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I like the Kindle. But sometimes Amazon manages ruin the product by trying to re-position it on the fly. Like pissing against the wind.
What I can infer now is either 1) You need 2 or 3 different Kindles to do the work of an iPad, or 2) It’s a total win that my Nissan is 3 times cheaper than a Ferrari.
With each extraordinary app I discover, my iPhone transforms itself into a new Christmas gift. Every time, no exception.
It only struck me today, after updating to Tweetbot 2.0, an excellent app that just turned extraordinary. I looked at my iPhone, after an hour or so of playing with the new Tweetbot, and felt like I was holding another device, a better new one, simply because it had become the recipient of a new extraordinary app. Like a gem holder with the gem inside.
I’m waiting now for my second Christmas gift these days – my new iPhone with Clear.
Thank you, Steve, for making kids’ Christmas possible every day. Nobody holds a patent for that.
How stupid could somebody get to spend 10.5 mil on advertising a device whose brain and blood are somebody else’s? That stupid.
I know Google paid for the ad (as well?), still, how stupid can Samsung get to show off a mere puppet? Where’s the heart of it? Where’s the brain? Where’s the soul of this puppet? Could you imagine Mercedes advertising its cars while being powered by somebody else? Say Hyundai…?
Samsung is Google’s new bitch.
There’s no need to say more.
It all started with media suddenly covering the happy-sad life of Foxconn employees, immediately after the (very) successful launch of iPad 1; I say “happy-sad” because all Chinese teens hope to work there, but once they get the job, they see no way out of Foxconn.
Later, after NYT posted the dark sequel on Foxconn, Apple became the “world’s child abuser” for it accepted the “cruelties” within its own production chain. Finally now everybody not owning an iPhone or a Mac felt they have some sort of reason pointing the gun at Apple: even it may be legal from Chinese law perspective, it is totally against human rights to underpay kids work over-hours for Apple’s profit. They say.
Hypocrites.
Do you think the mouse you’re using as we speak, or the chair you’re sitting in, or the sneakers you’re wearing right now are made by anybody else but Chinese children working over-hours for somebody’s profit, for so many years?
Do you think China ever had different work conditions than these? Do you think $300 plus food and home for a young Chinese worker was ever less than “a very good reason to kill for”? Do you think these “blood-red” products are a minority?
Everything China produces is blood-red; it ever was. And China produces everything.
Google is striving hard to promote Google Plus, and that’s not bad. But the way it does it, altering the search results – that’s bad.
Facebook shows you what your friends are doing, reading or watching; that’s not bad either. But the way it does that, by capturing you in your own “relevant circle”, all over the web – that’s bad.
Being evil is not a full time job, but mainly a constant (wrong) way of doing things. Being stupid – likewise.
The secret solution for getting out of this vicious circle, where the user is captive in his own circle of relevant content (be it relevant for the user or just important for the ones keeping him locked in) is simply to let the user out.
A single query can be run in two instances, on two tables: one table can contain the data relevant to that person, the other one – the data relevant to humankind (or whatever you’d like to call a generic interest, like war news, politics, culture). Therefore, by simply splitting the screen, the user should be able to see both the search results that are relevant for himself and the results that are relevant “per se“. Somewhere between personal relevant results, relevant ads could be integrated as well and I’m guessing that would make them even more visible.
Imagine the left side of the screen page showing what your friends are saying about the subject you’re searching for, while the right side of the page / screen – what Times or “Some Important Opinion Maker” are saying about the same subject. (The two buttons that Google is showing in the upper right corner are not exactly it: you should not have to switch between personal and non-personal results, but to be able to see them both, distinctly, in the same time).
I believe people are able to follow two streams, although most marketing researches may show the opposite. We do not process the two data streams in parallel, that’s true, but we are doing serial processing so fast that it becomes more convenient to say that we can do parallel processing in short bursts.
On the other hand, splitting the results may just save the newspapers, that are right now unfairly fighting against your friends, for your attention; it just shouldn’t be the case for a search engine to ponder wether you should first read what the president is announcing or look at your friends’ new pictures. These two types of content belong to separate categories that are mixed together only by accident.
There should be no way mixing the results so badly that no one could tell what’s being pulled and what’s pushed; the two columns of your search page should be called “only for you” and “for everybody, including you“.
I see no strong argument against this split (besides some technical elbow grease), given the condition that no player wants the information to be truncated or misinterpreted.
Simplicity and elegance are said to be the optimal minimum, but not less than that. If showing only one feed that is the main stream of revenue and customers for so many people, generates so much discontent and disorientation, then it’s time for two feeds of results.
Kindle bookmark:
iBooks bookmark:
Ever heard of “don’t bend the pages, use a bookmark!” in your childhood?
There were at least 3 “anonymous sources” unveiling the exact core concepts of Apple’s educational project, long before its date.
This worries me a lot, much more than all Apple’s-textbooks-are-walled-gardened mumbo-jumbo.
“If there’s one major downside to the iTunes U app, it’s that it’s most definitely exclusionary; students need an iPad, iPod touch or iPhone to take full advantage.” says Darrell Etherington at GigaOM.
Ways to feel bitter about Apple…
