Blackberry Tips

One of the best parts of the Blackberry user experience is its simplicity.  Sure there are tons of 3rd party apps out there that do everything from update your Twitter to integrate your Flickr account.  But at its core, the blackberry is a email messaging device.  That has always been it’s core function, and hopefully always will, although the Storm gives me reason to doubt.

Embracing your Core, and never losing sight of it is critical for a device in a market oversaturated with a increasingly varied array of Smartphone devices. On the flip side of the same coin, the ability to upgrade your performance and turn your device from a simple tool into a powerful one is equally critical to differentiating yourself.

Despite the lack of an integrated app store like Apple provides the iPhone with via iTunes, Blackberry devices have a remarkable number of add on apps and internal hacks that can really ramp up your devices power.

One of my favorite is to turn off home screen dialing, and turn on one-key home screen navigation.  The process is simple, from the main Blackberry screen, simple go to your call menu, click the Blackberry button, and go to the option menu, there, turn off the “dial from home screen option.”  From now on, when you are in the main Blackberry screen you can navigate through many of the native apps just by clicking a button.  So when you hit the ‘M’ key the Blackberry will now take you to your Messages rather than the M section of your address book.  Some other nav keys include ‘N’ for BB Messenger ‘C’ for contacts, and ‘T’ for task.  To help you remember, now the text below each native app will have an underlined letter reminding you of the quick nav button. 

That’s just one of the simple hacks, there are many more including this list of hacks and tips shared by a Student Nerds reader

If you have some other favorite Blackberry tricks or tips not covered, please leave them in the comments.

The Annual Reformat

Have you ever changed the strings on your guitar?  You know how it sounds a million times better – even though the guitar sounded great anyways?  That’s what a clean reformat does to your computer.

I have a friend.  He claimed (at some point) to be tech savvy.  He built the desktop he’s using at the same time that I built the one I’m typing on now.  He knew more than I did then.  I know that he’s not very tech savvy by modern standards because we’ve had the following argument for about 2 years:

Me: “Dave, reformat your computer”

Dave: “No.  It is running Windows XP just as well as it was when i installed it back in 2002.”

Me: “Dave, XP doesn’t work that way.  reformat your XP.  it will be night and day”

Dave: “No. Things open just as fast as ever and everything’s OK.”

This is a person in denial.  a Windows box cannot last 7 years without massive slowdown.  about 2 years after i built my first computer (in 2002) i first reformatted (not by choice).  reformatting does 2 important things (among many):

1) Gets rid of “the muck” from registry edits, added/removed programs, antivirus software footprints, and stuff you didn’t realize you don't need [making things way faster]

2) Gives you the newest, cleanest OS possible

The first part is the most important.  After 6 months of any Windows-based OS use (I don't know anything about Mac stuff), your OS becomes a bit bogged down.

The good news is that a computer almost 7 years old is more than satisfactory for today’s OS and software.  That’s amazing (7 years ago, a computer became obsolete after 2-3 years). The good news is the Microsoft OS has been (almost) perfected.  The newer versions (see: Windows Vista) offer nothing but eye candy, demanding advanced computers.  The bad news is that you can’t buy the version of Windows XP that you need.  The best version of Windows XP is available only on pirate torrent sites: totally stripped down, removing all the bloat ware and unnecessary processes.  That’s what I’ve been running for years and I haven’t looked back – or forward.

If I was more disciplined, I would reformat every 6 months.  Reformat once and you will see how magical it is.  You will want to reformat more often too.  The reformat shall set you free.  It will be the sun to your allegorical cave.  You don’t need all that shit you thought you did (like when you lost all your mp3’s and realized you only wanted to re-download 25% of them anyways).

I’m not disciplined enough to reformat every 6 months.  So I do it about every 12 months.  Fortunately, it’s not nearly the headache it was 5 or 10 years ago.  A thumb drive can save all your important documents and settings.  A couple DVD’s can (usually) save the important media, and with torrents it’s very easy to re-download important albums or movies/tv.

Then you can download open source software (as listed somewhere on this site): Firefox, Launchy, iTunes (not open source, i know), thunderbird, combined community pack (good for movies), foxit (>adobe reader), uTorrent, pidgin, and install a pirated Office (still >open office).  Getting those extensions again is a bit of a pain, but it’s also kind of fun seeing what new stuff is out there.  And you’re set.

Reformat.  I’ll help you.

Create Amazing Photo Slideshows

Creating slideshows of your pictures can be a fun way to share a trip or experience with your family and friends. The only problem is that it can be such a time consuming process to make a cool slideshow with music. Well, today I’m going to show you a product that makes it very easy to make a picture slideshow with music in a matter of minutes.

Animoto is a website that allows you to create slideshows automatically. All you have to do is select the pictures you want and the song that you want. Animoto will create a unique (they say no two videos are the same) video that has transitions based on the music. You can make as many 30 second videos as you like, but to get more out of the service, you need to pay. It’s $3 to make a full length video or $30 a year to have unlimited access. You can even download a DVD quality video to burn for $5 a video. It is a very impressive product and they really do live up to their slogan: “the end of slideshows".” Check out the video I made in just a few minutes:

Virus & Malware Cleanup

So you get a virus or some clear malware thing and you have no idea how to get rid of it.  It’s slowing your computer down and messing up your internet browsing.

I’ve helped a lot of friends in this exact situation and the steps are almost always the same.  (This is assuming you are running a Windows machine).

Here are the steps you need to take to rid your computer of any malware or virus:

1. Ctrl-Alt-Del and close any processes that you’ve never heard of (if you’re not super computer-literate, this might be a step to skip)

2. Press Windows key & R and type “msconfig” (without the quotes) and then hit enter.  Click the startup tab and turn off everything except the maybe 2 or 3 you know.  Restart the computer and see if the problem comes back. (if you’re not super computer-literate, this also might be a step to skip)

3. Open the start menu, go to settings—>controlpanel—>add or remove programs.  any item called “Xango toolbar” or something else that’s obviously malware. Remove it. (if you’re not super computer-literate, this might be a step to skip)

4. Download Ad-Aware (no links provided because you can google it)

5. Install and update Ad-Aware

6. Download AVG Free

7. Install and update AVG Free

8.Restart computer

9. Hit F8 repeatedly.  When the option comes up, go to safe mode.

10. Run Ad-Awareand do a full system scan.  Delete/quarantine everything.

11.Run AVG Free and do a full system scan.  Delete/quarantine everything.

12. Restart computer

13.  See if the computer is back to normal.  if it isn’t, call a techie friend (or use our service when it launches) since you probably didn’t do it right.  it’s also possible the malware you installed is super evil, and you might have to reformat (this was the case on my sister’s computer 2 weeks ago – first time ever for me).  We will have a post soon on how to do a full reformat.  Good luck!

Barack & The Blackberry

According to CNN, Obama is not willing to give up his blackberry.  The fact that there may be a possibility of people trying to hack into it and use the GPS to track Obama.  I think the issue is more that they don’t understand it.  I think its great that he is fighting for his Blackberry, and for the first time the White House might have someone who connects with our generation. 

Clinton only sent 2 emails during his entire term.  I send roughly 100 emails a day.  This is clearly one of the biggest issues I can see other than national debt.  We have lost our technology foothold in the world.  How quickly we forgot about the rush to be the most technologically advanced country between Russia and the US?  Below is the new NSA safe “BarakBerry” it costs $3,350.00 named Sectera Edge and its not available to the public currently. 

He can switch between “safe” mode (secure email/conversations) and normal mode(browsing the web).  This is allegedly the phone he will be using, it is not confirmed for sure.  Its a pretty sweet phone that I’m sure other geeks would love to get their hands on and prove that it is hackable.  I want one that's for sure, it might a little better than my Blackberry Curve!

Get The Most From Your Netflix Subscription

I don’t use Netflix anymore, I use Redbox.  (Disclosure: I currently have an intimate financial relationship with Redbox) When I did use Netflix, I was frequently made fun of for having a massive queue of movies that I wanted to watch (not a bad thing if you ask me) but I also suffered from a pretty common vice of not returning my movies fast enough to really justify the value of their unlimited subscription model. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. 

Coming to our rescue is a new service, Feedflix.  Feedflix works by utilizing the Netflix API to analyze your usage.  It provides a relative cost per movie you rent (as a baseline keep in mind that Redbox charges only $1/day for new release movies)

It also gives data on recent rentals, how long you hold your rentals for and various other types of data.  This kind of information can be very  helpful in determining what plan you should be on, if any at all.  

Hopefully this can help everyone get the most out of your subscription.

Catch Up on Missed TV Shows

Did you miss the season premiere of Lost last night?  What if your DVR fails to record it? What if you don’t have a DVR? What are you supposed to do?  I’m going to show you three free websites to catch up on missed TV shows (and it’s even free and legal!)

So, you couldn’t watch Jack Bauer save the world again.  Well, I think that’s a shame. Here are 3 ways to catch up on your favorite TV shows:

1. Hulu – This is my favorite site and one we have talked about before here on Student Nerds.  It is very well designed and doesn’t really bug you too bad with ads.  It was started as a joint collaboration with NBC and FOX, so you won’t find any ABC shows on here.
   
2. Fancast – This is a website started by Comcast.  Fancast is an aggregator that pulls in shows from many networks. 
   
3. Joost – Joost started out as a standalone application, but now has dumped that idea to focus solely on it’s web interface.  It is very well designed and even integrates with Facebook so you don’t have to create your own account.  It also allows you to share what you’re watching with your friends.  There is a lot of potential with this. (See Boxee)

The Trouble with HD Video Cameras

If you are considering an HD camera, please read this post.  It can be the best toy you have ever purchased or a nightmare trying to deal with it.  For Christmas this year I was blessed with an Canon HG20 HD video camera and I thought it was going to be as simple as point and shoot. Drag the video from the hard drive on the camera and bam, open up any old free video software and you can do simple editing tasks.  Then you can email your friends or relatives and enjoy the beauty of HD video.  Well this was the worst assumption I have ever made. 

First, the point and shoot was straight forward and easy, but selecting what quality to shoot in was the hard part.  Do I shoot in Standard basic HD, or MXP (The maximum setting on this camera)?  Well of course, if you buy a fancy HD camera, you want to shoot the max right away.  There are two problems with the highest setting.  First, it will record maybe 5hrs of video (not the advertised 22).  Second, the battery (always buy an extended battery) only lasts about 30 minutes.  Once you have your video shot, I would recommend Adobe Premiere. I tried Final Cut Express but you need to make sure you have it updated, or it will crash your comp.  Corel Video Studio didn’t handle AVCHD at all, or at least I couldn’t figure out how to capture it.  Once I loaded Adobe Premiere everything was smooth sailing for capturing and editing. 

Now the hard part, what format to put the video in to share it, or how to share it?  This is one I have still been messing around with.  I wanted to see if anyone has any ideas.  What is the best format for AVCHD video to share with friends and family that likely have older computers that can’t handle H.264 HD video?.  Do you send them an MPEG or upload to a video sharing site (Youtube or Vimeo)?   Let us know what you think can make this industry a little more uniform with video and if you have any recommendations for sharing HD video on the internet.

What happened to AIM?

Four years ago, the biggest difference I would make in peoples’ computing experience was switching them from AIM to gAIM.  The latter is an open-source alternative to the bloatware that is known as AIM.

Before we go any further, we have to draw a distinction between the software and the server.  The server is stuff like AOL, yahoo, MSN, ICQ, Google, and Skype.  They host your screen name, and all of those people you talk to.  The software is the *interface* with which you talk to them.  This distinction is one that continues to confound the computer-illiterate.  See my future post to help figure out whether you’re computer-literate or not…

Three years ago, I told people to use their AIM screen names but switch to gAIM.  It’s open source, it’s extensible, and it’s got no bloat-ware like the AIM version 5+ shit.  aim: gaim :: internet explorer : firefox.

But things have changed. I still use Pidgin (gAIM changed it’s name due to some lawsuit; Pidgin still rules), but my buddy list looks different.

A couple years ago, it was dominated by AIM screen names.  In high school, I didn’t have a *huge* number of buddy list friends, but I had a lot, probably over 100.  Today, I can probably point to 6 people I regularly see on AIM.  It would seem nobody uses it.  In fact, two days ago I changed my facebook “messenger” name from megatron490(@aol) to arjunsharma33(@gmail).

One thing I still wonder is how and why this happened  Certainly a number of my high school friends abandoned AIM in some sort of effort to act like they were really *grown up* or *indepenedent.*  Fine.  These same people didn’t join facebook.  And some of them really did grow up.

But then I see my sister still showing up on my buddy list.  She’s 20.  And her friends still use AIM all the time.  I asked her for her gChat name 6 months ago; she still cannot produce one.  She has 100+ AIM friends, like I use to.

I can’t help but wonder why my buddy list is 85% gChat addresses, while my sister’s is 85% AIM addresses.  All I know is that the future is google: no ads, no need for external software, video chat enabled, and fully logged conversations.  Anyways, offer thoughts re: googlechat vs aim in the comments.

How do you Google?

It’s not news to suggest that Google has become pretty ubiquitous. For an ever increasing segment of the population, the internet starts on the Google homepage every time they fire up a browser. I would be very surprised if almost every web user in North America or Europe didn’t use Google for at least something.

But everyone uses Google differently. My homepage on both my work laptop and my home network is iGoogle. Where front and center is the pretty cool Google Twitter Gadget. On my work computer I also have a tab for Traffic and Maps on my iGoogle to help me plan the drive home. So I hit 3 features of Google, Search, Maps and a Gadget from Labs, every time I hit the internet. I also have a Gmail tab on my iGoogle, but I rarely use it.

If I’m browsing for fun, almost inevitably, the next thing I do is to pull up my RSS aggregator, Google Reader. I’ve tried a number of different aggregators and readers in the past, but Google Reader is the only one that I have stuck with. I probably have 60-70 feeds in my Reader, 30-40 of which are active.

I also typically pull up my Gmail account, but I find myself using that less and less to read or compose emails, since I typically do that on the Blackberry, I use Gmail mostly for Gtalk if I want to chat or to access “follow up required” type of emails, usually reminders to pay a bill or buy a ticket or something.

Finally, three or four times a week I stop by Google docs to check on community docs, update some of my budget spreadsheets or upload some reports that some of the services I subscribe to generate.

I feel like my usuage is pretty standard, so that was why this article by Techcrunch interested me so much. It was about the top domains (a relative proxy for products) of the various Google domains (as measured by Quantcast) Here was the list.

1. Google Search
2. Google Maps
3. Google Image Search
4. Gmail
5. Google Book Search
6. Google News
7. Google Video Search
8. Picasa
9. Google Earth
10. Google Groups

The fact that Google search is #1 is no surprise. But what did surprised me was that my usage of Google doesn’t really correspond to what is popular. Reader and Docs don’t even make the list, I’ve never used Groups (and was barely aware that it existed), Picasa, Video Search (I assume this is different than Youtube?), I don’t really use News or Book Search (and I’m not even sure what that is).

What is clear, is that Google’s power (as measured by Traffic) is still in its search. This to me is bound to change. Search is great, but I can’t remember the last time that I really had an opinion about a search engine, or the last time I felt really a lot of value-add input came from my engine. I use Google to search , but almost as a after thought. What I VALUE from Google is their mail, the storage they provide, the ease and convenience of sharing documents, maps to help me get home and the service they provide in aggregating all the sites I read and follow.

I might be wrong, but I don’t think that Google’s strength and power lie in growing search, but in cranking out quality products like Reader and Gmail and quickly killing distracting and depreciative products like Orkut (although I hear that is big in Brazil, or is that Friendster? Who cares?) and Google Video.

But I could be wrong, clearly more people touch Google via search than through reader.

How do you Google? Let us know.

Technology Breakdown

As you all know because of last Friday’s poll, I have had quite the catastrophe with the technology that surrounds me.  It made me think. Are we a slave to the technology around us, or do we really control and utilize the resources.  I realized that when my technology (work laptop, Blackberry roller ball, personal computer hard drive, an HD video camcorder, and a gift card!)  went down so did my life.  I would like to think that I can function normally without these “luxuries” but in reality it was a scramble. It put everything else on hold to get them fixed.

I would like to hear if anyone truly believes that we are in control of the technology that surrounds our every day life, or we are bound to it by society/work/fun.  I got a call from my father yesterday during my lunch in the cafeteria at the McCormick convention hall, and it puzzled me.  He asked me how to get the text from a document onto a website site forum.  It was a simple task for copy and paste, but it seemed to escape his realm of knowledge.  I thought this was bizarre because he was a VP at Dow Chemical and a very astute businessman.  Is it possible today to make it to that level without the knowledge of technology we have grown up with?  Or is it a new day in the business world where us “Nerds” will ultimately use the technology we know and have to dominate the business world as we know it.  I want to know who thinks we are slaves, and who thinks we use our knowledge to dominate?

Find Great Music!

People always are asking me where I get my music.  Well, I just found a great website that literally launched days ago.  Coda.fm is a BitTorrent website (here’s a review if you want to learn how to use BitTorrent) that is all about the music.  It is very well organized and even recommends other albums that you may like based on your current selection. 

The website is very clean and includes a review of each album and a track listing.  A very helpful site indeed if you are searching for music.  Check out Coda.fm and hopefully this site will be able to stay around for awhile.

Rising Stimulus Lifts all Ships

I’ve written before about how much I enjoy/learn from Robert Reich’s posts. And he has another good one out, expressing concern that the benefits of the proposed stimulus might falls disproportionately to current highly-paid and desired professionals and to the vastly white and male construction industry. 

In his words:

“But if there aren't enough skilled professionals to do the jobs involving new technologies, the stimulus will just increase the wages of the professionals who already have the right skills rather than generate many new jobs in these fields. And if construction jobs go mainly to white males who already dominate the construction trades, many people who need jobs the most -- women, minorities, and the poor and long-term unemployed -- will be shut out.”

Reich has his own answers and solutions to the problem, and they are good.  But in my opinion his concerns might be over-stated.  One of the reasons for a stimulus, is the economic multiplier that is applied to government investment and spending (estimated to be significantly higher by the way then a tax cut).

The basic idea is that if you have more money in the pockets of people, by paying them to build bridges, install broadband infrastructure, etc, then they are more likely to spend money on other services and employer other people who spend money on other services and so on.  As the stimulus takes effect, and new investment and spending draws in high wage professionals and the existing stock of white male construction workers, a hole in the economy is going to develop in jobs that these people once filled and those who step in will inherently be from the stock of non-white and less highly compensated labor.  This will provide incremental benefit to these groups, although certainly not to the extent that the previously privileged will enjoy.

If we had the luxury of time, I would say that we should take the time to train this non-privileged pool of labor.  But we don’t have time, we need the right people and the best trained people to step in an do the job right the first time. But isn’t that business as usual? Aren’t we just going to be perpetuating the current inequities in the system? Isn’t that what we elected Obama to change?  The key here I think is maintaining a long-term perspective.  Today’s minority waitress  should be able to go to subsidized night school to teach her how to maintain and monitor solar panels for the power company, the immigrant landscapers should be cross trained (at the expense of the telcos) in installing underground, rural broadband connections. 

As money flows out of the gov’t it is critical that we do things fast and right, it is also critical that we use this challenge and opportunity to change the way things are done and bring new opportunity to underprivileged classes.  But this should be done in concert and as a part of investment, not as a pre-cursor. 

My Experience with Windows 7

Last Friday, Microsoft released officially released Beta 1 of the Windows 7 operating system (it’s been available on Bittorent for a few weeks now). After reading a few reviews of the beta, I decided to take the plunge. I have to say that it has probably been the best experience I’ve had with a Windows operating system yet.

I’ve only had about 3 days with the system, but I’m already very comfortable with the changes that Microsoft has made from Vista. The most noticeable change is the new Taskbar. It combines a quick launch bar with open windows and jump stacks. I know that sounds very confusing, but once you use it, it is a very useful change to the aging taskbar

The other thing I noticed was how well Windows 7 handled my drivers. It was able to get all of my drivers except for the proprietary drivers for my laptop’s buttons and also for the card reader. Compared to Windows XP, it’s night and day. Another great change is how the system tray is handled. Your system tray can get bombarded with every program you install wanting it’s own space in the system tray. With Windows 7 you can now control what icons show all the time and what icons only show up when there is a notification. This comes in handy with something like an anti-virus program that you have to run but only want it to bug you when you need to update it.

Another great upgrade is how Windows 7 handles wireless networks. If you’ve used Vista, you probably wondered why Microsoft changed so many things from Windows XP. Well, in Windows 7, I think they finally have it right. When you click the wireless icon in your tray a list of available networks pops right up. Compared to Vista, it saves about 2 or 3 mouse clicks.

Microsoft also really put some time in making Windows 7 run better. I think the best way to put is Windows 7 looks as good as Vista, but runs like Windows XP. It’s definitely nice to see my laptop boot in under 30 seconds.

Microsoft really has a great operating system on there hand with Windows 7. On the other hand, this is what Windows Vista should have been and I think it should be offered as a free upgrade for Vista users. If you want to read a very comprehensive write up on all of the features I’ve mentioned and then some, check out Ars Technica’s guide. If you’re ready to take the plunge, click here to get the files.

*UPDATE - If you do install Windows 7, make sure you install this fix (32-bit or 64-bit). There was an issue with your MP3 files and Microsoft has released a fix.

Comment is Free

“Comment is Free

It’s not just a quote, or the motto of the Guardian’s influential blog, but it’s also an important tenet of journalism.  But when Scott wrote those influential words, journalism and publishing was a very different business today. The cost of putting words to paper, and exposing that paper to the world for review was much higher.  The internet is changing that every day,  While I can report the exact cost of running www.studentnerds.com/blog, I can assure you that it is much much cheaper than an industrial printing press and national distribution network.  Many blogs and website (and hopefully this one) actually make money (how does $40K per month sound?). 

The internet hasn’t reduced the importance of facts, they are still sacred, maybe even more so.  But I do believe that it has increased the value of comment.  The world has become a big coffee shop, a university, a newspaper and a library.  We are all, or at least should be,  both producers and consumers of content, of facts and comment. 

The Student Nerds try to add to this debate. We hopefully provide valuable facts about ways to back up PCs and share documents and music.  We also try to add (what we consider to be) worthy comment as well.  We hope you guys read and enjoy what we write.  But more importantly, we hope you guys are inspired to contribute as well. 

Part of this goal of this blog is to create a dynamic community, the intellectual equivalent of a game of “First Bounce or Fly” we (only by virtue of being authorized on the blogger account) toss up and idea, review or fact and if we do our jobs right, hopefully someone catches it and runs with it, agreeing, disagreeing, and adding to what we have presented.  The comment system that we have added to the blog, IntenseDebate is a great tool for tracking and monitoring comments, people can give comments ‘thumbs up’ or down for comments that they read, receive and send email responses to what others have said, and track members of the community that they find insightful.  We hope you all sign up (you can also comment without creating an account of course)

One of the most enjoyable posts that we have made was Praz’s Google Docs post, both because it was an excellent post, but also because of the comments that it spawned (16 of them!), starting on the original topic, open source software, but eventually turning to not only Google, but Microsoft, cloud computing and start up DNA.  I learned a lot more from the comments than I ever would have if I just wrote about it.  There’s a new model of journalism, and if Scott was alive today, his quote might look more like this

“facts are sacred…to the extent that they free people to comment”

We hope you guys will feel free. 

Friday Poll

I know we really harp on backing up on Student Nerds, but it’s really important and someday you may really thank us.  One of the Student Nerds (Klear) actually just had a scare and made me think to ask this question.  Click through to take the poll:

Manage Your Finances Online

Just a quick little tip for today.  If you would like to get a better view of your finances or if you even are already using Quicken, you should check out Mint.  Mint offers a free and very user-friendly interface to money management.  A few months ago, Mint offered the ability to track investment accounts and 401ks.  They even offer an iPhone application for those of you lucky enough to have one.  I would include some more screenshots, but I don’t feel like blurring out all of my accounts. 

Help Someone Remotely

There have been many occasions where I have needed to help a friend or family member from a remote location.  Maybe it was Grandma who could not figure out the Family Tree Maker or it was Mom who was still getting used to Gmail.  There are countless reasons why you may need to help someone out and today I’m going to show you how to do it.  Sorry Mac owners, this is Windows only.

First, you and the person you are going to help need to download the file from here (tell the person you are helping to download the program to their desktop). Once both of you have downloaded the file, both of you should run the file.  You’ll see this screen:

Tell the person you’re helping to click the Start button and have them tell you what it says in the “Your ID” box.  Now that they have clicked on the Start button, you should click the Operator button and enter the ID that they gave you and click Connect:

The person you are helping should now see this box where they should just click accept:

If everything worked correctly, you should now be able to control the remote computer just as if you were sitting in front of it. Twitter or E-Mail me any questions.

Review of “Hot, Flat and Crowded”

I recently finished reading Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded, his follow up to The World is Flat. In this new work however, Friedman focuses much less on 'Flat' as a phenomena, and much more on it as a solution to the problems of the world being 'Hot' and 'Crowded.'

Friedman's basic thesis takes the pretty much universally accepted notion that the “American” (applying also to Western Europe and parts of Asia) style of living is environmentally and economically unsustainable. Friedman however takes his 'Flat' thesis, that techonolgy and communication are increasing exposing the previously undeveloped nations, in particular the BRIC nations, to the knowledge and means to obtain this American way of life. Friedman argues that based upon this flattening of the world, projections about how fast the impact of this lifestyle is wrecking havoc on the Earth are vast underestimates. The 1^st part of his book is dedicated to explaining how the growth of BRIC as well as how the current path of environmental degradation only creates the opportunity for an exponential increase in that degradation going forward.

But Friedman's book is less about the havoc and more about the opportunity that the crowding and heating of the world presents for us, the West, and America in particular. In his words: 

“But this challenge is actually an opportunity for America. If we take it on, it will revive America at home, reconnect America abroad, and retool America for tomorrow. America is always at its most powerful and most influential when it is combining innovation and inspiration, wealth-building and dignity-building, the quest for big profits and the tackling of big problems. When we do just one, we are less than the sum of our parts. When we do both, we are greater...”

Friedman outlines what he calls “Code Green,” a coordinated, concerted and national focus on renewability and sustainability of production, energy and consumption. What is most compelling about Friedman's argument is that unlike so many other doomsday environmental analyses, is that he comes at the problem from the Center, rather than the far Left or far Right.

However he doesn't rely on the Left or the far Left arguments that either we must reduce our consumption and production, even at the expense of GDP and our standard of living' but need to do so unilaterally, absent the participation of the BRIC nations, because they have the same right to quick, unsustainable industrial development that we did.

Nor does Friedman embrace the Right's notion that we can cannot accept any environmental restrictions that would impact even a dollar of GDP if the rest of the world is not fettered to an equal (or even greater) degree.

What Friedman does argue for is government intervention in the market to the extent that it points the market in the right direction. Make it cheaper for good environmental programs to come about. Subsidize high-tech education in engineering and science, arguing that the solution to sustainability will not come out of far-left history or theory classes, but rather the hard sciences. Friedman argues that we need to utilize our leadership in the fields of Finance and start-up technology to create better markets both for dirty energy (pricing in many of the social costs) as well as clean energy (discounting based upon the social benefits). We are the un-rivaled masters of markets and when the market forces are aligned correctly, the innovated and entrepreneurial potential of our nation will be turned to the enormous profit, and by extension socially beneficial opportunity presented.

I think this was an excellent book, there was certainly plenty I disagreed with, however the issues that Friedman raises are important points for consideration regardless of where you stand on environmental issues.