Since I was a little boy watching James Bond movies, I’ve loved Aston Martins. Fast, exclusive, and beautiful cars. I obsessed over them for years and, when it looked like they would be another casualty of the self-destructive tendencies of the British auto industry, I applauded when Ford stepped in and rescued them from the dustbin of automotive history.

In the early 90’s, I bartended at the Embassy Suites near the Denver airport. One of the bonuses of living in Denver is that you occasionally see cars going through their high altitude testing regimens. Engineers and cars with strange paint jobs and camouflage, would show up in our parking lot on a semi-regular basis. The guy from Lotus didn’t like to be bothered and would talk about his car. The occasional domestic manufacturers didn’t interest me because, well, their cars were the kinds of things I could actually expect to drive within my lifetime. Which, by its very nature, doesn’t have the kind of drama or interest that something out of reach like a Lotus or a Bentley.

One day, I showed up to work and there was an Aston Martin DB7 in engineering garb. A little computer set-up inside for diagnostics, a few bits sticking out here and there to gather information, and one of the most beautifully pure shapes of any car I’d ever seen. Real artistry in auto design is rare--which isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy looking at even fairly common cars, but that the forms that made up the DB7 were close to perfection both in the subtleties of its curves and in the cues that brought it in line with the rest of the Aston Martins through history.

This was after the car had been introduced at an auto show (Geneva auto show, if memory serves), so I knew what it was. After staring at the thing for a bit, I walked in and told anyone who would listen that there was a real, live Aston Martin in the parking lot. The kicker was that later that night, while I was working the bar, a group of a few British engineers came in, talking about cars and beer and where they had to go the next day. Someone said something about Tom Walkinshaw Racing--and it clicked in my head. I knew that Aston Martin had farmed out engineering work on the DB7 to TWR--these guys were the engineers. These were the guys that got to drive around in that car.

I comped them their drinks. I talked to them about cars, impressed them with my knowledge of the British auto industry, chatted about politics, told them about my truck (at that time I was driving a new Mazda B4000 extended cab). I listened to them tell me about the car, about Aston Martin, and about how many free drinks that thing got them while they were driving through all of their testing grounds.

Over the next year or so, they dropped in for more testing. They brought a few cars each time, they had a rotating group of engineers, and we got along spectacularly.

The comped drinks helped.

Then we started going places in their cars. First it was to a gas station down the street just so I could get the feel. Then it was to a bar where my wife was working. Then it was me driving the test car to my apartment complex to show the car to my wife and then it was a buzzed engineer asking if I wanted to drive the car while we went out drinking. Which I did.

Oh, boy, did I. I had the thing going over a hundred by the end of an on-ramp at one point--a ridiculous and unreasonable speed that I was sure any police officer would understand if he I could only get him to imagine what he himself would do if he were in my situation. Luckily, I didn’t have to test my theory.

The last time I saw the crew--Nigel, Steve, Martin, Dan, Chris, Mickey, and Phil--they gave me some gifts (including their autographs on the box of a Maisto Supercar Collection model of the DB7). I treasure those gifts. I won’t say who let me drive those cars since it might have some effect on their jobs, but I was in contact with them through 1997 and probably would have kept contact if it hadn’t been for the brutal dissolution of my marriage getting in the way of my normal life.

And I continued to lust after the car I couldn’t have. As it grew up into the DB9 and the same design basics extended to the rest of their line-up, I lusted after Aston Martins. The new DBS doesn’t have quite the same perfection and beauty of the DB7 and the DB9, but it inspires warm, tingly feelings in me. When a new Aston was demolished in Casino Royale, I groaned. Loudly enough that my wife gave me dirty looks in the theater, in fact.

I tried to explain to her later: “Beautiful things shouldn’t die senseless deaths.” She didn’t really understand.

Now it is time for me to stop loving Aston Martin. Not because I’ve grown up or become a better person or because their cars have suddenly become horrible, but because they have committed the unforgivable sin. If your brand is built on exclusivity, if your brand is built on beautiful design, if your brand is built on the perfect melding of old British charisma and forward-thinking design and engineering, you damned well cannot sell out and have your brand plastered on overpriced, ugly, supposedly collectible Nike Hyperdunk shoes.

It’s embarrassing. It cheapens the value of the logo. It’s an immature venture for a mature (or, at least, wealthy, mid-life crisisey) brand.

When your brand is associated with the mystique of James Bond, that’s just good decision-making. When your brand is associated with pitifully designed, empty marketing efforts like the Hyperdunks, then someone should be fired.

I’m almost as surprised by the Saints’ win today as I was by Shannon Sharpe’s missing the final cut for the Hall of Fame. Happier about the former, though.

As disappointed as I am for Peyton Manning, it is impossible to be truly disappointed in the result.

Boo, on the other hand, to Audi for an ad that made me want to buy a Hummer. Or a Chris “Birdman” Anderson-mobile.

I’m not sure that I see this as being any kind of a meaningful metric. Of course, I’m still a Twitter skeptic who finds himself wondering why the Internet equivalent of the bumper sticker has become such a popular conveyor for political messages. It doesn’t lend itself to nuanced, well-considered positions. For that matter, it doesn’t lend itself to proper spelling or sentence structure, either.

To be fair, it does take impressive creativity to fold, spindle, and mutilate the language into the Twitter-sized publishable nuggets, doesn’t it?

Anyhow, conservatives seem to be taking a lead in this, ahem, important new social media technology.

The party of Ted Stevens, the former senator who once described the Internet as a “series of tubes,” is starting to gain the technological edge.

A new study shows Republicans on Capitol Hill are far more active on Twitter than their Democratic colleagues.

Though Barack Obama commanded the new media landscape during his 2008 presidential campaign, House Republicans in particular have been texting circles around the Democrats. The study, “Twongress: The Power of Twitter in Congress,” showed twice as many Republicans use Twitter even though there are far fewer Republicans in Congress.

If you detect any crankiness, it’s not that I don’t appreciate the value of pushing message through Twitter, it’s that I’m afraid that Twittering might replace the larger conversation that needs to take place on the other side of that push.

But, then, maybe I just don’t quite get it yet. We’ll see.

Read it all.

But I like puppies.

Kindle. Probably not.

Nook. Probably not. Especially after reading the review at the link--although I’m a little disappointed. Some of the features (wireless, for example) sounded pretty nice.

No, if I’m going to be spending that much money on this kind of device, I’m holding out for the rumored Apple tablet. I find the rumors very compelling.

But it will never sound as naughty as Nookenfreude.

Anyone out there have a Google Voice or Google Wave invite they are willing to send my way? Because, you know, I’m special and stuff.

Update: Okay, Wave is taken care of. I now have 8 Wave invites to send out to anyone who needs them--just leave a comment and they’ll go first come-first serve.

Motorola’s new Cliq, an Android-based, iPhone-fighting, consumer phone aimed at the social-networking set, looks awfully nice. I’m a little unsure about the home-grown interface (Motoblur), and build quality will be important, of course, but I’m curious to see if this phone can revive Motorola’s image in the market.

Dovetailing nicely with the last post--and with a mood that hasn’t subsided--comes this from Instapunk, whose vicious and vibrant take on politics and culture mirrors much of the way I’ve been feeling lately.

They are going to try to baffle us with bullshit in the next few months. We’ll be lectured and propagandized not to give in to feelings of paranoia, especially by the great intellects on our own side, because nothing nefarious is really afoot, and our own raging gut instincts are all wrong, ignorant, and laughable.

Here’s how you survive the con job, which is all an exercise in herding.

It’s a longish post, but it’s well worth your time.

As a bonus, and not without point, is a snippet of video from Top Gear with Jeremy Clarkson driving an Aston Martin. The car is beautiful and so are the scenery and the soundrack (provided by a gorgeous V-12 overlaying some ambient bits of Brian Eno’s prettiest work, Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks, which album also has some lovely touches from Daniel Lanois) but it’s just this side of maudlin.

If I may paraphrase Mr. Clarkson (watch the Aston Martin video), “I just have this horrible, dreadful feeling that what I’m experiencing here is an ending.” For him, it centers on that car while for me it centers on the freedom that I grew up believing in--a faith as strong as any other in my life.

I have a job that requires me to work in an arena where I am not entirely comfortable: mass emailings to our subscriber base. So, being a good little geek, I subscribe to a few email lists, read a few sites regularly, and try to do my job as well as I can. Which is why I got to read this hilarious story from DirectMag.com’s Ken Magill:

...[O]ne of my favorite stories involves gun stupidity. Back in the early 80s, three Air Force buddies and I were in the Arizona desert target shooting with a.357 magnum. One of us—I forget his name, now—decided his lime-green Datsun 1200 would look really cool with bullet holes in the driver’s door. So he fired five or six rounds into it.

Then he remembered he had forgotten to roll up the driver-door window before he shot.

It’s in the context of bad email behavior from Republicans and conservative mass emailings--and it’s behavior that I had noticed, too, so I hope some list managers are paying attention. He’s right about this:

If Republicans don’t clean up their sloppy e-mail practices, soon their messages will get blocked from reaching people’s inboxes altogether. And then even people who want to hear from them won’t be able to.

Yahoo, Hotmail, and some of the other online services are pretty aggressive in the way they handle mass emailings. Even though everyone on my list has given explicit permission for us to email them with offers and information, their email providers don’t much care. Dealing with email design and distribution is enough to give me holes in my stomach lining--I’m not kidding when I say that it’s one of the most stressful parts of my job although not because any single part of it is difficult. The reason is more complicated: if the mailing isn’t well received, if the data in a first import isn’t clean, if I don’t do my job well, my email lists can be locked, my service can ban me, and the things that I am trying to get in front of customer eyes may not be seen.

My job requires me to convince people to buy and use our services; those mailings are vital to me doing a good job. Protecting my lists from marauding salesmen, an owner that doesn’t necessarily understand all the issues involved, all of our client companies that want to piggyback on our lists, all the while fighting against the natural attrition that comes with long-term list use is enough to drive me crazy.

Indiscriminate sharing of email addresses through the conservative and libertarian mailing lists will ultimately hurt the cause of putting ideas in front of people. You can’t change minds if you can’t first engage those minds--and if your emails aren’t getting through, you haven’t got a shot.

So, again I say, I hope some list managers are paying attention.

Read the rest.

Aston Martin makes a car that I don’t want.

I never thought it could happen; every Aston Martin that I’ve ever seen is a car that I want to drive or want to own. Every single one of them right up until now.

Aston Martin’s newest Lagonda, a resurrected name for a strange and awkward crossover vehicle, is blunt, ungainly, and unattractive. It is, in fact, the anti-Aston.

iPod Touch and iPhone users might have run across an app called “Classics”, which offers an ebook reader and a set of classics formatted uniquely for Apple’s little gadgets. Until today, I’ve been happy using Stanza, a free application that doesn’t have the prettiest formatting, but does have an amazing, searchable library of downloadable, free content. I’ll still use Stanza, but I’ve just bought Classics (for $2.99 on iTunes Music Store) and it’s a top-notch bit of software. It’s simple, but it’s very well done.

What convinced me to pony up a few bucks? Theft.

Chances are that if you have browsed the iTunes Store or watched prime time television, you have at least seen the popular eBook reader Classics at least in passing. Apple has featured it in one of its iPhone application advertisements and the UI has drawn some critical acclaim from end users. As a result, the application has been doing well; well enough that it has essentially been copied, right down to its images.

See the screen caps and read the full story at Ars Technica. And, if you have either a Touch or an iPhone, I’d encourage you to spend a few bucks (link is to the iTunes Music Store--you must have iTunes installed for the link to work) to help support the developers who have been thoroughly ripped off, and, whatever you do, don’t buy the competing product.

And, Apple, you might want to do something about “Classics: Jane Austen"--as obvious a rip off as one is likely to find this year.

Read the rest.

I just can’t see the Woz’s (Steve Wozniak for all you lesser geeks) tenure on Dancing with the Stars being anything less than a disaster.

Which means it’ll probably make great TV.

Read the Rest...

All I can say is, “Man up, ladies.”

I suppose a hunger strike is nice, but I’m not sure what good it’s going to do for the poor people who are hungry by political design instead of ridiculous choice.

It’s an entirely ‘nother culture, so I’m probably not allowed to comment on it; that would just be too judgmental.

Speaking of something else entirely, if I traded all my money for Zim dollars, I would totally be a billionaire.

Yet another stupidly early Christmas wish-list front-runner.

Pretty.

1. Outsourced. While it has moments that are remarkably predictable, Outsourced has a sweet charm in its affection for India and its main characters. It’s a small pleasure, but one that stands out for its gentle spirit and mildly sanitized view of India. While it wouldn’t do to expect anything life-changing, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a quiet romance, good humor, and a little flavor of India.
2. FilesAnywhere.com When I had to start sharing large files with clients over the Internet, I looked for a service that gave me a great set of tools, a decent price, and generous storage. FilesAnywhere.com did that in a big way. It’s quick, reliable, and mature. I’ve only been using it for a few months, but it’s impressed a number of clients so much that they’ve become customers. That’s about as good a recommendation as I can imagine.
3. Thunderer. I’m only about half way through Felix Gilman’s Thunderer, but I’m truly impressed by his first novel. It’s intriguing, compelling, and filled with well-realized characters to carry the reader through all of the wonders of the strange world that he has concocted (and all of its gods). Having read his blog, I can’t help but think that Mr. Gilman is a bit of a jerk when it comes to his political opinions (though no more so than John Scalzi). Luckily for me, I won’t let his politics come between me and the enjoyment of his novel. He wouldn’t be likely to miss me as a customer, but I would certainly miss the artistry of what he’s written. It took a little more than forty pages to get past the awkward introduction, but by then Mr. Gilman found a perfect pacing for the shifting views between the lead characters. I’m vaguely planning a full review of the book once I’ve finished it, but, in case that doesn’t happen, I wanted to make a quick note of this wonderful bit of epic fantasy.

What about you? What have you been enjoying lately that needs to be shared with the class?

I’m going through the old blogroll and I’ve decided that it needs updating. Aside from blogrolling’s recent outage, I have a number of dead blogs on the roll and a desperate need to see read some new voices. So, over the next few days I’ll be deciding which links to keep, I’ll be adding a few new names to the list, and then I’ll see if I can find some service that will make me forget all about the failures of Blogrolling (which seems to be, mostly, a dead product anyway).

Point being: if you have any suggestions either for a service for the blogroll or for new reads that I don’t currently have linked, please leave me your thoughts.

First up, I need to remember to link up the acerbic LibertyGirl2008. Happy fun anger!

Ubunutu is my third favorite operating system (behind Mac OS X and the iPhone OS, which, though still a little immature, has made a real impression on me in terms of its simplicity, responsiveness, and innovative nature), which goes precisely nowhere in explaining how Mandriva has taken over the hard drive of my travel laptop.

Mandriva, which used to be Mandrake, is an older distribution and isn’t bad by any means, but it lacks some of the polish and reliability of the Ubuntu distribution that I was running for a while. I’ve had a number of hangs on startups, a few crashed applications, and one crash that forced a restart of the operating system--all things that shocked me from a mature Linux distribution. The interface (I’m running it with KDE without the more gratuitous windowing gimmicks, one of which makes the windows shake like Jell-o after moving them) is similar to Microsoft’s Windows, but it feels strangely twitchy in a way (and has some peculiarities) that Ubuntu didn’t.

Since the installed programs are similar (and in many cases identical) and each has a package manager to install any other necessary software, and since those software titles run much the same on each OS, how is it that I ended up with Mandriva instead of Ubuntu? Easy: there are some non-negotiable issues driving my choice of operating system.

With my work systems, the OS has to support all of the software in which I have invested thousands of dollars and it has to be quick and easy for me to use (which speaks more to my own preferences and biases than any native advantage to the OS itself). My work computer is fairly well limited to Mac OS X and I have no complaints about that.

The more travel I do, though, the more I realized that I didn’t want to risk the MacBook to the hazards of the longer trips. A low cost, reliable travel computer was in order and the non-negotiable issues changed significantly: the computer had to give me office applications at a low price, had to support my camera, had to be capable of recharging my iPhone and iPod, and had to support my laptop’s wireless card. It’s that wireless card that killed Ubuntu (and a number of other distributions that I preferred to Mandriva)--a card that didn’t work with any other free distribution that I tried. Out of the virtual box, Mandriva worked without having to do any extra work, a trick that I wish Ubuntu could learn.

So as I prepare to head off to India, Mandriva is being tweaked and modified to make sure that it meets all my needs and expectations.

One of the more interesting things that I’m finding as I explore the software available through Mandriva’s Install/Remove Software is that so much of the free software that is available is crap. Don’t get me wrong, there are some titles that are great (Scribus, for example, doesn’t do half the tricks that Indesign or QuarkXPress can manage, but it’s actually a really solid and flexible desktop publishing app), but much of the stuff filling the slots is rankly amateur in execution. Sometimes free is cool; sometimes free just sucks.

Why do I share this with you? Absolutely no reason whatsoever…

The end of the congressional moratorium on commercial development of oil-shale is a big win for Republicans who have made this a talking point during this election cycle, and a bigger win for Americans who want a common sense approach to energy production and development of natural resources in the United States.

A congressional moratorium blocking commercial oil- shale development expires Monday, and the Bush administration is moving quickly to script how future exploration will occur.

The Bureau of Land Management plans to issue final regulations by year’s end that will set out factors including what royalty rate companies will pay to lease federal land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

Advocates of removing the ban, along with a ban on offshore oil drilling, rejoiced and declared Monday “American Energy Freedom Day.”

“It was a mistake to put the moratorium in last year, and it would be a mistake to keep it in this year,” said Republican Sen. Wayne Allard of Loveland. “The common-sense approach to ensuring Colorado’s economic future and our nation’s energy independence dictates that we safely, cleanly and efficiently explore and develop our resources.”

No one pretends that either this or expanded off shore drilling will fill all of America’s energy needs in the future, but a rational approach, to me, is a mixed approach that leverages new technologies and techniques to power our economy with everything from natural gas and clean(er) coal to oil shale and petroleum to wind and solar. And throwing in a series of nuclear power plants wouldn’t hurt my feelings, either.

The funny thing is that for this to happen, all it took was for congress to sit back and fail to act. I’m pretty sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere…

Hopefully the restrictions and lease terms put in place by the BLM won’t make it impossible for development on these new resources.

Read the story.

It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to test this on the Russian armor waddling through Georgia. But one can dream…

On the other hand, it seems a quiet test on the “battlewagons" here wouldn’t be out of bounds either ethically or politically.

Seriously, though: read through that first link and consider deeply. If that system works as advertised, as reliably as hoped, as accurately as predicted, and as quickly as that theoretical “strike” would indicate, the PASDEW is a game changer. From the moment the United States establishes air superiority in any region, regular flights could largely negate the effectiveness of enemy armor and even naval forces, completely disrupt supply lines, demoralize the enemy, and provide unprecedented support to advancing allied forces.

Of course, the energy use must be phenomenal and it’s far too early to judge anything like real world reliability. As a first step toward practical frickin’ laser beams, though, this looks like a hell of a thing.

I meant to publish this a few days ago, but life intervened and time slipped by. Happens.

Anyway, imagine for a moment that you are the Speaker of the House. Your party has the majority of seats but you won’t let a vote happen on offshore drilling at a time when most Americans are feeling an energy pinch like they haven’t felt since the 70’s. In fact, since that timeframe far exceeds the short attention span of most of us, it would be safe to say that gas and oil prices spiking over the past few years has brought a sense of urgency that could overpower most every other issue in an election year--these new energy costs may not be unprecedented, but they certainly feel like something new.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday ruled out a vote on new offshore oil drilling even as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said he might be open to a compromise that included it.

The scramble over expanded drilling off America’s coasts — ammunition for a weekend of rat-a-tat-tat by the presidential campaigns — underscores the political power of $4-a-gallon gas. Though President Bush and other backers of new drilling acknowledge it wouldn’t directly affect gas prices for years, they have pounded Democrats for opposing the measure, which is now supported by most Americans.

Why do you not allow the vote?

There are only two good reasons that I can think of to duck the vote when your party is in the majority: first, you don’t feel that you have the support of enough of your party to win the vote, or, second, your party isn’t on the popular side of the issue and you don’t want votes going on record when they could change the way people will vote in just a few months. The Democrats have aligned themselves to an increasingly unpopular position--the systematic denial of use of U.S. natural resources--to push a strong alt.energy with no excuses agenda. That argument is a loser when citizens are more concerned about being able to drive to the grocery store (and, hopefully, still afford groceries) than they are about the ideology that undergirds the Democrat’s need to avoid almost any new proposal to drill or mine anything that could be used to maintain or expand our current energy infrastructure. Their opposition extends far beyond the practical--that is, while moving to renewable sources for energy production is admirable and a goal that I support, the practical mind realizes that we won’t get there by dismantling our economy.

Refusal to address energy production in a responsible manner--realizing that natural gas, oil, and coal aren’t actually tools of the devil might be a good place to start--is advocating the destruction of our economy and the punishment of low wage earners who have a harder time dealing with rising energy costs than those of us who actually have a little elasticity built in with higher incomes. Denying the use of our own natural resources is just foolish. Good leadership would understand that we need those resources to help shore up energy production issues and our economy while we come up with a good mixed strategy for energy production in the future.

Of course, I can’t deny that none of our elected leaders have shown much in the way of leadership on the subject over the last few decades and I wonder if either guy auditioning for the office of President will represent an improvement?

One thing the article mentions that deserves to be addressed is the assumption that new drilling wouldn’t affect gas prices today. While renewed offshore drilling wouldn’t directly change gas reserves today, it probably would affect gas prices today--or, at least, in the relatively near future. The price of oil and gas are changed by investor’s expectations of what is going to happen in the future and if they believe that production capacity exceeds demand (and projected growth in demand), then the price will drop. One of the arguments against tapping the strategic reserves (aside from the fact that they should only be released in the most extreme emergencies--and this ain’t that) is that it wouldn’t have much of an effect in the long term because it doesn’t represent new production capacity. It represents a relatively small and temporary influx of product that would do nothing to change future supply or demand issues. Tapping the reserves would probably result in a very short lived dip (albeit a significant one) in oil prices and a small change in gas prices.

Whatever the result to releasing a portion of the strategic reserves, though, it would be short lived. I’d rather have a long term solution to production questions coupled with an aggressive push to address long term demand questions--a push that is already underway thanks to consumers who were seriously spooked by the results of $140+ oil. I sort of doubt that, even if oil prices were to get back below $80/barrel, we will be seeing a return of the SUV as king of the American road.

Oil prices are already easing to below $120/bbl as I write this (you can see the current price here) and show signs of fluttering down even more as the travel season is starting to come to a close, bringing a sense of relief to folks at gas pumps everywhere. While we have this small respite--and a real need for more relief to help pump up the economy and ease the effects that energy costs are having on inflation--we need to address our long term energy needs. Solar cells, wind farms, and bags of wishful thinking aren’t enough right now to power the economy (and don’t get me started on the ridiculous opposition to nuclear power in the US).

Citizens are demanding solutions to our near term difficulties and I believe that they will respond to strong leadership on the longer term questions. Nancy Pelosi has showed, though, that her best strategy involves ducking the issue. At least until the election is over.

Read the story.

PS- While I generally prefer a Republican in the White House, I tend to like Republicans better when they are a minority in the House and Senate. The political theater is more entertaining and the party takes on a rebellious bent. As a majority, though, they simply failed to deliver on the promises made during those years in the minority.

Of course, since I’m largely a fan of gridlock in government--that state where they are so engrossed in their tug-of-war with the opposition that they forget to pass stupid ore even destructive laws under the supposed cover of my best interests--I might be letting my bias show.

The iPhone Application Store is about to be open for business (which requires iTunes version 7.7, which is available now, and iPhone software version 2, available tomorrow) on Friday and I’m going to be downloading some nifty applications to make my iPhone an even better platform from which to manage my plans for world domination. And since I can browse the app store right now--integrated into iTunes and just as easy to use--I’m already starting to plan a few expenditures.

1. Pandora for iPhones-- Pandora, the cool purveyor of musical niftiness, has a free application that will turn my iPhone into a roving jukebox. Freakin’ awesome.
2. Recorder-- For $8.99, I’ll get a feature that I think should have been built into the iPhone from the beginning: voice recording.
3. - Or- TalkingPics-- Which is a bigger, more complicated app than Recorder, but it looks like it has some nifty options. It associates recorded content with photos and even appears to create slide shows with aural content. Which might make taking reference pictures and notes a freakin’ breeze for journalists.
4. BookZ Text Reader-- For $1.99, I can make the iPhone into a little portable library. I’m curious about a few things like what formats it supports and whether it operates in both horizontal and widescreen views, but for $1.99 a little experimentation can be excused, right? It explicitly does work with files from Project Gutenberg, so I will be able to build a collection of great books to keep me company on long flights. Take that overpriced Kindle!
5. iPint-- Because it’s a game, it involves beer, and it’s free. While I have no idea what the game might involve, it still seems a worthwhile investment.
6. Jared: Butcher of Song-- Because old Mac fans like me still remember Jared’s warbling songs with fondness. Sort of.
7. Light-- Because the iPhone makes a surprisingly good flashlight already, and the bright white screen of Light will do the job even better.
8. Platinum Solitaire-- For $7.99, it’s another way to kill huge chunks of time when in airports and airplanes.

Of course, that’s just a start to the damage that I’ll do to a credit card loading my little iPhone up with bright, shiny little applications.

Apple is going to rule the world.