Disqus - Friends of salcan

Re: The birth of the Kindle Fire and the death of the public library

David Cardinal — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:00:01 -0000

At the San Francisco public library by far the most popular item are the dozens of public access computers. There is almost always a line waiting for them. Clearly continued public access options for those who don't have their own devices will always be a desirable social good (maybe now that readers are as cheap as some books the libraries can be used to check out readers/tablets?)

Re: The birth of the Kindle Fire and the death of the public library

David Cardinal — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:04:29 -0000

Re: How does Swype really work?

David Cardinal — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 16:28:41 -0000

@Highlander--When asked the CEO of Swype said they have a version ready to go for the iPhone but need Apple to open up the keyboard API for it to work for the public. Interestingly he didn't _say_ anything about wanting a license fee so I don't know if money is also an issue or not.

It seems like the swype-like "hack" that is out for the iPhone may not really be based on Swype but instead be something similar but not nearly as polished or effective.

Re: How does Swype really work?

David Cardinal — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 11:41:49 -0000

As a footnote Graffiti is now available through the Amazon Appstore for Android free today. Palmsource successor company has apparently ported it. Not as good as Swype IMO but if you can't get at Swype or are curious about Graffiti and don't want to buy an old PalmPilot on eBay, now's your chance!

Re: Is your old computer costing you more than you think?

David Cardinal — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 13:42:54 -0000

Thanks for all the great discussion and in particular the real life examples. As to not going deep enough we wanted to get the word out for starters but there is a lot more that could be covered.

On the ROI comment the problem is that it varies massively with your energy situation. I have a friend who lives off the grid on solar so the net cost (and carbon footprint) of his computers is $0 until he turns on the generator. In my case we live in California and have some astronomical electric rates during peak hours which make the ROI of putting $100 worth of parts together to save $200 a year worth of electricity a no-brainer. Other states vary widely in their electric rates as do commercial and agricultural rates.

And as far as landfill that's another whole issue regardless of when you dispose of your machine. There are an increasing number of companies which try to do "green" recycling of what they can (assuming you can't find a good donation option) but a lot may still get junked.

PS I stand by the math although as one of the comments points out my phrasing could have been more explict. The article uses the real example of a 150 watt PC I was using to monitor our solar panels (some irony there I realize) and some other stuff that multiplied by 9000ish hours results in the stated over 1,000 KWh per year savings (which as you point out is the number you get multiplying 150 * 9).

Re: How does Swype really work?

David Cardinal — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 14:36:15 -0000

Baruch--Thanks for the tip on SlideIT. I downloaded the demo for my tablet and indeed it is very much like Swype. So far I think I still like Swype better (and it is free vs. $6) but for anyone who has trouble getting Swype or getting it to work (or just prefers the UI to SlideIT) SlideIT seems like a great alternative.

I've previously tried Swiftkey X when Swype wasn't available for tablets and I liked it but personally I find that I'm faster with Swype, FWIW.

Re: Is your old computer costing you more than you think?

David Cardinal — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:24:57 -0000

Shopping around you can get MSI or Foxconn mini-itx Mobos for $50-$60 in the US (I just checked newegg, for example). There are also some barebone kits that can be a good deal. But agreed that some of the other form factors have a much larger selection and more aggressive discounting based on high volume.

Re: What is HTML5, and why it will save the web from itself

David Cardinal — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:04:51 -0000

Thanks for pointing out that WebGL and the speech tag are separate standards effort although their usage is closely tied to HTML5 features (canvas in the case of WebGL) so from an adoption point of view they are closely coupled with HTML5.

Sorry you were disappointed in the article but thanks for helping out by clarifying those technical points.

Re: What is HTML5, and why it will save the web from itself

David Cardinal — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:05:05 -0000

Oops. Good catch.

Re: Long live Steve Jobs, successor to Edison and Disney

David Cardinal — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 11:04:54 -0000

Yes, Edison. The parallels are many and striking. Both became wealthy from innovation at an early age (telegraphy inventions in Edison's case). They each then invested heavily in future innovations in multiple fields. Edison invented recorded music with the phonograph and created a recording studio and company to provide content to his customers (not unlike the iPod and iTunes for digital music).

Edison went on to innovate in chemistry, motion picture recording and many other fields, holding over 1,000 patents. He systematized research by building the first industrial reseach lab in Menlo Park and surrounded it with his factories which produced his inventions, leading to the creation of General Electric.

And (much like Jobs) Edison was driven, working endless hours in his labs until he passed away.

Re: Your next phone: iPhone 4S or wait for Android Ice Cream Sandwich?

David Cardinal — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 12:00:35 -0000

Josh--The biggest unknown is the interface. Until vendors finalize tweaking their implementations of ICS and ship production units its hard to try to compare their interface to the iPhone interface.

For those who like Honeycomb on tablets ICS should be a winner (at least on phones where it is left alone by the vendor). But whether anyone currently hooked on an iPhone will consider 4G and some of the other features worth switching to Android ICS is still an open question.

Re: Long live Steve Jobs, successor to Edison and Disney

David Cardinal — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 13:13:17 -0000

wayzom--Interesting question about the mouse. I was working for Sun Micro when the Mac was announced and at the time we felt somewhat put upon that even though we'd been shipping a system with windows and a mouse for over a year (and of course PARC where Steve first saw it had been doing it internally and SRI had the mouse before that). But over time it became clear that if it'd just been us with our (then) $35K workstation windows and a mouse would never have had the impact they did when the Mac came out for $2K and appeared in campus bookstores for half that.

Re: Long live Steve Jobs, successor to Edison and Disney

David Cardinal — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 13:33:03 -0000

In terms of industry creation I was drawing the parallel between Edison creating the recorded music industry and Jobs essentially creating the digital music business -- and to some extent the computer animated movie business (although of course in both cases you can certainly argue that all those industries would have happened anyway, etc.). I agree he didn't create the PC industry, with or without mice:-)

Re: Amazon Silk’s fast new web: Is it safe and should you use it?

David Cardinal — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:04:43 -0000

Daniel--Presumably (although of course until the device ships we won't know which Android applications will run and if it doesn't have the Android market how easy it will be to get them). And as we mention in the article you can also turn off the acceleration in the Silk browser. So the question for users is going to be whether the improvement in speed will be worth the risk to their privacy. Personally I hope Amazon provides some granular control over that so you can accelerate common operations without exposing everything to their data-mines.

Re: What is HTML5, and why it will save the web from itself

David Cardinal — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:41:34 -0000

dreamer--A fair question with more than one answer. First, many of the Flash developers are intensely loyal to Flash and mis-trustful of HTM5 technologies. And they have plenty of grounds. Flash has delivered across platforms for many years now while the implementations of HTML5 are still uneven at best and the final nuances are only just now emerging. Flash still also covers a lot of ground in terms of functionality that HTM5 doesn't (yet at least--vendors are working to surround it with lots of other technologies to bring it to parity). And of course Adobe owns Flash so in some ways it isn't surprising that they continue to promote it but that they have come to the realization that they also have to get behind HTML5.

I think the HTML5 case is easiest for media-rich applications where you don't need massively complex functionality and where you haven't already built something in Flash that you need to throw out (magazines, newspapers, rock bands, organizations all come to mind instantly). Then come new productivity apps that need to be cross platform including Apple. Hard-core games may be the laggards?

Re: Your next phone: iPhone 4S or wait for Android Ice Cream Sandwich?

David Cardinal — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 11:32:10 -0000

James--The article does not say anything about Android being a hog. What it says is "in the Android ecosystem, where unruly applications can mysteriously sap processor cycles..." which I stand behind. I own and use an Android phone constantly (my second, as I've used Android for several years now) and an Android tablet. I love them both and enjoy fiddling with custom ROMs on the tablet (I leave the phone mostly alone:-), BUT it is very easy to use the openness that is Android and the large and uncontrolled set of applications available to make an Android device slow to respond because of the variety of background tasks--which is why Apple has only slowly introduced multi-tasking a bit at a time as processors have gotten faster and iOS has gotten more mature. Carriers have responded to the issue in some cases by trying to limit side-loading, not ship rooted devices, etc. (my own carrier AT&T comes to mind), because (in fairness to them) they typically get the blame.

So I agree with your last sentence that Android and iOS are very different solutions to the same problem. Users will still need to decide.

From what I have seen of Siri (going back to the original DARPA sponsored work which turned into a startup which Apple then bought) it goes way beyond anything I have ever seen done with the current Google offerings on a phone (although I'm sure Google will be working on something similar). Of course until it ships in a few days we won't know how practical it is, but it certainly a much more comprehensive solution to voice control than Google voice search or even the pretty slick Microsoft Voice Command application.

Re: What is Apple’s Siri, and will anyone use her?

David Cardinal — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 13:40:00 -0000

I think that'll work pretty well with BT, but I wonder about needing to hit the button. I realize why they need to do that but when I had voice command on my MS phone (and now voice search on my Android phone) many of the times I really want(ed) to use them were times when it was inconvenient to press the button (driving comes to mind, with the phone mounted up near the windshield). So I'm not knocking, but over time I think the industry will have to come up with a better way to activate voice commands that still protects against garbage inputs.

Re: What is Apple’s Siri, and will anyone use her?

David Cardinal — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 18:56:07 -0000

Apropos the button-in-car thing I was just playing with Google Voice Actions & Vliingo and in both cases they often either ask for confirmation or get things "almost" right and need some correcting. Either might be okay if you're hand-holding but both suck in a car. One measure of Siri's success may be whether it can get a command and get it right and go or needs to go back and forth this way.

Re: Your next phone: iPhone 4S or wait for Android Ice Cream Sandwich?

David Cardinal — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 21:39:14 -0000

One of the problems for Google in positioning Android is how much it varies by phone and by carrier so it is even hard to know how one user's experience compares with another. I will say that now that I am running Honeycomb on my tablet it has some pretty cool features I'd like to see on my phone so ICS should at a minimum give Android users the Honeycomb enhancements--unless of course their vendor or carrier hides them under a different UI--for better or worse.

Re: Improve your eyesight with an iPhone app

David Cardinal — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 11:53:29 -0000

This is an area of personal interest to me as someone who makes a living as a nature photographer but needs to wear glasses or contacts which definitely get in the way. My opthamologist (like most I've met) claim that eye exercises don't help, but anecdotally from spending a lot of time with game guides in Africa most of them have excellent vision -- even though they may have worn glasses as children when they lived in town, and their friends and family in town seem to have no better than eyes than any other group -- which leads me to believe that we can affect our vision -- whether negatively from close reading all day or positively through distance focusing or both I don't know -- so I do believe we'll learn more about ways to help our eye/brain see better.

That said anything priced like this app strikes me as a red flag. A monthly fee for eye exercise software? I'd be interested in a controlled study of their exercises vs. the common wisdom of just taking your eyes off the screen, focusing in the distance and going for a walk every day while looking out at the horizon:-)

Re: Virtual stores help shoppers save real time

David Cardinal — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 23:24:20 -0000

Marrach--At least in theory these virtual stores are designed to help with exactly the issue you're describing. Because they are life-size displays that are exact photographs of real store aisles they should provide for (more or less) the same aisle-browsing experience you'd get in a store. Of course the subway wall isn't the size of the store so it is an edited selection, and you can't pick they products up (since they are just photographs) but it at least seems like they are a novel combination of the convenience of online with the display advantages of a physical store.

Re: What is internet sales tax, and will it cripple e-commerce?

David Cardinal — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:18:49 -0000

Stan & Keith -- Thanks for such well thought out comments. I'm also ground-zero for this issue as I make most of my living from photography & much of my business is online (and through affiliate relationships, which is another story...). Part of the reason I researched this story is to sort out what the heck I'd have to do with my website & e-Commerce shopping cart system in the event of such a tax. Frankly dealing with sales tax in one state is already a hassle for me (I'm my own bookkeeper and tax accountant) so I'm naturally skeptical, but believe there is some need to level the playing field, so I'm hopeful that the ultimate solution isn't crippling to small businesses.

Re: What is internet sales tax, and will it cripple e-commerce?

David Cardinal — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:19:24 -0000

That must have been fun (not)!

Re: What is internet sales tax, and will it cripple e-commerce?

David Cardinal — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:20:57 -0000

Daryl--That's a great question and one I asked myself when writing this. Definitely fuel for another article as I suspect that situation is different and at least as complex. I can only imagine the possibility of US retailers moving across the border to avoid sales tax. That would be extremely unfortunate.

Re: What is internet sales tax, and will it cripple e-commerce?

David Cardinal — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:22:40 -0000

Agreed. One reason I like the phone shopping apps is that when I see something in a store I can look it up online -- not to buy it there but to make sure the retail price isn't too insane -- and then with confidence buy it locally.