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I’ve said nothing about recently Steve Jobs, his death was very sad just like anyone who dies earlier than there potential age. His cancer wasn’t just life threatening it was a killer.
Saying all that, however I do have serious problems with his late view point on the world and I have a lot of agreements.
He was a smart guy and what he did for Apple and the industry speaks for its self but…. there’s some things which I can’t help but remember…
“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said.
“I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”
What on earth…? Who says this kind of thing and really mean it? Frankly I would suggest rightly or wrongly, a psychopath? This psychopathic nature is something most people ignore or overlook. I can’t, I mean can you imagine Bill Gates saying the same about Linux, with such venom? (I’m assuming not, but I’m sure someone will prove me wrong).
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Yes this is quite spooky but I’ll be honest and say death will do that kind of thing to you.
When I was lying in bed after my brush with death last year, I thought damn hard about my life and made quite a few decisions.
It sounds like Jobs had a similar thing but I can’t understand why he would hold on to his fear about Android?
As Yoda says…
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
It pains/saddens me that he went to his death bed worrying about the challenge of Android. Letting go is essential and not doing so, just seems like a very sad thing.
He seemed to have forgotten his own words…
all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
I never want to go to my death bed thinking how I wanted to right the wrong of Apple. Its ludicrous… Yes I’m not a fan but you know what I’m not a fan of a lot of things including crappy fluff filled TV. I would never want to go to my death bed thinking must see a end of Xfactor or something.
Sure some of you are saying, yes but you almost went to your death bed hating Apple? Well not really, even in previous blog posts I’ve expressed happy feelings for Apple. The question should be, if I could stop Apple with all the money I owned, would I do it? Answer is a absolutely NO!
The plan was to buy the Steve Jobs book which was released but frankly I won’t really read it (plus the media has pretty much uncovered most of the book for us all) and as I said before, its very tragic but I’m personally not going to dwell.
He was a genius but also made other peoples lives hell and frankly if he was doing this still after learning about his cancer, he has certainly gone down in my estimations.
Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.
I know he strived for perfection but at what cost? The misery of others around him, was it really worth it in the end? Remember the way he treated his child? Once again was it really worth it in the end?
Life is such a precious thing and so many people never face the reality of how precious life really is…
I will remember Steve Jobs as a super smart man who was driven, who even on his death bed loved what he did, and did everything he could to building his own personal dream. I’m still convinced he was nuts to fight the opening up of the world and the more human engagement everyone is finally adopting…
RIP Steve Jobs…
I recently got fed up of waiting for someone to create a Google tasks application for Ubuntu/Linux and so when I read Wunderlist was available for Linux, I decided to switch.
Wunderlist I had heard about before but this was the tipping point. It already runs on most other platforms including the web, Android, iOS, Mac, PC and now Linux.
Everything was fine up till the point I switched over to using Ubuntu 11.10. Now I got a problem, but it looks like it won’t be long till its sorted.
I hoped Tomboynotes which comes as standard on Ubuntu would be apt for this all but it never quite got the traction and the Android app doesn’t let you make changes or edits which is almost useless for general use, I’m sorry to say… The ability to share the tasks is also a big plus… The only real shame is the size of the Linux installer (85meg!) as something lighter would be great.
First impressions of the Amazon Kindle Fire?
Fantastic! Its roughly a 7inch Kindle/Tablet with some decent power and enough storage for general consumption… And its only 199 dollars!
That means even if they shift the dollars price over directly into pounds its still a very reasonable price. Funny enough its about the same price as the HP touchpad when it was on sale.
Theres still quite a lot which is unknown such as side loading apps, which version of Android and ultimately how hackable the device will be but Amazon have totally blown the Nook Color out of the water ($249). In fact a lot of the tablets will struggle against the Kindle Fire, even the Ipad. The Kindle fire is just so cheap that it will be come a thing people will just have. Amazon have gone for the mass which frankly isn’t a bad idea at all.
Not having the Android Market isn’t a massive deal because frankly its just a matter of getting the developers to submit the same application to the Amazon store instead. Amazon have really taken the ideals of free and open to the maximum, now if only I was in the States! Maybe I can buy one off the back of the amazon account confusion…?
The other Kindles all look good and finally its good to see Amazon releasing a Touch screen version for all those who can’t live without touching the screen. But for now I’m sticking with my Kindle as I’ve not really seen enough to make me switch, plus I like the keyboard anyway.
Been thinking about getting a Tablet for a long while for the purposes of aiding with my needs to better write notes, recite things, etc. I was hoping the 7inch Samsung Galaxy tab would have dropped to much lower price by now but its holding its price quite well still.
So avoiding all the Apple crap, I was pushing for the Samsung galaxy tablet 10.1, then they announced the galaxy 7.7inch (not to be confused with the older 7inch) and at the same a 5inch sudo tablet which actually looks like a oversized phone. But I quite like it because it reminds me of the ipod touch (not in looks but more in how could be used) and I’m it would make a very good note taking device specially if I can get a bluetooth keyboard working with it?
Yes it won’t have Honeycomb (android 3) on it but to be honest I’m not that fused. Gingerbread (android 2.3) has most of the things I need, would use. I’m also expecting Icecream sandwich (android 4) will be hacked on the device once the source is made publicly available.
Will be interesting having a stylus too, specially since theres very few apps which support the stylus…
Iris Todorovic showed me her netbook and I was interested in the fact it had Android on it along side Ubuntu. It was Android Donut (or 1.6) so a very early version of Android, plus it was a Intel ATOM CPU. So I got thinking surely someones ported Android to a x86 / AMD64 processor architecture and made it work on a standard PC?
And I wasn’t wrong…
This is a project to port Android open source project to x86 platform, formerly known as “patch hosting for android x86 support“. The original plan is to host different patches for android x86 support from open source community. A few months after we created the project, we found out that we could do much more than just hosting patches. So we decide to create our code base to provide support on different x86 platforms, and set up a git server to host it.
Excellent, I’ll be giving it a try…
I am very disappointed with Google… After reading this on Torrent Freak
For many Android users Transdroid is the perfect remote access app for managing their BitTorrent clients on the go. The app allows users to start and stop torrents, search torrent files and even use the barcode scanner to find matching torrent files.
Transdroid offered both a free and a paid version of the app, and judging from the 400,000 downloads people seemed to appreciate it. However, as of this week, Google decided that Transdroid is no longer eligible to be placed in the Android Market.
“I have just received an e-mail from Google that Transdroid, both the free and donate version, have been pulled form the Android Market. This is due to apparent violations in the content policies of publishing in the Android Market,” Transdroid’s developer announced.
The developer of the application has wrote up his exchanges with Google and looks to be building a lite version which doesn’t including ezRSS feeds and Torrent Search.
I guess the good thing about Android is, even if they block it from all the stores, you can still download it and install it yourself.
From obscurity they rose via Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform. I’ve always been a fan because frankly they packed in a ton of technology into their devices and then sold them at a reasonable price. Mainly because they signed exclusive deals to the likes of Orange in the UK.
When they started producing Android devices, things really picked up and HTC started making a real name for themselves with the general public. Hackers also enjoyed Android HTC devices because they were more like a PC than anything else. HTC must have understood this when they jumped on the Social media bandwagon…
However they may not have expected the 2 way nature of the early adopters. Here’s their backtracking in action…
First case… HTC decides to lock all there bootloaders on future devices
Then… HTC changes its mind after all the comments on its own Facebook page…
Second case… HTC says the Desire won’t get Gingerbread
Then… HTC backtracks, says the Desire will get Gingerbread after all…
With help from a friend, I rooted my HTC Desire so I could put CyanogenMod on it using the Rom Manager.
When I first rooted it, I didn’t do anything to it but after a while the same problems started happening with the lack of storage again even under Android 2.2 Froyo. This time, I installed Rom Manager and wiped the whole thing clean.
The Rom was the CyanogenMod 7.1 which means I’m now running Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread)
For the first week I wasn’t sure I liked everything, it was too basic. I had to install all the apps which usually come preinstalled. I had the basic Google apps but for some reason some of them were not installable so for a long time I couldn’t install Google Maps and Amazon Reader for example.
Having the raw Gingerbread Android operating system took a little while to get use to but its just so great not having all that Orange crap on the phone and not being able to remove it. Memory for storage was always a issue and because not every application can be moved to the SD card, it became a balancing act of not installing too much and clearing the cache a lot. But now those days are long gone, thankfully.
One of the highlights so far is the personal Wifi hotspot (MyFi) which was introduced in Froyo but for some reason never worked with my Kindle ever. Now it works and seems pretty stable, which is great. On the other hand the standard Gingerbread camera application is pretty crap and I’ve not really found a replacement worthy of keeping.
It is a real shame I had to root the device just to take control of the HTC Desire. I’m glad to see HTC finally did the right thing and decided not to lock down the bootloader.
Rooting your phone isn’t for everyone and I do have quite a bit more respect for what Orange do to a operating system to provide a usable experience for the most people. Its just a shame they also put all that crapware on the device too. If they allowed people to uninstall the crapware, I wouldn’t have had to root my device.
About a year ago, I woke up in hospital and I asked my boss Adrian, "What did Google launch at Google IO 2010?"
Yeah crazy times but its weirdly true, maybe its all consistent with my memory of a series of dreams being in a Google run Hospital…
Anyhow, this year I was happily alive to be able to experience 2011′s Google IO (from the stream of course)
These are the highlights I saw…
- Android 3.1 Available on the Google TV with Apps!
At last a decent set top box with decent application framework. Plus the ability to create your own apps and deploy them to your own TV. Dare I say it BBC Micro for the 21 century? Plus Android will be the same on Mobile, Tablet and TV, very interesting for design challenges. - Android@Home framework for home automation
Amazing move by Google to bring some automation standard to the area. Shame its there own standard instead of supporting someone elses. But I can’t wait for Google to create a very simple web application to take advantage of this framework - Google Chrome web store across the board including paid for webapps
The web store is already making a difference to the way I am using my machines. Mozilla has backtracked on there Prism framework and are also creating a webapps store. - Android Open accessory standard
Just the Android@Home framework, its great to see Android part of something much greater. The demos of a Xbox and Playstation remote plugged into an Android device is great. I can’t wait to see Bluetooth Keyboards as standard and using that NFC chip with other things. This also must mean the end of Microsoft’s Windows CE framework? - The Android Arduino ADK
This is just simply cool, Arduino is well used and well loved. Mixing this up with Android is a good move. - Google Music beta locker system
Amazon lead the way on this one, must of the Apple fan’s are saying so what? The difference is its my music! Its also what Google is good at doing… Adding meaning and machine metadata to your content. Now if only Amazon or Google would open it up to the UK and Europe. I’d love to upload my music to one of there lockers. Specially when uploading mixes…! - Google Ice Cream Sandwich merges Tablet and Phone OS
Google finally answered the question of opening the sources of Android. It will "all be open source" said Google. - Google Film & Music store with offline viewing
Interesting but not as interesting as all the other stuff…
There’s a number of things Google is handy for as a person with dyslexia. In actual fact I’m just about to invest in a tablet running Google’s Android for this exact reason.
Some of the guys have suggested a iPad2 but there missing all the lovely little features which make it easier for someone with dyslexia to manage the world around them.
For example… Google just launched a new Google Docs application on the marketplace. On first look it just looks like a pointer to there google docs service but what people miss is the evernote style functionality of being able to turn written text into words.
Today, Google introduced the Google Docs app for Android, finally providing a native environment for the service, as well as some convenient new features.
The app lets you create, edit, upload, and share documents from your phone, and allows for near real-time collaboration.
You can also take a photo of an actual, physical text document and convert it into a Google doc, without the need for a third-party app. This feature should be handy for keeping track of receipts on trips (expense reports, anyone?) or quickly sharing other important textual information with your phone’s contacts.
This is pretty killer functionality and adds to the automatic spell checking, lookup and voice functionality of Google android already. I already have it on my own HTC desire phone.
So the question still remains, what android tablet/slate do I get?
I switched over to Tweetdeck a while ago… I use to use Gwibber on my laptop/desktop machines and Peep on my Android phone but recently switched…
HTC Peep was ok but honestly it use to wind me up when it wouldn’t update when the storage was quite low. No warning either. Gwibber was great but I found it slow when adding lots of columns. I tend to have a column for all the people I’m following (home) one for replies (@replies) and finally one for Private messages (d msgs). On top of that I have searches for events and the such things. Tweetdeck handles these pretty much in its stride, but Gwibber use to do odd things.
I think it might have something to do with being connected to Twitter x2, Identi.ca, Facebook and other services.
The one thing I do miss from Tweetdeck is the ability to connect to a identica and status.net server. Instead there’s accounts for Facebook (which actually works very well) and Google Buzz. Honestly I’d switch out Buzz for status.net anyday.
I don’t know how the news Twitter might buy Tweetdeck will effect everything but it looks like status.net and even the open microblogging standard isn’t coming any time soon. I may switch back one day, specially if Gwibber 3.0 is as good as it could be.
You can read the whole thing on mike3k’s posterous profile. But others have joined the game of describe the color app.
Evan Moran said…
…And all through it all you are left wondering. Are those screams you hear in the background? 40 million screams each crying out “play play”, “give give”, “stay stay”. As you tap tap, progressing further the game these sounds continue, louder louder. They become more distinct, more fervent. Rattle rattle. A counter point to real progress, an anti-sound. A sound of unknowing. Sizzle sizzle. Of misunderstanding. Fizzle fizzle. Perhaps you are playing it wrong. Tittle tittle. Perhaps it is you who is wrong. Tattle tattle.
Then you realize that the screams are what brought you here. Not to the room with the clock, but the game itself. Scratch scratch. The screams are coming from outside of the game, instead of from in. Thump thump. Luring you within. Bash, bash. You thought this was only a simple MMPRLMG game, but now it is invading your LIFE. Crash crash. The screams are getting closer closer. Will this be a real life monster? A colossal IPO beast made flesh? Its large marketing arm will reach reach, its terrible eyes will glower glower. Do you have the requisite levels of willpower? There is only one thing to do: RUN. Faster Faster. How did all of this become such a disaster?
Yesterday the review was removed from the Apple App Store - I assume the developers were upset the review got more attention than the color app?
I know its hugely unpopular but I actually quite like the idea of color the proximity photosharing application. I’ve not really played with it yet because I’m out of space once again on my HTC desire. But to be fair the user reviews are very telling…
What the hell do the buttons mean cool concept. Was all over the news yet for millions in funding yet very confusing. Add some descriptions PLEASE!!! – Ray (1 star)
The interface is simple, lacking any real functionality. Theres not even an option to exit, you need to go through and manually kill the program. – Zach (1 star)
I was confused at first but totally understand it now! I actually just had a fun conversation with people in the next office building, through pictures!! I have a feeling the Android version has less feature than the iPhone versions though – I can’t seem to find where to go to share the photos! – Eric (4 stars)
Oh well… Nice concept but maybe terrible excursion by color labs (why the bloody hell are we using the american wording!) Out of all the locational based systems this one has me the most interested…
I pretty much take my Kindle most places and people keep asking me what I feel about it? I always say its great and of course I carry it around everywhere… (in actual fact it would be great if Amazon recognized the fans/ambassadors like myself)
Then they usually ask about the books… What book are you reading?
This is where I tend to divert from the normal kindle owner.
So how do I get news on to the Kindle? Well there seems to be a whole bunch of ways.
- Calibre is your long lost friend
No matter what you do this is the first point of call for any ebook reader, even the ipad. It converts ebooks and with the recipes you can point it at almost any website and it will turn it into a ebook for reading on the device. One of my favorite recipes is the Google Reader recipe, turns my unread RSS subscriptions into a nice ebook. And to top it all off, Calibre can be setup to automatically send the ebook to the kindle. Of course I have this setup, so I never have to sync my kindle anymore. In actual fact I only need to plug it in once a month when the battery is low. - Instapaper is simply great
Instapaper most people know about but one of the new features is the ability to send to a Kindle as a kindle compatible .mobi file. No need to wait for Calibre. Plus it also has the option of sending only when there’s a certain amount of clipped content, so you don’t get lots of empty or single page ebooks. On top of that the Kindle treats them as periodicals so, it automatically archives old ones instead of clogging it up with old instapapers. - Klip me with chrome and soon others
Send to Kindle with Klip.me works exactly how you expect. The only thing is it currently only works on Chrome and Safari. They are working on a Firefox version but till then you can use the beta bookmarklet service which does the same thing but not so elegantly. - Email for Free
One of the things which Amazon don’t make very clear is the ability to send emails with attachments to Amazon and have them delivered for free over wifi. This of course totally displaces Amazon’s own conversion service, whispernet and if your like me, don’t really trust Amazon enough to give them access to everything on my kindle (see the whole 1984 issue), then you bought a wifi only kindle.
Your email address is what ever your kindle email is but with @free.kindle.com instead of @kindle.com. This is very handy for example I have sent things from my Evernote to the Kindle for further reading. Of course you have tell amazon which email address are valid, so you don’t get spam on your kindle. - Send to Kindle from Android
Nice little tool if you happen to for example get a tweet to a very interesting but lengthy post but can’t be bothered to read it on the small android screen. Usually I bookmark it using delicious, instapaper or readitlater but now I can go direct to the kindle which is handy.
The biggest problem with the kindle for me is simply once you read something in the google reader ebook its hard to find out who exactly wrote it. I keep meaning to modify the recipe include the blog titles. If I happen to be in a place with wifi, I can link to the kindle webbrowser but then I’m stuck again.
Ideally I would be able to send it to readitlater, instapaper or whatever. I though about using the tweet function but as I’ve discovered the tweets well pretty much useless. Don’t get me wrong it does what it says and its great if your reading a book but its no good for self published stuff.
Finally I don’t understand why but I can’t get my kindle to work with my HTC Desire mobile wifi hotspot (myfi). If I did I might be able to sort out some kind of solution but I can’t work out why…
Saying all this… I still love my kindle
I had multiple people tell me about the Inception App on Apple iOS devices. I think its interesting but not good enough to make me want to rush out and buy a apple device.
Interestingly, Michael Breidenbrücker is one of the guys behind the app. I know Michael from my course at Ravensbourne where he co-founded Last.FM and decided to go off and develop that away from the fingers of the college. Recently… he’s been focusing on RJDJ which is a music generation tool.
Anyway, the idea of Augmented sound isn’t new but its so so interesting. The rest of the app is well a little bit of a wet squid in my view but hey you can’t have it all. The app is pretty expensive but you do get a copy of the film tied to the app. There is a question in my mind if buying the app for 10 pounds and getting the ability to tweet and like sections is actually worth it.
Ether way, you can see Hollywood jumping into the app market in a big way in 2011. Warner brothers already have a Dark knight app too, while the Unstopable app is Fox’s work and runs on Android (the largest platform now).
I do find it intriguing that Inception isn’t available on Android, I wonder if the lack of content protection mechanism (or plainly put DRM) might be the problem for Warner Brothers? No problem for Fox or even Sony though…
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