Just a quick update… on the ride I and some friends did around Vashon Island Sunday, I had a problem with my Chariot Cougar I. Turns out one of the wheels had a bit of rust on the inner axel that controls the quick release… so it took me quite a lot of time to get the wheel to come off the trailer for transport (first time I had loaded it in my car) and then it took me some time to get it to lock back in… I had to keep slamming it into the slot to have the spring click and catch. Finally did, but not before the wheel almost came off while riding — I hadn’t noticed the wheel hadn’t locked, and rode down about a quarter of a mile from Lincoln Park to the Fauntleroy ferry dock. Yikes!
So, score one for the Burley design for wheels… no weird catch means that they aren’t going to have weather or rust problems. Now to REI to get a replacement….

**Update**

REI lubed the wheel, and now all appears good… we’ll check ‘er out tomorrow!

So, the cat is finally out of the bag. With A9’s former CEO Udi Manber moving to Google, Amazon has decided to go with Windows Live Search instead of Google for it’s A9 product. What does this mean?

First off, loyalists like me can now not feel guilty when I use A9, which I still think has a number of cool features for searching that haven’t made it in the mainstream yet.

Second, it’s a step towards more collaboration between Amazon and Microsoft. It’s painfully clear to everyone that the power of Google AdWords and AdSense are on a collision course for Amazon and eBay — the question is who gets to answer a customer’s shopping query first, Amazon / eBay or Google. If it’s Google, then they can cut Amazon and eBay out of the loop entirely. Think about eBay for a moment… lots of other companies have tried to do auctions, but failed, as there wasn’t the critical mass of buyers and sellers. Now, imagine Google doing auctions, but leveraging their huge distribution for AdWords on their search page… that’s millions in free ad inventory they can just throw at getting critical mass. It’d be tough to unseat eBay, but they could well do it. Same thing goes for Amazon… if you can leverage meta-search for shopping and provide some kind of trust guarantee or payment system (say Google Visa), then you can suddenly leverage the web for shopping instead of Amazon… which is a huge threat to Amazon’s business.

Things are starting to move… keep watching everyone!