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.

You could smell death in the air the moment Warner chose to support Blu-Ray. With five major studios and a major game system (Playstation 3) behind it, Blu-Ray was picking up steam and slamming press release after press release in the face of Toshiba, Microsoft and Intel.

But this victory may come at a significant cost to the consumer. As much as it would be lovely to think that supporters of the new format would be competing against each other in the hardware space, this may not be the case. Blu-Ray will be less expensive, eventually, just like all technology based items. However, the road to affordable personal development of high definition DVDs will be bumpy for sure.

I have seen both formats and have been swayed by the marketing effort of Blu-Ray. They simply did a better job with their brand. With a tip to my cap to Toshiba, congratulations to the new / old next best thing.

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.

I will always look back at the first time I ever opened Netscape Navigator, ver. 1.0a as THE turning point in my career. In 1994, the browser was released in the first non-beta version and was passed around on disks to friends at work who were lucky enough to either have a modem or, gasp, a connection to BBN Planet.

On February 1, 2008, the sometimes bane and sometimes joy of my existence, Netscape Navigator, will cease to be. And while I haven’t felt the same about Netscape since the 1999 acquisition by AOL, I will always and forever blame my love/hate relationship with javascript on version 4.7.

For those of you who feel nostalgic and wish to keep your old-school roots in tact, brave it out and download the skin for Firefox.

Maybe I’m just feeling nostalgic on a cold, rainy Saturday, but the industry seemed so much smaller back then and you felt like you were part of something big that most everyone else thought was just a fad. For those who knew better, this was “it”. You were paid well for knowing your hacks. You were called three to five times per week with lucrative job offers.

These days we still have similar issues as we fight our way through user experience designs being presented correctly in all browsers. We still wish to God Almighty (or your power of choice) that there wasn’t the need for CSS hack repositories (thank you, Ethan).

So, while I may feel nostalgic for the old days, I’m glad to see things change and I’m ecstatic that I still get to call this industry my home.

Netscape Navigator, I bid you farewell. Thanks for the memory (leaks).