Awesome Hot/Cold Coffee Mugs

Awesome Pac-Man and Space Invaders Hot/Cold coffee mugs from ThinkGeek. 8-bit arcade game heaven!

Friday Book Review: Leviathan

Okay, I'm just going to say it. Leviathan is all sorts of awesomeness! The book takes place in an alternate reality at the beginning of World War I, which made me really glad I recenetly finished reading Paris 1919.

The two main characters represent each of the warring factions:

A 15 year old girl named Deryn Sharp dresses up as a boy to join the British Air Service. The Allied Powers in this universe are nicknamed the "Darwinist" after Charles Darwin who pefected a genetic splicing technique which allows the Allies to create their own new species. One of which is the Leviathan class air ship that Deryn is serving on.

The other is a young man Aleksandar Ferdinand who is the son of Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand who's assissination starts what becomes World War I. The Central Powers are nick named the "Clankers" as they eschew the godless genetic experiment of the Allies and instead focus on steam powered machines. However, the Clankers are still influenced by the Darwinists as their machines tend to be modeled after animals. Such as the 8 legged walking dreadnaught which replaces the tanks we know of.

The universe that author Scott Westerfeld describes is fully developed and his characters act in believable ways. That is, not always in their best interest as they are kids after all.

In case you haven't guessed I give this book my must buy recommendation. Please check out the book's web site as well as it adds a number of extras as well.

Friday Book Review: What Would Google Do?

Once upon a time the 800 pound gorilla in the room was Microsoft. They had so much money and so many resources that companies were, rightly, afraid that Microsoft would enter their space and take away their market share.

This has actually happened to me. Once upon a time the executives at a company I was working at wanted to partner with Microsoft so they had them come in for a demo of our product that integrated with Exchange. The demo went well and Microsoft executives were impressed but the partnership never emerged. However about a year later there were rumblings in the industry that Microsoft was about to release a new version of Exchange that duplicated the functionality of our product. I will leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.

Now the 800 pound gorilla title has passed on to Google. Yes, they have the near unlimited resources that Microsoft has but they are more inclined to commodify your product by releasing their own free version. This is one of the topics that Jeff Jarvis explores in his book What Would Google Do?.

Jarvis boils down Google's strategy into his set of Google Rules:

1) The customer is always right
2) Be a platform others can build upon
3) Middlemen Are Doomed
4) Be Transparent
5) Small is the new big
6) The middleman is dead
7) Don't sell things, stuff sucks

Now these rules apply to more companies than just Google and by following them your organization can innovate like Google. I particularly liked the chapters on middlemen and don't sell atoms, sell electrons.

The book is well worth the read and I'm giving it a borrow rating. Also, I digested this book in audio book form and Mr. Jarvis does a great job of reading it as well.

How to Make Espresso

Saw this interesting video over on Boing Boing today. Kyle Glanville of Intelligentsia shows you how to make a great cup of espresso.

Espresso, Intelligentsia from Department of the 4th Dimension on Vimeo.

How to Tell if Your Coffee Joint Doesn't Suck

This article on the Phoenix New Times gives you 5 ways to tell if you coffee shop doesn't suck.

Starbucks Price Hikes

It looks like Starbucks is rolling out prices hikes in select locations across the US and Canada.

Hardest hit seem to be the tea drinkers as Starbucks is now charging a premium for it's new loose leave tea. A 50 cent hike is nearly a 33% increase in price. This reminds me of when Tim Hortons switched to steeped tea at their stores and started charging different prices for small, medium and large teas. This is in contrast to their former pricing scheme of charging a flat price for tea regardless of the size.

If any of your readers have noticed this trend I'd like to hear about it in the comments.

Friday Book Review: Odd and the Frost Giants

After a couple of disappointing reads I had to go with someone I can trust and so I turned to Neil Gaiman. I picked up his latest kids book Odd And The Frost Giants.

In it the titular Odd, his name means edge of a blade in old Norse, is a 12 year old boy with a gimpy leg. He lives with his mother, step-father and step siblings in a Norse village. Odd feels out of place in his step-father's house so he decides to leave home. On his journey he encounters three talking animals, a fox, bear and eagle who involve him in an epic adventure in which he will have to travel to Asgard, the home of the Norse gods and defeat the Frost Giants so that Spring will return to Midgard (Earth).

As this is a book targeted towards kids it weighs in at a mere 128 pages which makes it a quick, albeit enjoyable read. The moral of the story is quite excellent as it shows young children that regardless of the fact they are young/small/weak they can still make a difference. The juxtaposition of the young child's feeling of weakness is exacerbated by the fact that the villain is a giant. To resolve the conflict Odd has to rely on his wits instead of physical strength.

I really did enjoy this book and I rate it as a buy for folks with young kids. I have to work on my voices a bit more before I read it to Anna. I have a pretty good handle on the bear, eagle and frost giant but my fox sure needs some work.