Category: Technology

Worlds Colliding

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.

via Great New Scroogled Ad with the Pawn Stars | Cloud content from Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows.

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 🙂

Got a call this morning from my hotel last night…

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.

Stranger Than Fiction

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

Bringing Back the Blogs

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.

Commodified Authenticity and Social Media

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.”

via Google Alert for the Soul – The New Inquiry.

Pocket 5.0 Update

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.

HP Chromebook 11 Now Unavailable

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.

Bill Gates on Catalytic Philanthropy

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.

The iPod is 12

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…

What’s After Web 2.0?

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.

via Why the Web 2.0 model is obsolete.

Writing on the Wall

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.

How To Setup Nexus 5 Stock Notifications

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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

via Howto: Setup Nexus 5 Stock Notifications : Android.

R.I.P. Lou Reed

“Oh, it’s such a perfect day
I’m glad I spend it with you
Oh, such a perfect day
You just keep me hanging on”

Lou Reed, a massively influential songwriter and guitarist who helped shape nearly fifty years of rock music, died today. The cause of his death has not yet been released, but Reed underwent a liver transplant in May.

via Lou Reed, Velvet Underground Leader and Rock Pioneer, Dead at 71 | Rolling Stone.

L.A.’s iPad Conundrum

I just re-checked the Apple site because I’m utterly confused as to why the L.A. school district would be buying $770 iPads when the $499 models are perfectly fine for school use (helped with a few deployments myself over the past few years).

I’m guessing they went with the 64 GB wifi models ($699 retail) for some reason (oh but students will need lots of space because more is better and the cloud is insecure!) instead of the perfectly reasonable and much cheaper 16 GB $499 models?

Weird.

According to the L.A. Times, a new school district budget shows that iPads will cost $770 each. Apple’s discount on the tablets doesn’t kick in until the District buys at least 520,000 of them. That will cost approximately $400 million. In a statement to the Times, officials said that earlier cost estimates, “preceded the actual procurement process.” The District went on to say, “The negotiated discount [i.e. $678] does not go into effect until the district has reached the $400-million spending threshold.”

via L.A. Unified’s iPad Rollout is Way Over Budget | PadGadget.

And who goes ahead with an order this large (and with this much national scrutiny) when you don’t have the final price from Apple nailed down??

New math indeed.

I don’t understand bureaucracies (and evidently they don’t understand technology or bulk purchasing or business economics).

Sen Franken Questions iPhone 5s and 5th Amendment Implications

Another reason I’m passing on the latest iPhone is because of the 5th Amendment and the fine legal line between something you “know” and something you have or are. Or to put it simply, is a password more secure because you “know” it and the government would have to compel you to give up that knowledge rather than something that is tangible in the sense of a fingerprint or other biometric data that you “have” or “are”? It will be an interesting court case for sure.

Sen Al Franken (D-MN) has posted a series of thoughtful questions for Apple (and consumers) to ponder with this latest iteration of technology…

(10) Under American intelligence law, the Federal Bureau of Investigation can seek an order requiring the production of “any tangible thing[] (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items)” if they are deemed relevant to certain foreign intelligence investigations. See 50 U.S.C. § 1861. 

Does Apple consider fingerprint data to be “tangible things” as defined in the USA PATRIOT Act?

via Sen. Franken Questions Apple on Privacy Implications of New iPhone Fingerprint Technology | Al Franken | Senator for Minnesota.

To use the cliche, it’s not that I have anything to hide but I would like to keep as many constitutional aspects of my US citizenship (especially in 2013) instead of trading them off for quicker access to iTunes purchasing.