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How to Find Your Blues Name
This handy little chart helps you figure out what your Blues Name should be. Mine, Peg Leg Eyes Hopkins is the death of my blues career. What’s your Blues Name?
Steve Jobs Impressed by Lytro
On the first episode of GadgetReport.TV, I said Lytro’s light-field camera was my favorite innovation of 2011. A new book called Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky tells a story that suggest Steve Jobs may have thought the same thing.
The company’s CEO, Ren Ng, a brilliant computer scientist with a PhD from Stanford, immediately called Jobs, who picked up the phone and quickly said, “if you’re free this afternoon maybe we would could get together.” Ng, who is thirty-two, hurried to Palo Alto, showed Jobs a demo of Lytro’s technology, discussed cameras and product design with him, and, at Jobs’s request, agreed to send him an email outlining three things he’d like Lytro to do with Apple.
Who knows if Apple and Lytro reached a deal, but a Lytro can take an immediate photo without the need to focus so it makes sense that Apple would want that tech in future iPhones.
Adam Lashinsky’s new book about Apple is based on interviews with Apple insiders. In 2008 Fortune cover story, Lashinsky predicted Tim Cook would succeed Steve Jobs as Apple CEO. The book is available for pre-order from Amazon.com.
Read MoreIf Browsers Were Guns
If Browsers Were Guns
I don’t necessarily agree that Chrome is a machine gun and Safari is an antique gun. Chrome freezes up way too frequently on my Macs. I prefer it, but Safari is more reliable. I haven’t used Opera enough to get that joke, but the punchline about IE made me LOL because people I know using it constantly get warnings about malware they wouldn’t have to deal with if they just used a better browser.
Read More15 Braille Sesame Seed Burgers
Wimpy, a burger restaurant in Johannesburg offers menus in Braille. They wanted to get the word out, so they asked the ad agency, Metropolitan Republic for help. The final idea was to bake some burgers with messages written in Braille with sesame seeds. The messages explain what’s in the burgers. When the 15 Braille burgers were delivered to 15 blind people and when they read the sesame seeds, they break out in smiles and it’s a beautiful thing.
Read MoreTech vs. Entertainment
I’ve been sick and mostly in bed for the last three days. Through the sweat and fever I watched as the tech community joined together to let congress know elected representatives don’t understand the tech they are attempting to regulate. It made me proud to be a little part of this disparate group of people who come together when our ones and zeros are threatened. The Internet is speech and it is press. This certainly won’t be the only time the tech community will have to join to defend freedom against power established in an analog economy, but I hope we won’t go through too many of these battles.
I trust technology more than I could ever trust religion, government, and because I have a bit of Aspergers, I trust technology more than I trust in personal relationships. The constant purpose of technology is to work to improve life and solve problems. After technology, the thing I love is show business. I cherish the idea of people working to entertain.
In the last 100 years, we’ve seen technology transform transportation and manufacturing. In the last 60 years, technology created new forms of entertainment. Big, strong companies with expensive equipment and distribution systems worked to build bridges between content creators and content consumers. In the last 20 years, technology has begun to disintermediate the big, powerful systems of content distribution that produced physical products like books, records, cassettes, CDs, video tapes, DVDs and films. Change is hard and the established power of the entertainment industry wants to protect territory that no longer exists. Entertainment executives are like kings in a castle building motes to protect rejected authority.
It’s hard to let go of systems that worked well and made money. Trust me! I know how hard that is! Ultimately businesses created to produce, sell and distribute analog media products will have invent new business models or go out of business. So far the entertainment industry has been willing to spend massive amounts of money to try to stop technology. With PIPA and SOPA, they got close.
The entertainment business is holding on too tight and focused too much on the good ‘ol days. The sooner they embrace and work with the evolution of technology and the inevitability of change the sooner they’ll enjoy opportunity provided by innovation. Tech doesn’t want to compete with entertainment. Tech wants to invent new possibilities. The dispute over SOPA and PIPA shows tech culture has matured enough to have political muscle, but tech culture doesn’t want to have to deal with that nonsense. It’s an inefficient distraction from the work that matters.
Technology will ultimately win because technology constantly evolves to break through barriers and limitations. The culture that creates tech routes around anything or anyone who says no, don’t, stop, or can’t. Resistance is futile.
Read MoreJon Stewart … CNN … Bad Segment Idea
Jon Stewart is a national treasure. He has to continually ask CNN if they’ve run an idea through a human brain. As CNN grows more and more inane, I’m glad that young Americans are getting news from a place where people think.
Classic Apple iPhone 4 Case
I pray to sweet baby Jesus by way of Saint Steve Jobs that this concept for an iPhone 4 case gets made! I’ve never wanted a case for iPhone 4 because I regard the 4 and the 4S as the most prefect piece of industrial design humanity has enjoyed so far.
But THIS! This idea from a design firm called Les Forges MDK is the only external case for the iPhone 4 or 4S that can be justified.
OMGfun!
- Happy Dog … As Long as the Music PlaysThis video is super cute. It features a golden retriever watching someone play a guitar. Guitar playing … dog has a happy face. Guitar stops … dog has a sad face. […]
- Puppies and Christmas Wrapping Paper!Delightful video with puppies, enchanting Christmas music, and wrapping paper. […]
- Rozzi Crane Skips American Idol and Shows Awesome on YouTube!The best thing about new media is that it gives any talented person access to the world with nothing separating their talent from the audience. Rozzi Crane shows the world she matters in this video. No great lighting. No audio magic. Just real talent. […]