John Haro's Blahg

posts from a technologist and ne'er-do-well

Filed under: technology

On Google: Bad Publicity Is a Good Thing?

Not only has this heap of grievances failed to deter DecorMyEyes, but as Ms. Rodriguez’s all-too-cursory Google search demonstrated, the company can show up in the most coveted place on the Internet’s most powerful site.

Which means the owner of DecorMyEyes might be more than just a combustible bully with a mean streak and a potty mouth. He might also be a pioneer of a new brand of anti-salesmanship — utterly noxious retail — that is facilitated by the quirks and shortcomings of Internet commerce and that tramples long-cherished traditions of customer service, like deference and charm.

Nice? No.

Profitable?

“Very,” says Vitaly Borker, the founder and owner of DecorMyEyes, during the first of several surprisingly unguarded conversations.

via nytimes.com

Threaten your customers with physical violence and you can get to the top of the natural search results. Your google ranking is based on a lot of things, but attitude or opinion is not one of them. Using machines to determine 'sentiment' is a significant artificial intelligence challenge and likely one that will not be fully solved in the near term. I do think its likely that machine learning will soon get good enough at it to have some statistically relevant value over large amounts of data.

Blu-ray Not Coming to Mac Anytime Soon

In Steve Job's way, he engaged in an email thread with a person named Siva on why the new Mac mini did not include a Blu-ray dvd player.  Steve's response:
Bluray is looking more and more like one of the high end audio formats that appeared as the successor to the CD - like it will be beaten by Internet downloadable formats.

When I read Nicholas Negroponte's book "Being Digital" back in1996, he pretty much predicted the death of the video rental store, the proliferation of broadband internet over coaxial cable, and the death of any physical media (atoms) used to transport digital (binary) information. It was soon after that i started the laborious and painful task of converting my CD's to MP3 (back then CD's ripped very slowly and you had to hand type the track names).
I think Apple very smartly can and should avoid putting blu-ray onto the mac and while we are at it, I look forward to phasing out the CD/optical drive entirely. The only time I've used the CD drive in my macbook in the last year was to rip the very last vestiges of my CD collection.

Job's closing reply to Siva's assertion that the medium term benefits were substantial said:

No, free, instant gratification and convenience (likely in that order) is what made the downloadable formats take off. And the downloadable movie business is rapidly moving to free (Hulu) or rentals (iTunes) so storing purchased movies or TV shows is not an issue.

I think you may be wrong - we may see a fast broad move to streamed free and rental content at sufficient quality (at least 720p) to win almost everyone over.

I do not have, and will not buy a Blue-ray player. I will not buy movies or music distributed on plastic transported on trains, driven by semi trucks, and then stored in huge piles in the backs of Best Buy warehoses. Wake up, its 2010.

Adobe details zero-day exploit, affects Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix, and Solaris

The zero-day exploit, without question, is the mother of all vulnerabilities. A recent report put the black market price tag of a good zero-day exploit — on that can be widely distributed — at just north of $50,000. Governments and private security firms have been rumored to pay more than quadruple that figure on the “white market” if the vulnerability is severe enough. We’ve got the complete security bulletin, with mitigation instructions, queued up for you after the bounce.
via boygeniusreport.com

One exploit to rule them all... all except devices that do NOT run Adobe Flash

Why I May Actually Buy eBooks from Apple instead of Amazon

An incredibly dim lightbulb went off for me this morning about the iPad, iPhone, iWhatever. It never occurred to me that Apple's app and book DRM would work the same way their other media DRM works, in that you can share with 5 authorized computers.

I find all DRM annoying but as much as I love the Kindle, it is very locked down in that you can not share a book with ANYONE.  I can understand the desire to not have your books posted all over the intertubes for free, but the fact that I could not lend a book with someone in my household bugged me.  I forgive DRM, as most people do, for the convenience offered by the kindle (a devil's bargain).  

So, back to the dim lightbulb.  Apple's ebook DRM is the same as its application DRM and movie DRM, that is, you can authorize the content on 5 devices.  

Books downloaded from the iBookstore can be placed on up to five computers you own that you’ve authorized with your iTunes Store account. You can sync your books to any iPads you own. Audiobooks and ePub files you've added to iTunes will appear in Books under Library. To sync Books to your iPad, connect it to your computer using the cable it came with. In iTunes, select iPad under Devices, then click the Books tab. Choose the books you would like to read on iPad then press Sync. Books will sync to iPad even if iBooks is not installed; to read synced books, download iBooks from the App Store.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4059

I still love the Kindle and for pure reading it surpasses the iPad, but this slightly less restriced level of sharing with Apple is making me think twice.  Or at least making me think about WHERE I buy a book before I buy it.  

My .02 On The iPad

Ok, so you want to know what I think of the iPad that I bought for my dear wife that I won't let her use so that I can type this post on it? Here go:

1. It is fast. Really. Surprisingly. Fast. I think the fact that it is fit-to-purpose computing it just seems snappier than even my overpowered MacBook Pro. Switching between applications, zooming, scrolling, keyboard... It's snappy

2. The keyboard is unexpectedly usable. I'm a fast iPhone dual-thumb typist despite not matching what i do on a full keyboard. I'm finding using the same sort of zen-let-the-autocorrect-prediction-work-for-you way that serves me well on the iPhone works doubly well here on the iPad. No, it's not a full size keyboard by any stretch, but it's plenty good for me to write a long email without suffering, or even to write this post. I could see taking this into meetings instead of a notebook.

3. The industrial design is excellent but this is hardly worth mentioning because its the same level of quality we have all grown used to with the iPhone and MacBook. That being said the screen is big and bright and beautiful. Text is crisp and it's easy on the eyes all around.

4. The applications on launch day are impressive. I'll save a list of favorites for another post, but what is important is that there are thousands written specifically for the iPad. Enough to keep you busy downloading for a while and if this is day 1, I can't wait to see what is out next month or next year.

5. It is the ultimate web browser. It's amazingly comfortable and intuitive way to browse. Reading a web page in portrait and intelligently sized for the ipad has a completely different feel than browsing on a computer with even a very large screen. You can actually sit back and browse and it feels more like you are reading a book. Think about it the next time you hunch over the laptop on your coffee table. I can't overstate the importance of this most basic "feature".

 

Thats enough for now.  Its great, Its met my expectations and then some.  Can't wait to get my own :)

 
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