I’ve been meaning to get around to doing a Thinking Daily about this.
Hopefully, I’ll get to that sooner than later. Hint: I’m a big fan but for reasons you might not guess.
More soon (hopefully):
We’ve already written about why 2014 is really, finally the year that the “internet of things”—that effort to remotely control every object on earth—becomes visible in our everyday lives.
via How the “internet of things” will replace the web – Quartz.
Good piece that I hits the points that have unsettled me about bitcoin all along…
I want Bitcoin to die in a fire: this is a start, but it’s not sufficient. Let me give you a round-up below the cut.Like all currency systems, Bitcoin comes with an implicit political agenda attached. Decisions we take about how to manage money, taxation, and the economy have consequences: by its consequences you may judge a finance system. Our current global system is pretty crap, but I submit that Bitcoin is worst.
As a loyal fan of T-Mobile’s no-contract services, I can only respond with “whaaaaa????”
Please dear baby divinity no…
Sprint, the third biggest wireless carrier in the US, is preparing to buy out its rival T-Mobile, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. While the deal is a ways off, Sprint is expected to put in its bid in the first half of 2014 and could pay more than $20 billion for its rival.
via Sprint reportedly preparing to purchase T-Mobile in 2014 | The Verge.
The new WordPress 3.8 is definitely beautiful on the admin side. I’m glad to see open source software like WordPress continue to persevere (and thrive) over such a long period on the web (10 years old) given how much publishing on the web has changed and how fads have come and gone.
WordPress is, in many ways, the cornerstone of my web presence and I am excited about the update…
Today the WordPress core team announced WordPress 3.8 “Parker”, a major milestone for the web’s most popular blogging software. In its 10 years WordPress has seen many changes, one of the most significant being the “Crazyhorse” redesign that came with version 2.7 in 2008. Today’s update is the biggest visual update to WordPress since that release.
Just saw this after getting the KitKat 4.4.2 update on my Nexus 5 tonight.
Let’s make sure our citizens are literate first and capable of doing basic math before we try to sell the next “American Dream” as being a app maker to our kids.
I love coding. I loved when my students were interested in coding as a middle school teacher. However, I made it clear to them that while hard work will get you halfway there, there’s a lot of persistence, skill and luck involved in developing the next Angry Birds.
While we realize the hard work involved in something insanely complicated like electrical wiring, we tend to gloss over the difficulties involved in computer science careers because “it’s just computers” and not a physical thing that you have “to do” in order to see results.
Code is only the latest in the classic American / Horatio Alger dream that hard work and the right education will by the golden key that ensures everyone has a job. Go west, get a farm. Learn chemistry. Become a mechanic. Learn how to fix computers. So on and so on and so on. Now: Learn to code! It fits very nicely with the current disruption/app/techie focus of the economy and suggests that the companies and donors that comprise it are necessarily the country’s future. They’re not.
via No, Mr. President, Not Everyone Needs to Learn How to Code – The Wire.
Edit: Dave Winer has a great post on this as well:
Bottom-line: In all likelihood, coding will NOT make you rich. So you’d better have another reason for wanting to do it, because it’s not easy.
Like blogging, coding isn’t easy and probably won’t make you rich!
Whatever you’re doing right now, stop it.
And go look (watch) this amazing production:
Code is on GitHub.
Andy Beaumont on the plague of Pop-Ups 2.0 and the reason why publishers of all sizes are rushing to put them on their sites (hint.. doing analytics wrong):
I have tested this design pattern with real people, and a significant portion of them believe that they must do what the box is begging them for in order to close the overlay. These people remember, they’re people, not “conversions”, are signing up to a newsletter they don’t want. They’re then going to be irritated by it for several months until they work out how to unsubscribe from it. The analytics guru you brought in is walking away with a chunk of your money, in exchange for having pissed off a whole bunch of existing and potential customers.
Tom Merritt is not only an excellent sci-fi author (seriously), but an amazing talent in podcasting and tech punditry. I’ve listened to him from the days of TechTV a decade ago into CNet’s Buzz Out Loud and into his daily show on TWiT called Tech News Today.
So, this sucked…
After some soul searching, I’ve decided that we do need an in-studio anchor for Tech News Today, and a News Director who can help us build the kind of organization you can count on for authoritative tech news and information.
So it’s with a heavy heart that I’m announcing that we’re not going to renew Tom’s contract as host of TNT. His last show will be at the end of the month.
via inside.TWIT.tv | …the revolution will be streamed… – Blog – Changes at TWiT, Part 1.
Comments closed, indeed.
I’m a big fan of TWiT and Leo Laporte’s work on building his own podcasting empire, but this is not a good move.
Amazingly enough, Tom and his pal Roger recorded this podcast tonight about the nature of the new economy, working for yourself vs working for others and the uncertain road of going it alone.
It’s worth your time to go listen.
God knows this is something I’ve been going through with setting up my own business. Tom has been an inspiration for both my marketing agency, my podcasting aspirations for Thinking.FM and a plethora of other businesses I have in mind.
Godspeed, Tom. Sucks for now but things will be better than ever soon with the ability to handle the NSFW crowd like you do. Keep writing, podcasting, and inspiring the rest of us who want to follow you into the new economy.
I can’t say how much I love my Chromebook… nice thought piece on TechCrunch about the Chromebook threat to Microsoft and why it’s more than a browser…
This time, the company is targeting Chromebooks, Google’s cheap ChromeOS-based, web-centric laptops. Why is Microsoft worried about Chromebooks? Because it can see the writing on the wall.
via Microsoft Should Be Worried About Google’s Chromebooks | TechCrunch.
I always thought Vader would use a Windows Phone instead of a 4s…
Another day at the office. #StarWars #DarthVader #selfies #gpom
Just when you thought the technology industry couldn’t get any stranger, the latest idea from the retail giant is to offer an audacious delivery-by-drone service.
via Amazon unveils delivery by drone: Prime Air. No, seriously | ZDNet.
I’m a big fan of Pawn Stars. It’s the one “reality show” I can watch (when I’m in a hotel or via the History Channel app on my Nexus 7). So, I was apprehensive about clicking this given I also love Paul Thurrott’s podcast “Windows Weekly” on TWiT and knowing his…um… love for Chromebook since I’ve been listening for over 5 years. Click to read his reaction to the Pawn Stars / Microsoft mashup:
So I was happy to see a great new “Scroogled” ad appear from Microsoft this week featuring the guys from “Pawn Stars.” It’s worth watching.
I use a Windows machine here in the office and love it as a “truck” to do things like Photoshop or intense projects.
However, my go-to device is a little Acer Chromebook that I love. Between the Chromebook and my Nexus 5, I can run my company on the go and “in the cloud” pretty effectively. I sometimes need to get to the office to use this powerful Windows machine (or if I need to play a graphics intensive game), but my computing work is pretty evenly distributed between the Chromebook and this PC.
No, I don’t think a laptop needs Windows and Office to be a “real laptop” as the ad calls out. I know Paul disagrees, but this just reeks of desperation and won’t be received well.
Microsoft should decide what to be and go be it rather than trying to point out what other competitors are and are not. That’s my $50,000 marketing advice to them heading into a very important 2014 for the future of their company. Embrace RT. Push us old “we want desktop!” users harder to the Modern UI interface. Lean forward into the future and make Windows (RT) the kind of polished product that the XBox One is on launch day. Be innovative. Make us smile again.
Oh, and stop making my favorite TV people talk smack about something I love 🙂
Very nice lady explained I had left my iPad in my hotel room when I checked out. I stumbled for a bit because I don’t have an iPad.
I asked her to flip it over and see if it says “Nexus.”
“Yes, it does!” she said, “what is a Nexus iPad?”
We had a nice chat about Android and iOS.
Fun tech convo thanks to my carelessness.
This is just getting weird…
The truly amazing thing about this is just how pedestrian the NSA’s efforts are – according to NRC, they’re essentially running the same kind of phishing scams with false email requests that you’ll see from any other purveyor of malicious software. As an example, NRC points to how the British GCHQ used false LinkedIn pages to lure and infect Belgacom network employees. Just one more good reason to never click on anything sent from anyone ever.
via TechCrunch
I like this approach… I’ve been using it somewhat regularly here but need to be better about posting things like images or bookmarks here first and then letting them go out to the silos.
Networks like Instagram are still hard to do, but Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus are pretty easy.
POSSE is an acronym/abbreviation for Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. It’s a Syndication Model where the flow involves posting your content on your own domain first, then syndicating out copies to 3rd party services with perma(short)links back to the original version.
POSSE lets your friends keep using whatever silo aggregator (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) they’ve been using to read your stuff.
It’s a key part of why and how the “IndieWeb” movement is different from just “everyone blog on their own site”, and also different from “everyone just install and run StatusNet/Diaspora” etc.
via POSSE – IndieWebCamp.
Good read…
The demand for commodified authenticity is an expression of consumers’ nostalgia for a never-existing time when one had total control over the development of one’s identity. That sort of authenticity has always been a fiction, but the very real existence of goods that signify authenticity masked that fact. Consuming authentically could seem to prove fidelity to our “real self.”
After being an Instapaper user and fan for so long, I held out on Pocket for as long as possible. However, over the past year, Pocket has become one of my most-used apps and a go-to place for my workflow.
While I’ve been using Feedly for something close to this new functionality, it will be a nice addition to an already slick experience…
Pocket is releasing an update to its app today that puts a new focus on helping you discover the best of the items you have saved, using algorithms to surface content likely to interest you the most. Pocket 5.0 searches through your saves to find articles that are trending, longform content, and items that you’re likely to enjoy based on your interests.
via Pocket update highlights the saves you’re most likely to enjoy | The Verge.
Weird.
Just bought Merianna one on Monday night and was planning to go pick one up for myself today…
Retailers everywhere have stopped selling the new HP Chromebook 11, effective immediately. Best Buy store managers were sent a memo which read, in part, “Stores should stop selling the HP Chromebook 11 effective immediately”. This removal from the retail space is widespread, with Amazon and other retailers also pulling the item from their product listings.
via HP Chromebook 11 now unavailable for purchase, no reason given – Android Community.
Reads like one of those quotes that you’ll eventually see in the authorized auto/biography of Gates in a couple of decades (if he doesn’t cure death first)…
We work to draw in not just governments but also businesses, because that’s where most innovation comes from. I’ve heard some people describe the economy of the future as “post-corporatist and post-capitalist”—one in which large corporations crumble and all innovation happens from the bottom up. What nonsense. People who say things like that never have a convincing explanation for who will make drugs or low-cost carbon-free energy. Catalytic philanthropy doesn’t replace businesses. It helps more of their innovations benefit the poor.
via Bill Gates: Here’s My Plan to Improve Our World — And How You Can Help | Wired Business | Wired.com.
Still amazing to watch all these years later (start at min 24 for a glimpse of pure joy if you don’t have time to watch the whole thing):
I can’t believe the iPod is twice the age of my oldest child, but I’m glad she’s growing up in a world of music sharing and discovery made more possible by that device.
The iPod first went on sale 12 years ago | TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog.
Now I need to go dig up my Gen 1 and Gen 2 iPods from whatever drawer they may be haunting…
My pal Wayne Porter and I got into a fun spat almost seven years ago about what web 2.0 meant for marketers. We had a similar “what’s next” private convo on Facebook a couple of nights ago regarding Twitter’s very successful IPO.
Seeing Twitter hit the mainstream over the last few years and now being a big public company has been weird to say the least. Not to compare, but I imagine the apostles felt the same kind of bittersweet “what now?” moment after seeing the early Jesus movement take off under Paul etc (yes, grossly simplified).
But what’s next?
Is there a web 3.0? Wearables like Google Glass?
I don’t know… it’s a strange world and we need new descriptive science fiction to point the way.
Here’s Dave Winer on the topic:
New models for communication can develop, independent of the needs of the companies that run the Web 2.0 servers. I don’t think Web 2.0 will go away, but a new net can take its place beside it. And that’s all that’s needed to boot up a new layer.
I definitely just ordered Writing on the Wall as it combines two of my favorite things… the social internet and anthropological archaeology…
Papyrus rolls and Twitter have much in common: They were their generation’s signature means of “instant” communication. Indeed, as Tom Standage reveals in his scintillating new book, social media is anything but a new phenomenon. Cicero’s web is just one of many historical antecedents of today’s social media. Other prominent examples include the circulation of letters and other documents in the early Christian church; the torrent of printed tracts which circulated in 16th-century Germany, triggering the Reformation; the passing from hand to hand of gossip-laden poetry in the Tudor and Stuart courts; the duelling political pamphlets with which Royalists and Parliamentarians courted public opinion during the English Civil War; the first scientific journals and correspondence societies, which enabled far-flung scientists to discuss and build upon each other’s work; the handwritten poems and newsletters of pre-Revolutionary France, which spread gossip from Paris throughout the country; and the revolutionary pamphlets and local papers that rallied support for American independence. Such social-media systems arose frequently because, for most of human history, social networks were the dominant means by which information spread, in either spoken or written form.
via Writing on the Wall | tomstandage.com.
Wow.
Yes, it’s all come to this… python scripts (or you can follow @n5stock on Twitter but that’s too easy).
We’re a desperate lot.
Nevertheless, this is pretty awesome if you as excited about the hopefully imminent Nexus 5 launch as I am (my beloved Nexus 4 is long in the tooth and pretty smashed up).
Howto: Setup Nexus 5 Stock Notifications