aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Monday, December 24, 2007
The Economist: Linus Torvalds should be rightly proud
From the third of The Economist’s Technology in 2008 three fearless predictions:
Linux has swiftly become popular in small businesses and the home.
That’s largely the doing of Gutsy Gibbon, the code-name for the Ubuntu 7.10 from Canonical. Along with distributions such as Linspire, Mint, Xandros, OpenSUSE and gOS, Ubuntu (and its siblings Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Xubuntu) has smoothed most of Linux’s geeky edges while polishing it for the desktop.
No question, Gutsy Gibbon is the sleekest, best integrated and most user-friendly Linux distribution yet. It’s now simpler to set up and configure than Windows. A great deal of work has gone into making the graphics, and especially the fonts, as intuitive and attractive as the Mac’s.
Like other Linux desktop editions, Ubuntu works perfectly well on lowly machines that couldn’t hope to run Windows XP, let alone Vista Home Edition or Apple’s OS-X.
Your correspondent has been happily using Gutsy Gibbon on a ten-year-old desktop with only 128 megabytes of RAM and a tiny 10 gigabyte hard-drive. When Michael Dell, the boss of Dell Computers, runs Ubuntu on one of his home systems, Linux is clearly doing many things right.
And because it is free, Linux become the operating system of choice for low-end PCs. It started with Nicholas Negroponte, the brains behind the One Laptop Per Child project that aims to deliver computerised education to children in the developing world. His clever XO laptop, costing less than $200, would never have seen the light of day without its clever Linux operating system.
But Mr Negroponte has done more than create one of the world’s most ingenious computers. With a potential market measured in the hundreds of millions, he has frightened a lot of big-time computer makers into seeing how good a laptop they can build for less than $500.
All start with a desktop version of Linux. Recent arrivals include the Asus Eee from Taiwan, which lists for $400. The company expects to sell close on four million Eees this financial year. Another Taiwanese maker, Everex, is selling its gPC desktop through Walmart for $199.
When firms are used to buying $1,000 office PCs running Vista Business Edition and loading each with a $200 copy of Microsoft Office, the attractions of a sub-$500 computer using a free operating system like Linux and a free productivity suite like OpenOffice suddenly become very compelling.
And that’s not counting the $20,000 or more needed for Microsoft’s Exchange and SharePoint server software. Again, Linux provides such server software for free.
Pundits agree: neither Microsoft nor Apple can compete at the new price points being plumbed by companies looking to cut costs. With open-source software maturing fast, Linux, OpenOffice, Firefox, MySQL, Evolution, Pidgin and some 23,000 other Linux applications available for free seem more than ready to fill that gap. By some reckonings, Linux fans will soon outnumber Macintosh addicts. Linus Torvalds should be rightly proud.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Think Secret no more: keeps sources, shuts down
Remember how back in 2005 Apple sued Think Secret, one of the most infamous Apple rumor sites on the block? Apparently TS’s publisher Nick Ciarelli (aka Nick DePlume) settled and even managed to keep his inside sources hidden (and the man has many), but paid the ultimate price: he’s agreed to shut down the site, presumably for good—at least in its current incarnation. [...]
Update: It’s real alright. Nick just wrote back: “I’ll just say that I’m very satisfied with the settlement, and that I’d like to thank the Electronic Frontier Foundation and my attorney, Terry Gross of Gross & Belsky, for their support.”
Monday, December 17, 2007
Faster firewire coming
David Meyer of ZDNet UK reported from London:
The speed of FireWire is set to quadruple next year after the group behind it announced a new specification for the networking interface.
FireWire is the best-known brand name for the 1394 standard, which is also known as i.Link. The technology is used as a high-speed data interface for linking devices such as external hard drives and camcorders to PCs.
On Thursday, the 1394 Trade Association announced the S3200 electrical specification for FireWire. The specification builds upon the existing IEEE 1394b standard by boosting the maximum speed from 800 megabits per second to 3.2Gbps. Importantly, S3200 can use the cables and connectors already in use for FireWire 800 products, the association claimed.
Om Malik: the New EchoStar Should Buy TiVo
Satellite TV company EchoStar recently decided to spin off its set-top box and other non-broadcast businesses into a separate company, EchoStar Technologies Corp. (ETC), betting that this standalone business will grow with the demand for smart, next-generation set-top boxes. ETC has one big problem, though: It has inherited the bitter patent feud between EchoStar and TiVo. One way to end that feud for ETC — buy TiVo.
The move has more upside than the chance to put an end to the legal drama. It could make ETC, which also includes the recently purchased Sling Media, a set-top box powerhouse. [...]
TiVo (TIVO) sued Englewood, Colo.-based EchoStar (DISH) in 2004, alleging that it stole TiVo’s DVR technology for pausing, fast forwarding, and rewinding live TV shows. The Patent and Trademark Office recently sided in favor of TiVo, putting EchoStar at a serious disadvantage. In fact, in documents filed with the SEC, EchoStar listed the TiVo patent case as one of the big risks to spinning off its hardware unit.
With a market cap of $811 million, Om says TiVo’s an affordable consumer-friendly product with good brand recognition and the potential to become a compelling next-generation device to satellite, IPTV and cable TV service providers:
TiVo, which led the time-shift revolution, missed the place-shifting movement spearheaded by Sling Media. When you combine those two features, and layer Internet downloads (TiVo has deals with Amazon Unbox and several independent video content creators like Rocketboom), digital music and home networking capabilities, you have a set-top box that does it all — minus the clunkiness normally associated with set-top boxes made by Motorola and Scientific Atlanta, or the complexity of Microsoft Media Center. And the Sling and TiVo brands are strong enough to withstand any challenge from newfangled IP set-top boxes being offered by companies such as Amino.
Given the Patent and Trademark Office’s recent decision, this patent fight may not be one that EchoStar can win. So if you can’t beat ‘em, why not join ‘em?
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Apple TV Apple flop?
Over the past few months, a variety of reports have speculated about the future of the Apple TV. Some have flat-out asked if the device “will die,” and although I can’t be sure of that answer, I still like to believe that Apple wants to make it the cornerstone of any home theater. So if you’re asking me to answer that question, I’d say, “Not yet.”
Regardless of my own stance, there are still a host of issues surrounding the Apple TV. First off, it is estimated to have sold just 400,000 units, according to Forrester Research, which is an astounding 600,000 units shy of what the research firm originally believed Apple would have sold by now.
To make matters worse, Apple has yet to provide a decent array of videos on its iTunes store. And ever since Steve Jobs called the Apple TV a “hobby,” some have wondered how dedicated the company really is to seeing this product succeed.
He has three suggestions: Step 1: Allow users to do more; Step 2: Start working with movie studios for a change; and Step 3: Apple must pretend like it cares.
I almost bought one. Fix it and I will.
Robo-parking
Slate (the ad is an annoyance not worth waiting through):
Equally dramatic, in a high-tech way, are the parking towers at Autostadt, Volkswagen’s exhibition complex and automotive theme park in Wolfsburg, Germany. This parking garage is entirely robotic. Two 160-foot circular towers store 400 new cars on 20 levels, serviced by a central elevator that can retrieve a car in 30 seconds. While the Volkswagen silos, designed by Günther Henn Architekten, are in large part a marketing device-the transparent towers function as giant billboards-automated parking in some form is clearly in the cards. Stacking cars in close-packed racks can be up to 50 percent more efficient than a conventional garage, but since it is currently more than twice as expensive, it is viable only in cities where land prices-or space-are truly at a premium.
RELATED: Car held in robo-garage for copyright violation.
LATER: man rescued from a car hanging from wires between the sixth and seventh floors of a parking garage in Atlanta.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
More on Broun and the SAFE Act
Still looking for why our conservative Republican representative, Paul Broun, opposed the SAFE Act (he and Ron Paul were the only 2 in the House to do so), I found this in the Athens Banner Herald:
While Broun finds people who make or look at child pornography “beneath contempt” and has “nothing but disdain and disgust for them,” he thinks the bill is unconstitutional and could lead to police harassing innocent people, said his spokesman, John Kennedy.
When police investigate child pornography based on information turned over as a result of the bill, or when police discover child pornography that wasn’t reported by the service provider, it will be difficult to tell who was responsible, Kennedy said.
“It puts an innocent person potentially in the position of having to fight off the presumption of guilt,” he said.
Broun believes states, not the federal government, should pass and enforce laws restricting pornography, Kennedy said. The bill also lacked a clear definition of child pornography and was rushed through without a committee hearing, giving lawmakers little time to read it before voting, he said.
States Rights aside, I’m right there with him.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Meatpacking Apple
An hour ago Apple opened a new store in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District (at the corner of 14th and 9th). So cool… but perhaps the coolest thing is its third floor Pro Labs: Free multi-session classes in Logic, Final Cut and Aperture. Six students sign up for 2hrs, once a week for four weeks. The classes are TOTALLY FREE.
Photo from the Gothamist store preview. Gizmodo has the press release, a photo gallery and video. I found it all via Towleroad’s Towletech V.83.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Innovation has moved from the desktop to the web
Leopard is great for me. Unlike others (like this Slashdot rant or Dave Rosenberg’s own complaint), I’ve never had Leopard crash. Not once. The upgrade from Mac OS X version 10.4 (Tiger) was completely painfree. Everything just works.
Maybe this is the problem.
Over the years I’ve come to expect operating system and application upgrades to be, well, upgrades. I pay for something new: new functionality, new user interfaces, new something. With Leopard, everything just works, same as it did before with Tiger. Time Machine is new, but I haven’t gotten around to using it. Spaces? Not interesting to me. Expose in Panther? That was cool. New look to the Dock in Leopard? Snore....
So why did I upgrade? I mean, besides the fact that I’m clearly a mindless Apple zombie? I figured the new applications would take advantage of the power and functionality under the Leopard hood, and in this I assume I won’t be disappointed. But for now, everything is the same.
Not quite, of course. Apple has released new software that actually has changed and visually improved. iLife ‘08, for one, is definitely worth the upgrade. I like some of the innovations in iPhoto and iMovie. But I didn’t need Leopard to get the new iLife.
It may well be that we’ve tapped out the desktop metaphor and won’t be seeing much reason to upgrade, whether on the Windows, Mac, or Linux client. Maybe all the innovation is now happening out in the Internet cloud. Maybe it’s time to stop feverishly clicking on “Software Update” to get the latest patches and functionality updates to Leopard (or Vista, if that’s your persuasion).
Perhaps it’s time to just capitulate to the perpetual beta that is the web. There’s always something new happening there.
Newegg responds
Six months later and finally they issue the rebate!
Kara & Walt’s gadgetfest
Last night, Walt Mossberg and I co-hosted our annual holiday gadget fest for the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley.
Now in its fifth year, it was called, “Making a List: The Fifth Annual What’s Hot and What’s Not in Personal Technology” and took place in Palo Alto.
Walt and I typically show off several devices we think are interesting and try to identify some important trends.
Walt says, “The big trends in gadgets, I think, is software… the gadgets are important but the software on them matters even more.”
Do we really want an alarm clock that jumps off the table and makes you chase it around?
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
The GOP on YouTube: “A greasy-haired bunch”
So the sissy Republicans who tried to avoid their YouTube debate are finally facing The People.
Anderson Cooper acknowledges the concerns about the kinds of questions asked last time but only manages to insult the entire field of questioners by featuring the stupid moments. Thanks, Andy. Next we have a song about the candidates that is an utter waste of time. We have more than 10 minutes of preambles, taking up the chance to add two questions. And I’ll waste a line of pixels noting that none of these guys believes in blow-dried hair. It’s a greasy-haired bunch.
We have the same formatting problem from the last debate: the videos are a small screen on a screen. And worse, they’re sometimes out of sync. And dark and unwatchable.
We start with a tribute to Lou Dobbs: immigration.
Finally, question No. 1: A New Yorker asks Rudy Giuliani about New York being a sanctuary city. Rudy says that New York was not a sanctuary city but on my TV, CNN’s transmission glitches and we missed a few crucial words from his answer. Rudy defends himself; Mitt Romney goes after him; Rudy attacks back, saying that Mitt had illegal immigrants working in his mansion. Mitt calls foreigners “people with funny accents.” Fred Thompson jumps into what is looking like a schoolyard squabble.[...]
Finally, we get off immigration but land on someone pushing Ron Pual on conspiracy theorists and the Trilateral Commission. Jee-sus. This is our national election? These are what CNN thinks are what we think are the most important topics in this election? What a cartoon.
Hacking my life
Speaking of the web as mind, my own is too often filled with cob webs and clutter and would benefit from some optimization. 
At 53, I’ve developed my tech habits over decades and they’re rusty. It’s time to change but there’s so much to change to that it’s hard to keep up.
Oh to be young again!
To wit, I’ve been tweaking my inputs and workflows over the last few months. I have successfully adopted the InBox Zero methodology of email processing and it’s changed my life. I’m a free man; I feel the love!
I started by watching this presentation Merlin Mann did at Google:
I’ve also set up an I Want Sandy account, but have yet to get my Jott accont synched with it and all of the speed dials and email shortcuts set to effectively use it. And, finally, I’ve set up one GrandCentral phone number so far. (If you need an invite drop me a line; I’ve got a few left.)
The way I’m using it is to give friends a single number that will ring my cell, 
Doug’s cell and our home. It might be handy to get a second for work to allow the Dean and other VIPs to have single number access to me wherever I am but I’ve yet to set that up. And I’m not sure those folks want yet another number for me, even if it is a master number that can reach me anywhere.
The key to adoption for me in all of this is to enlist students and friends to use these services. Then they can show me how to better use them myself!
The Web as human mind
The future of the Web is coming fast and furious:
Though the favorite metaphor to describe the Web has long been a highway, or for some, a “series of tubes,” the man credited with inventing it all thinks of the Web more like the human mind.
“Lots of people are doing research around the Web...and there are interesting results, but a lack of a core curriculum in the universities,” Tim Berners-Lee told a gathering of scientists at HP Labs and other Silicon Valley executives here. “I’ve been told the Web has 10 to the 10 to the 11 (number of) Web sites. The brain we study as a complex system.” So why not the Web? [ERAD ON]
Monday, November 26, 2007
Newegg.com Rebate scam!
UPDATE: Newegg has issued the rebate and sent it via UPS. I will have received it within the 10 business days I stipulated. Further, they have offered $30 towards my next order. Now I have to tell the BBB how satisfied I am. I will wait to get the rebate and verification of the $30 before responding to the BBB. Newegg has clearly resolved my situation. But they have not changed my conviction that we need some serious rebate regulation!
Today, Cyber Monday of all days, is 6 months to the day after I purchased my 32” flat panel HD display. You may recall how pleased I was that after a $50 mail-in rebate the $500 price even included shipping.
Here’s what the Newegg Rebate Status website says about the rebate I’m still waiting for today:
I have emailed them repeatedly and documented prior visits to the rebate status website here, here and here.
On Thanksgiving Day, 10 days after my last email enquiry, they finally replied, “We did not receive an original UPC symbol or proof-of-purchase tab with your request.”
Well, of course, they did! 
I copied the code and documented the purchase of the extra postage and the larger envelope required to send it in. Color me suspicious, but this rebate abuse is a scheme to scam people out of their money. Why didn’t they contact me when they discovered the UPC code was missing? Why does the website to this very second say that my order is being processed?
I sincerely believe that these rebate abuses cry out for investigative attention and appropriate state and/or federal legislation. At a minimum, companies offering rebates should be required to clearly state who is offering the rebate (manufacturer or retailer?), how to contact the appropriate party, and how long until the rebate will be received. And they should pay a penalty when a rebate is late.
If any such laws are in place now, I have yet to find them!
I have filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau; I will follow up with the state of Georgia and the Federal Trade Commission. I am confident that I am not the only consumer to have had this experience.
I wonder how many of us are willing to go through all that it takes to recover the rebate? In the extended entry I have copied their letter to me, my complaint to the Better Business Bureau and my last reply to Newegg.
Read the rest of "Newegg.com Rebate scam!" in the extended entry.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
I Want Sandy
I just signed up for I Want Sandy.
Cory Doctorow, who’s “proud to serve on the advisory board for values of n, 
the company that produces I Want Sandy,” says:
IWantSandy is an email-based automated personal assistant that has just opened up for public signups. I’ve been using Sandy for a couple months now, and she’s fast becoming indispensable for my life. All you do is CC your personal Sandy address on your mail and throw in keywords, like “Sandy, remember that this is the grocery list” or “Sandy, remind me to follow up on this with Fred on January 1, 2008” and the Sandybot will file away all your minutae for you. Sandy emails you with reminders (she can also communicate by Twitter/SMS). She can barf up all your remembers whenever you need them—just tag your emails with the @-mark (for example @phonenumber @kids @kitchenrenovation @welding) and then ask her for all the items corresponding to a given tag.
The coolest thing about I Want Sandy is the “groupware” function—if I CC you and Sandy on a message with a reminder, she’ll remind both of us. No permissions, no groups, just CC in regular email. The service is free and live and open to all comers.
Matt Wood adds:
You can also email Sandy commands to lookup stuff and send it back to you, very handy if you’re on the move with an iPhone or Blackberry, or, you can always manage all your stuff on Sandy’s website.
Sandy also supports recurring events and tags, so GTD users could easily turn it into a nice, trusted system with mucho lists and contexts.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Happy Thanksgiving
Search Engine Roundtable has gathered some search industry holiday logos on display today:
Ask.com dressed up their home page:
Dogpile goes cute:
Here is Google:
Yahoo has a Flash logo and a static, here is the flash followed by the static version:
Gmail has a special logo:
Cre8asite Forums has a logo:
We, the Search Engine Roundtable, have a special logo:
The pretty much recaps all the logos I was able to track down. For more thanksgiving images, check out Flickr. Gary Price compiled his Fast Facts: Thanksgiving Day 2007 Facts and Stats and Danny Sullivan posted Flight Tracking, Airport Conditions, Real-Time Traffic, & Other Thanksgiving Search Tips. Quintura emailed me to tell me they added a thanksgiving tab to their navigation.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Amazon’s Kindle Reader
First look, it isn’t like reading actual paper. Emphasis in original.
I was going to completely ignore this meme. eBook readers are stupid. The iPhone and Blackberry and services like DailyLit that deliver books via email and RSS to any device are the way to go. [...]
...you probably can’t get this blog on the Kindle. But it’s easily readable on an iPhone or a Blackberry and that’s where mobile content is headed, not to some big, heavy, proprietary device that charges to subscribe to content. Losers is right…
Firefox 3 beta released
A few months later than had been planned, Mozilla released on Monday night the first beta version of an overhauled Firefox, the widely used open-source Web browser.
Firefox 3 beta 1 includes a number of significant features that Mozilla said should improve security, ease of use, rendering of Web pages, and location of previously visited Web pages. And for the new era of rich Internet applications, the browser can run Web-based applications even when the computer is disconnected from a network.
Download it here.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
The Singularity: A Period Not An Event
I’m in complete sync with Rodney Brooks in this podcast of his Singularity Summit Keynote:
Whatever writes future history will look back at what we are calling the singularity not as a single event but as a period of time. The singularity period will encompass a time where a collection of technologies were invented, developed, and deployed in fits and starts, driven not by the imperative of the singularity itself, but by the normal economic and sociological pressures of human affairs. A Hollywood treatment of the singularity would have a world just like today’s, plus the singularity, as a singular event. In reality, the world will be changing continuously due to rapid growth in technologies that are both related and unrelated to the singularity itself. The future will be embedded in a different world than the one we inhabit. And the AI systems we create will not have the same desires, beliefs, and goals as today-us. Tomorrow-us will be much better equipped for the changes that will take place in our world. This talk will explore how things might unfold and how we will transform ourselves along the way.
My notes on his comments begin with his definition of the singularity. Clean, clear and simple, he says it’s “the technological creation of a smarter than human intelligence.”
On predicting the future, he’s a fan of Arthur C. Clarke who said, “When it comes to technology, most people overestimate it in the short-term but underestimate it in the long-term.”
Brooks says he expects accelerated progress for AI and robotics because of a couple trends. First, demographics. The population is aging - the baby boomers are about to hit retirement but they won’t be the last of it - so young people will have to become more productive:
There will be so many market pulls on providing services, things that are currently being done by the working age between 20 and 65 who will be a much smaller portion of the population so their productivity will have to be increased through information technology and robotics… we will get a lot of push, a lot of venture capital, a lot of government research money around the world pushing into AI and intelligence systems. There’s going to be rapid progress.
And there are big issues in labor… we outsource manufacturing labor, we insource agricultural labor in Europe and North America… there’s lots of political pressure here which, again, is going to push us to have different productivity models and AI and robotics are going to be part of that.
That all rings true to me. So now we get to the fun part of his talk, his musings on alternative futures. How the Artificial General Intelligence might be made manifest…
Read the rest of "The Singularity: A Period Not An Event" in the extended entry.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
One Laptop Per Child sale
You may have heard about the $200 ubuntu desktops at Wal-Mart. They’ve sold out online:
it looks like the early results of putting Linux in front of Middle America are overwhelmingly positive—Wal-Mart’s online warehouse has already sold out of the cheapo Linux box, and users both savvy and new are filing enthusiastic reviews. Of course, it’s still early and we can’t imagine anyone getting too down on a $200 computer, but it certainly looks like Team Ubuntu is making a strong play to shift the balance in those OS wars.
So maybe you should consider an XO from OLPC:
The mission of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is to empower the children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child. In order to accomplish our goal, we need people who believe in what we’re doing and want to help make education for the world’s children a priority, not a privilege. Between November 12 and November 26, OLPC is offering a Give One Get One program in the United States and Canada. During this time, you can donate the revolutionary XO laptop to a child in a developing nation, and also receive one for the child in your life in recognition of your contribution.
For a bunch of good reasons why this computer is a dazzling piece of ingenuity, here’s David Pogue’s review.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Android challenge. And demo
Yesterday Google announced a $10 million challenge for developers to build mobile applications for its forthcoming Android mobile OS. More here. And here a first look at Android:
Monday, November 12, 2007
Super Google
Bob Cringely’s not talking Sprint rumors, he’s imagining Google winning the 700 MHz spectrum auction and buying a credit bureau:
...once the spectrum is won and the network is built, say by 2010 or 2011, Google will have a very different relationship with the other mobile operators. That’s because Gphone (its a network service, understand, not a device), like Gmail, will be free.
Think for a moment of the impact a free mobile phone service will have on the mobile phone market. Why would I continue with Verizon or AT&T or Sprint or T-Mobile or Alltel or whomever if I could get the same or better service for free? Yeah, but the way to make the service free is by running ads on it and those ads would be contextually linked somehow to where or who you were calling and isn’t that creepy, especially for business customers?
Yes and no. Like Gmail, Google can sell a higher-end product probably minus the ads. People might find they actually LIKE the ads if Google does its job really well and isn’t too intrusive. The ultimate result, of course, is near-total Google dominance of the mobile ad space and - this is REALLY big - transferring some significant portion of the market caps of all those mobile operators right onto Google’s hips. Thanks to consumer parsimony and telephone number portability, Google over the course of a couple years would become the dominant U.S. mobile operator. And no matter what handset or protocol those customers use, the ads will be there and Google will be raking in the dough.
Which brings us back to the credit bureau. It would be very much in Google’s interest to own one of the big three credit reporting agencies, because your mobile phone number is the most practical supplement for the Social Security number as a financial identifier.
Take all the web usage and YouTube video data Google has been acquiring about us all, glue it to our data down at the credit bureau, tie it to our mobile phone number and our mobile activity, then use the resulting product as both an information service and a database for targeting ads and you have Super Google - the most valuable company on Earth and entirely based on metadata.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Google to buy Sprint?
Having at long last left Sprint, I’ve spent a good part of today setting up my new AT&T phone.*
We went with AT&T because there is an iPhone in our future, but now I read that rumor has it Google may buy Sprint:
On the surface it seems like this would be a bad move for Google but in reality the world’s leading search engine has become so much more than just a website to go to when you want to find a trinket of information… The company now needs a wireless network to allow it to grow in the mobile search and related spaces such as watching YouTube videos on the subway.
Google doesn’t really need the messy wireless phone business you say?
What they really need is platforms which will allow them to display ads embedded in their services such as maps, videos, etc.
Google could buy Sprint Nextel and in a complicated maneuver spin it back out as a different company (perhaps a nonprofit) which agrees to work more closely with Google to display ads and distribute its applications. This would allow Google to stay somewhat independent and work with other service providers worldwide.
Another more drastic move would be to buy the beleaguered wireless phone company and start giving all service away for free. In addition the company could reinitiate the ClearWire talks and work with this company and others to blanket the world with a free (or at least ad-subsidized) WiMax network.
This sort of move is logical from a local search perspective. Imagine Google being able to light up your phone with information relative to where you happen to be. Think about the phone as a virtual tour guide. When you get a phone call from someone, the phone could pull up a MySpace or orkut page before the phone even rings. If the caller ID is blocked when receiving a call, you could see the results of a web search of the phone number as the phone rings. When you are walking past a coffee shop a coupon for 10% off any drink with a European sounding name could be displayed on your phone.
It gets better… McDonalds could flash ads for $2-off any meal with more than 1,000 calories in total. Of course I am kind of kidding about this last point but we should all realize the web is beginning to have more of our preferences stored in it somewhere and Google could indeed ferret out our likes and dislikes and match them up with ads from relevant companies in a way we never thought imaginable.
In the end he gives the chances of a Google acquisition only a “maybe” but if so, “I would see them rapidly rolling out free service or at least heavily-subsidized service and making life extremely difficult for the likes of AT&T and Verizon Wireless.”
* The phone was free. But only on the second trip. I said to Doug, “buying a cellular phone today is like buying a used car - you have no clue about pricing or what you’re going to get!”
Friday, November 09, 2007
Search Engines Every Web Developer Should Bookmark
Christina Laun has cataloged 17 of them for us:
Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com aren’t the only search engines out there. There are many smaller, more customized search options that can help you quickly find what you’re looking for by only searching through a few sites rather than through everything. After all, you’ve got enough on your mind with hosting, design and programming to do. Try out these 17 search engines designed with Web developers in mind.
1. Ergonosearch: This search engine, created by Sébastien Billard, searches through sites on accessibility and usability, helping you to find the resources, blogs and forums you need to make your web pages as user friendly as possible.
2. Sparkl: Sparkl is a great search engine for those looking for resources on web design. It indexes the best sites on design and even has a few that Google and Yahoo don’t prioritize. [READ ON]
