I’ll tell you one thing: August is a bad month for blogging, especially when one is setting up a new apartment, juggling too many projects at work and trying to go about the business of life all at once. I’ve been too frazzled to sit down and compose a decent post lately, so I will rattle off a few random thoughts that I’ve had over the past few days.

Needed: Rebirth of Cool

First, I’ve been thinking that among the few remaining household appliances that have not undergone a major redesign is the air conditioning unit. The reason I’ve been thinking this is that I had to lug mine over to our new apartment, and I found it ridiculously primitive. These units are essentially the same as they were twenty years ago, and though they may be marginally smaller they remain heavy, unwieldy and, with their sharp, ergonomics-free corners, a bit dangerous to pick up.

An entrepreneur looking for an opportunity could hire a handful of engineers and industrial designers to rethink the essentials of air conditioning units, and then make a killing on the market with a smarter, lighter, safer unit. For a real innovatopm, they should add some digital intelligence and an Ethernet jack and make it network-friendly, so that household temperature can be controlled by PCs. (If you take this idea and run with it, you kinda owe it to me to hire Behavior to design your Web site!)

Which Wireless?

In order to avoid snaking Ethernet cable throughout our new apartment, I think I’m going to finally have to make the leap to Wi-Fi, or 802.11b/g networking. My reluctance to date has been based on not wanting to take on yet another set of technical troubleshooting headaches, but it just doesn’t make sense to deal with the mess of wires when wireless is becoming so prevalent. I just can’t make up my mind between the cheaper 802.11b alternatives or the pricier yet much slicker Apple AirPort.

Lost

And finally, I came across this clever flyer this morning in my neighborhood. It’s a little geeky, but it made me laugh.