands the coverage of the WiFi network as well which will make our house super strong...and perhaps we could sell access to that to neighbors...

Drawbacks: iTunes only.

A Dedicated Device like Roku or Squeezebox

Roku and Squeezebox are two alternatives focused specifically on music. Roku is more focused on using the Roku to control the music, costs $200, and doesn't act as a WiFi repeater. The Squeezebox Receiver or Transporter could also do this but, like Roku, are way more expensive at $150 or $2,000 respectively and don't act as WiFi repeaters.

Drawbacks: Still requires some client software on the laptops that is Windows/Mac only :(

Remote Wireless Speakers - Audio Unlimited

We like our house. But we are realizing it will not be exactly what we want in the long run.

So, long run, here is what we really want and/or want to do in our new house shortly after we move in:

Features Of The House

• Somewhere between 1600 and 2000 square feet
• A single large kick it room
• 2-3 kid bedrooms
• 1 master bedroom
• Kitchen that opens onto the dining room/living room
• "Office"
• Garage

Existing Features or Things to Tweak Right After Movein

• Steam shower
• Compost pile
• Energy Efficiency review by Dirk's friend Jay
• Fireplace with wood pellet stove insert

Start with:

• 4 garlic heads
• 2 ounces of olive oil
• 12 ounces of water (approximately)

Cut the tops off the garlic heads so you can see the cloves and brush the olive oil across the heads of garlic. Place the heads in a shallow casserole dish and fill with water 1 inch deep. Bake in a preheated oven for 45 minutes - until the garlic is soft and lightly browned.

To eat: remove the garlic with a knife and spread it on a bit of toast or cracker. Delicious when combined with some soft cheeses.

So, I'm officiating a ceremony and we get to be creative. I know what christian/catholic weddings are like. I don't know Jewish ones, much, but I've seen them in movies...? I wanted to research weddings in general to get some ideas of some universal elements and fun things that we shouldn't miss.

Here's the stuff that's been helpful to me so far:

a short Hindu wedding
Red Hot Curry's guide to Hindu weddings

Some wedding scripts from a unitarian universalist celebrant

According to 9news.com IKEA is finally coming to Colorado!

My Past Discussions of IKEA Colorado

I've written about this in the past and become somewhat of a rumor hound on the subject:

• IKEA Store Located in Commerce City, Denver, Colorado
  *IKEA in Denver or Boulder or Front Range of Colorado
  *Ikea adding store to Denver, Colorado?
  *IKEA Fort Collins - 2008?
  *ikea store locations in the US

Often the comments on those posts are more interesting than the posts themselves...

I'll post an update comment on Wednesday after the real announcement.

Edit: Ikea Centennial

According to a comment I just received it will be in Centennial, Colorado. Centennial just recently incorporated into a city as expansion has grown south of Denver. I guess this makes sense since that area of colorado (Douglas County, southern Jefferson County) has been the fastest growing area in Colorado and one of the fastest in the nation for the last few years. I imagined they would put it north of Denver because my perception is that IKEA is popular with college students and the CU/CSU combination in Boulder/Fort Collins is the center of our college population.

And more sources are identifying it as coming to centennial.