The Prius of progress

One of the nice discoveries since buying a Toyota Prius last July is that my fuel bills have gone down dramatically (by over 40 per cent) at a time when petrol costs have been going up.

Now I discover (from the Daily Telegraph, no less) that I may have another pleasant surprise in store. The personal tax and NIC incurred in running my previous company car (a Saab) came to over £5,000 a year. The bill for the Prius looks like being closer to £1,600. There must be a catch here somewhere. The Telegraph also reveals that the late lamented John Peel was a Prius owner.

My colleague Dale (who drives a Prius) has a theory that there is a correlation between using Apple Macs and owning a Toyota hybrid. A better way of looking at it might be that the Prius is the iMac of the automobile world — tiny market share, but smug and satisfied owners!

Sparklines

Edward Tufte, who has written a series of lovely books about presenting graphical information (and an elegant pamphlet on The Congnitive Style of Powerpoint), has come up with another neat idea: sparklines — data-intense, design-simple, word-sized graphic images. Like this (conveying information about glucose levels).

The New Yorker‘s view

Terrific long editorial outlining the case for voting Dubya out. Nice contrast with the tired cynicism of the Economist. Quote:

“The damage visited upon America, and upon America’s standing in the world, by the Bush Administration’s reckless mishandling of the public trust will not easily be undone. And for many voters the desire to see the damage arrested is reason enough to vote for John Kerry. But the challenger has more to offer than the fact that he is not George W. Bush. In every crucial area of concern to Americans (the economy, health care, the environment, Social Security, the judiciary, national security foreign policy, the war in Iraq, the fight against terrorism), Kerry offers a clear, corrective alternative to Bush’s curious blend of smugness, radicalism, and demagoguery. Pollsters like to ask voters which candidate they’d most like to have a beer with, and on that metric Bush always wins. We prefer to ask which candidate is better suited to the governance of our nation.”

UK government accepts that Open Source is now ‘viable’

As I noted last week. It’s been a long time coming, but better late than never. My Observer column on the Office of Government Commerce’s conversion is here. Audio version here.

And the impact of that bin Laden video…

… Er, precisely zilch, argues the New York Times. “In dozens of interviews on Friday and Saturday in five hotly contested states, … Supporters of Mr. Bush said the bin Laden tape had strengthened their resolve to vote Republican by reminding them of the grave threats still faced by the country, while Mr. Kerry’s supporters said the tape was yet another reminder that the Bush administration had failed to catch Mr. bin Laden. Even the undecided said the tape would not influence their decision.”