There are many issues you could have with the iPad. No multitasking, still no Flash. No camera, no GPS. They all fall away the minute you use it. I cannot emphasise enough this point: "Hold your judgment until you've spent five minutes with it". No YouTube film, no promotional video, no keynote address, no list of features can even hint at the extraordinary feeling you get from actually using and interacting with one of these magical objects. [...] The moment you experience it in your hands you know this is class. This is a different order of experience. The speed, the responsiveness, the smooth glide of it, the richness and detail of the display, the heft in your hand, the rightness of the actions and gestures that you employ, untutored and instinctively, it's not just a scaled up iPhone or a scaled-down multitouch enhanced laptop - it is a whole new kind of device. And it will change so much.
Newspapers, magazines, literature, academic text books, brochures, fliers and pamphlets are going to be transformed (poor Kindle). Specific dedicated apps and enhancements will amaze us. You will see characters in movies use the iPad. Jack Bauer will want to return for another season of 24 just so he can download schematics and track vehicles on it. Bond will have one. Jason Bourne will have one. Some character, in a Tron like way, might even be trapped in one.
I've been mostly uninterested in this device, but this review has me curious. And Mr. Fry is the second person I've heard describe the device as "magical". I wonder if that's because they were primed by the keynote to use that term, or if it really is that?]]>
In its announcement, Google stated that Chinese attackers have accessed 2 Gmail accounts and stolen intellectual property - Google company secrets. Additionally, Google has found evidence that, independent of this attack, Gmail accounts belonging to advocates for Chinese human rights have been routinely accessed by third parties, probably as a result of poor security practices on the part of those individuals. As a result, Google has announced that they "have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn".
Wait - how did Google jump from "We have been the subject of an attack" to "We will no longer censor search results in China?". I think I know.
]]> When I visited Bejing in 2007, a Google.cn employee told me that China had been particularly interested in Google because it represented an opportunity for Chinese workers to gain intellectual capital. Many Western companies are interested only in cheap Chinese labor, and seek to export manufacturing jobs, not jobs that will result in the gain of truly valuable skills for the Chinese.So Google.cn represents an opportunity for a mutually beneficial alliance. Google gets access to the (big and quickly growing) Chinese market, and China gets skilled knowledge workers. The explicit condition for this alliance was that Google.cn would censor its search results to comply with Chinese authorities' standards. And Google has received a lot of criticism for that.
Google's Code of Conduct states "Our reputation as a company that our users can trust is our most valuable asset, and it is up to all of us to make sure that we continually earn that trust. All of our communications and other interactions with our users should increase their trust in us." That's not idealism, it's a practical understanding Google's core business model.
Google is the world's most popular search engine because a majority of users believe that a Google search will provide them with the best information that exists on the Web. Not "approved" information. Not information paid for by the highest bidder. Google quickly rose to dominance because it provided better search results than its competitors - remember Altavista? Unless Google users trust that they are receiving unfiltered, accurate results every time they do a search, they will use another search engine.
So Google's business proposition to its users is this: A Google search on any subject will provide you with the most accurate, most reliable information that exists on the Web. Censoring results in any market compromises this proposition. Because if Google is willing to monkey with search results in China for business reasons, what might it be doing in the rest of the world?
The Chinese government agreed to allow Google deep access to the Chinese Web in exchange for Google sharing its intellectual property with its Chinese employees and censoring search results according to authorities' dictates. The implicit quid pro quo in this arrangement was that Google could decide what intellectual property to share and, with the exception of censorship at Google.cn, that China would allow Google to do the rest of its business as it always has.
Google has apparently concluded that a cyberattack focused on gaining information about advocates for Chinese human rights is likely to come from the Chinese government itself. Additionally, these attackers stole Google intellectual property. If the Chinese government is behind these attacks, it has violated the spoken and unspoken terms of its agreement with Google.
This is a calculated business opportunity for Google. It can now go to the Chinese government and say "You messed up, and we caught you. We won't do business with any entity that has so little respect for our intellectual property and the privacy of our users. Now, about those censored search results..."
Censoring search results in China brings into question every Google search result around the world. So Google has decided to leverage its knowledge about the origin of these attacks - and Google's value to the Chinese government - to remove a terrific public relations liability, satisfy a matter of conscience for many of its employees, and above all restore its basic business proposition to all of its users.
It is not that there are no good people at Google, or that "doing the right thing" didn't factor into this decision. Far from it. Google's challenge to the Chinese government is opportunistic, yes. But it is neither an act of altruism nor a cynical ploy to scuttle a failing business unit while disguising it as a humanitarian gesture. Above all, this is a business decision - and a very good one. ]]>
To understand what Verlinde is proposing, consider the concept of fluidity in water. Individual molecules have no fluidity, but collectively they do. Similarly, the force of gravity is not something ingrained in matter itself. It is an extra physical effect, emerging from the interplay of mass, time and space, says Verlinde.
"It is not even a theory yet, but a proposal for a new paradigm or framework. All the hard work comes now." - Erik Verlinde]]>
When one of Proteus's pills is taken, stomach fluids activate the edible communications device it contains, which sends wireless signals through the body to another chip worn as a skin patch or embedded just under the skin. That, in turn, can upload data to a smart-phone or send it to a doctor via the internet. Thus it is easy to make sure a patient is taking his pills at the right time, to spot adverse reactions with other drugs and so on.
Don't miss the caption on the photo. (via MikeK)]]>
Scott Horton's devastating new exposé of the possible murders of three prisoners at Guantanamo in 2006 is...simply too terrible to allow to be true. Which is why it has been mostly ignored this week in the mainstream American media.
Read it and judge for yourself.]]>
Flow is the feed. It's the posts and the tweets. It's the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that remind people that you exist.
Stock is the durable stuff. It's the content you produce that's as interesting in two months (or two years) as it is today. It's what people discover via search. It's what spreads slowly but surely, building fans over time.
I feel like flow is ascendant these days, for obvious reasons - but we neglect stock at our own peril.
It's all true. After this page, the most popular parts of this site are my Zoom Teeth Whitening Caution (it hurts!) and Eating Organic on a Food Stamp Budget which, people tell me, they "read like a novel".
Robin may overestimate the rate of flow which is necessary to keep you on the radar, but she is absolutely correct in understanding that it is a necessary mix. (via @jayrosen_nyu) ]]>