Link bookmarked via Diigo on Friday, February 12, 2010 @ 07:52 CST by Daniel Andrlik
Loren Feldman of 1938 Media does a great job summarizing many of things going wrong at Techcrunch these days, and it’s an excellent overview of the issues at hand. In particular, Feldman points out a number of important unanswered questions still lingering in the wake of Michael Arrington’s supposed transparency regarding the MacBook Air scandal.
From the post:
At this point it’s obvious that the TechCrunch site is incapable of doing the right thing. There is simply no moral compass over there to guide them so I am once again forced to stop producing puppet shows for a few dozen people and spell it out.
[snip]
[It’s] still not clear is Daniel’s relationship with TechCrunch. Mike Arrington, Editor-In-Chief of TechCrunch, said that Daniel is merely an intern and that “the frequency of [his] posts was light.” If by “light” he means “over a hundred stories” then okay. Daniel states no, he was not an unpaid intern but a part-time employee. The TechCrunch site lists him with a fancy title. Intern, employee, dog sitter, no one is too sure what this kid does. Which is it? It’s February. Did he just get a 1099 or not?
Go give it a read, I think it summarizes many of the reasons that I stopped regularly reading Techcrunch about a year ago, although it leaves out an important one: their policy of posting stories based on rumors from anonymous sources without getting confirmation or performing anything that could pass as journalistic due diligence. I still think it’s disgraceful that the tech community at large gives so much influence to a site that is just one small step above being a gossip rag.
Link bookmarked via Diigo on Wednesday, February 10, 2010 @ 11:14 CST by Daniel Andrlik
This is huge. This is bigger than Buzz, bigger than the Nexus One and bigger than Wave. If Google’s trials are successful, they could seriously reshape the standard for the speeds at which Americans access the Internet, specifically around 1 gigabit per second over fiber connections.
From the post:
Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make Internet access better and faster for everyone. Here are some specific things that we have in mind:
Next generation apps: We want to see what developers and users can do with ultra high-speeds, whether it’s creating new bandwidth-intensive “killer apps” and services, or other uses we can’t yet imagine.
New deployment techniques: We’ll test new ways to build fiber networks, and to help inform and support deployments elsewhere, we’ll share key lessons learned with the world.
Openness and choice: We’ll operate an “open access” network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers. And consistent with our past advocacy, we’ll manage our network in an open, non-discriminatory and transparent way.
Guess this settles the question of why Google has been buying up all that dark fiber over the last few years. OK, tech pundits, in the wake of this announcement, do any of you seriously care if Buzz is a flop or not?1 Stop opining about social networking sites and “power of social media” (a phrase guaranteed to earn you a punch in the groin from me) and start thinking big.
For the record, I hope Buzz does well, because it’s promoting some very interesting open standards that could revolutionize they way publishers and subscribers interact with each other.↩
Link bookmarked via Diigo on Tuesday, February 2, 2010 @ 15:33 CST by Daniel Andrlik
Outstanding example of what an HTML5 based video player can be. I look forward to the day when all web video is consumed like this: with no browser plugins, seamless buffering, and without hogging my computer’s resources.
Link bookmarked via Diigo on Saturday, November 14, 2009 @ 12:57 CST by Daniel Andrlik
This is the kind of breakthrough we need in order to make AR a practical technology for day to day use.
One of the limitations of current head-up displays is their limited field of view. A contact lens display can have a much wider field of view. “Our hope is to create images that effectively float in front of the user perhaps 50 cm to 1 m away,” says Parviz.
Just as exciting is proposed power source for the device:
Parviz says that future versions will be able to harvest power from a user’s cell phone, perhaps as it beams information to the lens. They will also have more pixels and an array of microlenses to focus the image so that it appears suspended in front of the wearer’s eyes.
Link bookmarked via Diigo on Friday, August 28, 2009 @ 14:32 CDT by Daniel Andrlik
By masses, of course, they mean companies that can afford the hardware, but this is still a pretty huge development in pushing quantum computing out of the lab and into the real world. The Dutch will get it first, but hopefully it will begin to become common in developed countries with high broadband penetration.
Blog Entry posted on Sunday, March 29, 2009 @ 10:44 CDT by Daniel Andrlik
Google Voice is Google’s upgrade to the GrandCentral service they acquired almost two years ago. I’ve had a GrandCentral account for almost as long as the service existed, but I never found a reason to use it, mostly because the feature set was just short of being useful enough for me to want to manage an additional phone service. However, Google has added a number of features that make it an extremely compelling service. In particular:
Ability to place domestic and international calls with Google Voice number
SMS support and routing
Voicemail transcription (Also, downloadable as MP3)
Call conferencing
Call Recording (Incoming calls only, downloadable as MP3)
Wait, you smell that? Smells like screenshots:
Google Voice Inbox showing SMS functions and voice mail transcription.
Google sends a notification email for new voicemail with the transcription.
Google Voice forwards SMS messages received to my cell phone as well as voicemail notifications.
These features, along with the previously existing call-routing and contact management features (which are awesome) make the service something I could easily see myself becoming dependent on in the near future. I’m already scheming to start routing more of my telephone communication (especially anyone who is not a friend or family member) through my GV account.
Now, Google Voice has already received a ton of press online detailing all the new features, and rather than repeat everything that has already been said, let me just say this: I do not understand how this is not already a paid service. Slap an SLA on this service and I would not even think twice about paying $50 a year for it. The only possible reason I can think of for not doing this is to stay cheaper than Skype, which charges for having a phone number and voice mail. Skype’s international rates are still slightly cheaper than Google’s, but it’s free offerings offer nothing like the basic feature-set provided by Google Voice.
I have only two one complaints about Google Voice. First, the inbox defaults to showing all messages and does not have a way for me to use the unread-only view as my default, which gets annoying because it is an extra mouse-click every time I go to look at my messages. The only way to prevent a message from showing up again is to delete it, which I don’t want to do. (Fixed: Google pushed out an update on 2009-04-02 which defaults the inbox view to unread-only, or at least it remembers my preference). Secondly, While the mobile web app is fast and great, I want a native app for managing my account on my phone. It seems like Android integration is the obvious path for Google, but I would hope they would also follow their previous practice and release an iPhone application (or integrate it into their existing app) as well.
On the whole, I think this is an excellent service and a home-run for Google. It’s the first time I’ve been this excited about a Google product since Google Reader and Gmail. In fact, I’ve written this post partly in the hopes that it will help me stop telling my friends about Google Voice every time we talk to each other, as I am sure they are ready for me to shut up about it. I was even tempted to do a screencast to show off how you work with the application, but video adds a lot of difficulty to the process of hiding other people’s phone numbers, and I respect my friends’ privacy.
Currently the service is only available to users with existing GrandCentral accounts, but Google has stated they plan on opening to the service to new users soon, presumably with “soon” being a value somewhere between a few weeks and just before our sun explodes.
If you have used Google Voice and would like to leave me a comment about what you think, feel free to click the call widget below to leave a voicemail message with my Google Voice account. I’ll keep it active for at least a few weeks. Also, when you leave your message, please indicate if you would like your message included in this post. I don’t promise that I will include your message, but I do promise that if you leave me a voicemail I will not post the audio or your name without your permission. I reserve the write to quote you anonymously in text, however, because I like to write and that’s just the way I roll.
Link bookmarked via Diigo on Sunday, March 22, 2009 @ 13:12 CDT by Daniel Andrlik
It begins…
People have been dying to start writing extensions for Chrome since it was first released. I’ve actually become accustomed to living without extensions when using Chrome, because the speed and other interface tweaks fit my workflow very well. Still the ability to add extensions to Chrome is a huge step forward.
Currently, you need to use the developer version of Chrome ( instructions here ) to install extensions and the installation/management process is still pretty basic, but it’s a good start.
Now, Google just needs to get versions out for Mac and Linux.
