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2009

  • 1 min read

Maybe I hate my iPhone

This is from today's New York Times Magazine. I didn't know Virginia Heffernan was funny!

"Actually, the iPhone probably sips, like a lipsticky girl with a vodka drink. It usually does things in a cute way. Whatever. At 4 in the morning, I was in bed, fighting rage. I couldn’t stop thinking about that device’s tarty little face and those yapping “apps” you can download for it. The whole iPhone enterprise seemed to require so much attention, organization, explanation, praise, electricity. I know — I know: in the morning, Apple’s latest miracle machine would fill my palm with meaning and magic. So why couldn’t I contain my annoyance? I had no new-thing excitement. It dawned on me: I hated my iPhone." (from I Hate My iPhone)

Read the whole thing, will you?

I actually don't have an iPhone although I've been seriously considering getting one when the next generation comes out in June. Why have I waited so long? I worry that the reality won't live up to the anticipation, and that I might grow, over time, to hate my iPhone or what it does to me.

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Bizspeak

Who cares about equities traders leaving Morgan Stanley. Not me, but check out this post Top Equities Trader Leaves Morgan Stanley:

"We're convinced that no one would actually use the "spend more time with family" line unless they are trying to convey that the real reason for leaving is something else. Very probably Gallo will pop up at another firm, or perhaps start his own hedge fund before long. His predecessor at Morgan, Sutesh Sharm, left to join Vikram Pandit's Old Lane hedge fund in 2006." (from: from Clusterstock)

Funny and possibly true 🙂

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Meeting24.tv Keeps Online Meetings Simple

Check out this post Meeting24.tv Keeps Online Meetings Simple:

"Like Utagoe Live 100, meeting24.tv also has a similar minimalistic feel to it, which is supposed to make it easy for anyone to use - even those with little web experience. The service is based on the assumption that other online meeting solutions such as TokBox (which we covered three times), Cisco’s Webex, Polycom or Skype are just too complex. " (from: from TechCrunch)

I tried it, at least by myself. It seems to work but I am not sure that I am getting the most performance out of my Logitech webcam. Pretty cool.

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NBC’s Boston affiliate isn’t going to show Leno’s new show

Check out this post NBC's Boston affiliate isn't going to show Leno's new show:

"WHDH, the NBC affiliate in Boston (I'm watching it right now) says that they're not going to show Leno's new 10PM show. Starting in September, the station is going to show local news at 10PM instead!" (from: from TV Squad)

This is pretty interesting. I was wondering how the world could give up the 10:00pm time slot, each and every day on NBC. So 'our' station is choosing to opt out. Didn't realize this was even possible!

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How easy is it to cheat?

I've gotten very interested in Election Reform lately, and I've delved into how the overall voting system works, technically but also politically and procedurally. There are so many simple and not so simple ways in which election results can be manipulated that it makes my head spin.

I was at FooCamp this weekend and told this story to many people, so I thought I'd give some pointers to this particular example of how voters using touch screen devices could be cheated out of their vote.

"But evidently there's another version of the iVotronic interface in which pressing the VOTE button is only the second to last step. In those machines, pressing VOTE invokes an extra "confirmation" screen. The vote is only actually finalized after a "confirm vote" box is touched on that screen. (A different flash demo that shows this behavior with the version of the iVotronic equipped with a printer is available from ES&S here). So the iVotronic VOTE button doesn't necessarily work the way a voter who read the standard instructions might expect it to." (from Is the E-voting Honeymoon over?)

This is far from the only example…Concerned?

election reform, fraud, security

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“Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism”

Clay Shirkey writes an article called "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable". I thought this was an excellent discussion about a topic I've written, with much less insight, in the past. For me a crucial passage of his article is:

"Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead" (from Thinking the Unthinkable)

If you are interested in the future of newspapers and journalism, you need to read this article. (which, by the way, appeared not in a newspaper or magazine, but as a blog post!)

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Kindle book prices: another genius move

Take a book that I was interested in, "The Lords of Finance", by Liaquat Ahamed. This is a brand new book, very timely that I heard mentioned on TV.

Prices:

I think this might again turn the publishing world upside down. Questions:

  1. Will it cause publishers and printers to loose a bunch of money because people who normally buy hardcovers will by Kindle books instead?

  2. Will it cause them to MAKE a bunch of money because people who never buy hardcovers now will buy Kindle books (as I am tempted to, with this particular book)

  3. What is Sony thinking? I think they are running a huge free marketing program for Kindle. They convince someone to read books on a device, and once they do they see the huge amount of money they can save by doing it on a kindle and go buy one.

Genius?!