Amazon shows off ‘Prime Air’ 767 ⇢

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Dan Frommer at Recode:

At a media event Thursday, Aug. 4, in Seattle, Amazon took the wraps off its first “Prime Air” branded plane, a Boeing 767 owned by Atlas Air that has been converted into a freighter. Amazon announced deals with two aircraft leasing companies — Atlas, and another called Air Transport Services Group, or ATSG — earlier this year to fly as many as 40 dedicated cargo planes over the next two years. Eleven are already in operation; this is the first one that’s been painted.

No doubt this is a sign of Amazon’s ever-growing dominance, but I can’t help but think of UPS and FedEx. Both have large presences here in Memphis; FedEx’s headquarters is 20 minute drive from my house. Will Amazon eventually control the entire shipping chain? Here’s Amazon’s Senior Vice President of Operations Dave Clark, as quoted in Frommer’s article:

We have the ability, with our own planes, to create connections between one point and another point that are exactly tailored to our needs, and exactly tailored to the timing of when we want to put packages on those routes — versus other peoples’ networks which are optimized to run their entire network. We add capacity, we add flexibility, and it gives us cost-control capability as well.

Today, it seems that Primer Air is just to make as-needed connections, but I can’t help but think this is just the start.

NASA names investigations for future planetary missions ⇢

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DC Agle, writing on the JPL blog:

NASA has selected five science investigations for refinement during the next year as a first step in choosing one or two missions for flight opportunities as early as 2020. Three of those chosen have ties to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The submitted proposals would study Venus, near-Earth objects and a variety of asteroids.

One or two of these will be funded for future missions. I think I’m partial to the VERITAS and NEOCam missions myself.

Adventures with a PowerBook ⇢

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This writer is using a PowerBook G4 to blog. I’ve always liked the idea of a “minimal writing machine,” a computer set up for writing and not much else. When I’ve tried similar things in the past, I always end up frustrated that I’m using a computer without all my stuff on it.

In many ways, the iPad has taken over this roll for me. I can write without a lot of on-screen distractions, but the rest of my data is just a few taps away. Still, this experiment is tempting, and I do have many PowerBooks I could choose from.

Quip purchased by Salesforce ⇢

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Bret Taylor and Kevin Gibbs:

We’re committed to growing and expanding Quip’s productivity platform as part of Salesforce. If you’re a Quip customer, please know that we’ll continue to provide you with the exceptional service and extraordinary products you’ve come to expect from us, and once the transaction closes, we’ll do so as part of the world’s #1 CRM company. If you’re not yet a customer, sign your team up today!

As their blog post also says that Quip is hiring, my gut says that it will survive in some form or another, but as part of Salesforce’s enterprise tools. I’m happy for these guys, but I’ll be pretty disappointed if I — as a regular human user — get shut out of this app.

Apple adds more gender diverse emoji in iOS 10 ⇢

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This is some good stuff:

More than one hundred new and redesigned emoji characters will be available to iPhone and iPad users this Fall with iOS 10. This exciting update brings more gender options to existing characters, including new female athletes and professionals, adds beautiful redesigns of popular emoji, a new rainbow flag and more family options.

Some of these rolled out in iOS 10 Developer Beta 4 earlier today.

Photographic Memories

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I’ve always had a strong sense that places are important. I’m not a particular sentimental person about some things, but my strongest memories are very often associated with specific locations.

I wrote about this five years ago on this very blog, when I trespassed in a hospital due for demolition visited an important part of my family’s history.

(Just a little warning: that post is intense. I couldn’t re-read all of it.)

I’ve thought about this part of me many times over the years.

Several years ago, my brother and I were north of the city, not far from the small, country elementary school we attended. I badgered him into letting me stop and take some pictures. He didn’t understand why I wanted to do it, but I was driving, so we did it.

When I left my job with The Salvation Army in 2013, I walked through the community center I helped design and built, taking tons of photos, trying to soak it all in while I still had an employee keycard. It took a couple of years before I could go to an event or work out up there without weird emotional tugs.

I’ve thought a lot about it over the last month or so.

Recently, my alma mater started tearing down the dorm I lived in for two years with one of my closest friends. It wasn’t a nice building, and I really only slept there, but I’ve been cutting through campus while out running errands to keep tabs on the demolition. I’ve stopped to take some pictures, and was disappointed to realize I took very few of our room while we lived there.1

Last week, my wife and I purchased her grandmother’s house, after selling our previous one. We moved our family of five into a home where my mother-in-law and her siblings grew up.

There’s a lot of history in this house, but it’s not my history. I’ve watched Merri experience some of the things that I thought were unique to me in our relationship. Several times, I’ve caught her just looking into a room or out into the yard, and I know she’s thinking about the time she spent here as a kid, or when she lived here in college.

I’m sure that with some time, I’ll feel the same way about this house as I did our previous one.

I don’t know what my point is in all of this. It’s just been on my mind, so I thought I’d share it, and encourage you to take some photos of your surroundings. One day, you may want them.

  1. This has made me realize I really just missed the age of the ubiquitous camera in school. There are probably a dozen or so decent photos of me in high school; kids today take that many before lunch every day. I envy them, to a degree. ↩