Tag Archives: PDA

The Freight Train That Is Android is a fascinating analysis of the Google business model with a close look at what Android could do to the smartphone industry.

“So here is the kicker. Android, as well as Chrome and Chrome OS for that matter, are not “products” in the classic business sense. They have no plan to become their own “economic castles.” Rather they are very expensive and very aggressive “moats,” funded by the height and magnitude of Google’s castle. Google’s aim is defensive not offensive. They are not trying to make a profit on Android or Chrome. They want to take any layer that lives between themselves and the consumer and make it free (or even less than free). Because these layers are basically software products with no variable costs, this is a very viable defensive strategy. In essence, they are not just building a moat; Google is also scorching the earth for 250 miles around the outside of the castle to ensure no one can approach it. And best I can tell, they are doing a damn good job of it.”

“Human minds evolved to constantly scan for novelty, lest we miss any sign of food, danger or, on a good day, mating opportunities.

But the modern world bombards us with stimuli, a nonstop stream of e-mails, chats, texts, tweets, status updates and video links to piano playing cats.”

You can read the rest of ‘All those tweets, apps, updates may drain brain’ here.

Fascinating article from The Atlantic about robots talking to humans. You could be doing so now and have no idea it is happening- “One day last February, a Twitter user in California named Billy received a tweet from @JamesMTitus, identified in his profile as a “24 year old dude” from Christchurch, New Zealand, who had the avatar of a tabby cat. “If you could bring one character to life from your favorite book, who would it be?,” @JamesMTitus asked. Billy tweeted back, “Jesus,” to which @JamesMTitus replied: “honestly? no fracking way. ahahahhaa.” Their exchange continued, and Billy began following @JamesMTitus. It probably never occurred to him that the Kiwi dude with an apparent love of cats was, in fact, a robot.”

Did you wake up this morning and thought to yourself that you wanted to look at a 15.5 gigapixel panoramic photo? Probably not, but head on over to this link and have a pan around. You may also want to zoom in as far as you can because the detail is remarkable.

Why I bought a new Kindle (as an iPad accessory) is a well thought out piece of writing from Paul Biba and explains why he believes the Kindle is an excellent iPad accessory.

“I recently read a statement about the relationship between iPad and Kindle and I think it’s very true: The Kindle is a terrific iPad accessory.  I’ll still read a ton of short-form content on my iPad but it’s nice to have the Kindle option when I want a device that’s even lighter.  For the record, I’ve never had any eyestrain or other problems reading on my iPad, even when outside.  The Kindle offers a better direct sunlight option but I’ve always been able to read my iPad on my back deck, for example.

When you can get a Kindle for as little as $139 they’re almost disposable.  It reminds me of the VCR evolution.  My first one cost $500 back in 1983 and before DVDs became more popular you could get one for every TV in your house for well under $100.  I like having two in the family since it enables my wife and I to read the same books and only pay for them once.  Sharing across accounts is still clunky but sharing within an account is wonderful, as long as you’re both bookmarking to avoid a collision when sync-ing to the furthest point read.”

Vodafone has taken a dab of 3D projection, a selection of phones old and new and produced a brilliant advert demonstrating the evolution of the mobile phone. Check it out below-

The Commodore 64 is about to be re-released with a 1.8ghz dual-core Intel Atom D525 processor, Nvidia Ion 2 graphics chipset, 2 GB of DDR3 memory and your choice of a DVD or Blu-ray drive. It will feature the exact same case as the original, but with modern day innards.

Retro is almost always good, but can you imagine trying to battle with that keyboard again? No thank you. An Atari STE on the other hand…

Aximsite was huge in its day and one of the best PDA communities on the web. It isn’t fully back, but the original owner has built a tribute site which will help you relive some of those golden memories before the smartphone boom.

Gary Rivlin has written a great article exploring the main problem with Microsoft. Thought provoking and largely correct.

“To some longtime Microsoft veterans, Ballmer’s swift termination of Courier symbolizes a shortsightedness that has plagued the company’s top management in recent years — and has left the company eating Apple’s dust. (And Google’s. And Amazon’s (AMZN).) Ballmer, a preternaturally optimistic man not inclined to second-guess himself, has been forced to publicly acknowledge many of the company’s biggest misses. The Vista operating system frustrated users. The MP3 player, the Zune, has proved a dud. And then there’s Microsoft’s costliest blunder, its also-ran status on the device that is emerging as the personal computer of the 21st century, the mobile phone. “We were ahead of this game, and now we find ourselves No. 5 in the market,” Ballmer said at a tech conference in June. “We missed a whole cycle.” Or two. Or three.”

You may have already seen this story, but it does highlight the fine line that needs to be trodden when dealing with negative reviews.

Jacqueline Howett, an author apparently, received a review that questioned the way some of the sentences in The Greek Seaman were written. Here’s an example- “Don and Katy watched hypnotically Gino place more coffees out at another table with supreme balance.” She has defended the above sentence and others as perfectly good English- well, sorry but that is a terribly constructed sentence if ever I saw one.

It gets worse though because she goes on to defend it with comments such as the following-

“You are a big rat and a snake with poisenous venom. Lots of luck to authors who come here and slip in that!”

“Who are you any way? Really who are you? What do we know about you? You never downloaded another copy you liar! You never ever returned to me an e-mail

Besides if you want to throw crap at authors you should first ask their permission if they want it stuck up on the internet via e-mail. That debate is high among authors.

Your the target not me! Now get this review off here!”

And one she likes to repeat a lot- “F*ck off!”

The irony is that she will probably see more sales because of the thread, but it really is not how to deal with criticism.

The Daily Mail has profiled Jonny Ive and states that he will not be leaving the company. The actual profile is quite good, but I still can’t bring myself to believe anything this particular newspaper writes.

“Few Westerners have ever seen the forging of a Japanese samurai sword. It’s considered a sacred practice in Japan; one of the few traditional arts that has yet to be bettered by modern science. Japanese smiths work through the night (better to judge the heat of metal by eye) hammering, melting and forging by hand to produce the finest blades in the world.

The steel is folded and refolded thousands of times to create a hard outer layer and a softer inner core resulting in a singular blade: terrifyingly sharp but far less prone to breaking than any sword forged in the West.

Once the blade is complete it is polished to a mirror finish, an elaborate procedure that itself can take weeks. The long and laborious process pushes metal to its absolute limit – which is precisely why Jonathan Ive wanted to see it first hand.”

MailSuite makes some seriously bold claims about its service. Phrases like ‘Better than BlackBerry’ and ’98% mobile compression’ are sure to grab attention, but is the service as good as it claims? I am tempted to try it I must admit. via MIR.

Stops 100% of spam emails, guaranteed!

No spam. Ever. Seriously. We mean it – never, never, never.

We use ClearMyMail, so there’s never any spam. Seriously. Honestly. Trust us on this!
Instant access to your emails through your cell-phone

For any type of cell phone and for any cell-network. Turns your phone into a Better Than Blackberry device where your messages instantly arrive at the time you choose. No more checking for emails, they will just be there, ready for you when you need them.
Saves you having to check every messaging account separately

Do you have multiple email accounts (Yahoo, GMail, your work, your ISP, etc)? Also multiple Twitter accounts? Ever worry that you may of missed a message or have had enough of having to logon and check all of these accounts?

Worry no more! MailSuite brings them all together into one secure location.

The iPod will reach 10 years old this year and will likely be killed off at the same time. It started what we know now, but unfortunately has been replaced my multi-trick ponies that can do so much more. The Guardian takes a look back.

“The iPod Classic, as the famous scroll-wheel design is now known, hasn’t been updated now since September 2009, with a modest capacity jump from 120GB to 160GB. On the Apple Online Store, shipping times have slipped from 24 hours to 1-3 days. Across the US, several major retailers have reported short supplies, leading to speculation the device may soon be discontinued. It didn’t even warrant a mention at Apple’s annual Developers Conference in 2010. “The iPod’s essentially finished, give or take,” says Dr Alice Enders, a former senior economist at the World Trade Organisation who now reports on global music markets for media consultancy Enders Analysis. “Sales have been in decline for some time. The converged media device is the way forward.” In other words: the iPhone, the iPod Touch and the iPad – devices that the iPod paved the way for, devices that have helped push Apple’s latest profits to a record-breaking $20bn. If the iPod now finds itself as the least-loved of the company’s shiny portable devices, you get the sense Apple is probably OK with that.”

Steve Litchfield has published Technology: losing the ‘Sense of Wonder’ which will appeal to those of you, like me, who were around in the early days of mobile technology. Although I should point out that Steve has been on the Earth longer than myself…

“To use the time-honoured phrase, “Back when I were a lad…”, dial-up modems had only just been invented and I was routinely connecting up to mainframes from remote ‘terminals’ at 2400 baud, i.e. 2kbps. Hard disks were very rare and I remember supervising the installation of a freestanding 16MB system (yes, I said MB, not GB) that consumed a couple of kilowatts on its own. Mobile phones hadn’t yet been invented – in any size.

All of which put me in an excellent position to observe the technology world maturing over the next 30 or so years. Coming from a world where almost nothing existed, technology-wise, and very little worked without a lot of effort, it has put me constantly on the defensive when it comes to high tech. Quite simply, whenever I needed to connect machine A to peripheral B or to log into service C or boot palmtop D, I was bracing myself for something to go horribly wrong and accessing my long term memories for possible solutions and workaround to all possible problems.”

The New York Times has published subscription charges for viewing its content digitally.

Can any of you work out why people should pay more to use the iPad to view the content over a smartphone? Doesn’t make sense to me.