Connecting the Dots

Apple iTablet: It Does Everything!

Steve Borsch — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:54:42 +0000

Apparently this Digitimes article is all the buzz over on Techmeme supposedly saying the rumored Apple tablet is delayed.

DAMMIT anyhow! I fully expected this new tablet to cure cancer, singlehandedly save the publishing industry, remove toe fungus once-and-for-all, and let we mobile users be much, much cooler than anyone who doesn't yet have one (until millions have it like the iPhone, you know, THOSE PEOPLE WHO INSIST ON USING "XYLOPHONE" AS THEIR RINGTONE!).

Now it's not coming out or, as linkbaiter PC World says, it might be dead? This blows.

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TV of the Future

Steve Borsch — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:06:55 +0000

Was incredibly pleased I stumbled across this video today since, what with the internet, I've been wrestling with what the TV of the future will look like. ;-)

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…and people wonder why I drive a Prius

Steve Borsch — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:06:08 +0000

It is so obvious from even casual observation that consumption of oil for energy is continuing to accelerate. Too many people I know continue to choose gas guzzlers when they buy a new car, as if "someone out there" will take care of what's happening to world oil supply.

From the Economist:

A Developing Thirst

GLOBAL demand for oil is set to rise from 84.7m barrels per day (bpd) in 2008 to 105m bpd in 2030, says the International Energy Agency in its latest annual energy report. Transport will account for 97% of this increase as rising numbers of cars hit the roads of the developing world. Demand from these countries will overtake that of the industrialised OECD nations by 2030. By then, America, Japan and Europe will be using less oil than in 1980. But the thirst for oil will balloon in Asia—and in India and China in particular—where demand is predicted to rise by as much as 400% compared with 2008.

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Whistleblower Claims IEA Is Downplaying Peak Oil

Steve Borsch — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:23:39 +0000

Yesterday the Guardian ran a story based on two anonymous sources inside the International Energy Agency who claimed that the agency had distorted key figures on oil reserves."The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the [IEA] who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying. The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves."Today the IEA released its annual energy outlook and rejected the whistleblowers' charges. The Guardian has an editorial claiming that the economic establishment is too fearful to come clean on the reality of oil suppplies, and makes an analogy with the (marginalized, demonized) economists who warned of a coming economic collapse in 2007.

from Slashdot

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Verizon Ad dissing AT&T

Steve Borsch — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:28:51 +0000

Always humorous to see one company bash another, but the Verizon red has one dirty little secret: it's CDMA and not compatible with the rest of the world and is not Long Term Evolution (LTE), the oft-termed "4G" mobile networks (AT&T touts 2011 as 4G rollout and Verizon network-wide by 2010….but we'll see).

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River of News at Flood Stage

Steve Borsch — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:35:39 +0000

I'll be challenged to get to my RSS feeds today (or this weekend) due to several commitments, and that 824 articles/posts that are in Google Reader at 8am will be 2,000 or more by the end of the day and several thousand by late in the day Sunday.

How do you keep up with your river of news…or do you just not?

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Social Media Breakfast at Summit Brewery

Steve Borsch — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:30:00 +0000

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Jon Stewart on Net Neutrality

Steve Borsch — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:23:21 +0000

John McCain against net neutrality? Surprise, surprise.

This Fortune archived article entitled, “How I Work” from March of 2006 will give you an interesting overview of how clueless Senator McCain really is…thank God he's married to a wizard:

I read my e-mails, but I don’t write any. I’m a Neanderthal–I don’t even type. I do have rudimentary capabilities to call up some websites, like the New York Times online, that sort of stuff. No laptop. No PalmPilot. I prefer my schedule on notecards, which I keep in my jacket pocket. But my wife has enormous capability. Whenever I want something I ask her to do it. She’s just a wizard. She even does my boarding passes–people can do that now. When we go to the movies, she gets the tickets ahead of time. It’s incredible.

Detailed explanations of net neutrality don't work but humor sure does. Behold Jon Steward on net neutrality and his references to Senator McCain:

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Pew Internet: Twitter & Status Updating

Steve Borsch — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:33:00 +0000

The always insightful and useful Pew Internet reports have become must-reads for anyone who cares to gain knowledge of trends related to the internet, web and its use. In a report released just days ago entitled, "Twitter and Status Updating: Fall 2009" they, once again, deliver much of what we savvy social media participants already know, but do so in a way that even we can gain significant value from by reading it.

From the abstract:

"Some 19% of internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others. This represents a significant increase over previous surveys in December 2008 and April 2009, when 11% of internet users said they use a status-update service.

Three groups of internet users are mainly responsible for driving the growth of this activity: social network website users, those who connect to the internet via mobile devices, and younger internet users – those under age 44.

In addition, the more devices someone owns, the more likely they are to use Twitter or another service to update their status. Fully 39% of internet users with four or more internet-connected devices (such as a laptop, cell phone, game console, or Kindle) use Twitter, compared to 28% of internet users with three devices, 19% of internet users with two devices, and 10% of internet users with one device.

The median age of a Twitter user is 31, which has remained stable over the past year. The median age for MySpace is now 26, down from 27 in May 2008, and the median age for LinkedIn is now 39, down from 40. Facebook, however, is graying a bit: the median age for this social network site is now 33, up from 26 in May 2008.

It will probably become more difficult to track status updating as an independent activity as social network updates feed into Twitter and vice versa. For now, it is clear that a “social segment” of internet users is flocking to both social network sites and status update services. This segment is likely to grow as ever more internet users adopt mobile devices as a primary means of going online."

Go to the site and you can read the entire report online or download a PDF of it.

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Trusting Your Own Eyes

Steve Borsch — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:53:47 +0000

Imagine watching President Obama speak on TV and watch him tell us he's actually a "closet" Republican, was just kidding about universal health care, and has a secret man crush on Glenn Beck. Ludicrous right? Someday…maybe not.

Watch this TED video and realize how close we are to no longer being able to believe what we're seeing in video. From needing experts to determine whether a video is fake, in the same way we now hire Photoshop experts to examine the pixels in an image to determine if it's been altered.

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