Currently, Indianapolis has about 70,000 spaces around downtown, including spaces built to accommodate the oft-stressed IUPUI area, which has 16,781 spaces between lots and garages. All of IUPUI’s spaces are publicly-owned and constructed at a cost to Indiana taxpayers. 8,337 of those spaces are designed just for students, meaning faculty and staff take up almost half of the available spaces at IUPUI. There are over 30,000 students enrolled at IUPUI.

Figures based on the average cost of constructing a new parking garage indicate that in 2008, U.S. garages cost about $15,000 per space, or $44 per square foot. That’s a lot of money just to hold a car. Parking lots cost anywhere from $250 to $500 per space, depending on their location.

All that car storage takes up a lot of valuable real estate, too, causing city centers to be consumed by largely useless, ugly, concrete walls so people can walk a few short feet to their destination.

Considering the cost to the public to build large roads, parking garages either entirely publicly funded or abated with public tax grants, parking fees people pay, meter attendants, and other public infrastructure for car storage like signage and meter maintenance (now partially covered by a private operator in Indianapolis), that’s a huge sum of money. Even one garage that, on average, costs millions to build, is somehow seen as “okay”, despite it costing the average US city just under $6 million to do so.

The average student at IUPUI pays over $250 an academic year to park on campus, or about $25 a month. Similar rates apply to people who work downtown and have to pay their own parking costs. Dennison Parking operates a facility that charges $40 a month for non-guaranteed daily parking at their facility on South Meridian Street.

The entire IndyConnect plan would cost a person earning $50,000 just $10 a month to build and maintain a system. The average household in Marion and Hamilton County would pay about $120 a year for a system that would allow us to stop building ugly blocks for car storage, and instead allow people to get to the business of actually getting around town quickly and efficiently. The cost of three parking garages would roughly cover the cost of operating IndyConnect for one year.

Which means that the amount of money that Indianapolis is going to spend, without much of a peep from the public, is enough to operate an entire transit system that would catapult Indianapolis into the echelon of “cities with great mass transit” for a year. That’s just in public money that the city somehow “doesn’t have”. Outside of the public coffers, the plan would have to be funded largely by tax dollars on a recurring basis in a way that garages presumably don’t (beyond maintenance).

So, for the average schmuck who’s married with a kid or two, where both parents work, they’re willing to spend, on average a third of their income each year based on US Transportation Bureau statistics on cars and “car stuff”, like maintenance, gas, insurance, and parking fees. Or, $25,000 a year for an income of $75,000. As opposed to spending $120 a year in taxes, plus bus/train fees of $60 a month for a total of $1,560 a year (for two people).

Tens of thousands of people willingly pay $25,000 a year when they could just pay $1,560. Talk about an economic opportunity. Wouldn’t you like a third of your income back?

Most people in Indianapolis are one person in a car going to work, then going home. If you’re married, even losing one car to allow mom the use of the transit system while Dad takes the car to run a bunch of errands and then pick up and drop off the kids somewhere would still be a savings of $12,500 a year. If you’re a single parent with a kid or two, you can still enjoy the savings by using the car less in instances where the kids take the bus to school and you take the bus or train to work. Imagine saving just half the money you spend now per year on gas and oil changes. That would also extend the life of your car, or allow you to purchase and maintain a cheaper used car that you use less. For virtually everyone except elderly old quadriplegics in Indianapolis, everyone stands to save thousands of dollars a year.

For all those students going to IUPUI who spend untold amounts of car expense, they could instead invest that money in their education. Even not paying for a parking permit could cover the cost of several textbooks (or one big one if you’re in med school).

Cars are, for most people, a drain. They are not an asset, as an asset should retain or grow in value. They’re generally used for only transporting one person around, they pollute, they’re expensive, very few people like their car or their commute, and they’re an antiquated way of thinking about transit that we’re seemingly stuck with because of years of city building and construction that centered around the highway and the suburbs.

The City of Indianapolis is about to construct big boxes useful for nothing else but cars, while everyone sits around and wonders where all the money went, why they’re out of money themselves, and why they have to sit on the highway for so long every morning and night just to get to work. And not one public figure has drawn the connection that maybe it’s time we start diverting the money we do have to smarter ways of getting around. A reduction in waistlines, pollution, ugly and expensive lots and garages, and the convenience of knowing that even if you kept your car and one morning it doesn’t start, you still have a clean, safe, secure way of getting to work is not a bad thing.

First, Siri on an Apple TV is possible, maybe likely, but it’s not going to be the only interface. It can’t be. As Neven Mrgan pointed out, how would you flip to a new channel if Siri goes down? What about gaming? You can’t game with your voice — “QUICK! RUN AWAY, ME!”

So here’s what I imagine:

• It’ll be pricey, as with any Apple device, but it’ll be competitive on the high-end. Probably about $1,499 if I had to make my guess.
• It’ll use the traditional Apple Remote. I think they, and everyone else, really likes that. It may get modified or become smarter to do things like increasing the volume, but;
• The real remote comes on your iPhone or iPad. You can use it without, sure, but the magic happens on those devices. Now many have pointed out that you can’t easily control one screen by looking at another. Hand someone an iPad and the first thing they do is look at the iPad screen and not the TV. The current Apple Remote App is fine, but it requires a sort of disjointed brain behavior that’s hard to wrap your mind around. BUT, Apple doesn’t have to do that anymore. They introduced iPad mirroring, didn’t they? You just display whatever’s on the TV on to your iPad. When you’re done, you just put the iPad down and enjoy your show.
• I don’t think Apple’s TV will play nice with the cable providers. It’ll use the Internet-only, which is terrifying, since that’s still the cable company (if that’s not a monopoly, it’s about to be…I bet Apple can and will fight tooth and nail on that front if it comes to pass that Comcast starts throttling data or selectively blocking channels.).
• Since it’ll be Internet-only, I imagine a device that lets me pick shows completely on-demand, a la carte. Want Mad Men? That’ll be 99 cents for an episode or you can buy a season-pass for $9.99. In addition, Apple will no doubt become a subscription handler, allowing you to pay $19.99 a month or about $240 a year on an “all you can watch” model, like Netflix, so you can get TV and some movies. Movies not part of the subscription plan can still be rented for $1.99 or .99 cents. They may well do away with the TV episode subscriptions all together in favor of this.
• I have to assume the folks at Apple see Netflix floundering wildly. I have to suspect Eddie Cue wants to eat them for breakfast, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they terminate their Netflix deals and go straight into their own business of selling those monthly subscriptions for access. Or, more likely, a yearly subscription so you can pay it once and forget it. Seems less like “a bill” when you do that. They’ve done that with MobileMe and now iTunes Match, so that would be consistent.
• Sports packages have to get thrown in if Apple can pull it off, otherwise it’s not useful for a lot of people.
• I bet HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc. can’t wait. This fits with the model they’ve been touting for years.

Apple’s devices are all about content, so there’s no reason why we have to keep falling all over ourselves trying to figure out what amazing new input method they’re going to think up. I bet it’s mostly remote control, with a little voice-control if you want to use it, just like your iPhone.

It’ll be a really pretty device, maybe with a few neat things like built-in WiFi and Bluetooth (for iPhone controllers for games?) and iCloud access. But the really good parts come from easy software and access to all the best content.

The marketing geniuses at General Motors launched this campaign this week. It’s aimed at convincing college kids already paying exorbitant tuition and living well beyond their means that they can go another $20k in debt and somehow pay the monthly insurance on a sweet new car. You’ll recognize the humiliated cyclist riding an uncool bike from the 80s and a similarly dull helmet because that’s you and me a few years back.

However, the folks at Giant, the makers of my bike, have a nimble ad department of their own.

I have sold my old 11″ and the iMac. I have my Time Machine backup set to backup the Air and Carbon Copy Cloner is backing up external files (music, photo, movie libraries) to the Time Machine backup, too.

So, the current setup looks like this:

1 Apple Cinema Display ($1,000)
1 13″ MacBook Air ($1,200)
1 1 TB external hard drive ($80)
1 1 TB external Time Machine backup drive ($80)

My prior setup was:

1 27″ iMac ($1,700)
1 11″ MacBook Air ($1,000)
1 1 TB external hard drive ($80)
1 1 TB external Time Machine backup drive ($80)

I’ve already reduced the valuation from $2,860 to $2,360. Since I can keep the Cinema Display for a good long while (they don’t exactly change much for years at a time), I stand to save some money on upgrade costs later on by swapping $1,200 Airs instead of $1,700 iMacs. It also reduces maintenance burdens and file synchronization (seriously, stop saying “DROP BOX!” I use Drop Box, it’s great, but it’s also almost full. I have a lot of files, ok?)

I can also get amazing portability and access to most all of my files with the Air.

In the near future, I intend to upgrade the Cinema Display to a Thunderbolt Display (I still have 12 days to return this display to Apple) and plug in a Thunderbolt-capable external hard drive to save most of my larger external files. I won’t even notice a slight bit of lag then on writing files.

Then the current 1 TB drive will serve as a backup and I’ll plug it into my Airport Extreme and then I’ll have my own homemade “cloud drive” with all my files, accessible from anywhere. Neat! I’m also giving BackBlaze a trial for cloud backup of my files, too. (I looked at Carbonite first, but it doesn’t backup files on external hard drives, where most of my files now live).

The Air is amazing. I have managed to get it fired up a time or two that the fans kicked on, but it’s a very quiet, quick machine. I turned to my iMac earlier to fire up Safari and gave up waiting on it to load. I managed to load, search and find what I needed on my Air faster than my iMac could boot Safari.

I’d recommend this setup to anyone who does light computing for sure, and would advise high-end geeks consider it, too.

My first observation was that they are not prepared to handle people like me. I walked in and spoke to an older associate, probably one of the oldest I’ve ever seen working there. I kinda preferred that, actually. I told him I wanted a Thunderbolt cable to plug from my Air to my iMac so I could just use the iMac’s display for a while with the Air. I knew the price and capabilities of the cable, the associate did not. He thought the cable was $29, I said it was $49, he checked and it was $49. I wanted reassurance that what I wanted to do was possible and he went to check with others to verify. Everyone seemed to think plugging the cables in would work. It did not.

My second trip to the Apple Store was to return that cable and for a Cinema Display. I wanted one of the new Thunderbolt Displays. The person I spoke with, whose name I don’t remember, I recall being very speedy and jittery. He kept shuffling around and bouncing all over the place and said, “Yep yep yep” a lot. I couldn’t tell if he was just like that or was trying to hurry me the hell up.

He went to the back of the store to check for a new display and came out with a big box. I handed him my credit card and he stopped to say, “Wait a minute…let me check something.” He turned and noticed the display was the prior generation, a non-Thunderbolt enabled display. He almost sold me the wrong product from what I asked for. This, of course, was after I stood there for 8 (!) minutes waiting for someone else just to bring it out of the back of the store. As much as Apple’s tried to make their stores efficient with payment and sales help, they fumble hard on that front.

So I left without buying the old display. But I wanted to try out my Air in an Air-only setup without my iMac. So I went back the next day to buy the old display with the knowledge and proclamation to the next associate that I would bring it back in 14 days and hope to get the new one. They were cool with that, and I was cool with that, too.

However, things took a downturn when I spoke to a young female associate about the display. She didn’t even know if the displays in the store were the old or new ones. When I asked, “So, I can just plug in my thunderbolt cable to the Mini Display port and the USB ports from the monitor to enable the three ports on the back, right?” She nodded slowly.

“Yeah, and the Thunderbolt cable will deliver power to the Air, too and enable the use of the USB ports on the back of the display.” She said. “Wait, why does the display have a USB plug and a power adapter then?”

I knew what the monitor needed. The old displays had three cables: one for power, one for USB and one for MiniDisplay. The new ones just use Thunderbolt for USB and display and they have a power adapter, too.

“Yeah.” She said. “Yeah? You mean that little ol’ MiniDisplay port brings power and connectivity to everything?” (It doesn’t.)

“Yeah, I don’t know much about these displays. Let me get someone else.” She quickly turned and returned with a cute little guy. I do remember his name because he made a good impression on me. He was knowledgable about the products, even if he did somewhat talk down to me (he explained what Engadget was to me as he looked up Thunderbolt specs. I know what Engadget is dude.)
So I bought the display and I have it sitting on my desk as we speak. I will try to upgrade it in the next week or so to the Thunderbolt display, hopefully as they get them in.

My last trip to the Apple Store was Friday night. I sold my 11” Air on eBay for a good price and went back to buy a 13” with better specs. I spoke to a guy who also made a good impression on me and I remember his name, too. He was my favorite of all the reps I’ve spoken to, as he was smart, pleasant, conversational and seemed like the kind of guy you’d want to share a beer with. He wasn’t overly hipster or punk or emo or whatever the kids are these days.

We talked shop a bit as I debated between a high powered 11” Air, a mid-powered 13” Air or a 13” MacBook Pro. Talking through it as I debated (trying to balance price and speed), he wasn’t afraid to talk specs with me and gathered pretty quickly I knew what I was doing. After I decided on buying a 13” Air, he told me, “I’m supposed to ask, but do you want Apple Care?” I said, “No. I don’t keep them long enough to warrant the expense.” He agreed and added, “Yeah, I don’t know why we sell it with the Airs, personally. They’re no moving parts in them besides the fans.” That was the first refreshingly honest thing I’ve ever heard any Apple associate say. Kudos to him. If someone from Apple is reading this and you’re feeling like your associate didn’t do this job: yes, he did. He understood his customer perfectly and still did his job like you asked. His remark may not fit the Apple PR guidelines, but I know better and he knew it.

I still love Apple products and much prefer the experience at an Apple store vs. other retailers. God forbid you ask questions at a Wal-Mart. I bought an iPod there once and the clerk made no hesitation at telling me “they are junk” and his no-name piece of crap Sony thing was “far superior”. That the “Apple fanboys are stupid,” this AS I’M BUYING AN iPOD!. This was two months ago.

Apple’s retail experience is good, but they’re clearly designed and trained to deal with the masses. If you know what you want or know anything about RAM or processor speeds, you’re beyond anything they’ve reasonably trained for. Luckily, I guess, most people aren’t like me.

well it may be a cool application on itouch or ipad. but definitely not fun on a mac. the graphic is not good enough and u can even see the pixels. Anyways it doesnt worth 9.99 dollars at all!!!!

Double points for calling it an “iTouch” and complaining that he sees pixels while simultaneously demonstrating no understanding of third grade English.

So, it seems like the perfect time to start another project!

While I was away at X-Mester, I was getting up at 6 AM, maintaining client work, teaching and supervising students and going to bed around midnight. There wasn’t a lot of time for much of anything else. So I got behind in the news of the tech world, something I follow very closely. I’m a news junkie that way.

It made me realize how much most things just do not matter. The endless stream of Facebook posts about nothing, Twitter posts that seem out of context to everyone but that person and all the news stories that happened in my industry that were of such little quality.

I wanted a website where I can go to and find out all the important stuff really, really fast that’s well designed and with no distractions. I’ve always wanted something like that even when I’m at the office during the day working. I can easily spend a whole afternoon in RSS Hell reading story after story. Most of them aren’t really worth it. Have you ever read a blog post that changed your life? No, of course not.

So that’s why I’m soft-launching SlowNews.me. A site that’s run by me where I’ll post all the big stuff, the stuff that matters. For now, I’m getting into the swing of things, so posting may be off my self-imposed deadline of twice daily (by 6 am and lunch).

No more wading through posts about endless Apple rumors (“A 24 inch iPad by next week!”) or endless dribble about some new phone (“The Nokia N93522914 is coming soon!!1!!1″) or posts about how to upgrade your browser to the latest version of Chrome. I don’t need that and neither do you. Those sites post stories for the sake of posting. Listening to podcasts is too time consuming and using Twitter for news is fine if you want to organize a bunch of lists to keep all the power-users from dominating your stream. I’m posting for the sake of sanity.

It’s tech news at the speed of productivity for developers, designers, tech lovers and users. It’s time to get back to work.

Check it out at www.slownews.me. You can learn more about the site at www.slownews.me/about.

According to my Google Reader stats, I read over 19,000 articles of news, tidbits, posts and the like in 2010. By “read” I mean that they popped up, I skimmed over them and said, “Mark all as read”. Of the ones I actually absorbed, the number is closer to 6,000. That’s still a lot of news and none of it probably mattered at all.

I mostly read a lot of web, Apple, business and tech news. I follow dozens and dozens of feeds on those topics alone in Google Reader and I use Twitter as a means of keeping a curated list of people similar to me with shared interests that post interesting tidbits from sources I don’t directly follow.

So I was pretty excited when News.me launched. It’s a service that takes those Twitter feeds and spits out an email every morning with all the top links shared from the day before. That’s great, I guess, but I’ve already been made aware of those by following Twitter. The email I received today featured 4 out of 9 stories alone from Smashing Magazine. It’s completely dominated by a few top publishers and by the time I read it, it’s old news. Maybe I need more people to follow on Twitter, but then I lose all control of Twitter and it becomes a collage of crap like Facebook. It just shows me everything I’ve already read. If I stopped following Twitter, how would I ever know to follow new users and what about the folks that I like that don’t do tech stuff? For News.me to work, I still have to keep all those people in my feed.

What’s frightening is how much time I spend reading the news. I asked a friend how much time they spent browsing around and while it certainly varies, they can sometimes spend most all day reading blogs, posts and other things that really don’t matter. Unfortunately, I do the same thing. There needs to be a filter or system in place.

But that’s News.me; that’s the answer for the system to parse through and give you what you want. Except,  I don’t know what I want, necessarily. I know that I want the good news that matters and I want to stop spending so much time parsing through everything, but I don’t know where to look and where to find it. It consumes hours upon hours each week. It’s important for me to stay on top of these things; it’s my job, but it takes time that I could be using elsewhere. The system needs human curation. I don’t think it can be adequately automated. Even if I followed just a few of my favorite blogs, like Daring Fireball or Shawn Blanc, I’d be afraid I’m missing some great post from Mac Rumors or Neven’s blog.

So, my question for you, dear reader is this: does this sound familiar? Do you have this same problem? As much as I enjoy reading through all the various links, blogs and stories, I’d rather be in better control of my time by not spending all of it reading this stuff.

What if there was a news service that aggregated all this stuff into the top 10 stories with none of the fluff. GigaOm, Engadget, Tech Cruch, The Huffington Post Tech section, they all latch on to the link-bait stories and post something every 15 minutes. I don’t want to know that Steve Jobs might sneeze tomorrow or that Microsoft “might be in trouble” according to some no-name analyst predicting the future or that HTC released some new version of Android device and another one’s likely on the way next week. I want to know whats really happening, what’s really going to happen and I want updated just a couple times a day: in the morning before I wake up and in the evening after work.

Breaking news, like if Microsoft declared bankruptcy or Google inventing a second sun, would be worth an interruption. Some original reporting would be great, if it were good, too. Some new jQuery library or a gallery of inspirational websites or tips on how to use an iPad as a steering wheel aren’t of use to me. If I wanted to see a gallery or some snippet of code, I’d Google around for it.

I’d even be inclined to pay for such a service. $2.99 a month for a subscription to such a service would let me save countless hours of time and remove half my feeds and halve my desire to check Twitter all the time sounds like a life saver. Make it integrate with Instapaper and everything’s covered.

Yes, they’re podcasts like TWiT, but that’s once a week and is a little too slow for my tastes. I want to have something to read every day.

What about you? Does that sound more or less like what you’d want to see and read? Nothing sensational, nothing hyperbolic; just great coverage of the truly important news and tips linked to sources updated twice a day.