Eric Mead: The magic of the placebo (And Spookiest Ted Talk, ever?)
Eric Mead: The magic of the placebo | Video on TED.com.
Gary Flake: is Pivot a turning point for web exploration? | Video on TED.com
Gary Flake: is Pivot a turning point for web exploration? | Video on TED.com.
YouTube – Best Tech Guy caller EVER with Leo Laporte
YouTube – Best Tech Guy caller EVER with Leo Laporte.
Flash Forward (and the iPad Pro)
I’m not sure why this is such a big deal. Yes, it’s a bummer that I can’t get Hulu on my iPhone & that the same will apply to my iPad Pro1. But in the mean time there’s a ton of content you can consume on any device without a Flash Player. Steve Jobs refers to the iPad as revolutionary. Maybe the revolution centers around getting people to read again.
I don’t doubt that some video standard will eventually emerge & make its way into most if not all browsers. In the meantime, Adobe spends millions of dollars a year building & giving away software–for which content viewers & even content creators dont have to pay a dime — to compensate for the rest of the worlds failure to get the job done.
via http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/01/sympathy_for_the_devil.html:
John Nack on Adobe: Sympathy for the Devil
Flash really does seem to get a bad rap & for the most part I completely agree. It’s a hog fit to be slaughtered. However, like John Nack says it did move the needle. I remember having to build really crappy user interfaces that let users choose (though we made assumptions, like defaulting to Quicktime on Macs). What a pain. Even worse was when Aol tried to get in the game with their own codec. Now the UI had to offer choices & subtly promote one option. Whatever, you can imagine how that turned out.
My favorite site that does the handling of video and text-based stories together is CNN. The best way to explain it, is to implore you to check it out. It seems straightforward; have a page with two versions of the story & when the video’s plugin can’t be invoked just show the user the text-only article.
Reading is fundamental.
- You read it here first: Apple will release the max’ed iPad as the iPad Pro. This will have twice the CPU power, twice the RAM, and a swivel camera that can face you (towards the front) or ‘behind’ the iPad. The bezel will be solid black to set it apart. And it will be bundled with all of Apple’s accessories. Except dongles for USB & SD, since those ports will be included.
iPad, Quick Take
iPad?
Taken from comments here:
http://i.gizmodo.com/5458382/8-things-that-suck-about-the-ipad
And I guess I should say, I don’t think this thing sucks. It’s underwhelming. I was always interested in knowing whether the camera would be in the front or rear — never thought of neither. Also, no USB / SD seems lacking. And I don’t believe the ‘keeps the cost down argument.’ They could (and maybe will) a la cart features like this, as they did with the 3G feature and storage capacities. Still it sounds awesome & puts the Kindle and most netbooks to shame … Any of the other shortcomings I’ve read about are a software update away from being moot.
Like the iPhone there’s probably an early adopter tax. Whether that’s realized in initial faux pas, a reduced price in a month or two, or a much better version in a refresh that appears sooner than other Apple products’ updates; I think it’s worth the wait this time.
Some great reads (and watches):
- http://daringfireball.net/2010/01/ipad_big_picture
- http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2010/01/apples_ipad_–_a_broken_link.html
- http://www.macworld.com/article/145976/2010/01/ipadissues.html
- http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/apples-ipad-muted-response/
- http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/01/27/apple.banking.on.color.and.apps/
- http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2358502,00.asp
- http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/27/apple_now_allowing_iphone_apps_to_make_voip_calls_over_3g_networks.html
- http://theappleblog.com/2010/01/27/video-fake-steve-jobs-on-the-apple-ipad/ Video — Not Safe For Work!
Jobs’ Commencement Address
Steve Jobs gave this commencement address in 2005 to Stanford U:
My favorite quote:
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
… which appeared on the back cover of the final publication of “The Whole Earth Catalog”
jQuery UI Draggables & Droppables
Introduction
So it took more time than I thought it should have to accomplish a small jQuery UI implementation; which inspired what follows. I just wanted an HTML list to be able to have its items dragged & dropped on to other items in the same list (to create sub-lists, or nested lists) and have the results fired off via AJAX (to have the lists’ new organization stored).
This is a discrete task related to a larger project; part of which also involves making the list sortable. To keep things simple; I’m providing an example of just the drag and drop portion of the functionality. I’m leaving the comments open to see if this interests anyone & if incorporating the sort-ability (in a separate post) is ‘wanted.’
The Example Page lives here:
… for a brief explanation read on.
Ken Auletta: 10 things Google has taught us – Oct. 26, 2009
Ken Auletta: 10 things Google has taught us – Oct. 26, 2009:
The words belong to Eric Schmidt, who explained: “Life is long in the sense that we have long memories. Time is short in that you have to move very quickly. But to me the most important thing to know is that life has a way of working things out. We forget so quickly what the problem was three or four years ago. So my personal view of life is that every problem is an opportunity.”
Sneaky Microsoft plug-in puts Firefox users at risk"> Sneaky Microsoft plug-in puts Firefox users at risk
This is awful. MicroSoft uses its Windows Update to “enhance” Firefox on Windows. Unfortunately, this opened up Firefox to vulnerability related to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). No need to understand what WPF is; what it isn’t is secure. If you chose Firefox on Windows for security reasons maybe now’s a good time to stop thinking about which version of Windows 7 is right for you:
“While the vulnerability is in an IE component, there is an attack vector for Firefox users as well,” admitted Microsoft engineers in a post to the company’s Security Research & Defense blog on Tuesday. “The reason is that .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 installs a ‘Windows Presentation Foundation’ plug-in in Firefox.” What’s eerily ironic about this is the response MicroSoft had regarding Google’s Chrome Frame — a plugin to supplant Internet Explorer’s browser engine with the very standards compliant browser engine from Google’s Chrome browser: “With Internet Explorer 8, we made significant advancements and updates to make the browser safer for our customers. Given the security issues with plug-ins in general and Google Chrome in particular, Google Chrome Frame running as a plug-in has doubled the attack area for malware and malicious scripts. This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take. For a deeper look at how the browsers stack up in security, take a look at the latest phishing and malware data from NSS Labs.” Looks like they were speaking from personal experience.
Make Drew Carey give away $1 million – CNN.com">Make Drew Carey give away $1 million – CNN.com
After the soccer team Drew Carey partly owns did well in a game he bid $25,000 to get “Drew” or @Drew through a fundraiser for LiveStrong… a short time later he upped the ante to 1 million dollars if 1 million people were following him on Twitter. A million dollars is a million dollars, and for a great cause. So go & follow him: http://twitter.com/DrewFromTV/ From CNN:
Drew Carey plans to give away a million dollars to LiveStrong, if he gets a million Twitter followers by the end of the year.
“It was just one of those things that you felt compelled in the moment to do something,” Carey, who said that he’s had loved ones go through cancer treatments, explained. “I didn’t talk to my agents about it or my account or anything. I thought, well, I could afford it, and it’s a really good cause. I was really intrigued with all these people all over the Twitterverse to retweet things and follow, and raise a million bucks.”
Judging by how quickly the follower count increases every time his @DrewFromTV Twitter page is refreshed — on Tuesday evening, he had over 76,000 followers — Carey is well on his way to doing so. Of course, if he doesn’t reach a million followers, the donation will be prorated: If there are 500,000 followers when the clock strikes midnight, then $500,000 will be given to LiveStrong. Also, maybe even cooler, Drew Carey actually feels slightly guilty about the million followers caveat. And is contemplating how to extend the concept so that charities on twitter can benefit directly.