Did you like Mission Impossible and the heads up displays?  How about the Terminator’s eyeballs?  Well if you want a heads-up display to read off stats like altitude, speed and latitude and longitude the world got a whole lot cooler with the Zeal Trascend Goggles.  The Transcend is one of those high-end, early-adopter toys but is affordable to many folks at the intro price of $350.  Plus it is cool and incredibly useful.  Key technology includes; an accelerometer, air pressure sensor, thermometer and SKYTRAQ 65 GPS chip.  Rather than projecting the metrics on the lens, which might be difficult to read if you fog your goggles like me, it is displayed in the lower right part of the frame. The data is stored locally and can be extracted via mini-USB, and will give key stats such as maximum speed, vertical change, ability to map to Google maps etc. The goggles incorporate most the features of sport watches such as the Garmin 405.  Watch for this technology to be added to cycling and maybe average glasses soon and then the next generation including holographic optical switching technology.

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Demi Moore ’s boy toy, Ashton Kutcher, seems to have a promising new deal going with his telephony venture - Ooma.  It has been out for a year and they have had to drop the price but it seems to be getting real traction.  The price includes unlimited US calling forever!  While it’s a bit more expensive than the MagicJack you do not need to leave a computer on and Ooma’s call quality is superior.  All the basic features like CallerID and Voice Mail are included, while an optional Premier tier of service ($99/yr) offers additional features such as extra lines/numbers and conference calling.  Hopefully this one will work out better than Kutcher’s crappy movies.

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Great post on learning from failure in a start-up.