Author Archive

New Blog: It Came from the North

via flickr.com
Here I am, less than 24 hours from departure from Alaska and I just wanted to mention that the moving saga will be captured online at a new blog: It Came From the North. I’ll do my best to post stuff of a relocation nature there.
A couple things are already posted. Enjoy!

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Where Apple always aims

…while most people have entered the digital world, participation falls off sharply as complexity increases. For example, 93% of respondents have a digital camera, but less than a third use digital photo-sharing tools. Similarly, 92% of respondents have a cell phone, but only 22% have used an internet-based phone service such as Skype.
via marketingcharts.com
The iPad [...]

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Down with PC applications, up with cloud-based apps

Apple endured its darkest days during the early 1990s, when the PC had lost its original magic and turned into a drab, utilitarian tool. Buyers flocked to Dell’s cheap, beige boxes. Computing back then was all about the programs. Now, computing is all about the programming – the words and sounds and pictures and conversations [...]

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Tabula rasa

When the White House announced that President Obama would deliver his State of the Union message on Jan. 27—the same day Apple was planning to unveil its new tablet computer—many of us at Slate cringed. “What is Obama thinking?” one of my colleagues joked. “He’s going to be totally overshadowed.”
The idea of a product rollout [...]

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Late night TV shaken up by changing media habits

The contract between viewers and late-night hosts can be an intimate one. Yet while we all like to be told bedtime stories, in the main, late-night television is very hit or miss. We watch and wait for the moment of serendipity when a single joke happens to define a moment or a banal interview takes [...]

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Spread the word for Doctors Without Borders

via doctorswithoutborders.org
Spread the word using a variety of banner ads / images from Doctors Without Borders.
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/donate/haiti-share.cfm

Posted via web from jmproffitt

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Nexus One: 20,000 / iPhone 3GS: 1,600,000

via gigaom.com
This is not good.
I love the iPhone, but it needs competition. While the Android series of phones are interesting, they still aren’t stacking up as serious competitors, either from a unit sales perspective or, more importantly, from a software perspective.
This is the difference between messianic vision for a product or service [...]

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Techdirt on the Cable TV vs. Internet battle

…both of these stories suggest a prime battleground for the next year: as the old TV businesses come to grips with the internet (finally). Just like other parts of the entertainment industry, it will be messy and annoying — and incumbent players are going to make a lot of really stupid mistakes. But, [...]

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Obscene wastefulness at the TSA and DHS

It would make sense to fight the next battle, for once, instead of the last one. Sense, though, is not the criteria by which public money is spent in this country—and it hasn’t been for a long time.
via slate.com
Thank you, Anne Applebaum. We need more voices to fight the security theatrics put on by the [...]

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Seth Godin: Is there a fear shortage?

If you see something, say something. Hmmm. Has that actually worked? Or x-raying shoes? When was the last time a bad guy was foiled because he couldn’t use a good camera to take a picture of a tourist attraction? Why do the authorities at Grand Central Station in New York wear desert camouflage?
via sethgodin.typepad.com

[...]

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Terrorists vs. flying vs. driving vs. food

…a risk-free flight has never existed; nor has a risk-free car trip; nor a risk-free ocean liner voyage; nor a risk-free bike ride. To be alive is to face risks.
via nytimes.com
And don’t get me started on cars vs. terrorist bombings. Ugh. 30,000 to 40,000 people die every year in automotive crashes in the U.S. But [...]

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David Brooks: The God That Fails

All this money and technology seems to have reduced the risk of future attack. But, of course, the system is bound to fail sometimes. Reality is unpredictable, and no amount of computer technology is going to change that. Bureaucracies are always blind because they convert the rich flow of personalities and events into crude notations [...]

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