My Sage iMac G3 has a new friend thanks to my buddy Paul.
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The Newton-Powered US Navy
Two weeks ago, I was waiting for my rental car at the Alamo car lot at National Airport in DC. Also waiting for a car was a US Navy Rear Admiral (two stars). I was rather surprised to see that an Admiral had to wait for a car and jokingly asking him why the Pentagon didn’t send a one for him. As we were talking story, I pulled out my Newton to check my schedule. Upon seeing this, the admiral smiled and said “Is that a Newton? I haven’t seen one of those for years.” He went on to tell me that the Navy had a large program to evaluate the newton for use on ships and subs to facilitate communications and wireless access to the ships’ central computers from anywhere onboard. He apparently was in charge of a major part of this project. He told me that the Navy was very pleased with the Newt and made plans to issue 2100s to all shipboard personnel Petty Officer and above but canceled the deployment when Jobs canned the Newton. Now the Navy has issued Palms to most of their personnel but the Admiral told me they are not satisfied with the capabilities compared to the Newton.
Hold it ‘Naked’
I don’t use a case on my iPhone, and most probably never will. Apple made the thing to be a beautiful little block of glass. Precision engineered to be as slim and light as possible. It just feels perfect when you hold it. A case - any case - ruins that. If you have an iPhone and use a case, take it off for a second. Just hold it ‘naked’ for a second, and remember how it’s supposed to feel.
Is the Cloud Just the new Mainframe?
If you think about it, cloud computing is a lot like the old centralized IT processing model of the past embodied by the mainframe. Computing power is moved away from the end users and into a centralized entity that’s managed by someone else. To be fair, the cloud isn’t really centralized the way mainframes of the past were (and are). However, the cloud and mainframes are alike in that they both move the computing power and infrastructure governance farther from the users of those platforms.
NASA Gives up on Silent Spirit Rover
Spirit’s final troubles began in April 2009, when it got stuck in a patch of Martian sand. Engineers worked for eight months attempting to free the rover, but to no avail. In its stationary position, Spirit’s solar panels weren’t able to tilt toward the sun and so it lost power during the winter of 2009 and 2010.
When Spirit lost power, its internal temperature plunged to minus 67 degrees Fahrenheit — the coldest it had ever experienced — and it likely sustained electronic damage that prevented it from powering back up last spring.
The Fifth Floor
When Josiah was first diagnosed with brain cancer, we spent almost a month on the south wing of the fifth floor at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital here in Memphis. While there, our six month old had massive brain surgery, followed by a smaller operation weeks later. We spent two days in the ICU, praying the pain killer would kill him asleep. We spent countless nights, staring out the window across Memphis’ medical district, listening to ambulances and watching helicopters land at various hospitals. We got to know every nurse on the floor by name. We ate more hamburgers in the cafeteria than any one person ever should.
Dell Really Likes the MacBook Pro
I just don’t get what kind of company would be okay with producing such a blatant rip-off.
Eighty Percent of Mobile Video Views on iOS
FreeWheel reported that four-fifths of all mobile video views happen on Apple iOS devices. The iPhone and iPod touch each account for about 30 percent of all video views that happen on mobile devices, with the remaining 20 percent being attributed to Android devices, according to the report. Other devices account for less than one percent of all video views on mobile devices, according to FreeWheel.
Man, the lack of Flash is really holding Apple’s devices back.
Maybe Size Does Matter
Casey Johnston at Ars, on the HP Veer:
While webOS remains a promising platform with many desirable features, we ultimately found that the Veer, both in terms of physique and power, is not sufficient for anyone performing more than very light and infrequent tasks on their smartphones. The inclusion of a physical keyboard makes the phone decent for messaging (though its keys are quite small) but the size of the screen and the underpowered processor can make moderate to heavy use a chore. The Veer is targeted at those who want latitude in the capabilities of their communication device, but have only a light reliance on the various functions a smartphone can perform.
Old Apple Startup and Crash Sounds
Be sure to check out the crash sound for the Power Macintosh 6100/60AV. It is my favorite, by far.
Notification Badge Anxiety Disorder
I have a problem. I get anxious anytime I see a notification badge on my iPhone.
Be it Mail, Reeder or something else, those little red circles really get under my skin. I check my email constantly, am always refreshing Twitter and love marking RSS feeds as read just to kill the little bastards.
I — like most of you — am addicted to input. It’s a terrible side effect of growing up in the 90s, I suppose. But it’s slowly eating away at me.
EFF: Apple Should Defend its Developers
Julie Samuels at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, on the Lodsys mess:
The law generally works to ensure that the party in the best position to address an issue bears the responsibility of handling that issue. In the copyright context, for example, the default assumption is that the copyright owners are best positioned to identify potential infringement. This is because, among other reasons, copyright owners know what content they own and which of their works have been licensed. Here, absent protection from Apple, developers hoping to avoid a legal dispute must investigate each of the technologies that Apple provides to make sure none of them is patent-infringing. For many small developers, this requirement, combined with a 30 percent fee to Apple, is an unacceptable cost. Even careful developers who hire lawyers to do full-scale patent searches on potential apps surely would not expect to investigate the technology that Apple provides. Instead, they would expect (with good reason) that Apple wouldn’t provide technologies in its App Store that open its developers up to liability – and/or would at least agree to defend them when a troll like Lodsys comes along.