Fluoridation of water in Portland, OR? Really?

Portland, Oregon will soon vote to fluoridate its water. This in a city that prides itself on having the cleanest, best-tasting water of any major city in the United States; a city where the cleanliness and purity of the water has led directly to a boom in silicon chip manufacturing, beer brewing and drinking fountain usage. For some reason, a large and powerful political coalition has latched onto this issue and is pushing it forward, despite the controversy this is creating in our community.

Quite some time ago, I blogged about the dangers of fluoride in toothpaste; I'll leave the technical arguments for that post for the most part, though I will add one new point of information that has come to light since then: fluoridated municipal water supplies cause fluoridated wastewater to be released into rivers and other waterways, which can impact the health of fish and other aquatic species.

Basically, I feel like this is sort of a Bush vs. Gore moment for Portland, in many ways. Portland is the largest remaining U.S. city to not fluoridate its water; for many of us, this is a sort of pride. If you want fluoride, go buy just about any brand of toothpaste and brush your teeth. Even if you can't afford dental insurance, this will provide your teeth with all the fluoride they "need" to stay healthy (though, please see the previous post for questions about to what degree this need even exists). If you don't think this is the case, then also go ahead and purchase some fluoridated mouthwash; this will provide more than enough fluoridation to protect your dental well-being.

But please, don't force the rest of us to have fluoridated beer, fluoridated lemonade, fluoridated kombucha -- and fluoridated local fish!

Thanks.

MTC/ABAG's Draft SCS is Fatally Flawed

Recently in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to the provisions of California's Senate Bill 375 (SB 375), the regional agencies released a draft version of their plan for land use and transportation patterns through the year 2040. The Bay Area's Greenbelt Alliance called regional government agencies MTC and ABAG's draft Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS) a "...page turner of a land use scenario." 

I agree that it is a comprehensive discussion of the issues faced by planners in the Bay Area. In fact, I would almost call it whiny. Read this paragraph and see if you agree:

The affordable housing production challenge is particularly critical relative to infill development where established

neighborhoods are revitalized with new development in the midst of existing communities, land values are high and planning and entitlement processes are often complex and costly. In addition, construction costs of multi-unit structures continue to escalate, particularly due to the cost of steel and other materials. Financing for infill development remains difficult and the “cost of money” remains relatively high due to the perceived riskiness of multi-family construction and the need for large chunks of capital up front. Urban infill development is also challenging due to the need to assemble sites and the extra costs for site preparation, as well as the extra regulatory hurdles in core areas, such as extensive design reviews. And most recently, there is a new threat of lack of institutional capacity to process housing applications, due to the dissolution of redevelopment agencies and the ongoing fiscal stress in local governments. (page 8)

If it sounds like this may be a prelude to a plan that does not propose solutions to these problems... it is.

For instance, it seems to take a passive, backseat role with regards to planning for the future urban form of employment parks:

Multiple activities and transit at office parks

Office parks have and are expected to continue to accommodate a growing number of employees. However, given the limited land available for new office parks, existing vacant office space, and the preference for walkable, transit-served neighborhoods by a growing number of employers, office parks are expected to grow at a slower pace than in recent decades. Existing office parks are also using less space per worker, providing transit access, and in a few cases adding housing, services and amenities. The emerging private shuttle services run by businesses, particularly in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties, are expected to grow and improve transit access while lessening, but not fully mitigating increased freeway traffic congestion related to employment growth. (page 15)

Remember -- this is a plan that is legally mandated to attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, specifically from transportation. And yet it takes a laissez-faire approach to one of the most major issues in regional planning in the Bay Area -- the continued growth of auto-dependent low-density employment parks far from transit -- which is known to lead to increased greenhouse gas emissions.

The major issues with the plan also include the low amounts of housing units planned for construction in comparison to population and employment growth over the next three decades. For instance, rather than confront that fact that this region has consistently under-produced housing over the past few decades (as evidenced by high housing prices and high amounts of in-commuting), the plan seeks to reduce the target for new housing production by using gimmicks:

“…the plan takes into account current housing vacancy rates (approximately 6.4%) and fills vacancies first before planning any new construction.”

First issue: The Bay Area likely has among the lowest vacancy rates of the largest regions in the state, and yet, even though it is the last of the major MPOs in California to produce its SCS, it is the first MPO to suggest that filling vacancies can be a reason to reduce the housing target by a six-figure amount.*

Second issue: Even if this were a valid strategy on its face, it misses two important factors:

1) Location: Many of the vacant units are located in undesirable areas, far from transit and job centers. Vacancy rates in walkable neighborhoods near transit with low crime are at normal, even low levels.

2) Demand by unit type: Much of the vacancies are for single family homes, especially those in poor locations. Much of the demand is for townhomes and multifamily units near transit. Just because there is a surplus of the former doesn’t mean that there is no need to construct the latter.

In reading the draft SCS, I see no mention of demand for units by unit type, especially not in the nuanced manner that has become normative in post-SB375 planning in California: Single Family Large Lot, Single Family Small Lot, Townhome and Multifamily. While Dr. A.C. Nelson’s report “The New California Dream” is referenced, his specific demand projections by unit type and by location are ignored. In case readers don't wish to dig too deeply to find them, here they are for the Bay Area (from page 44 of Dr. Nelson's housing unit demand forecast):

New unit Demand 2010–2035

Multifamily: 668,000 (45.10%)

Townhome: 519,000 (35.04%)

Single Family Small Lot: 294,000 (19.85%)

Single Family Large Lot: −526,000 

Total: 956,000

The draft Bay Area SCS (what they call the Jobs-Housing Connection Strategy, or Plan Bay Area, as a part of some nebulous umbrella effort known as OneBayArea) doesn't specifically include targets for housing unit production by unit type. However, Dr. Nelson's estimate of 956,000 new housing units is likely closer to the overall total amount than the 660,000 used in the current draft of the Bay Area's plan. This shortfall will likely be made up by continued exurban sprawl in California's San Joaquin Valley, as well as to much lesser degrees the northern Salinas Valley, the Santa Cruz/Monterey Bay area and Mendocino and Lake counties.

For these reasons alone, this is a fatally flawed plan; but also add to this list the fact that it does not specify where non-TOD growth will occur (beyond while travel analysis zone it will fall in); and that it admits that it fails to provide enough housing to meet potential demand -- to such a degree that job growth will be lowered by ~110k future potential employees as a consequence, as admitted on page 8:

According to Steve Levy, from the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, the region could capture another 110,000 jobs of the total national growth. However, the total job growth is constrained by our ability to produce housing, which is ambitiously estimated at 660,000 new units by 2040.

On page 9, the plan admits that it will not seek to current the current imbalance between jobs in the Bay Area and housing outside of the region (mainly in the San Joaquin Valley):

This also assumes that the rate of net in- commuting will remain at 2010 levels, and absorption of about 40,000 existing vacant units. (continued in footnote): The Jobs-Housing Connection Scenario includes an adjustment of 0.7 percent higher employed residents than the numbers forecast by Levy. This adjustment is the result of retaining the 2010 in-commute ratio out to 2040.

Not just retain the current total amount of people commuting into the Bay Area, but actually allow it to increase by retaining the current rate. This will result in an absolute increase in in-commuters, which is not good news to anybody who currently drives in through the Altamont Pass during their morning commute; it will also result in more sprawl in the immediately adjacent San Joaquin Valley, which will not be good news to folks who would prefer to see the agricultural character of that place preserved.

It also flies against what many, including the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) consider to be the primary goals of SB 375 -- to provide housing for all of the potential future residents of a region:

Identify areas sufficient to house all the population of the region, including all economic segments, over the course of the planning period of the regional transportation plan, taking into account net migration into the region, population growth, household formation, and employment growth. This provision is not atypical for growth projections, but SB 375 makes two significant changes. First, the SCS must accommodate all the population growth of the region within the region. Shipping residential growth to adjacent regions is no longer allowed. Second, the population growth projections must include the increased housing demand caused by employment growth. These provisions recognize the crucial linkage between a regional-scale jobs-housing balance and reduced VMT. The housing projects in the first horizon year of the plan (presumably eight years out) must be consistent with the regional housing need identified in the regional housing needs allocation (RHNA) program. This provision is part of the effort to align these programs.

The hope for this plan lies in the basic framework of concentrating growth around transit, and the programs that are being proposed to help make this happen. Let’s hope that future iterations of the plan will build upon this, but address the issues mentioned above…

 ------
* SCAG's SCS mentions that the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) allowed them to reduce their Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) for the upcoming 8-year cycle by a slight amount to reflect the current elevated vacancy rate, but they don't mention using this vacancy rate to reduce their overall growth control totals to 2035, nor do they use it as an excuse to continue to encourage the growth of current unhealthy in-commuting patterns. SANDAG's SCS does not mention reducing their housing growth targets due to the vacancy rate specifically, though their vacancy rate was only 5.8% in 2010 according to that document. SACOG's SCS mentions accounting for vacancy -- by using a 5% "vacancy factor", which they account for by planning to overbuild housing to account for a future 5% vacancy rate in 2035 and still be able to accommodate all new households. SACOG's approach is the right way to look at the nuances related to vacancy, which is to take responsibility for the fact that there always will be vacant housing units, and to plan to overbuild slightly in order to account for this.

My maps are now helping to define GIS

At least, the California Map Society is using two images of my maps to help them define the term GIS (URL: http://californiamapsociety.org/mapping/gis.php). I created these maps back when I worked for MTC, and submitted them to ESRI for use in their Map Gallery. Somebody found them at the California Map Society page, and emailed me with a question about how I made them... which is a refreshing reminder that cartography does matter, and once upon a time, I did a lot of it.

An interesting side note is that these maps represented for me the first result of my dabblings in "psychaedelic geography", or the use of non-traditional colors and methods to depict GIS data on maps. The purpose of psychaedelic geography was foremost to make maps that looked more interesting and less boring, which was intended to have consequential side effects of getting people to pay more attention to the data represented on the map. Looks like it worked!

In the three years since I came over to Calthorpe Associates, I have been doing a lot more work behind the scenes, that is, work involving databases, project coordination, public relations, client relations, spreadsheets... in short, everything but cartography. Maybe, thanks to this reminder and the changing demands of the project, I will start to do more cartography soon...

Obama's speech tonight hit it out of the park.

He did an excellent job articulating his messages, he showed emotion, and he did effective combat against a lot of the anti-intellectual ideas that the opposition has been throwing up recently.

I predict that his new for-the-people offense will prove successful in passing the jobs for america act. The question is, did he write enough oomph into it to provide an effective-enough boost to the economy to ensure his re-election? I'm curious to hear Paul Krugman's analysis of what the macroeconomic effect of this bill is likely to be...

Still, I suppose that the bottom line with regard to Obama's reelection will involve many more variables than just the degree of success of this bill.

For instance, the surface transportation reauthorization bill will be another upcoming opportunity to inject massive amounts of funding into capital infrastructure improvements, which have large job-creating capabilities... This will be thus another good opportunity for Obama to exert leadership and use the bully pulpit to fight for large expenditures on transit and bike/ped, which are proven to generate large numbers of relative jobs per dollar spent.

So, here's to hoping that Obama's new fighting spirit will hold, prove effective and be put to good use!

YouChooseBayArea website launched

One of the projects that I've been working on over the past year, Envision Bay Area, has now produced a product, the YouChooseBayArea website, which allows users to play with different policy choices to produce a future scenario for growth in the region, and then see the results of these choices. It's all done up in an easy-to-use manner, with well-written text describing the implications of the choices and the collateral benefits (or damage) resulting. Metrics measured include fiscal impact, public health, GHG emissions, travel behavior, building energy and water consumption, and others.

The scenarios were run through the Rapid Fire model that I was instrumental in the process of building here at Calthorpe Associates. This model produced all of the quantitative results that you see on the website. This is the model that has also been used to produce the initial Results Report for the Vision California project.

Go check out the website. Let me know what you think!

California Ballot Endorsements November 2010

State of California
November Election, 2010
*********************


Governor: Jerry Brown Discussion: The state is a mess; it needs Jerry Brown to come fix it. Meg Whitman's a rich idiot, and the other alternatives are jokes.
Lt. Governor: James "Jimi" Castillo Discussion: This is pretty much a joke job with a good salary anyways. Let's just be honest about that fact, and use this opportunity to elect a Green Party member to statewide office. The other candidates are former politicians just looking for a good way to continue collecting a salary for doing nothing. Let's elect somebody who might actually shake things up a little.
U.S. Senator: Barbara Boxer: This is not the time to replace Boxer. She's not perfect, but she'll do for now.
Attorney General: Kamala Harris Discussion: Yeah, as AG of SF she's been a little soft on crime, and the streets of SF are still the streets of SF. For this statewide office, she seems like a thinking, open-minded human being who may at least give some serious thought to the important policy issues of the day. You can't say the same for the other candidates.
Treasurer: Bill Lockyer


Statewide Measures:
Measure 19: Legalizes Marijuana. Discussion: I probably don't need to say much, but I will. This needs to be done for two very good reasons: One, it will undercut the funding for foreign mafias that currently profit by trafficking marijuana into our country, and thus have definite foreign policy benefits; and Two, it will undercut the funding for domestic drug gangs that currently profit by trafficking marijuana within our cities and within the country, and thus have definite domestic policy benefits. Estimated Financial Impact: The state's going to bring in a ton of cash from this. Recommended Vote: Yes


Measure 20: Redistricting. Discussion: Takes the carving of the pork out of the wolf's hands. Recommended Vote: Yes


Measure 21: VLF for State Parks. Discussion: Seems like a rather poor use of funds collected from vehicle license fees, and if the state parks were to all "close" tomorrow, as long as they didn't begin actually clear-cutting them, at least they would be preserved for future generations. Recommended Vote: No


Measure 22: Prevents State from Stealing Money from Other Jurisdictions. Discussion: I was horrified when I heard that the State of California could do this to begin with. F*ing fix it already. Recommended Vote: Yes


Measure 23: Suspend AB 32 until hell freezes over. Discussion: Funded by oil companies to protect profits and advance the Conservative cause. Go tell them where to stick it. Recommended Vote: No


Measure 24: Remove some business tax exemptions. Discussion: There's probably a good reason for some of these exemptions, if you ask the right lobbyist. But, the state is really, really, really broke. It needs cash, and it shouldn't have to steal it to get it. This is a logical way to raise revenue without raising taxes. Recommended Vote: Yes


Measure 25: Allows the Legislature to pass a budget with a simple majority vote (currently, 2/3 is needed). Discussion: This is a democracy, which is majority rule, not minority rule. Requiring a super-majority vote on an issue is effectively creating minority rule. That strikes me as wrong. This measure will go a long way to fixing politics in this broken state. Recommended Vote: Yes

Measure 26: Requires 2/3 vote to enact or raise fees. Discussion: See above, about minority rule = bad. Recommended Vote: No

Measure 27: Opposite of Measure 20, Redistricting. Unlock the coop, leave a trail of blood to the forest, and put up a god-damn neon sign saying "The chickens are sleeping, come and eat them Mr. Fox". Recommended Vote: No

Alameda County

Measure F: Vehicle License Fee for Bicycles, Transit & Urban Greening. F*ing yeah! Right on. This is a great use of VLF moneys. Appropriate use of funds, given the revenue source. Recommended Vote: Yes

BART Director, District 4: Robert Raburn

Mayor, Oakland:

1) Rebecca Kaplan

2) Joe Tuman

Discussion: Rebecca gets it, and would hopefully be a good mayor. Joe at least supports the Oakland Streetcar proposal, which is better than nothing. Stop voting after two, your first two votes will still be counted under the ranked-choice system (You may rank UP TO three choices).

Oregon Ballot Endorsements 2010

State of Oregon

*************

United States Senator: Ron Wyden

Representatives in Congress:

1st District: David Wu

2nd District: Joyce Segers

3rd District: Earl Blumenauer

4th District: Peter DeFazio

5th District: 

Kurt Schrader

6th District: Just kidding, Oregon only has 5 districts.

Governor: John Kitzhaber

Treasurer: Ted Wheeler

Oregon Metro Council President: Bob Stacey Discussion: Bob will show decisive leadership on important policy issues, and that's still what metro (and Oregon) need.

Measure 70 through 72 were referred to the people by the Legislature, and thus already represent the result of a well-reasoned consensus that has been reached by our elected body of citizen representatives in Oregon.

Measure 70: Amends Constitution: Expands availability of home ownership loans for Oregon veterans through Oregon War Veterans' Fund. Estimated Financial Impact: None. Discussion: This seems to be mostly a clean-up bill to rationalize what seems to be a slightly irrational set of rules governing this program. Recommended Vote: Yes.

Measure 71: Amends Constitution: Requires legislature to meet annually; limits length of legislative sessions; provides exceptions. Estimated Financial Impact: Not estimated to exceed $100,000. Discussion: You know, this sounds like an interesting experiment, and I'm all for interesting experiments taking place in Oregon, if there's not pre-known to be a predictable adverse impact. Know what I'm sayin'? Recommended Vote: Yes.

Measure 72: Amends Constitution: Authorizes exception to $50,000 state borrowing limit for state's real and personal property projects. Estimated Financial Impact: This should provide for lower financing costs to the state to acquire debt. Discussion: The state says it needs more tools in its financial toolchest. It's going through hard times. This seems like a really good idea. Recommended Vote: Yes.

---

Measures 73 through 76 were referred to the ballot through citizen initiative petition.

Measure 73: Requires increased minimum sentences for certain repeated sex crimes, incarceration for repeated driving under influence. Estimated Financial Impact: $18.1 million to $29.1 million per year after it fully takes effect after its fourth year of impact, lesser until then. Discussion: While this seems like a good law-and-order measure, in these hard financial times, I'd like to see it come with some financing attached to help pay for itself. I don't see that. Without more evidence that this is the best solution available for the problem at hand, I don't see the compelling cost-benefit analysis that says this is the best use of the state's limited funding. Recommended Vote: No.

Measure 74: Establishes medical marijuana supply system and assistance and research programs; allows limited selling of marijuana. Estimated Financial Impact: Up to $20 million in revenue to the state in the first year alone. Discussion: Some time has passed since Oregon legalized medical marijuana, and in that time, experience has shown that additional regulation could improve the situation. This measure is therefore an evolutionary step forward from the present situation in Oregon. Recommended Vote: Yes.

Measure 75: Authorizes Multnomah County casino; casino to contribute monthly revenue percentage to state for specified purposes. Estimated Financial Impact: Yeah, allows for opening a casino. I think it might bring in some cash. Maybe a few dozen million per year or so in taxes, something along those lines, once a casino begins operations... Discussion: I think there are much better-thought-out options to raise cash for the state, including some of the other measures on this ballot. We don't need to stoop this low yet. Recommended Vote: No.

Measure 76: Amends Constitution: continues lottery funding for parks, beaches, wildlife habitat, watershed protection beyond 2014; modifies funding process. Estimated Financial Impact: None,  unless you happen to be another state program competing annual for lottery funding since this is a renewal measure, these funds are already currently obligated to this purposes. Discussion: This is micro-managing the Legislature. As good-intentioned as this sounds, I believe the Legislature actually might already have a process to work this out, which is what we did elect them to do. Since this is a renewal measure, this is just a matter of reinforcing our already-good judgement to use some lottery funds to help support the parks. Recommended Vote: Yes.

People's Republic of Multnomah County:

Measures 26-109, 26-110, 26-111, 26-112, 26-113, 26-114, 26-118: Yes

City of Portland:

Measure 26-108: Yes

Measure 26-117: No

Tri-Met:

Measure 26-119: Yes Discussion: begrudgingly, since this is effectively the renewal of the bond funding that was used to construct Westside Light Rail, and I don't see this current expenditure as rising to that level of vision-achievement.

I was on the radio this morning for Vision California

The link to the radio program is here:

http://www.capradio.org/programs/programdetail.aspx?showid=8045

I think my section starts at about 16:40.... Dan Leavitt (Deputy Director of the California High Speed Rail Authority) and I were interviewed by host Jeffrey Callison about the recent Vision California data release, which has generated some press coverage already. We discuss some fun facts from the data release, as well as why the project is happening, why High Speed Rail is funding it and how confident we are in the results.

Rebuilding the Streets of North Oakland

So, I was invited to write an op-ed piece for the Oakland North blog, discussing pedestrian and bicycle safety in North Oakland following the wave of incidents in recent weeks.

This is my submission:

http://oaklandnorth.net/2010/06/16/you-tell-us-rebuild-oaklands-streets-to-make-them-safer/

Please share it widely among folks who might be interested; feel free to forward it to lists and groupservs that might hit folks who live in North Oakland (or elsewhere) and care about this issues. I would like to continue to use the Oakland North site as a forum to begin a community dialogue about these issues, and see what might be made to happen as a result.

If you don't live in north Oakland and are reading this post, please tell me what you think right here on Underground Science!

thanks,

~Garlynn

My Ideal Cell Phone: Specs

OK, so a number of years back (in 2006), I put out specs for my ideal automobile, updated the post later in the year with a progress report... then gave up on the idea of anything happening soon, and settled for buying a 20-year-old diesel Mercedes wagon to run on biodiesel. Since then, Mercedes has announced plans for a new diesel-electric hybrid car at some point in the future, as has Volvo and others... and I followed up with specifications for the ideal plug-in biodiesel hybrid wagon... but I since announced that there are lots of poor options when it comes to new cars, and lots of great options when it comes to new bicycles...including the bakfiets, the station wagon of bicycles. You pretty much have to go to Europe to get a decent car right now with good gas mileage that is biodiesel-capable.


So, enough about transportation. I've tried to make a difference, and maybe I have, but these things take time.


Right now, I'd like to turn my attention to the cell phone. There have been a lot of advances in cell phone technology recently, and indeed, there seem to be a lot of decent phones on the market right now.


But.... BUT... my personal cell phone is now at least five years old. Verizon has been offering to give me a free new phone of my choice for at least the past three years, and I keep turning them down.


Why?


It's not that all new phones stink... it's just that none of them actually meet all of my specifications, and I keep hoping that the right phone will be released in the next two years, so I might as well wait for it. Besides, my current phone (an old Audiovox) works just fine, with decent battery life, good call quality and reception, and the ability to take photos and video, send and receive text, picture and video messages, and even do some rudimentary web surfing and gaming (i.e., tetris and chess).


So, without further ado... what would it take to get me to upgrade? Here's the list:

• It needs to work on the Verizon network, native, with full support. I hate AT&T, having done business with them a number of times in the past and had to endure their monopolistic thinking and shoddy customer service. I won't do it again. I've been with Verizon since they used to be called AirTouch, and aside from their politics, I see no reason to leave (though, Working Assets/Credo Mobile might start looking more attractive if Verizon keeps supporting the Blue Dog Democrats)...
• It needs to offer at least 120 gigabytes of on-board storage capacity, and preferably closer to 200 gigs -- or more. I'd like to just take all of my music and a lot of my movies, plus some of my photos, with me when I'm mobile. Why should I have to limit myself to a certain sub-set of my collection? The technology now exists and is quite cheap to just give it all to me when I'm on the go.
• It should have a 4+ megapixel digital camera built it, with an actual physical zoom lens (3x minimum), a decent flash, and decent night-time photography capabilities (this is apparently mainly a software thing now). I'd love to have a physical viewfinder, but... I could live without it if one feature had to get cut. It should, in short, be a good digital camera... not the best, but it should certainly be competitive with the best compact digital cameras circa, say, 2004 or 2005...
• It needs to plug in to a standard USB port for synching, but it should act as a standard external drive when plugged in, with no funny business with regards to copy protection, digital rights management, or any of that bullshit. Let me use it how I want to use it, that's why I'm paying money for it -- keep your corporate paws out of my private business.
• It should be an excellent music player, with the ability to support noise-cancelling headphones, either corded or via bluetooth, and excellent sound reproduction, including transfer of frequencies from 10hz to 200khz, that is, just outside both edges of human hearing -- just in case I decide to plug it into something other than headphones that may have the ability to actually reproduce those frequencies.
• It should be an excellent cell phone, with perfect call quality when service is good, the ability to operate either in digital or analog mode, the ability to switch modes on the fly without dropping a call in order to achieve top call quality, and the ability to operate on any network in the world that uses any technology currently in use by cell phones.
• It should have decent battery life, that is, the ability to talk for a few hours, or listen to music for a few hours, and then be in standby for a few days, on a single charge. I don't have unrealistic expectations for this, and I'm certainly fine if I need to plug it in when I go to sleep every second, third or fourth night depending on how much I use it -- but at least out of the box, I shouldn't have to plug it in every night, and I certainly shouldn't need to plug it in more than once a day (unless I'm using it for like eight hours straight for battery-intensive operations).
• It should be good at surfing the web, at least as good as the iPhone is currently, and be able to view some version of all standard web pages, not just the "mobile version."
• I think it probably should also support Flash. It should be MY decision, not the decision of Steve Jobs, if I want to take the risk of running Flash. Maybe I should have to sign a disclaimer saying that I know I'm an idiot if I want to do this, but then, I should still be able to do it. Please, just let me be my own idiot when it comes to installing and running programs on my device that, technically, should be able to run on that device just fine.
• It should be able to run a variety of other applications, within reason (i.e. I don't expect to be able to run a full-fledge GIS on it, but a slim version of Google Earth might be nice).
• It should have the standard accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, GPS, and other functions that any modern iPhone or competitor now has, and the ability to use them.
• It should be tough. Like Dvorak has suggested, "make the thing out of tungsten. Drop it, and it would break the floor. Tungsten has a great finish. People will ask, "wow, it's actually made from tungsten?"" Or, you know, find some other way to make it really tough, and hard to break... I don't care if it's tungsten, titanium, aluminum, or just stainless steel. I've dropped my current phone dozens of times, on a variety of surfaces. It's a flip-phone... that's one of the reasons I like the flip-phone design. The thing just takes it and keeps working, and it's made out of plastic. Give me a reason to pay $50 more for something that will last a long time (like a MacBook Pro laptop or a Mercedes), and I will.
• Maybe it should have night-vision camera capabilities. That would be cool... or even just the ability to hold it up and see the night-vision view on the screen. OK, that's maybe just a cool idea for an app, I don't quite understand all the technology involved. That's not a requirement.
• It should definitely have the ability to run a powerpoint show (via some dongle that, say, plugs into its USB or monitor out port and into a standard VGA cable) or even show movies via a projector or TV. After all, it will be able to hold dozens of movies on its massive HD, why not allow you to watch them on a full-size screen?
• It should have an average-size screen. The screen on the iPhone is fine. In fact, the dimensions of the iPhone are about perfect. It could even be a little bit thicker, to accommodate more battery and more storage device (hard drive, flash drive, whatever works best). Not TOO much thicker, but a few more millimeters wouldn't be a deal-killer.
• It should be tough. Did I say that already? If it gets dropped, I don't want anything breaking, including the screen. MAKE IT TOUGH. I'll pay extra. I need to make that clear. Also, just build it to last -- don't skimp on the components, go for the high-quality stuff. But, within reason. I'd pay $400 for such a device, maybe even $500 with a good warranty... but not much more... so, be really smart about the design and manufacturing...

OK, that's a pretty long list, so I'll quit while I'm ahead. I think you get the picture. Comments are open and welcome.

cheers,

~Garlynn