Free Coffee is Back at McDonald's

McDonald's has recently announced on their Twitter feed that they will be offering free coffee from March 1st to 14th. The deal is available all day at Canadian McDonald's locations.

Tim Horton Bans Man

Tim Horton's levies lifetime ban on a man for complaining about it's decaf coffee. Apparently the decaf coffee served by two Tim Horton's near the Jimmy Craig's home consistently tasted burnt.

I have never been to either of these Tim Horton locations but this is a problem I've encountered on numerous occasions. Their web site indicates that the coffee must be served within 20 minutes of brewing but that is not always the case especially in regards to decaf coffee.

My Dad drinks decaf and when I used to do coffee runs for him back when I was in high school he would made me ask Timmy's to brew a fresh pot of decaf for him. Consequently whenever I was too lazy or embarrassed to ask them, he could always tell as the coffee tasted burnt to him. Coincidence, I think not.

Pour Over Brewing Coming to Starbucks

It looks like Starbucks is rolling out the pour over coffee brewing method in the next month or so. If you are not familiar with the pour over method, here is a good explanation.

This will add coffee diversity to Starbucks as customers will be able to select which beans they want for their individual cup of coffee instead of settling for the bold, mild and decaf versions on sale that day. However, I can see this negatively impacting the wait times at Starbucks as each cup has to be individually ground, poured and served.

USB Heated Travel Mug

For those of you who spend a lot of time in the car, I present the USB heated travel mug. Perfect for those of you on the go or tied to your computer.

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.