‘Apple has done an interesting job. They’ve sold more than I’d like them to sell.’
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO on the iPad and tablets, talking to Wall Street analysts.
Monthly Archive for July, 2010
The iPad was released as being—supposedly—a Kindle killer. Amazon needed to strike back. And they did, in their own way.
What? Does it look a lot like the old Kindle? Shouldn’t it be filled with incredible features such as a multitouch screen—colors, at least?
Well, this is not Amazon’s strategy.
First, the price. Well, 139$ is a lot less than 499$ right? Now, I’ll let Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO continue.
For the vast majority of books, adding video and animation is not going to be helpful. It is distracting rather than enhancing. You are not going to improve Hemingway by adding video snippets.
Steve Jobs would probably say that he’s wrong, that, in the contrary, adding video snippets would help, but who knows?
PS. The best reading experience possible remains the book, people, don’t get excited.
So, what is Enole?
A platform for identity management utilizing near field communications, strong authentication, and lots more buzzwordy awesomeness to help developers build something just plain cool.
Enole builds an API that will help developers optimize our identity management in the real world, using, of course, technology. Enole’s ultimate goal would be a world where your phone is the only thing you’d need to be recognized as yourself. No ID, credit cards, passport, etc.
Ok. That wasn’t enough. GigaOM writer Liz Gannes gives more information. She met with the co-founder. And sometimes, examples are great:
Co-founder Kurt Collins came by our office yesterday and showed me a few examples: In one called Viploc, a Mac is set to lock itself when it’s not in Bluetooth range of its owner’s mobile phone. So when the phone is not present (or its Bluetooth is turned off), the computer logs out of its current session. In another demo, an iPad app called ZapCash, users can send each other money when they are in proximity of each other.
One of Enole’s early success is that they’ve managed to transform security into a key feature of their product. And that’s well done.
Rather than requiring a mobile app to be installed, Enole uses a unique identifier associated with a phone, such as a Bluetooth ID or MAC address. The company offers developers a REST-based API for identity and authentication using secure sockets layer encrypted transport and public key infrastructure (PKI). And to ensure reliability, Enole has also developed a way to use DNS to authenticate a user’s token should its servers be down.
I’ll keep an eye on this start-up.
This partially consists as a response to The Next Web’s post: 5 ways Apple’s Magic Trackpad could change the world and more particularly to the bottom of the article: A whole new wave of computer art.
For a new wave of computer art to arrive, there is, in my sense, a little more to achieve than releasing a device. Sure, the pen did great for the cause of art in general yet the Magic Trackpad isn’t as revolutionary.
Computer art needs precision. And even when I try to do some light image editing with Preview on my Mac, my trackpad isn’t sufficiently precise.
The Magic Trackpad will, maybe—hopefully!—allow people to access computer art more easily but nothing is less sure. So your fifth reason isn’t truly one.
Behind this barbarian title lies a very simple explanation.
The Net Index is powered by SpeedTest. SpeedTest is a tool that tests and measures your Internet connection speed: ping, download, upload. The Net Index is the world index for Internet connection speed based on millions of recent test results from SpeedTest and therefore from all around the world.
You can be sure that the data is precise. Plus, the site’s design is quite neat. Go check it out.
That’s what Rosa from Gizmodo thinks.
I hope it’s true. Because, personally, I’ve experienced the ‘Death Grip’ only one time. The biggest flaw I found on the iPhone 4 was the proximity sensor not recognizing my cheek and hanging up on everybody. Bastard.
Today, Apple updated its entire line of desktop computers.
The Mac Pro will feature an impressive 12 core processor and many hardware improvements. Available to buy in August. More information from Ai and Apple.
The new Mac Pro desktops feature the latest quad-core and 6-core Intel Xeon processors, all-new ATI graphics and the option for up to four 512GB solid state drives (SSD). The processors run at speeds up to 3.33GHz and use a single die design so they can share up to 12MB L3 cache, improving efficiency while increasing processing speeds.
The iMac is now available with Core i3, i5 and i7 processors along with the ATI Radeon graphics starting at the attractive price of 1199$. More information from Ai and Apple.
Starting at $1,199, the new iMac line is the fastest ever with dual-core processor speeds up to 3.6 GHz, quad-core speeds up to 2.93 GHz and discrete graphics including the ATI Radeon HD 5750.
The Cinema Displays now—well, in September—ships with a big, glossy 27-inch screen and the usual goodness. More info from Ai and Apple.
Apple on Tuesday took the wraps off its new 27-inch LED Cinema Display which sports a 2560 x 1440 resolution and 60 percent more screen real estate than the company’s existing 24-inch LED Cinema Display.
And finally, last, but the the only new product from this afternoon Mac frenzy is the Magic Trackpad. Which is quite similar to your MacBook Pro’s trackpad and should be used along your iMac. More info from Ai and Apple.
Apple has brought the multi-touch gestures available to MacBook users to the desktop with its new $69 Magic Trackpad, as well as a new battery charger for wireless devices like the Magic Trackpad, Apple keyboard, and Magic Mouse.
Plus, in an unprecedented eco-friendly move, Apple added the battery recharger that works for your Apple accessories. And since there’s an Apple on it, it’s the best.
Today’s bookmark is this simple blog called Best of Wikipedia. It does what it advertises. BOW is:
A twice-daily updated collection of some of the best reading on Wikipedia.
Happy browsing.
WASHINGTON – Owners of the iPhone will be able to legally break electronic locks on their devices in order to download software applications that haven’t been approved by Apple Inc., according to new government rules announced Monday.
A report from AP. More info here.
Did you know that you can buy Uranium Ore on Amazon?
MG Siegler made an inventory of the finest comments made for this product on Amazon. My favorite?
So glad I don’t have to buy this from Libyans in parking lots at the mall anymore.
Read Siegler’s article to see that you can also buy fresh, whole rabbits and wolf’s urine on Amazon.
A great, great piece by Frédéric Filloux, worth both your time and focus.
The digital natives are people aged 18-24, born with Internet and gadgets everywhere.
These are my favorite bits of the must-read article.
About brand trust:
There are notable exceptions, such as brands that are direct components of the digital sphere. Sony and especially Apple, maybe very few others, have gained access to a unique status of blind trustfulness (which, in itself, shows the crucial importance of design and user interface).
About work and hierarchy:
The survey showed that 3/4 of Digital Natives want to be entrepreneurs, not just for the the sake of it, but in order to be relieved from a hierarchy they don’t respect.
The story tells our truth.
This is pretty crazy, people.
Nadia doesn’t even contain a proper camera. Inside the black box is a Nokia N73 cellphone which talks to a nearby Mac via Bluetooth. The Mac sends the image off to Acquine’s “aesthetics inference engine” on the web and gets back a score, which it then displays on screen.
Nice project.
A device, manufactured by HTC was spotted in the wild, having the WP7 (Windows Phone 7) OS.
And many blogs are reporting the story. Before, nobody cared about Windows mobile. Now, it seems that, after the thorough WP7 previews, people are getting interested in Windows on mobile devices again.
Good news for MSFT (Microsoft).
WikiLeaks opens governments. At least, that’s what their official Twitter account says.
Earlier, today, WikiLeaks published thousands (more than 91 000) documents, mostly reports about the Afghan war from 2004 to december 1st, 2009. But, before doing so, they gave access to these documents to three newspapers. The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel.
The newspapers had time to decipher every information and they now offer portals to browse the information.
Here, for Der Spiegel, over here for The Guardian and there for the NYT.
This is an incredible story. Sorkin’s movie shouldn’t be about Facebook but about WikiLeaks.
