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The United States is a great country, but after spending 10 days on a whirlwind trip across France, here are a few areas where the USA can learn a thing or two.

Tipping

In France, tips are not expected, even at full service restaurants. In the United States, the tipping culture has gotten out of hand. Its gone way beyond wait staff at full service restaurants, today we see tip jars popping up all over the place. I’m a generous tipper, but things are out of control. Employees are getting underpaid, and consumers are expected to fill up the gap.

Driving

I was amazed how well motorists behave on the highway in France. First off, nobody clogs up the left lane. Everybody moves immediately to furthermost right lane when not executing a pass on the highway. Nobody passes on the right hand side.

Roads

After driving over 2500 miles, I was shocked how smooth the highways are in France. Literally, I did not hit a pothole of significance during the whole trip. I don’t know what the French are doing differently, but their roads are clearly superior, and I didn’t see much construction going on during our trip.

Gas Station Coffee

In the United States, if you want drinkable coffee you are forced to go do a dedicated coffee house. Gas stations and rest stops have horrible coffee. I’m sorry folks, but Wawa and Sheetz have shitty coffee. Donut shops have shitty coffee. In France, every rest stop has automated espresso machines that make decent coffee. Its not great, but its way better than anything in a gas station in the USA.

Food

There is great food in the USA, but its not the norm. You can easily have a bad food experience. Its hard to have a bad food experience in France, especially if you avoid the touristy sections.

Two months ago, I bought the Withings WIFI scale, which has a bunch of unique features, including the ability to report weigh-ins to twitter. I decided to conduct a two month personal experiment where my scale would report to twitter every time I stepped on it. Because my twitter account is hooked up to Facebook, the scale also updates my Facebook status.

I had two goals for the Twitter diet:
1. Don’t gain any weight in the month of December
2. Lose 10lbs by the end of January

Amazingly, I managed to acheive goal #1, but I fell short of goal #2. I only managed to lose 5lbs during the twitter diet. The Twitter diet was unique because everybody around me was reminded that I was on a diet, which created a built-in weight loss support group. If somebody saw me eating junk food, I would be ridiculed.

The daily reporting of my weight caused me to really think twice about what I was eating. For the first time in my life, I experimented with various diets. I went veggie for a few weeks, I tried the the low-carb thing too. There is no way I would have been motivated to diet if it wasn’t for the Withings scale.

Overall, I think the twitter diet has a lot of potential. I’m actually going to keep the scale sending tweets, but on a weekly basis instead of daily. The weekly reporting should be enough to get me embarrassed if I start to creep back up, and thats the real benefit. The public reporting of weight, gets people who would otherwise not care to really think about how much they weight, what they are eating, and what they are doing.

Its been 24 hours since the iPad was announced, and I have to say that with every tick of the clock, my opinion of Apple’s new device gets more negative. During the announcement, I wasn’t blown away, but I was positive. However; the more I started think about the iPad, the more I disliked it. Its really just an oversize ipod touch.

I thought Apple’s device would be a really strong e-reader, but sadly the Kindle is far superior. A backlight display is not preferable for reading, so Apple’s choice of an OLED screen makes the device a substandard e-reader. With the Kindle, there are no data fees, and there is infinitely more content, and to top it off, the books are cheaper too. So I have to have a monthly network access fee, to buy more expensive books, in a store with less selection, and I must read those books on screen that will strain my eyes? No thanks!

Photos, videos, and music all look very nice on the ipad, but why would I buy an iPad when the iphone/ipod already has all that functionality? The video display is better, but what is the actual use case for the iPad video? An airplane trip? If I’m in an airplane, I already have my laptop, so why bother with an iPad? Again, the more I think about it, the more the iPad doesn’t make much sense.

Finally, the one solid use case I had for an iPad is a living room computer. Something I could share with others in the house to check e-mail, browse the Internet, and carry on the road when I’m on the go. The lack of multiple user profiles makes the iPad a horrible option as a living room computer. Multitasking has existed on personal computers for 16 years, but the iPad wants to party like its 1989? There is no camera, there is no standard video out, and there is no usb port. No sane person would buy a computer that requires you to purchase a bunch of proprietary junk to have basic connectivity.

I’m the type of personal who can rationalize just about any technology purchase. I’m the guy in line to buy the new gadget the day it goes on sale. There is no way to rationalize purchasing an iPad in its current form. The device makes zero sense. It reminds me of the Macbook Air, a device for people who have more money than brains.

I recently purchased the new Withings Wifi enabled scale. The scale is unique because it uploads your weight and body fat measurements to the Internet via wifi, and the measurements are accessible via a web page and iphone app. A new feature allows you to publicize your weight to twitter. It sounds completely stupid, but I thought it would be interesting to see if reporting weight via twitter would actually lead to weight loss.

For the next two months, I’m going to report my daily weight measurements via twitter. December is probably the absolute worst time to start a diet, but I need to get an early start. I have a very challenging cycling “vacation” at the end of March, and my current weight is the cycling equivalent of morbid obesity.

The marketplace for startup funding is something that has always fascinated me. Venture capitalists seem to behave like trendsetting hipsters trying to go to the next “it” club. Once the new “it” business plan is identified, VC’s will gladly fund mediocre startups that resemble or piggyback to “it” regardless of their potential for long term viability.

In the mid to late 90′s “it” was any business plan that involved e-commerce. You could write a business plan to sell dogshit online, and “it” would probably get funded. The Napster phenomenon caused a funding frenzy towards P2P startups, even though their potential for revenue was mediocre at best. The success of Myspace caused a funding boom for anything to do with social networking, even though that business model is extremely questionable. Today, the “it” trend is probably cloud computing.

Venture capitalists are like hipsters looking for the next “it” nightclub, but most of the time they end up with a bunch of “me too” companies that go nowhere, but get funded with buzzword laden business plans. Some of the most successful startups in the history of technology are boring companies in established markets.

Was there really anything exciting about Google? Search was already being done by 20 different players in the late 90′s. Search was boring. I’m surprised they didn’t get passed over in order for a VC to fund the next Pointcast screensaver.

The point is that some of the best startups are boring companies, that do boring things, in already proven boring marketplaces.

During my labor day vacation, I managed to snap a few shots of Seagulls following the ferry.