Open up your mind and say, ahh...

There is no longer any room, nor any patience, for your cryptic remarks…

Your serial numbers can no longer be tiny, your error messages can no longer be short, your warnings can no longer be in ALL CAPS.

We ought to be able to read the entire manual, for free, at the touch of a button with our smart phone. Your suggestions should be a rollover away.

The Catch 22 of engineering feedback: “The only person smart enough to understand this warning doesn’t need it.”

That’s over, I’m afraid. You have unlimited paper and a pen with plenty of ink. Be clear, enunciate and tell us what to do, please.

The good part: it’s cheaper to explain it right the first time than it is to answer a question later.

Google is making the +1 Button more social with the addition of friend annotations.

“You may have already noticed faces and names when you hover over a +1 button,” Google Developer Advocate Timothy Jordan said in a post on the Google+ Platform preview. “This change rolled out late last week. Now, you can make these recommendations even more visible to your users. Simply update the +1 button code, and an inline annotation will show next to the button.”

The new annotations appear when a user hovers over the +1 button. Hovering over it will display a list of friends and contacts that have already clicked the +1 button for that page. Google has also unveiled new code for the +1 button that will display the faces and names of friends that have used the +1 button. This feature works much like how the Facebook Like Button appears for Mashable stories, displaying how many people have +1′d the page and which friends have +1ed it.

The changes are small, but they will likely make the +1 button even more sticky. The search giant will need to do more though to compete with Facebook’s button, which has become standard on millions of websites across the world.

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: MusicTandem

Quick Pitch: MusicTandem is an iPad app for creating personalized music channels and discovering new artists.

Genius Idea: Endless music listening and watching on your iPad — or Apple TV via AirPlay.

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Scour YouTube for music and you’ll find an overwhelming collection of videos to choose from. MusicTandem, a newly-released application for iPad, engineers an easy-listening environment should you wish to sit back and let the application build out custom, personalized artist and music channels, à la Pandora, for you.

Once you pay the upfront application sticker price of $0.99, you’ll gain access to MusicTandem’s all-you-can-eat music listening and watching experience. Start by entering the name of your favorite artist and the application will build out a channel of music videos with tracks from similar artists included, should you so choose.

You can also scroll over to the genre music channel screen and tell the application to build you an 80s Pop or 90s Rock channel, for instance.

For those already familiar with Pandora, MusicTandem will proffer a familiar instruction-free listening and watching experience, minus the song skip limitations.

MusicTandem bucks the track licensing issues and costs of other music applications by sourcing its music video selection from YouTube. The application slightly suffers as a result — video buffering may interrupt the flow of music play. But the application’s intuitive user interface, support or AirPlay and lack of listening restrictions will more than make up for the delays for most app users.

The iPad application is a product of upstart AppTandem, a bootstrapped Teramo, Italy-based company.

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Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Back in 1955, when Bill Haley And His Comets were hitting their stride and “jet set” referred to people who actually flew places, General Motors introduced the Chevrolet small block V8 engine. A marvel of compact design, technical innovation and (relative) fuel efficiency, it didn’t take long for the potent powerplant to end up in everything from milk trucks to race cars.

The little engine that could was heralded with the usual corporate fanfare, but few expected it to be the unmitigated success it became. It transformed Chevrolet, helped drive America’s love affair with performance and became one of the 10 best engines of the 20th century. Fifty-six years later, GM says it is about the crank out its 100 millionth small block Chevrolet engine.

Sort of. Actually, not really.

General Motors will crank out a V8 Chevrolet engine that is a descendant of the engine born in 1955. But it isn’t the same engine at all. Contemporary Chevrolet V8s have little in common with the original small block Chevrolet beyond eight cylinders, a single shared dimension and a pushrod drivetrain. So it’s a faux milestone, heralded during GM’s 100th anniversary. But that in no way detracts from the original’s place in history, because the small block Chevrolet engine remains GM’s Mt. Everest.

The V8 engine was something of an anomaly before World War II, when most automakers offered inline fours, sixes and eights. That changed after the war as consumers demanded more performance and power.

Chevrolet was among the last to the V8 party, offering only a straight-six from 1929 until 1954. It was a fine engine but lacked the oomph consumers, particularly the growing post-war hot rod culture, wanted. GM chief engineer Ed Cole set out to design a powerful, light and affordable V8.

Cole’s answer to that equation was elegantly simple: A compact, efficient 90-degree V8 engine with overhead valves, pushrod valvetrain and 4.4-inch on-center bore spacing. The first engine had a displacement of 265 cubic inches and delivered 195 horsepower. It appeared in the (now) iconic 1955 Chevrolet (pictured).

The engine was revolutionary for its light weight, compact size, general simplicity and remarkable durability, said John Wolkonowicz, an automotive historian and former industry analyst. Although there were some hiccups during the first year or so, GM worked them out and the engine quickly became a hit.

Consumers loved the performance and fuel economy, which was on par with the six-cylinder engine it replaced. Racers and rodders loved its performance and light weight, quickly dubbing it “Mighty Mouse.”

“Until the the small block Chevrolet, the flathead Ford engine was the rodder’s delight,” Wolkonowicz said. “That shifted right away when the small block Chevrolet came out. It was small, it was light and it lasted forever. Hot rodders loved it.”

They still do. Even now, you’ll see the small block Chevrolet and its descendants, the LS and LT engines, almost everywhere, powering almost everything. There are no end to the tricks tuners can use to generate enough torque to move houses and enough horsepower to seriously warp your perspective of time and space.

“The performance of the small block transformed Chevrolet,” Jim Campbell, vice president of GM Performance Vehicles and Motorsports, said in a statement. “The small block made Chevrolet the weapon of choice for grassroots racers on the drag-racing and sports-car tracks across America.”

You’d expect him to say that, of course, but it isn’t hyperbole because it’s true. The ubiquitous engine has appeared in everything from stock car racing (more NASCAR wins than any other engine) to drag racing to endurance racing, not to mention an ungodly number of hot rods built in the past 50 years.

The original small block Chevrolet grew in displacement and output over the years. In 1957, the 283 cubic-inch engine fitted with Rochester fuel injection became the first engine to produce one horsepower per cubic inch. The 350 cubic-inch variant appeared in 1967 and eventually appeared in everything from station wagons to sports cars. It almost certainly is the most popular small block V8 engine of all time.

The first-gen small block engine reached its zenith with the 400 cubic-inch monster in 1970. By that point, the venerable mill was all but bulletproof.

“By the time the engine was truly perfected in 1970, 300,000 miles was the norm for a 350 cubic-inch small block Chevrolet,” Wolkonowicz said. “It was a beautiful, remarkable engine.”

Those with jaundiced eyes might say, “Yeah, yeah. That was then. What does an engine designed half a century ago have to do with getting down the road in the 21st century?”

A lot, actually. The DNA of the small-block Chevrolet can be found in modern GM engines.

General Motors revamped the small block when it introduced the 347 cubic-inch LT engine in 1992 to comply with tightening fuel economy and emissions regulations. The LT featured, among other changes, reverse cooling (in which the coolant flows down through the cylinder heads into the engine block) and an optical distributor mounted at the front of the engine. But it was, at its heart, the same engine Cole designed.

GM went back to the drawing board for the LS engine, which first appeared in the Chevrolet Corvette in 1997. Yes, it’s a V8, but it’s not a small block V8.

“Everything is different,” Wolkonowicz said. “The only thing that’s the same is it’s a 90-degree layout with pushrods and a 4.4-inch on-center bore. Every other part of the engine has been redesigned.”

That doesn’t detract from the significance of the original, or the potential of its descendants. GM has stuck with the general design all these years because it still offers the same benefits: small size, light weight and excellent power.

“As fabulous as the original small block was, the new small block is better in every way,” Wolkonowicz said. “It’s more durable. It’s got more performance. It’s quieter. It’s smoother. It is is capable of better fuel economy and lower emissions. It is simply a much better engine. It is to the 21st century as the original was to the 20th century.”

Photos: General Motors

Should you post photos to Twitter via its new photo-uploading tool, or through a third-party photo-sharing service such as yFrog, TwitPic or Instagram, your photos will soon be featured on your Twitter profile in an image gallery.

Twitter is rolling out user galleries, as the feature is called, to members beginning Monday. Galleries will automatically display the 100 most recent images the user has shared by way of Twitter — dating back to January 1, 2010 — from supported photo-sharing services.

Galleries will live on a user’s profile and highlight a few recent images. A visitor can click the “view all” button to see even more images in either a grid view showing image thumbnails or a detail view highlighting the most recent image and the text of the tweet that was shared along with it.

The update ties into Twitter’s photo-sharing push and will dramatically change the appearance of Twitter profiles. Galleries will provide equal billing to images shared via third-party app makers, but also serve to remind users that Twitter is no longer a place just for 140 characters — it’s for photos too. The update is likely designed to entice Twitter users to add more photos to their tweets.

Galleries, at launch, will be image-only. Twitter Communications Manager Carolyn Penner said in a tweet that users can expect to see the update Monday. “We’re rolling out one of my fave features today: user galleries! View photos an account has shared on Twitter. Sit tight – it’s coming soon,” she tweeted.

Apple’s iPhone 3GS was supplanted by the newer iPhone 4 more than a year ago, but it’s still outselling every other phone on the market, except for the iPhone 4, according to a report.

Apple’s iPhone 4 took the number one spot, followed by the iPhone 3GS in the second quarter, according to The NPD Group. The latter model, which is slower and has less functionality than the iPhone 4, is also much cheaper. AT&T cut the price of the 3GS model to $49 with a two-year contract, in January. Refurbs of that model can go for as low as $9. A new 16 GB iPhone, meanwhile, costs $200 with a two-year contract and the 32 GB version sells for $300. Verizon, which began offering the iPhone in February, doesn’t offer the 3G iPhone as an option.

Even though the iPhone held the top two slots for mobile phone sales, Google’s Android operating system was on 52% of all units sold compared to 29% for Apple’s iOS. RIM’s BlackBerry was number three with 11%. Motorola’s market share fell from 12% in Q2 2010 to 9% in the current quarter, according to NPD. The report also noted the growth of prepaid plans offering smartphones. In Q2 2010, just 8% of prepaid phones were smartphones, compared to 22% in this year’s second quarter. Since such plans are usually aimed at lower-income and credit-challenged consumers, that growth also explains the continuing popularity of the iPhone 3GS.

In discussions about new media, you will often hear the division of media opportunities as Paid, Owned, and Earned media (P.O.E.M.). Over the years, I’ve studied the various categorization of media from a few perspectives, that of content creation, how social networks cater to consumption and sharing, and also how media opportunities are packaged and sold by each network. I believe media is not limited to three groups, but instead categorized into five key segments, Paid, Promoted, Owned, Shared, and Owned. To visualize the model that reflects the state of new media, I once again partnered with my good friends at JESS3. The result…The Brandsphere.

Introducing The Brandsphere

Social networks and channels present brands with a broad array of media opportunities to engage customers and those who influence them. Each channel offers a unique formula for engagement where brands become stories and people become storytellers. Using a transmedia approach, the brand story can connect with customers differently across each medium, creating a deeper, more enriching experience. Transmedia storytelling doesn’t follow the traditional rules of publishing; it caters to customers where they connect and folds them into the narrative. In any given network, brands can invest in digital assets that span five media landscapes:

1. Paid: Digital advertising, banners, adwords, overlays

2. Owned: Created assets, custom content

3. Earned: Brand-related conversations and user-generated content

4: Promoted: in-stream or social paid promotions vehicles (e.g. Twitter’s Promoted products and Facebook’s Sponsored Stories)

5. Shared: Open platforms or communities where customers co-create and collaborate with brands. (e.g. Dell’s IdeaStorm and Starbuck’s MyStarbucksIdea.)

Any combination of the five media strategies defines a new Brandsphere where organizations can capture attention, steer online experiences, spark conversations and word of mouth and help customers address challenges or create new opportunities. each media channel connects differently with people and thus requires a dedicated approach integrating tangible and intangible value. Doing so ensures a critical path for social media content: relevance, reach and resonance.

Click for a free hi-res download…

Center (White): At the center of the Brandsphere is the brand story. Everything starts with not just defining what the brand represents, but how it comes alive in social networks. This requires definition through a social media style guide and the development of a complete persona, voice, and promise.

Ring 1 (Red): The brand story is supported by tenets the serve as the connective tissue between the brand story and the technology that creates a path to consumers.

Ring 2: The vertical gray lines (triangles) divide the media types between Paid, Promoted, Owned, Shared, and Earned. Ring 2 provides the various options available to brands within each channel.

Ring 3 (Orange): Each media type is then enlivened through various forms of activation including Engagement, Gamification, SEO, Content Marketing, and SMO.

Ring 4 (Light Green): Media types are then visualized through the various platforms consumers use to discover, consume, and share content aka the Four Screens: PC, TV, Tablet, Mobile.

Ring 5 (Green): Media objects are then pushed and socialized through promotion, syndication, and organic means.

Ring 6 (Dark Green): Objects are further distributed and also measured through 1) Clickthroughs, presence and traffic, 2) Actions, Reactions, and Transactions (A.R.T), 3) Word of Mouth, and 4) Shares.

Ring 7 (Light Blue): Content then finds a permanent home among the groups that value information based on social graphs (personal and professional relationships) and interest graphs (networks based on commonalities and shared interests).

Ring 8 (Dark Blue): Objects are analyzed, activated, and/or repurposed by the various markets intrigued by the branded story.

The results of new media programs are measured by resonance, reach, and outcomes. Those that garner traction travel from the center outward and again from the outward in and back out again.

The Brandsphere is the visualization of Social Media’s critical path, R.R.S. Thus content programs require a thoughtful approach where media tells connects information, narrative, and people through their channels of influence in ways that spark interaction and circulation.

Please go to theconversationprism.com to download a free hi-res version for printing or for use in presentations.

Electric cars, which have come and gone at least twice since the dawn of the automobile era, are back. The first mass-market EVs are here and more are rolling silently over the horizon. The Obama administration loves cars with cords and wants 1 million on the road by 2015.

That’s an ambitious, but not impossible, goal. Most major automakers promise to have an electric vehicle or plug-in hybrid in showrooms by then. Their commitment seems solid, and some are making big promises. General Motors just announced its second plug-in hybrid, for example, and Nissan says its factory in Tennessee will be able to crank out 150,000 EVs annually by 2013. Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn boldly predicts battery electric vehicles will comprise 10 percent of the global market by 2020.

So where will we plug them in?

This is not an insignificant question, but neither is it the major hurdle some suggest. We’ll plug in mostly at home, often at work and, if we need to, at a growing number of public chargers. Some bet swappable batteries will alleviate our range anxiety, while others envision fleets of quick-charge trucks rescuing stranded drivers. Optimists say we’ll soon see batteries that can take us hundreds of miles, making the issue moot.

“There are a lot of possibilities coming, and it’s not just about home charging, or quick-charging, or removable batteries,” Ghosn told Wired.com. “It’s about a lot of pieces of technology coming together to make charging much easier.”

These pieces are falling into place as big players like General Electric and NRG Energy join smaller outfits like Coulomb Technologies, Ecotality and Better Place in rolling out the infrastructure. We’ve already got more than 1,300 public charging stations nationwide and thousands more coming. Uncle Sam is spending more than $100 million to help install 22,000 residential and public charging points nationwide by 2014, and ABI Research says we’ll see more than 1.4 million residential and public chargers in the United States by 2016.

For all this investment, the charging station you’ll use most already is here.

“A lot of people ask me, ‘Where will we plug in?’” said Dan Davids, president of the advocacy group Plug-In America. “Two words: At home.”

The simple fact is, most of our charging will be done at home while we’re sleeping. That’s exactly how early adopters like Davids, who’s driven a Toyota RAV4 EV for more than four years, keep rolling. It isn’t as expensive as you might think. The average cost of electricity in the United States is 11 cents per kilowatt-hour, and the Department of Energy pegs the typical annual electricity cost of the Nissan Leaf, for example, at $561.

The fact we’ll do most charging at home suggests our infrastructure needs aren’t as great as EV naysayers claim. A survey of 3,000 people who would consider buying an EV found 61 percent would prefer plugging in at home. Just 14 percent had any interest in public chargers, said Thilo Koslowski, an analyst at Gartner, which conducted the survey. A similar survey of Southern Californians by Electric Power Research Institute found 95 percent prefer charging in the garage.

“The majority of consumers are just fine with charging up at home,” Koslowski said.

Further supporting this point, the range provided by many EVs is sufficient for many — but obviously not all — commuters. Most EVs claim a range of 100 miles, which typically translates to an EPA-certified figure in the 70s. You aren’t commuting from the furthest exurban rings of, say, Atlanta, with that, but a lot of people will be fine. A survey of 120 families who spent a year driving the Mini E in California, New York and New Jersey found the car’s claimed range of 100 miles met 90 percent of their driving needs.

Even if home charging is sufficient for most of our needs, there’s a wrinkle in that plan: One-third of Americans live in rental housing. They may not have the option of installing the 220-volt charger needed to juice their car in seven or eight hours. They may not even be able to plug in their car’s 110-volt trickle charger, which does the job in twice that time. That is changing, albeit slowly, as developers and residential property owners — City Ventures and Equity Residential among them — begin installing chargers or pre-wiring parking lots and garages to handle them.

Still, it’s naive to think electric vehicles will achieve anything approaching mainstream popularity if people can’t plug in anywhere but home.

“Buyers over the next couple of years are the typical early adopters who do not need much encouragement to get the latest technology,” said David Alexander, an analyst with ABI Research. “But public recharging will be necessary to engage the broader market.”

ABI estimates there will be 820,000 residential chargers and 642,000 commercial charging stations nationwide by the end of 2015. Of those public stations, about 73,000 will be Level 3 “quick chargers” that can charge a battery to 80 percent capacity in about 30 minutes. Alexander says all that hardware will cost roughly $4.95 billion to install.

We’re already on our way, though some will complain it’s a slow start. We’ve got more than 1,300 public and commercial chargers available in the United States right now, and more coming. A look at a few major projects provides a glimpse of our coming electric infrastructure.

• Ecotality is overseeing The EV Project, a campaign financed in part by the Department of Energy to install more than 15,000 chargers in 18 cities by mid-2012. Of those, 6,350 will be public chargers and 310 will be quick chargers. The feds have invested $100 million in the $230 million project. The company says about 25 percent of the chargers have been deployed; of those, about one-third are public chargers.
• Ecotality will install 45 quick chargers at BP and Arco gas stations as part of a demonstration test project.
• Coulomb Technologies is overseeing ChargePoint America, a program funded in part by the DOE to install 4,600 residential and public charging stations in nine cities. More than 500 have been deployed. The feds have invested $15 million in the $37 million program.
• NRG has opened the first of 120 “Freedom Stations” planned for Houston and Dallas. The privately-funded stations, available to subscribers of NRG’s “eVgo” service, include a conventional charger and a quick charger. The stations will be installed at Walgreens, Best Buy and other retailers.
• San Francisco will install 80 public chargers in 20 parking garages this year. The free chargers will use hydroelectric power. That’s important. Many studies show EVs emit less CO2 than internal combustion on a well-to-wheels basis even when using electricity from coal-fired plants, but their greatest potential lies with renewable energy.
• Aerovironment is working with state transportation officials to install 30 quick chargers along Interstate 5 in Oregon under the West Coast Green Highway project. Another nine quick chargers are slated for I5 and Highway 2 in Washington.
• The San Francisco Bay Area plans to install 30 quick chargers throughout the region over the next several years. “It’s essential to do this regionally,” said Robert Hayden, the city’s clean air manager. “People move around, they commute. In order to alleviate range anxiety, people need to know they can plug in.”
• A growing number of campgrounds charge EV drivers a nominal fee to use the 50-amp, 240-volt hookups set aside for RVs. “The potential is there for the nation’s private campground owners to help support the greening of the nation’s transportation infrastructure,” said Paul Bambei, head of the 3,300-member National Association of RV Parks and Campgrounds.
• Better Place is still betting on swappable batteries. The technology has been embraced in Israel, is being tested in Japan and is headed for Australia and China. It hasn’t generated the same excitement here, but Better Place and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District plan to install two swap stations in San Francisco and two in San Jose. The stations will service a fleet of 61 taxis. The first stations and cabs are planned for next year.
• Better Place also is rolling out “a small number” of public charging stations in Hawaii.
• AAA is rolling out one “quick charge” truck in each of six EV-friendly cities this year to see how it goes. If the program is a success, AAA says it could be expanded to other cities.

Most of the big EV projects are happening where most of the EVs will be located: on the West Coast and in EV-friendly metro-areas like Seattle, Washington; Austin and Houston, Texas; Boston; New York; Tampa and Orlando, Florida; and Phoenix. Auto industry hotspots Michigan and Tennessee (Nissan’s North American home) also have projects underway. But we’re also seeing small-scale projects like Plug-In Carolina, which is helping nine cities deploy more than 80 chargers.

Many of these public chargers will be installed outside restaurants, big box retailers and other places where people tend to spend an hour or more. Ikea, for example, will install chargers at 10 stores in four states. NRG is rolling out its “Freedom Stations” at Best Buy and other retailers. Walgreens plans to install chargers at 800 stores nationwide.

So how many chargers will we need to support all those electric vehicles? The folks at Ecotality have crunched the data — they’ve been installing chargers since the days of the General Motors EV1 — and say the magic number is 1.51 chargers per car.

“The ‘one’ is the charger in your garage,” said CEO Jonathan Read. “The ‘point one five’ is the public or commercial charger.”

Yes, the grid can handle this. One million, 10 million, even 100 million electric vehicles will not be a strain, said Mark Duvall of the Electric Power Research Institute.

“The United States produces 4,000 terawatt-hours of electricity a year,” he said. “One million EVs would be about one one-thousandth of our annual electrical production.”

The grid is sufficiently robust for the added load, he said, and utilities are making improvements as needed to prepare for the coming of cars with cords. Most of these vehicles will be located on the coasts, but here too EVs do not pose a threat. An electric vehicle draws about 700 or 800 watts, which is roughly what two flat-screen TVs require.

“Your getting an electric vehicle would be like your neighbor getting a hot tub,” Duvall said. “It is not an unreasonable electricity demand. For any utility, even one with the densest level of EVs, it’s a non-issue.”

Still, there is a lot of talk about utilities managing loads and offering incentives for consumers to charge at night. But this is an effort to use excess generation capacity and offer EV owners the lowest possible rate by plugging in off-peak. Even in the highly unlikely event that every single EV owner plugged in at 5 p.m., when demand is highest, the grid can handle it.

“There’s no possible way these things can crash the grid,” Duvall said.

How much we’ll pay to use these chargers remains to be seen. Some will charge a nominal fee of perhaps a few bucks. NRG’s “Freedom Stations” are available only to subscribers who pay $89 a month for a home charger, access to the public chargers and all the electricity they need. But many chargers will be free, offered by retailers to draw customers.

“We’re seeing a lot more EV-friendly businesses,” said Brian Wynne, vice president of the Electric Drive Transport Association. “You’re going to see a lot more businesses stepping in, because we’re talking about pennies for a customer to park and plug-in while they’re shopping. Retailers see a lot of value in this.”

A single Level 2 charger costs $2,500 to $3,500 and another $1,500 to install it. Ecotality says it costs about $1.40 to $1.80 to charge a car and businesses that hold a charging station will see full return on their investment in five years.

A growing number of employers are offering charging as well. This is important, because our cars spend 10 or 15 percent of their time parked at work. Richard Lowenthall, chief technology officer at Coulomb Technologies, said roughly 25 percent of his firm’s business involves installing chargers for employers. It costs an employer about $600 a year to install and operate a single charger, he said.

The government is spending more than $100 million through the Transportation Electrification Initiative to get the infrastructure ball rolling. But the companies getting a hand from Uncle Sam say they see a strong business case and don’t want — or need — open-ended subsidies.

“We’re capitalists,” Lowenthall said. “We believe this market can only grow through capitalism.”

David Crane, CEO of NRG Energy, was more direct. His company is going it alone, investing $25 million in evGo project because it firmly believes there is a lot of money to be made there.

“The electric vehicle could be the third great consumer electronics revolution of our lifetime, after the personal computer and the cell phone,” he said. “The potential reward of this $25 million investment is so great that it outweighs the possible downside.”

Still, we’re seeing far more promises than plugs at this point, and the nation’s largest charging network is a crowdsourced collection of early adopters’ garages. PlugShare, the smartphone app creating an ad hoc EV charging infrastructure from individuals, now includes more than 3,500 charging locations. Most are EV owners and advocates happy to let you plug in.

So the cars are coming. The infrastructure will follow. There’s no way of knowing at this point just what it will look like, but it almost certainly won’t look like the fueling infrastructure we’re using now. There are nearly 160,000 gas stations in the United States. We simply cannot match that, EV advocates said, nor do we need to. EV advocates say we need to move beyond our habit of driving until the tank is empty. Driving an EV means plugging in at night and topping off when you can during the day. It’s called “opportunistic charging,” and it is second-nature for EV owners.

“That shift in thinking takes you about three weeks,” said Dan Davids of Plug-In America. “Then you don’t even think about it.”

It’s a paradigm shift. But then, everything about electric vehicles is a paradigm shift — including when and how we’ll “fill” them up.

“Everyone looks to the public charging network as the gas station of the future. It’s not,” Crane said. “The charger in your garage is the gas station of the future. Public charging stations are simply insurance.”

Main photo: Coulomb Technologies. Public chargers lined up at Google HQ in Mountain View, California. The tech giant recently installed 70 chargers and has plans for 250.

Time-lapse video of the installation of the first evGo “Freedom Station” in Texas. Video: NRG Energy

There are a few reasons why one might not care what happens in the long run:

• You don’t intend to be around
• You’re going to make so much money in the short run it doesn’t matter
• You figure you won’t get caught

Short-term marketing involves using deception to make a quick sale, or using aggressive promises to get a quick hit. Having a price war counts as well. Linkbait is on that list as well.

Short-term architecture means putting up a cheap building, a local eyesore, something that saves money now instead for building something for the long haul. The guys who put up the Parthenon in Rome weren’t doing short-term anything. Hard to say that about a big box store.

Short-term manufacturing ignores the side effects of pollution, bad design and worker impact because it’s faster money in the short run to merely make the product (and the sale) in the most direct way possible.

Short-term investment banking invests in transactions that are unsustainable and eventually blow up (after commissions are paid).

Short-term sales involve spamming as many people as you can, as fast as you can.

Short-term hiring requires you to hire cheap, train as little as possible and live with turnover.

Bernie Madoff was a short-term capitalist, of course.

Left to their own devices, (particularly during difficult economic times) too many people misunderstand the essence of capitalism, and rationalize a do what it takes mindset that is ultimately self-defeating. The reason we need the SEC, the EPA, transparent operations, a free press that cares about its mission and people willing and able to speak up is that they make it expensive to choose the short-term option.

The short-term capitalist is betting that someone else will clean it up.

One of the worst things you can call a business person, I think, is a short-term capitalist. He selfishly takes for now and fails to contribute in return.

The internet has opened two doors. First, it’s easier than ever to do the short-term thing, anonymously if you choose, with a big splash, internet ads, eBay scams and more. On the other hand, since there’s a revolution going on, it’s also easier than ever to build something that matters, something that lasts.

The thing to remember about the short-term is that we’ll almost certainly be around when the long-term shows up.

Take one look at these multidimensional photos and you’ll think there’s magic afoot, but there’s a reasonable explanation for this. Artist/photographer Ignacio Torres used conventional digital SLR cameras and a bit of fairy dust to create a series of photos that give you a peek into the third dimension.

How was it done? We asked Torrres, and he revealed his secret that you might have already figured out: He combines four images in an animated .gif file.

“I created the images shooting the subject from four different angles,” he says, taking the pictures “all at the same time with a synched flash.” At the same time, he sprinkles a bit of dust and reflective confetti into the scene, and the result is magic.

In this project entitled “Stellar,” Torres is making a deeper philosophical point, channeling Carl Sagan with the notion that “we are all star stuff.” On his website, he describes his “Stellar” project:

“This project began from the theory that humans are made of cosmic matter as a result of a star’s death. I created imagery that showcased this cosmic birth through the use of dust and reflective confetti to create galaxies. The models’ organic bodily expressions as they are frozen in time between the particles suggest their celestial creation.

“In addition, space and time is heightened by the use of three-dimensional animated gifs. Their movement serves as a visual metaphor to the spatial link we share with stars as well as their separateness through time.”

Photos courtesy Ignacio Torres, used with permission

Ignacio Torres, via Gizmodo