Jason Kottke reviews a new video conferencing site called Chatroulette (chat roulette). Connect with random people all over the world, no moderation, no rules, just a video and voice connection with god knows who or what on the other end. The site has no appeal for me but Kottke’s review of it is one of the best blog posts I’ve ever read. Read it, it’s funny as hell. If you have the guts to try Chatroulette let me know, I’d love to hear what you think.
Michael Arrington, Walter Mossberg, and David Carr discuss Apple’s new iPad on the Charlie Rose show.
Mossberg is brilliant but all of them, including him, miss the idea that it’s not just the form factor that’s a game changer, it’s the simplicity. The iPad is may be the first computer appliance and while that’s not talked about much when talking about “features” I think it’s the killer feature that will define a new market.
Former Microsoft employee Dick Brass on how the company has failed to innovate over the years.
Some of us have seen this pattern brewing at Microsoft for years. Couple this with the idea that the release of Apple’s iPad seems to be less about hardware, more about a statement that some (maybe many) users are fed up with the complexity, instability, and poor design of their computing experience and you have a real problem for Microsoft going forward.
As Brass says, Microsoft makes most of it’s money from selling the Windows OS and MS Office for desktop and laptop computers. Desktop computers may not go away any time soon, but simpler devices that do fewer things more easily are on the rise and are eating into that space.
The other interesting idea here is that both Microsoft and Apple and other computer companies as well as companies that make smart phones have been going after convergence products for years: products that are attempting to be all things to all users and do a lot for them. Maybe the end of that quest is Apple’s Knowledge Navigator and maybe the iPad or some tablet computer could evolve into that. But, I’m betting that we’re entering an era where “divergence products” like the iPad will do well, partly as a reaction to the difficulty many people have with general purpose computers (both with Windows and OS X on them).
Having recently flown on both Virgin America and United on wifi enabled planes, I can say that even in coach where there’s little room for a laptop computer (an iPad would be perfect here), having access to the internet in flight is useful, makes a long flight easier to take, and certainly worth the $7-$12 it costs.
Just keeping up with email, RSS feeds, Twitter, and the news in flight makes it very useful.
The influential site Daring Fireball, John Gruber’s web site that covers all things Macintosh, iPhone, iPad and Apple in general is a weblog with the commenting feature turned off. On popular sites like DF moderating comment threads can be a full time job and Gruber has said he’d rather spend time thinking and writing than moderating and responding.
The problem is, Gruber doesn’t quite say it like that, he says it in an incredibly egotistical way and when questioned about it he calls people names like “jackass” and “douchebag.”
Gruber is an excellent writer and his coverage of Apple technology is first rate but his self-important attitude has bothered me for many years. I read him but I cringe at times.
It seems others feel this way as well and John Casasanta has built a web site that is going to allow them to express their feelings about all things Apple and Gruber: Daring Fireball with Comments.
While I share some of this feeling, reposting the content, look and feel of a site with the addition of comments is not a great way to express it; a quick look at the comments at the site supports exactly why Gruber decided not to allow them on his site.
No doubt John Gruber needs to be taken down a few pegs but this isn’t the way to do it.
Click the image above to start a slide show of the various image in this set. The slide show application has various tools including a button at bottom right to zoom to full screen. Let go of your mouse or trackpad and the slideshow will run automatically to the end or until you stop it.
Tim Johnson is an artist who uses a variety of natural materials to weave baskets and other objects. He’s based on the Isle of Wight on the southern coast of the UK.
The Frame has a wonderful collection of images of macaque monkeys in Japan. Love the last few images that show all the photographers around the hot springs. Fantastic.
I calculate it took about seven minutes, give or take, after Steve Jobs finished introducing the shinypretty iPad before the whiny attacks on the wondergizmo began flooding in, how it didn’t have this or that expected feature, how it can’t do live video chat, doesn’t have Flash, the bezel is too big and it won’t double as a meat thermometer, how it doesn’t really revolutionize much of anything despite how it’s, you know, this gorgeous 1.5-pound slab of aluminum and glass that works flawlessly and can perform roughly one thousand tasks in a more fluid and astonishing way than any device of its kind in history.
My God, did you hear that pathetic State of the Union? That guy, that President Obama? Disappointing times a thousand, am I right? What the hell happened to him? Why is he so weak and ineffectual? Why the hell can’t he step up and fix the entire planet in under 400 days like he promised he would, in my dreams and fantasies and impossible liberal grass-fed organic tofu greengasms? Doesn’t he know I put a goddamn bumper sticker on my Subaru for him? I’ve never done that for anyone. Bastard.
This is a brilliant piece. Morford has really captured something. Read the whole piece, not just my outtakes. Fantastic.
[EPUB is] a free and open standard format created by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), and it’s designed for reflowable content that can be optimized to whatever device is being used to read a book file. The IDPF has championed EPUB as a single format that can be used by publishers and conversion houses, as well as for distribution and sale of electronic books.
Steven takes us through a short history of computing explaining why some of us have a hard time making these leaps when companies like Apple come out with products that make large leaps rather than small incremental steps. Beautifully reasoned and written.
…the release of the iPad marks a classic battle between two philosophies:
Is it better to have a device that is loaded with bullet-pointable features?
Or is it better to have a device that has a shorter list of specs … but which does everything right?
That’s not a loaded question. It’s the key difference between the Android and iPhone operating systems. It’ll also define the difference between a netbook and an iPad. The former looks great on paper. The Apple product looks great when you’re actually trying one out firsthand.
Steve Lohr has written an excellent piece discussing the back story on how Jobs thinks and works.
…Apple products are known for being stylish, powerful and pleasing to use. They are edited products that cut through complexity, by consciously leaving things out — not cramming every feature that came into an engineer’s head…
Watch the entire 10 minute clip or fast forward to six minutes and watch the Nicholas brothers dance. Some of most amazing “flash” dancing you’ll ever see. Don’t forget, in those days this was all done in one take.
Pyramid Lake (at Night), a 2004 photo by Richard Misrach is one of the included desktop photos on the iPad and it was used during the iPad introduction event. It’s a spectacular image and no doubt Apple went through many to get to this one. Congratulations Richard.
According to the photographer, this is the first time he has licensed an image for commercial use in his 40-year career–a deal he agreed to because he’s a fan of the company. ‘What’s funny is that for years I actually used the photo as my own screensaver,” Misrach says. “So I guess they know what they’re doing.”
Apple’s head of marketing Phil Schiller demonstrates the new iWork application on iPad including the use of multi-touch gestures for getting things done without a mouse.
This is a clip from the iPad unveiling which can be watched in its entirety here.
Palo Alto, California. I was just visiting my friends Manish, Mamen, Samir and Aisha and Mamen asked for a picture of her and Aisha. We had a blast taking lots of images and they all worked out in one way or another but I liked this one best.
My friendship with this family goes way back and since we live on opposite sides of the country we don’t get to see each other very often. When we do, it’s like a family reunion.
I’ve been watching various reactions to Apple’s new iPad and it amazes me that people don’t learn from history that Steve Jobs is a visionary and visionaries take larger steps than the rest of us. This is one of the many things I admire about Jobs and Apple. Not all of these steps work out for Apple. I think this one will.
The announcement happened yesterday while I was flying and I got at least ten emails and tweets (the Gogo wifi on the plane worked great, again) that said the thing has an “unfortunate” name because it sounds like a sanitary napkin. As someone with a nickname of “Dick” I’ve been there and all I can say is, people who see things that way see things that way. I don’t. The name is fine and this focus will die off fast as the iPad gets traction.
Then there are those who say the iPad is not a netbook or a tablet Mac, it’s missing firewire, a camera, and a real desktop OS. To them I say, that’s what you might have wanted but when did Steve Jobs ever give you exactly what you wanted? And, had he made that for you my guess is you’d have skipped buying it because these days if you want a computer you get a computer. This device, while technically a computer, defines a new category (for Apple). Maybe it is just a bigger iPod Touch but maybe the iPod touch needed a larger cousin. If so, great.
What Jobs and Apple tend to do is to project ten or more years out and make a device for that world knowing that they have enough pull, push, magnetism, cache, and cool that a good number of people will follow and the rest will catch up over time. There are always the people who can’t make the leap with Jobs and Apple: “It doesn’t have a disk drive, it’s a piece of shit.” I’ve learned, over many years of watching Apple to take a longer view and it’s paid off.
In watching Apple’s various video demos of the iPad, I find the standard applications incredibly alluring in their simplicity and functionality. The email client built in looks better than the one on both the iPhone and Mail on the Macintosh. The address book looks great. Maps look great. the Calendar looks great. The device is fast, in fact it is probably faster than any Macintosh at doing the things it does. It will run all (100,000 and growing) iPhone apps out of the box and no doubt as it becomes more popular apps will be nudged to take advantage of the larger screen.
The iPad is a platform, just like the iPhone, just like the Macintosh. It can be anything to anyone.
Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California. I’m pretty taken with the rotunda of the entrance pavilion of the Getty Center. There’s something about the lines, the light, and the shapes. Can’t help myself.
Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California. Alberto Giacometti is one of my mother’s favorite artists. Giacometti was 14 when my now 94 year old mother was born and this piece was probably cast around the time I was born.
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