think differently big

Samsung Is the Next… Acceptable Apple

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 01:25:07 +0200

So you have two superlatives: biggest phone manufacturer and biggest TV manufacturer. Add in some tablets, some washing machines, and some acceptable software and you have a real and vibrant ecosystem.

Adding crap on top of even the greatest thing makes it crap too. So, at most, you get an acceptable ecosystem.

TRIGG: A Framework for Predictions

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:12:31 +0200

Quickly identifying the type of a prediction will help you either create your own list or going through others’ much easier.

There are 4 types of predictions.

Truism. This category should be obvious. Already confirmed facts, sometimes in a new packaging that is supposed to make them sound new, carrying no actual value, no new or interesting information.
PR-esque. There are types of roles—think C-level management—requiring people to formulate some predictions characterized mostly by unjustifiable optimistism. These predictions usually take the form of: “this is the year of our product”. Sometimes there are facts or some truth behind them, but most often these are given an unbalanced weight or emphasis compared with reality.
I told you so or It was me that said this firstly. There are jobs—think analysts or journalists—that require people to throw out the most phantasmagoric predictions in the hopes that at some point in the future they’ll get any form of confirmation thus justifying their titles.
Gibberish. These out of thin air predictions are formulated for making the numbers. Having 5 instead of 4, or 10 instead of 8 bullet points is more marketable.

Update: After some more thinking I’ve concluded there is a form of predictions that could be considered valuable or at least interesting.

Guesstimates: a combination of historical data or experience with a dose of intuition. The trick for these not to fall either in the truism or the “I told you so” categories is that they need to hit just the right balance of data and intuition. Not too much guessing as that would easily make them phantasmagoric (or too optimistic). Nor too much data and no guessing as that would result in truisms.

18 Fonts I'd Use, ComicBookFonts, and Their Jan.1st Special Offer

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:52:25 +0200

It all started with searching for and experimenting with different monospaced fonts in IDEs. But then reading and writing so much slowly transformed me into a font maniac. For a while the Personal and then Portfolio Typekit plans offered me comfort.

The last episode of Andy Ihnatko’s podcast introduced me to the ComicBookFonts and their special offer on each year’s Jan. 1st: every font for $20.12^[1].

So even if I know I’ll not be able to get them, I’ve put together the list of fonts I’d like to have:

Nine fonts isn’t much, right? But I couldn’t stop here and I have a second list of nice to haves:

Andy Ihnatko posted his 10 picks here.

If you are a font addict too, I bet this whole thing will make you waste a bit of time. But hey, it’s the holiday season so we’re allowed to relax and dream of gifts.

The offer price is actually the year in cents. 2012 means $20.12. ↩

Analysts, Reports, and Market Predictions: Carrier IQ Nominated as IDC's 2011 Innovative Business Analytics Companies Under $100M to Watch

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:34:47 +0200

While it’s outside the main focus of my NoSQL blog, reading that IDC nominated Carrier IQ—let’s say it is a Big Data company—in its 2011 Innovative Business Analytics Companies Under $100M to Watch, made me wonder how often are analysts off or how limited are these reports. Were they off when predicting the future of NoSQL Database companies too?

The iOS Missing Gesture

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 06:05:27 +0200

The 4-fingers gesture on iPad is better than double-tapping the home button. But this would be the perfect one.

Power Is Fast Shifting From End Users and Software Developers to Operating System Vendors

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 10:45:13 +0200

Power Is Fast Shifting From End Users and Software Developers to Operating System Vendors:

Jonathan Zittrain:

If we allow ourselves to be lulled into satisfaction with walled gardens, we’ll miss out on innovations to which the gardeners object, and we’ll set ourselves up for censorship of code and content that was previously impossible. We need some angry nerds.

Two Decades of Productivity: Vim's 20th Anniversary

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:03:37 +0200

Two Decades of Productivity: Vim's 20th Anniversary:

The vi text editor was originally created in the late ’70s by Bill Joy, an early BSD developer who later went on to cofound Sun Microsystems. The original implementation of vi was conceived as an interactive “visual” mode for an ed-like line editor called ex. It was developed at first on an old ADM-3A terminal, about a decade before computer mice became ubiquitous. Users relied on commands and keyboard-based navigation to interact with the editor.

While I don’t consider myself a vi expert, nor a heavy user, once the discussion gets to the vi vs Emacs, I’m in the vi camp.

Daedalus Touch: Tools That Do the Unexpected

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 04:45:24 +0200

I was getting ready to post a hint about the ~~nice~~^[1] iPad editor Daedalus Touch being available for $1.99, when I’ve discovered its dark face.

One of the features I was looking for is Daedalus Touch’s integration with Dropbox. The action is called “Import from Dropbox”. But this import has a dark face: if the files you are importing have a non .txt extension they get deleted and replaced with .txt copies. Which part of an import operation includes renaming files?

I hate tools that are supposed to do one thing and they end up making completely unrelated decisions for me. What could I say more about the cases when they are making the wrong ones.

Truth being told Daedalus Touch’s interface and gestures are nice. ↩

Developers Explain Changes in Growl 1.3, but Miss Important Aspect

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 03:45:37 +0200

MacStories published a short summary of the explanation provided by Growl’s developers about the mess in Growl 1.3.

Unfortunately the summary missed one very important aspect in the devs’ post:

Out-of-date applications don’t work with Growl 1.3 - Due to the changes in Growl 1.3 in order to get Growl into the App Store, some applications currently do not work with Growl and will need to be updated. Some applications have already updated to address this problem. If you are a developer who requires assistance with these changes, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help. Users can use Growl Version Detective to help mitigate this problem, but long term changes need to come from developers.

I’ve used the Growl Version Detective (you can get it from this page) and I haven’t found any application on my system that is compatible with Growl 1.3.

While I do understand the reasons for pushing out the new version as early as possible—and I payed for Growl to support its future, the Growl team has made a terrible mistake: they broke compatibility with older applications. I’m pretty sure they could have thought of workarounds that would not have disappointed exactly the people that hurried to support the dev team.

Steve Jobs's Ideas vs Execution

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 19:03:16 +0200

Steve Jobs:

To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

and separately:

You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90 percent of the work. And if you just tell all these other people “here’s this great idea,” then of course they can go off and make it happen. And the problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. […]

Via John Gruber.

Day-O

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:29:53 +0200

Day-O:

Not only does it look nicer than the OS level clock, but it provides a tad more functionality.

WriteRoom 3.0

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 10:24:29 +0200

WriteRoom 3.0:

Somebody should stop me.

Luckly WriteRoom 3.0 is not expensive: $9.99 in the Mac AppStore.

Tablets and News

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 04:14:33 +0200

Stephen M. Hackett quoting a Pew Research Center report:

Consuming news (everything from the latest headlines to in-depth articles and commentary) ranks as one of the most popular activities on the tablet, about as popular as sending and receiving email (54% email daily on their tablet), and more popular than social networking (39%), gaming (30%), reading books (17%) or watching movies and videos (13%). The only activity that people said they were more likely to do on their tablet computer daily is browse the web generally (67%).

The survey also finds that three-in-ten tablet news users (defined for this study as the 77% of all tablet users who get news at least weekly) say they now spend more time getting news than they did before they had their tablet. Just 4% say they spend less time while two-thirds (65%) spend about the same amount of time.

A third (33%) of tablet news users say they are turning to new sources for news on their tablet, sources they had not turned to on other platforms such as television or their desktop computer. And, more than four in ten (42%) say they regularly read in-depth news articles and analysis on their tablet.

These are very impressive numbers when you think that the whole publishing industry is having economical issues.

Technology and Design

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 01:51:59 +0300

Technology and Design:

Stephen Fry:

Henry Ford didn’t invent the motor car, Rockefeller didn’t discover how to crack crude oil into petrol, Disney didn’t invent animation, the Macdonald brothers didn’t invent the hamburger, Martin Luther King didn’t invent oratory, neither Jane Austen, Tolstoy nor Flaubert invented the novel and D. W. Griffith, the Warner Brothers, Irving Thalberg and Steven Spielberg didn’t invent film-making. Steve Jobs didn’t invent computers and he didn’t invent packet switching or the mouse. But he saw that there were no limits to the power that creative combinations of technology and design could accomplish.

KeyStroke: Customizable Shortcuts for Safari

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 00:42:21 +0300

KeyStroke: Customizable Shortcuts for Safari:

This is just a fantastic Safari extension. No need to move your hands away from the keyboard anymore. Thanks Brett Terpstra for the hint.

Information: Paper vs Digital

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:38:24 +0300

From an old Make issue:

[…] our real challenge today is not to use less paper but to keep less paper.

For ubiquitous capture, planning, and brainstorming, paper’s tought to beat. For storage, searching, and editing, the point goes to digital.

Considering information works the same way as code—written once, read many times—an optimal system should allow the usage of both mediums. For a while I thought Livescribe could be the solution. But in the end it didn’t work for me.

If Google Reader Changes…

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 11:42:30 +0300

Considering there was never an official API, if Google Reader will make radical changes, does it mean that it will break all the apps we came to love—Reeder (Mac, iPhone, iPad), Pure Reader, Mr Reader, River of News? That’ll be just a new way for Google to piss off some more users.

I couldn’t find a better way to say this than MG Siegler’s comment about Google products:

And I’ve spoken with that team a number of times behind the scenes about other issues. Nothing ever gets fixed. In fact, it often gets worse.

Multimarkdown Composer: Yet Another Mac Markdown Editor

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 10:44:57 +0300

If you thought we’ve already got enough Markdown editors on Mac, just add another one to your list Multimarkdown Composer. This one comes directly from Fletcher Penney, the guy who extended Markdown into MultiMarkdown. At first glance the app looks like an extended version of TextEdit with support for syntax coloring and auto-generating syntax. And it integrates very well with Marked.

As a user of a custom Markdown/MultiMarkdown syntax, I’m missing the option to configure MultiMarkdown Composer processor. But I hope it will come with a later version.

Multimarkdown Composer is selling at a special release $7.99 price in the App Store.

How Does Google Make Money?

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:46:02 +0300

How Does Google Make Money?:

Dan Frommer:

In a word: Ads.

This past quarter, Google generated $9.7 billion of total gross revenue. […] Google says it paid out $1.8 billion last quarter to AdSense partners, and another $400 million to “certain distribution partners and others who direct traffic to our website.”

Google is making aprox. 5 times more than content producers by indexing their content. It is the living proof that content aggregation can be profitable.

Hidding Purchased Apps in App Store

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 05:43:39 +0300

If you are playing with a lot of applications either on the Mac or your iOS devices, the list of purchased applications just gets longer and longer. But I noticed that you can remove apps from the App Store:

Was this feature there before?