Feature right must always be better right?  John from Zumboni guest blogs at GigaOm, talking about the super phone. In it he makes the argument for a new class of phones that is higher in feature / function than a smart phone calling the smart phones.

Then view this piece in NY Times by David Pogue on an “email only device” the Peek.”

Also view this $20 (no long term contracts) phone from Spice. It has numbers, a speaker and a microphone – no display BTW. There’s another company making a $10 phone (again, this is the unlocked phone, no contracts).

This is the new digital “divide”. A phone with everything for someone and another with only one thing for everyone (well, everyone that wants email that is).

I am always reminded of the microwave at home, which has a clock display. Now, 90% of homes in India, turn their microwaves “off” when not in use. So the “clock feature” is mostly useless.

For over 80% of the “non power users”, the basic 3-5 features are the ones they use 80% of the time. Get that right and the rest is just gravy (OR useless depending on your viewpoint).

Here is my team.

QB: Matt Hasselbeck (Seattle)
RB: Marion Barber (Dallas)
WR: Santana Moss (Washington) and Terrell Owens (Dallas) – yeah I know, once a 49er’ always one.
TE: Tony Gonzalez (Kansas City)
Defense : Ravens
K: Matt Stover (Baltimore)

I am doing okay, in my league, won 2 lost 1.

I changed the name from BuzzGain DoItYourselfers. What is yours?

Google Docs.

More money. Check.
Bigger name. Check.
More resources. Check.

Must be better?

Save a large file on Google Docs? (Sorry).

Zoho Writer absolutely beats the pants out of Google. If you have to save large files (which I just had to). I got kicked out of Google 4 times. Gave up.

Went to Zoho writer. No problem.

Zoho has THE best office productivity suite on the cloud. By far. Bar none.

Clear and to the point – writing in plain English.

Summary:
a) Use common, everyday words

b) Use “you” and other
personal pronouns

c) Use “must” instead of
“shall”

d) Avoid using undefined technical
terms

e) Use positive rather than negative
words

f) Avoid using gender-specific
terminology

g) Avoid long strings of nouns

Verb Forms:
h) Use active voice

i) Use action verbs

j) Use the present tense

Structure:
k) Use parallel construction

l) Be direct

m) Avoid using unnecessary exceptions

Seems to be a week of great diagrams, information and analysis. Paul points us to this great graphic of venture capital distributions in the US by state. The most surprising part is the participation of Colorado and Utah. Who woudda thunk it?

Smart Money Map of the Market is a must view daily for everyone looking to get a birds eye view of wall street. Its an interactive graphic with the top news and trends in a single page.

Will asked yesterday for the China graphic, and I thought it would be good to see the relative spend India and China on the same items. Needless to say China is WAY ahead on every item in terms of consumption.

Below is the spending on various goods and services for India from the NY times article, but their graphic is MUCH better.

Great NYT interactive flash graphic on how much people spend on Electronics, Clothing, Alcohol & tobacco, Household goods and recreation the world over. Its a pseudo world map with relative sizes of spending depicted by the size of the box.

Its clear the developed nations have the lions share of the spend, but its very revealing to see the size of recreation spend.

hat tip. Flowing data is one of my favorite blogs BTW.

Who knew wind energy has a mortality rate that mirrors mines and coal plants. Wind-works does.

WindStats has recently re-examined the mortality
data in light of wind’s rapidly expanding generation. The mortality rate
is a function of not simply the number of deaths, but the number of deaths
relative to the amount of electricity generated.

In the mid-1990s, 14 men had been killed on wind turbines or working
with wind energy. Since then six more have died, including the first member
of the public, a parachutist who literally flew into a turbine in Germany.

Total cumulative generation reached nearly 130 TWh from 1975 through
the year 2000. The number of deaths per TWh of cumulative generation steadily
dropped through the 1990s.

The high number of deaths in the USA may be connected to the typically
frantic nature of year-end, tax-subsidy driven installation booms.

The data clearly indicates that the wind industry will have to do
a better job at improving safety if it wants to live up to its promise of
being clean, green, and–benign.

Imagine a car that gives 65 miles a gallon. Its made by Ford! Why cant you buy it in the US? Businessweek has a host of good reasons (below).

1. People’ perception that diesel is awful.
2. Taxes aimed at commercial trucks mean diesel costs anywhere from 40 cents to $1 more per gallon than gasoline.
3. The engines are built in Britain, so labor costs are high.
4. The pound remains stronger than the greenback. At prevailing
exchange rates, the Fiesta ECOnetic would sell for about $25,700 in the
U.S. By contrast, the Prius typically goes for about $24,000.
5. No tax breaks for diesel vs. hybrid
6. Ford plans to make a gas-powered version of the Fiesta in Mexico for
the U.S. So why not manufacture diesel engines there, too? Building a
plant would cost at least $350 million.
7. The automaker would have to produce at least 350,000 engines a year to make such a venture profitable.

Hat tip.