I like Shawn and all, but he’s wrong about this one.
The best pen in the world is the Pilot G2. But in blue, and 0.7MM. I mean, just check out the first line of the first review:
The cure for cancer will undoubtedly be mapped out using this pen.
Category: General Tech
Will a Tablet Hurt the Kindle Brand?
When the iPod was released in 2001, the market for mp3 players was relatively new. It was a huge success for lots of reasons, but one of them was its ability to do one thing well. Sure, it could do a handful of tasks, like hold your contacts or run basic games, but it was primarily an MP3 player. A brilliant MP3 player.
I think you can compare those first few iPod models with the first few Kindles. What the iPod did for music, the Kindle has done for books. It took an untapped market by the scruff of the neck and kicked it up the arse. Or ass, if you prefer. Instead of producing a catch-all media player, Amazon focused on books and built an e-reader that was better than anything that had gone before.
YahAOL
AOL Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Armstrong is talking with advisers to Yahoo! Inc. to gauge its interest in combining the companies after the ouster of CEO Carol Bartz, according to two people familiar with the matter.
I can’t wait to see what quality products will be brought to fruition from this.
Yahoo Fires CEO
Carol Bartz was fired Tuesday as Yahoo Inc.’s CEO by the Web portal’s board of directors.
The company says Bartz will be replaced by Chief Financial officer Timothy Morse on an interim basis.
When Apple needed someone to fill in for Steve Jobs, it chose COO Tim Cook. Any company that puts the CFO in charge feels like it is in trouble.
Ultrabooks and Originality
Best. Playground. Ever.
There are driving and flying experiences for all kinds of wheeled and winged machines, but what’s been missing? Obviously, a place to play with heavy machinery to relive the sandbox fantasies of one’s youth. Leave it to Las Vegas to fill the void with Dig This, a giant dirt pit where anyone at least 14 years old and 48 inches tall can pay a fee to spend hours pretending to do the kind of job many people would rather avoid.
RIM Shareholders Push to Sell
Noting its poor stock performance, lack of innovation and loss of market share, Jaguar Financial is leading the charge to have something done at RIM.
In a statement on Tuesday, Jaguar Chairman and CEO Vic Alboini called on RIM’s Directors to maximize shareholder value. This includes putting the company up for sale and selling off the patent portfolio.
With an 80 percent decline in stock value since 2008, I think stockholders are probably ready for something to change.
Natural Language
I’ve always wondered about the future of technology. While I’ve never been a flying car kind of guy, I do look forward to technology becoming more integrated in our lives.
A simple way I see this happening is being able to deal with my computers in natural language processing.
This dream is an old one. The foundations of NLP can be found back in the 1950s. Apple explored this topic with the “Knowledge Navigator” project. Here’s a video from Apple, outlining the concept:
RSS is Poison
Jacqui Cheng at Ars is a genius.
Kindle Tablet
MG Siegler got his hands on the Amazon tablet. From what he describes, it sounds like a killer product. Thankfully, it is expected to be sold alongside traditional e-ink Kindle readers.
This part is especially telling:
They are not working with Google on this. At all.
It’s clear Amazon wants to control its own destiny here. Which is good.
George Lucas Strikes Back
File this under “WTF.”
Barbarians
People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians, and if the laws of the United States continue to condone this behavior, history will surely classify us as a barbaric society. The preservation of our cultural heritage may not seem to be as politically sensitive an issue as “when life begins” or “when it should be appropriately terminated,” but it is important because it goes to the heart of what sets mankind apart. Creative expression is at the core of our humanness. Art is a distinctly human endeavor. We must have respect for it if we are to have any respect for the human race.