Everything I read about the iPad (and believe me, I’ve read a lot) uses the near term to predict it’s failure or success. How many sales will Apple see in March? How many in April? Will Kindle outpace the iPad by Christmas? Everyone seems to be thinking about this year and maybe next year.

When I look at the iPad I don’t see the computer I’ll buy this year (though I might). I see the computer my kid(s) will take to college in 20 years. I see the video games we’ll play in 5 years. I see the magazines I’ll read when traveling on high speed rail from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 10 20 30 40 years.

Many call the iPad evolutionary, and indeed it is. It’s an iPhone with a bigger screen and faster CPU. Don’t believe me? Download the SDK.

What the iPad predicts for the future of computing however, is revolutionary indeed.

Today I noticed a very pleasing attention to detail in Google Chrome. This new browser gets rid of the status bar, something that’s been core to all browsers since their inception 20 years ago. When you hover your mouse over a link, just enough of the status bar is shown to inform the user of the link’s destination.

By default the mini-status bar appears on the bottom-left of the browser. This is almost always just fine and I never ran into an edge case where that position would be problematic, until today.

Hovering over a link very low on the page I noticed that the mini-status bar jumped to the right side. Brilliant! If this didn’t happen then the status bar would overlap the mouse and obscure the link being hovered. I realize that it’s easy in hindsight to say “duh, of course it should work this way” but it seems that this level of design attention is often overlooked, especially in beta software.

Peter Merholz recently wrote about the Nexus One mobile phone that the Adaptive Path office received courtesy of Google. I took possession of the device yesterday to check it out. There’s a lot to like about it, mostly from a hardware perspective (sleek, fast, good form, etc). What was unexpected, and kind of great, was the power of tapping into Google’s broader ecosystem. Upon turning on the phone, you are prompted to provide your Google account. Doing so pulls in all of your relevant data such as calendar and email.

This is not news, you can read about the connection between Google’s phone and their services all over the place. What I wanted to add to the conversation is the email below. Getting to the office this morning I found this message with tips and tricks. The email is a nice touch, showing that Google put thought into designing not just the device but the touchpoints a new user has with Google elsewhere.

As has become my tradition, here’s my 2009 year on a bike saddle. This year I expected to spend less time riding, but found that despite the time demands of a new baby and traveling a lot for work, I was able to get out and ride quite often. Check out my 2008 stats for comparison. I didn’t set actual goals for 2009, and won’t for 2010 either. Still, it’s fun and useful to see how I compared to the past.

2009 Cycling Stats

4 organized rides (same as 2008)
46 individual rides (2 more than 2008)
1,579 miles (96 more than 2008)

I’m stoked to add Maui, Hawaii to a list of states ridden. While I’m not sure if I’ll rent a bike every time I visit the islands, I’m enjoyed the experience and am happy to have it one my cycling “resume”.

Oh, and in March I battled some nasty weather to watch a stage of the 2009 Tour of California along with some friends. That’s me cheering on Lance.

I created a cartoon strip from photos of Brooke’s first birthday party with the help of Bubblr.