Stuff tagged "OnTheGo"

The web as a rainforest

Posted by Antonio 3 months ago (April 24, 2010)

This is my last bit on this whole Facebook thing (not quite sure why
this week's announcement has rubbed me so wrong):

I am currently waiting out a rainstorm at the Yunque national forest,
one of the only tropical rainforests in the US national park system.
What is amazing about this place is how heterogenous it is, from the
fauna to the flora. There are something like 225 species of trees alone!

It is really a sight to behold. Looking at it, I couldn't help but see
this interwoven set of animals, plants, and trees as a good metaphor
for the web as a whole. It thrives because of how diverse it is.

And yet asking one of the parks folks whether there was any common
element to the speed of development of the ecosystem as a whole, I got
an interesting answer: apparently the flow of water, from cloud to
rain to trees to the ground and back is the only thing that governs
the speed of growth, and it would seem that the biggest threats the
reserve has faced over time have come from global environmental
factors that affect this general flow (such as global warming).

Similarly on the web, it has been the flow of hyperlinks, from page to
page that I think has governed the speed of development. Between http
and HTML, we've gotten the same basic elements that have allowed for
the heterogeneity of the web: from amazon to wikipedia and millions of
smaller species that hav thrived.

If this Facebook thing takes off in a big way, it has the chance to
evolve the link in interesting and very powerful ways. No doubt. But
at the behest of one company. This can not possibly be a good thing.

Google was made possible because of the web. And today it is
incredibly powerful. But if it were to go away tomorrow, we'd still be
left with the web- it'd be like the National Park Service pulling out
of the Yunque- mostly because until recently they've sought to curate
the web and not evolve it in a way that makes it less rAinforest and
more zoo.

The park folks keep telling us that this is our park and that
protecting it is our responsibility to the future. It strikes me that
the same could be asked of us on behalf of the open web.

(Excuse the typos. Typed on an iPhone in the middle of a rainforest.
In the rain)

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It's a good time to be a kid

Posted by Antonio 1 year, 7 months ago (Dec. 14, 2008)

The Economist review on Don Tapscott's new book, "Grown Up Digital," reminded me of how lucky kids growing up in the "net generation" are today. Based on a huge survey of kids growing up today, here is his summary of this new crop just coming out of school:

Mr Tapscott identifies eight norms that define Net Geners, which he believes everyone should take on board to avoid being swept away by the sort of generational tsunami that helped Barack Obama beat John McCain. Net Geners value freedom and choice in everything they do. They love to customise and personalise. They scrutinise everything. They demand integrity and openness, including when deciding what to buy and where to work. They want entertainment and play in their work and education, as well as their social life. They love to collaborate. They expect everything to happen fast. And they expect constant innovation.

Sounds like the ideal employee to me! More significantly, as Detroit crumbles in part because of the inability of a huge workforce to retrain itself quickly enough, I'm left wondering whether this cohort just coming out of school now might be able to avoid some of the same pitfalls.

The whole concept of Tapscott's sequel reminded me of this YouTube video I came across last week on the "Networked Student:"

It's worth viewing this video and wondering whether the education our kids are getting today at school prepares them as well as the narrator of this short piece might like. My bet: for the most part, no, though scattered through all manner of schools today, we've probably got great glimmers of hope in those teachers that are looking forward and thinking about what skills might be relevant to this new generation of students.

Finally, this is where I come to my second plug for Corey Doctorow's "Little Brother" and the kids he portrays. He might not have had Tapscott in mind when he wrote the novel, but his heroes sure do possess all eight of the aforementioned qualities of a net-genner and the book is a testament to how useful these can be in a pinch.

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What the world looks like to a snowflake at the beginning of the season

Posted by Antonio 1 year, 8 months ago (Nov. 28, 2008)

What mavericks those first snowflakes of the year are...

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New fundamentals?

Posted by Antonio 1 year, 8 months ago (Nov. 24, 2008)

The latest issue of the economist argues that Obama should be wary of
thinking too much like FDR in trying to stimulate the economy via "New
Deal" like government spending programs because the fundamentals of
the economy are different now. Separately various blogs were arguing
this weekend that companies like Google and Apple represent the new
industrial order with their capital efficiency and ability to generate
loads of free cashflow very quickly. To think, just 8 years ago Apple
was almost broke and now they are sitting on a $25b cash hoarde thanks
to the iPod, the iPhone and Vista's flub.

Still I'd be interested to understand whether the fundamentals of the
economy really have changed in a structural way or whether what we see
when we look at companies like apple and google is a better, faster
implementation of high growth businesses with incredible returns to
scale that are facilitated by the network effects common in high tech.

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When is all of this going to self assemble into a T3000?

Posted by Antonio 1 year, 8 months ago (Nov. 3, 2008)

Hardware is hard!

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IChalky: will keep you sane during long meetings

Posted by Antonio 1 year, 9 months ago (Oct. 27, 2008)

Easily worth a third of a latte. Fabulous use of the accelerometer and
multi-touch and a great checkvalve for not going nuts as your
frustration climbs.

Trust me, indispensable if you sit in a lot of long meetings.

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Bye bye Germany

Posted by Antonio 1 year, 10 months ago (Sept. 26, 2008)

A week eating sausages and schnitzel— wowee a little too much.

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On the subway

Posted by Antonio 1 year, 11 months ago (Aug. 17, 2008)

AR

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done. Go make some great products says Steve.

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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Applauding for the iPhone engineers

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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launch date: July 11th

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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$299 for 16gb plus white back

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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price: $199

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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running some goofy video of all of the countries they are launching it in while camera pans on al gore

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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GPS built into phone.

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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claims battery is better than other 3g phones but maybe not as good as first iPhone?!?

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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knocking nokia n95 3g and treo 750- 36% faster

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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Steve: 3g speeds approaching wifi. Really zippy.

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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head to head download video of NG webiste: 21 secs 3G vs 59 edge. Great demo

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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iPhone 3G

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

AR

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just showed phone. Black back flush headphone

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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Steve is in his groove now: iPhone 3g

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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6 million iPhones sold.

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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Steve back to talk iPhone. 90% customer sat. 98% users browse

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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mobileme costs $99 a yr in July. Replaces .mac

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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I hope someone like_Google will power this monster of a web service

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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mobileme: Apple discovers AJAX

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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push calendar, contacts, email. The beginning of wireless sync

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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Schiller: like exchange for the rest of us. He just called activesync activestink

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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mobileme is being announced.

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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ad-hoc is up to 100 iPhones. Sort of not enough.

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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app distribution is changing. They now have enterprise and ad-hoc distribution

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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iPhone 2.0 software is coming in July.

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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new iPhone features: contact search, iWork doc readers, bulk delete and move. These are features? More like fixed bugs.

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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push service coming in September. Forstall done now.

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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typical apple: too controlled but will ultimately benefit the user

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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3 types of notifications can be pushed: sounds, badges, txt alerts

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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Background processing is being addressed in SDK by push notification service hosted by apple

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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Javier from Barcelona has a beautiful looking game. Great closer for demos

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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we are on a medical apps snooze cruise now!

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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now we art seeing a medical flashcard app. I am beginning to worry that this is the whole keynote?

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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MLB app with real time video highlights. What a productivity sucker at Tabblo

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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solo developer with music app has just wowed the crowd. This is what software done right can do. App is called Band

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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more games at $9.99. Accelerometer based steering is new black

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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am coming back with a pair!

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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Just a sidenote: all of these mediocre presenters have those tiny little square glasses- what did I not get the dresscode memo? Watch out Tabblo, I

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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AP is up with a local news app. Again a good use of core location.

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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Typepad is showing mobile photo blogging via camera API. Usable but not sexy. Great to have access to camera

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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Loopt is showing a mobile social network. Shows a lot of promise. Integration with native APIs especially with SMS and phone is really powerful

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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ebay is showing how u can do a lame native app by just pretending that it is a webapp. Sucks.

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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sega just priced monkeyball $9.99 at appstore. Nintendo watch out, the ds franchise may suffer

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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Sdk demo makes me think the keyboard will finally rotate for native apps in landscape. Yay.

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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sdk demo of interface builder. Core location, addressbook, and IB for a demo of a mobile social network app. Cool.

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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Scott Forstall the SVP for iPhone sw is talking about the sdk and sounding like a suit. Sucks to go after Steve buddy! Try not rehearsing so much.

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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And it starts...

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

AR

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the start is all about iPhone in the enterprise, blah blah blackberry killer blah

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

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Lines everywhere

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

This is my cohort that was lined up single file in six columns.
Apparently we are the last group going into the main room.

Am amazed so many people are willing to do this.

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Wwdc ground zero

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 9, 2008)

Arriving at moscone west. What do I make about the fact that the other
big conference here is the American Diabetes Society?

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Test 2: writing on the next laptop

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 8, 2008)

We keep arguing at work about the iPhone versus the Nokia phones and
about the significance of the word "platform" when it comes to mobile
computing.

Whether the high resolution touch screen plus the gestures that are
now called "multi-touch" really represent a new platform per se is a
debateable point, especially when the parallels are drawn to the PC.
It may be that multi-touch is really more like the GUI in that what it
brings is an order of magnitude increase in accessibility for everyone
else who has thus far seen the mobile as nothing more than a wireless
phone.

At least that is one thing we all agree on- the onramp for the next
billion people is going to come from something that looks more like an
iPhone and less like a laptop or pc.

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Because real men test on production. First post!

Posted by Antonio 2 years, 1 month ago (June 8, 2008)

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