Communication design & technology. Sharing media & communication news, design resources and technology innovations.
You know that guy, Steve Jobs? What a jerk! He has never ever donated one dollar! Luckily, his wife did.
Anonymously.
PS: Jokes aside, I love rich humble people, that don’t care about making their donations public. I’d bet Steve Jobs actually contributed a lot, but hated to be in the spotlight. Most probably, he preferred to be seen as the bad guy in the industry.
A recent study on human willpower, involving college students and baked goods, should be cautionary here. Its results suggest that our willpower gets tired, like a muscle, so when we use it a lot in the course of a day we end up hardly being able to use it at all by day’s end. It seems to follow that, faced with media’s stronger, more regular seductions, we’re bound to give in earlier and more often. Perhaps this helps explain why the ends of long American workdays often feature alcohol, dessert, and hours of consumer media.
Oh, this is a very good article.
One of the problems with the U.S. economy, in fact, is that American corporations have become so obsessed with near-term profit growth that they’re achieving it by underinvesting in the future. (…) But firing employees and cutting research and development spending this year may also depress growth two or three years from now, when the products that this extra investment might have produced would finally have hit the market. Thus, in the interests of pleasing impatient short-term shareholders, the companies might be shortchanging their long term performance—not to mention the rest of us.
A good read.
Just what we needed to find funny cats.
Good to know.
A cube that you’ll put on a table or a shelf. It has a camera that will live stream whatever happens in your house straight on your phone. And it has a laser that will project a red dot on the floor, so your cat stays busy. Oh, yeah, and you can move the red dot wherever you want, using the app on your phone, so more fun for the cat.
Google buys companies because, well, they can. It’s not really a win, it’s more of a loss. Wall Street is just virtual money. It’s a game played by investors. Some get richer, some get poorer. But in the end, it’s about the company and its potential to innovate. Google stopped innovating. Google is in the money game now.
To put it shortly, I hate Facebook chat. I turn it off, it turns on, well, just because. How the hell do you shut it down completely? Is there any setting like that? Because, as far as I can tell, there’s some privacy Facebook lacks to respect. If I say that I DO NOT WANT TO USE FACEBOOK CHAT, I HATE THE DAMN OVERLAYER AND I DO NOT WANT OTHERS TO SEE THAT I’M ONLINE, why in hell would Facebook don’t give a shit about WHAT I WANT and just keeps turning it on?
I do believe there’s a privacy issue here. And if anyone would ever go in court with Facebook, he or she would win.
VASLUI, Romania (Reuters) - Valentin Boanta, sitting in his jail cell, proudly explains the device he has invented which, he says, could make the world’s ATMs impregnable even to tech-savvy criminals like himself.
His invention - an anti-skimming device that can be used even in older generations ATMs - was awarded at the International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva, probably the most important exhibition of its kind in the world.
Now, that’s what penitence should be about, right? :)
Imagine texting while driving, or placing a call while showering, without holding your phone in your hands. It’s not sci-fi any more â a new technology allows information like text messages and driving directions to be projected onto a contact lens.
Beat that, Google!
The Twitter church :D
Reading the title, I said “Damn, sounds like a James Bond movie.” Then I read the article and, yeah, it’s a great satire. And it’s a great story, actually. And like all the stories, there’s a bit of truth in there. Unfortunately, that satirised truth is rather similar to a James Bond movie, where a villain is silently working on new ways to rule the world. And that’s pretty much what Google seems to be doing. I said *seems*, OK?
The Czech National Symphonic Orchestra playing on iPads and iPhones.
I don’t know if it was actually live, using the devices - which would actually be really cool -, or if it’s just playback, but it’s a hell of a good idea.
My first article on Medium.
Just take a look at the following titles from 9to5mac.com:
Soon, probably, we’ll hear about Google Music or whatever it’s called, coming to iOS.
On Hangouts
Let’s put it this way: Google’s competitors on the messaging segment are Viber and Whatsapp. Maybe iMessages combined with Facetime, which I wouldn’t be really sure about it. What do they do? They take Hangouts to iOS. AND to the desktop (Viber, anyone?)
I’m not sure how they expect to make money out of Hangouts, but most probably it’s going to be shut down in three or four years due to being Google’s. It’s rather interesting how a Google+ feature turned to be a standalone app. Maybe Google is trying to bring more traction to Google+. Or they’ll just shut it down because no one actually uses it.
On Google Play
What’s even more interesting is their choice to launch Google Play on iOS. Basically, Android is not profitable enough, maybe not profitable at all, they have users who don’t pay for apps (whatever apps, including games,) so they try to make money on the competitor’s platform. It’s actually funny and says a lot about Android users.
Most interesting though, is going to be when they’ll launch Google Play, the music edition, for iOS. Because it is going to happen. Right now, Google isn’t about innovation or about free stuff anymore, it’s about making money. Google is in the money game now.
Google kind of confirms that Android is pretty much an operating system that costs more than it actually delivers.
That’s pretty sad, actually.
