During the height of the Great Depression, Pierce-Arrow, known for producing cars for the high and mighty (including Presidents and dignitaries) offered a $10,000 car known as the Silver Arrow. It was the last car that Pierce-Arrow ever produced.

Today, Tesla rolls out the first production electric-powered car for a cool $109,000 (which can go up to a well-equipped $125,000).

The difference?

Tesla is fore fronting the next wave of political lobbyist haters by presenting something that, while no doubt priced to recoup $40 Million for the investors and R&D costs, will have a significant impact on the future of car production and fossil fuel dependency.

Or will it?

Many have tried, including the aforementioned Pierce-Arrow, to build a car that doesn’t follow standards. The new wave of “green” will offer chances for us to save our environment (if it’s not already too late) and give the consumer a reason to fight the sheer crutch that is fossil fuels.

In the next year, Tesla promises to begin production on a five passenger family sedan with enough of a charge to go about 200 miles before having to stop and get a “refill”. Experts say that’s enough to fuel a trip to work and back and possibly stop for some groceries.

Support or Death

The key to the success of Tesla and other like car companies will be in the country’s ability to build an infrastructure that can sustain and maintain a balance of outgoing (50 more years?) fossil fuel depots and electricity charge stations.

I hope that like other technologies, the advancement of electric transportation becomes affordable enough to make it a viable option in the near future. If Tesla is successful, expect every car company to force their hands in the market and also expect to see tens of thousands in production in the next 15 years.

May 5, 1961

One last note: The irony should not be lost on technologists, who will more than likely remember May 5, 1961, as the date Alan Shepard became the first U.S. man in space. His flight lasted only 15 minutes. Let’s hope the Tesla and its new brand have a much longer time line.

We all have our fair share of conference calls and Web-centric meetings and it’s been a while since we had a nice, clean fight between two Web services.

Our experience so far is giving the upper hand to GoToMeeting. Here’s why: It very usable. The interface is cleaner and has more clear direction, the switching of hosts and call control is much faster and the voice quality has so far been much better than we experienced with WebEx.

In the coming months, we’ll periodically have to report back but so far, we’re liking the company selection.

Speed: It can make you look like a rock star or a rock star’s discarded gig wear.

Mobile UX: It can make you a helpful, innovative leading-edge company or it can make you look like someone’s old Windows 3.1 application.

From a banking application to a quick Twitter session with your friends, I believe that speed and ease of use are the ultimate drivers for mobile applications. Web and application developers have been going through a growth path that includes the typical questions:

• What’s a mobile application?
• Who would ever trust such a thing as a mobile application?
• How fast can I get one for my business?

Years ago, the question surrounding the viability of mobile, image-less browsing was relegated to R&D and people with a great deal of time on their hands. These days, it’s becoming more and more a requirement in our proposals and presentations. Have you seen an increase? Do the requests make sense?

Trust Me

Trust is a key factor in many of the decisions our customers make as to whether or not they belong in the mobile community. My personal advice to any company who has a service or application that can be used in quick sessions (less than a three-minute transaction) is to go for it. Build the application using the latest and greatest security you can employ and create your mobile application as soon as possible.

Trust comes with time. Established in x year. Since xxxx. Time is a great way to generate trust to your audience. It isn’t going to carry you very far, but it’s a start and it’s something you won’t have if you don’t move now.

Again, Again!

Once you’ve gone through a comprehensive design for the mobile version of your offering, it’s critical to keep the ball bouncing. By standing still and keeping your early iterations in production, you’ll lose the edge.

Paying attention to new browser versions, the ability to incorporate time-saving development environments and keeping your application or service fresh is going to keep the customer alert and keep you on the right path.

Remember the Past

It’s a significant effort to produce the right UX for a mobile environment. It takes a deep understanding of your product, your staff and the design process for human factors and behavior.

Additionally, it takes time. Most often, we notice that failing mobile ux is a product of not taking enough time to sort out the business requirements. It’s not effective to take what you have and “re purpose” it. The mobile version should have the same care and feeding that was established with the big sister or big brother product.

In most situations, you’ll run into some nasty speed bumps such as

• language versions / regional codes
• brand elements
• functional buttons / iconography
• vanity

That last bullet is pretty important. Vanity can kill a mobile application. If the logo is too big, the first impression might be that the provider cares much more about themselves than they do about me. If it’s too small, or ignored altogether, the customer may feel that the provider isn’t being transparent.

Corporate vanity has a strong place in the mobile world: marketing materials, about pages and tasteful watermarks.

Conceive and Create

Use your product knowledge and your creative staff to work together. It’s an effort that can not be successfully carried out by one or the other. Both departments (or vendors) need to work in harmony to effectively produce your mobile application or service.

The global reach for companies these days is expanding at a rate far greater than ever. And, with this expansion of products and services, especially through online channels, comes the ability to work with freelance or agency talent all over the world.

Collective talent pools like Airbag Industries, HappyCog and, of course, Visual Activity have succeeded due to a deep bench of talent and the ability to work in remote areas while using the most up to date tools.

We currently have a staff that includes an engineer in London, a senior ui developer in Utah and two physical addresses in the Northeast where the other three staff members work each day.

Our reach, like that of our clients, becomes paramount to our success in such a competitive landscape. While some of our clients such as Harvard University and Interactive Data Corporation are local, our international clients like Novartis and Capcom require a blend of weekly phone calls and online project management tools to help everyone stay on track.

The extent to which we are able to work with clients across the globe is unlimited. We’ve had a long history of success working with client teams from Ireland to India and we expect the trend to not only continue, but to grow.

A fantastic example of how international talent is being used for global marketing is the recent hire of Sydney, Australia-based Publicis Mojo to handle the worldwide effort for Diet Coke. This, based on information from a report in AdAge marks this as “the largest global account ever awarded to an Australian agency”.

As the trends grow and the internationalization becomes more standard, one thing that will remain an issue is the localized audience. I still think that companies have a difficult time understanding the needs of the local audience as it pertains to a global strategy.

Time will tell if localization becomes less of an issue (spelling, language options as a standard option, sites with zoned pricing, etc…). I hope that as companies more frequently use international talent they pay close attention to the local impact.

If you are one of the billion people in the world who accept the Apple method of control and, admittedly, the epitome of electronic distribution then Steve Jobs has news for you: they’ll handle your software applications for the iPhone and iTouch as well. No problem. They’ll take it all.

Why? Because that’s exactly what’s going to happen once the SDK finally reaches the masses and those masses clamor to strut their stuff.

Small development and creative firms will try to create the next $1.99 killer application and larger development firms will try to close the gap between business productivity and one of the coolest devices ever created.

Will this mean that there won’t be any freeware?

Of course not, but consider the stronghold of Apple in their distribution of electronic content. They’ll be certain to set strict guidelines surrounding QA, pricing and size than any standalone development shop. And, if they’re going to have the opportunity to charge you for their control, then they should implement best practices to refund or allow credit for items which do not meet specifications or the promise to customers.

The development community, as always, has the say on whether or not they’ll sign on for distribution with Apple. The choice to not join, however, would be detrimental to the bottom line. In reality, it could stop all means of getting the product out the door.