What’s new in America

I have been in San Francico for a few days now. Coming to the US around once a year I always look for things that are new. As William Gibson said “The future is here now. It’s just not evenly distributed.”
With that in mind, what is happening in California, and San Francisco in particularm, tends to turn up in Australia a few years later.
So what I have noticed so far:

  1. Diet Coke Plus. Diet Coke with added vitamins. Now I can tell my mother my addiction is healthy!
  2. 49 cent Compact Fluro light bulbs. CFCs are the lowest hanging fruit of all to lower carbon emissions. California has jumped in by heavily subsidising them so that they are the same cost as incandescent bulbs. Great idea.
  3. I have not seen a McDonalds yet.
  4. The food servings remain huge, but with lots of salads.
  5. The hot new fast food is Cream Puffs.

By Greg Luck

As Terracotta’s CTO, Greg (@gregrluck) is entrusted with understanding market and technology forces and the business drivers that impact Terracotta’s product innovation and customer success. He helps shape company and technology strategy and designs many of the features in Terracotta’s products. Greg came to Terracotta on the acquisition of the popular caching project Ehcache which he founded in 2003. Prior to joining Terracotta, Greg served as Chief Architect at Australian online travel giant Wotif.com. He also served as a lead consultant for ThoughtWorks on accounts in the United States and Australia, was CIO at Virgin Blue, Tempo Services, Stamford Hotels and Resorts and Australian Resorts and spent seven years as a Chartered Accountant in KPMG’s small business and insolvency divisions. He is a regular speaker at conferences and contributor of articles to the technical press.