Neuhäusler Weekly

[Comment]

I start seeing more and more people in the subway using their iPads. They seem to either read eBooks or they seem to use their iPads to listen to music, headphones connected. I can't stop thinking that over time the weight and the size of the iPad, compare to a Kindle, Nook, or iPod, will convince them that their iPad is of much better use at home or at the coffee-shop, and not on the subway.

[NyTimes]

• "Touchable Gadgets Win Over Users" [nytimes]
• "Retargeting Ads Follow Surfers to Other Sites" [nytimes]
• "A Book Attracts Loads of Facebook Fans. But Why?" [nytimes]
• "Print or Pixels? Publishers Strive to Advance Both" [nytimes]

[Links]

• Heavy Drinkers Outlive Nondrinkers, Study Finds [link]
• Let a Thousand Personalized Newspapers Bloom [link]
• Steve Jobs at Stanford [link]

[Comment]

A hypocritical newspaper reader? I'm sitting at the airport. Reading one of those hotel-provided newspapers. It feels weird, it feels so old-styled. What a waste of resources. Why would everyone still read those newspapers ... Every Sunday morning I enjoy my two hours of news and article browsing in my beloved newspaper. I like to 'stumple-upon' interesting articles; those articles I would have never seen in the online version of the newspaper. I like its 'single-tasking' way of consuming information; reading only ... and it somehow smells good.

[NyTimes]

• "Technology Leads More Park Visitors Into Trouble" [nytimes]
• "In Georgia, a Megamansion Is Finally Sold" [nytimes]
• "People Subscribers to Get Free App for iPad" [nytimes]

[Links]

• Why I’m Reading Blogs Again [link]
• Privacy and Facebook's Widgets [link]
• The illustrated guide to a Ph.D. [link]
• Video: The 2010 99% Conference [link]

[Comment]

Is The Web Dead? A question that recently seems to pop-up more frequently. The driving force behind that statement/question is the fact that users on smartphones, iPads, but also desktops switch from using regular web-browsers to using dedicated apps to access their web-sites. A move away from HTML driven pages towards more native applications.

I personally don't think that the html-based web will disappear. Instead it will become one of many UI-technologies to access the same underlying data. A thought nicely stated in a blog post I recently came accross, "Is The Web Dead?": " ..the founder said, 'everything we do is cloud-based, with an API, and mobile friendly'. He did not say 'everything we do runs in a browser.'".

[NyTimes]

• "Shopkick App Pushes Bargains, Aisle by Aisle" [nytimes]
• "North Korea Takes to Twitter and YouTube" [nytimes]
• "Facebook Unveils Service to Announce Locations" [nytimes]

[Links]

• Hand-Eye Supply [link]
• Bulthaup's painfully beautiful "tool cabinet" for kitchens [link]
• Biodegradable Pen [link]
• Video: Peter Molyneux demos Milo, the virtual boy [link]

[Comment]

Writing software still feels like a challenging undertaking with a sometimes unpredictable outcome. Only a week separates following two blog posts: "With CouchDB, I always emphasized the quality of the high-level design and code implementation. We cannot under any circumstances lose or corrupt your committed data, or get things into an inconsistent state. Reliability and durability are absolutely imperative. Any design or implementation that doesn't meet these goals doesn't make it into the project." and "If you are using CouchDB 1.0.0 and have the default setting for 'delayed_commits' (true) then you are affected by this data loss bug.". I like challenging tasks ...

[NyTimes]

• "Kindle vs. iPad: Specialist Against Multitasker" [nytimes]
• "Consumers Find Ways to Spend Less and Find Happiness" [nytimes]
• "Call It 'Creating Apps for Dummies'" [nytimes]

[Links]

• Do the math: 1, 2, 6, 42, 1806,… malware [link]

[Comment]

I have to start small. I will start with half-day-computer-free Sundays. Curious how that goes.

[NyTimes]

• "An Amazon-Facebook Alliance to Make Shopping More Social" [nytimes]
• "U.A.E. Moves to Block BlackBerry Services" [nytimes]
• "Meet Google’s Space Commander" [nytimes]
• "New Site Aims to Connect Reporters and Publicists" [nytimes]

[Links]

• LED light bulb concept [link]
• Fata Morgana: The World without a Map [link]

[Comment]

Haven't done that for a while, I bought a bunch of real paperbound books this week: "Lucene in Action, 2nd Edition", "Language Implementation Patters", "Founders at Work", and "Reality Check" ... great books, but unfortunately only one of those books came with an additional electronic copy ... I still don't understand why I as a consumer have to decide upfront if I want go with the paperbound or the electronic edition, or otherwise have to pay full price for both?

[NyTimes]

• "Defying Digital Craze, Newspaper for Youngsters Is Thriving" [nytimes]
• "Video Technology Added at New Meadowlands Stadium" [nytimes]
• "Exemption Will Allow 'Jailbreaking' of iPhones" [nytimes]
• "How Much Credit Card Rewards Cost the Poor" [nytimes]

[Links]

• Build your own Corvette engine at GM's Performance Build Center [link]
• Fathom Information Design [link]
• Video: Lagoa Multiphysics Teaser [link]

[Comment]

I still believe that their is a market for Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 cellphones. It is the market space between the nerdy Android phones and the geeky iPhones. It is a market that is not driven by the number of apps, but driven by a neatly integrated small set of core apps (text msg, phone, camera, audio, youtube, and facebook). It is the same market that Danger with its Sidekick was selling into, and the same market that Palm tried to own. But anyway, based on history there is a decent chance that Microsoft's endeavor in the cellphone market will fail .. again.

[NyTimes]

• "In Online Journalism, Burnout Starts Younger" [nytimes]
• "Condé Nast Hopes to Wean Itself From Ad Revenue" [nytimes]
• "Bye-Bye, Batteries: Radio Waves as a Low-Power Source" [nytimes]

[Links]

• Windows Phone 7 in-depth preview [link]
• Windows Phone 7 In Depth: A Fresh Start [link]
• Flipboard .. a personalized social magazine on the iPad [link]
• Facebook’s Panic Button: Who’s panicking? And who’s listening? [link]

[Comment]

Reading thru newspapers and news-blogs during the summer time you realize that summer is the main season for urban legends .. curious if Antennagate falls into the same category?

[NyTimes]

• "Most Smartphones Are Underused" [nytimes]
• "Rewarding Consumers for Providing Personal Data" [nytimes]
• "Techmeme Offers Tech News at Internet Speed" [nytimes]

[Links]

• Yes, the iPhone 4 is broken / No, the iPhone 4 is not broken [link]
• Gephi, graph exploration and manipulation software [link]
• Video: Absolut Brooklyn [link]

[Comment]

Currently everyone in the Apple community is focused on the iPhone, including me. But there is something more interesting going on. Everyone else seems to be buying an iPad. Visiting different offices, talking to different people, I realized how many non-Apple-geeks recently bought an iPad. I was especially astound by the number of iPads that showed up on peoples desks at the office within just the last month .. A quiet revolution is in progress.

[NyTimes]

• "Solar-Powered Plane Flies for 26 Hours" [nytimes]
• "BP Aims for a Bull’s-Eye Under the Gulf of Mexico" [nytimes]
• "IPhone Supply Chain Highlights Rising Costs in China" [nytimes]
• "White House Envisioned Spy Case Swap Even Before Arrests" [nytimes]

[Links]

• GigaOM: Four Years [link]
• The 20 Hot New York City Startups You Need To Watch [link]
• The First Thing Young Women Do in the Morning: Check Facebook [STUDY] [link]
• Video: Jane McGonigal - Gaming can make a better world [link]
• Video: Hans Rosling - No more boring data [link]

[Comment]

Wake up .. cloud-computing isn't about reducing IT-infrastructure cost .. it is about using the power of the cloud to implement completely new solutions that we haven't thought of yet .. things that in the past fell into the "you are crazy, that is impossible"-category.

[NyTimes]

• "Where Do Gadgets Really Come From?" [nytimes]
• "Foursquare Raises an Additional $20 Million" [nytimes]
• "HDTV Pixelates Our Standards of Beauty" [nytimes]

[Links]

• Using Starbucks As Your Office? Here Are Some Tips [link]
• Core77 speaks with Jonathan Ive on the design of the iPhone 4: Material Matters [link]
• The Life Box [link]
• Video: Sick of the Swiss [link]