Week of 2011/04/10

[NyTimes]

• "Cisco Shuts Down Flip, Its Video Camera Unit" [nytimes]
• "Why Is the Head of Zappos Smiling?" [nytimes]
• "Amazon to Sell Cheaper Kindle Supported by Ads" [nytimes]

[Links]

• Cloud Foundry - Delivering on VMware's "Open PaaS" Strategy [link]
• Cloud Gets It Done [link]
• Things Wile E. Coyote Teaches Us About Creative Intelligence [link]
• Product design at GitHub [link]

Week of 2011/04/03

[Comment]

The week of the security breach at Epsilon marketing .. I got notice emails from Chase, Citi, Capital One, TiVo, and Marriott, just waiting for the one from Best Buy .. Services in the "cloud" are becoming interesting targets for network security attacks.

[NyTimes]

• "After Security Breach, Firms Warn of E-Mail Fraud" [nytimes]
• "Designers Make Data Much Easier to Digest" [nytimes]
• "Erasing Individual's Digital Past" [nytimes]
• "For Activists, Tips in Safer Use of Social Media: Noticed" [nytimes]
• "Team From Engadget Makes Jump to SB Nation" [nytimes]

[Links]

• A VC: Going Out On Top [link]
• Facebook: Hey, We're a Great Tool for Journalists Too [link]
• Milk: Kevin Rose’s New Company Aims to Solve Big Problems on the Mobile Web [link]
• The Vehicles of Cars 2 [link]

Week of 2011/03/26

[Comment]

Pretty cool, car dashboards are becoming more like smartphones, each offering its own platform for apps. I'm curious how long it takes until Android/Google AdSense makes its way into our cars?

[NyTimes]

• "Start-Ups Work to Reinvent the Internal Combustion Engine" [nytimes]
• "The Future of Manufacturing is Local" [nytimes]
• "Doreen Lorenzo, president of Frog Design, Says Leaders Must Communicate" [nytimes]
• "Long-Form Journalism and Multimedia at The Atavist" [nytimes]

[Links]

• A VC: Curation [link]
• Who Curates the Real-Time Web? [link]
• Ten Lessons from GitHub's First Year [link]
• Video: Quadrocopter Ball Juggling [link]
• Video: IBM Centennial Film [link]

Week of 2011/03/19

[Comment]

On Demand Deployment ..

Interesting to see how the deployment of software products has changed over the last few years .. and it is not just the way we deploy games, apps, and ebooks to phones and (tablet) pc's .. it also includes the deployment of services, the services that serve as the backbone for all those applications.

.. everything gets deployed on demand via some wireless connection.

[NyTimes]

• "In Silicon Valley, a Lack of Engineers" [nytimes]
• "OnStar's New Facebook App" [nytimes]
• "Nuclear Waste Needs to Be Stored. But Where?" [nytimes]
• "Vu1 Promises Higher Quality Light Bulb at Lower Cost" [nytimes]
• "A Clever End Run Around the Movie-Streaming Gremlins" [nytimes]
• "No Mortgage Lenders in Jail, but a Borrower Lands There" [nytimes]

[Links]

• Color Credulity [link]
• Apple's Role in Japan during the Tohoku Earthquake [link]
• The Planetarium - An HTML5 Astronomical Adventure [link]
• Video: Google Goes Gaga [link]

Week of 2011/03/13

[Comment]

Just spent a week in the California desert without cellphone, internet, tv, news, and blogs .. it felt really good .. it was beautiful .. and I don't think I missed anything.

[NyTimes]

• "On Twitter, 'What a Party!' Brings an Envious 'Enough, Already!’" [nytimes]
• "Arduinos Provide Interactive Exhibits for About $30" [nytimes]
• "Google's 8-Point Plan to Help Managers Improve" [nytimes]
• "How Government Data Can Improve Lives" [nytimes]

[Links]

• Does Anne Hathaway News Drive Berkshire Hathaway's Stock? [link]
• Data-Driven Documents for visualization in the browser [link]
• Video: Hey Marcel [link]

Week of 2011/03/06

[Comment]

Do you know of any household that hasn't bought at least one Apple branded product over the last 3 years? .. I don't.

[NyTimes]

• "IPad 'Smart Cover' Opens to Instant Access" [nytimes]
• "New iPad Appeals More to Emotion Than Reason — State of the Art" [nytimes]
• "Left-Handedness Loses Its Stigma but Retains Its Mystery" [nytimes]
• "In Groupon’s $6 Billion Wake, a Wave of Start-Ups Follows Suit" [nytimes]
• "AngelList Connects Start-Ups With Investors" [nytimes]
• "Japanese Phone Makers Look to Ride Android’s Surge" [nytimes]
• "Mog, Streaming Music Service, Takes Aim at TVs and Cars" [nytimes]

[Links]

• How Facebook Is Powering Real-Time Analytics [link]
• Seek Money From Customers, Not VCs [link]
• Rot.Sketch Web App [link]

Week of 2011/02/28

[Comment]

Many of us enjoy the sound of a BlueRay movie via some nice surround sound system. Have you ever asked yourself why those surround sound systems are usually powered by some massive AV-receiver?

At least the size of those receivers can somehow be explained by the space needed for all those different connectors for video and sound. But why do they still come with a built in AM/FM receiver? Who is listening to radio on his home theater system anyway?

.. my conclusion: AV-processors must somehow be subsidized, or exempt from import duties when they come with a built in AM/FM receiver ..

[NyTimes]

• "Proposed Cuts Strike Teachers as Attacks on Their Value to Society" [nytimes]
• "HarperCollins Limits E-Book Lending by Libraries" [nytimes]
• "Bloomberg Seeks to Dominate World of Opinion" [nytimes]
• "Remapping Computer Circuitry to Avert Impending Bottlenecks" [nytimes]

[Links]

• Useless Labor and Production of the Self [link]
• VW Resurrects Its Hippie Microbus With an Electric Powerplant [link]
• The Market for Online Privacy Heats Up [link]
• Google flips Android kill switch, destroys a batch of malicious apps [link]
• iPad May Be Magical. Apps Aren’t. Here’s Why. [link]

Week of 2011/02/20

[Comment]

Google's Eric Schmidt recently said:

"To me, the tools and technology that allow us to do targeted TV quality ads -- again with permission and without violation privacy -- is the next great frontier in advertising."

Sorry Mr. Schmidt, I can't get excited about that "future" of media. I'm not a believer in (ad-)subsidized markets .. and I won't buy an ad-subsidized Android phone .. but I really would like to pay for an ad-free, non-ad-driven Google-Search.

[NyTimes]

• "Metaverse Keeps an Eye on Web Sites for Children" [nytimes]
• "Google Tweaks Algorithm to Push Down Low-Quality Sites" [nytimes]
• "IPad and Other Tablets Make Push Into Corporate World" [nytimes]
• "New Hacking Tools Pose Bigger Threats to Wi-Fi Users" [nytimes]
• "I.B.M.'s Watson - Computers Close In on the 'Paris Hilton' Problem" [nytimes]

[Links]

• Lift conference, what can the future do for you? [link]
• Database Technology for Large Scale Data [link]
• Video: QuaDror [link]
• Video: Water Powered Jet Pack [link]

Week of 2011/02/13

[Comment]

Will IDEs for software development become web-based?

I always strongly believed that software development tools have to run on your desktop, with a rich UI, and nicely integrated with the operating system. But recent developments in the way we build and deploy software made me rethink my position. For one, I think OOP's time is over, we don't need fancy tools anymore to traverse and investigate huge object dependencies. Instead, today we think and work with "functions", "closures", and "pattern-matching" (Erlang, JavaScript/Node.js ..). We focus and work with much smaller entities of code, and we run that code in some hosted-context in the "cloud", continuously deployed via github or Google Project Hosting ...

Future IDE's will be web-based dashboards with focus on editing, deployment, and execution of "functions" in the cloud.

[NyTimes]

• "Search Optimization and Its Dirty Little Secrets" [nytimes]
• "Stuxnet Software Worm Hit 5 Industrial Facilities in Iran" [nytimes]
• "Media Companies Cash In, at Cost of Unpaid Contributors" [nytimes]
• "A Rare Look Inside Pixar Studios" [nytimes]

[Links]

• Stephen Wolfram: Can he topple Google? [link]
• In pictures: Frédéric Chaubin's subversive Soviet superstructures [link]
• Real_Time_Congress_API [link]
• Google Public Data Explorer [link]
• Video: The Future of Art [link]
• Video: Moullinex - Catalina [link]

Week of 2011/02/06

[Comment]

Some questions for your economics class:

Would Amazon benefit from having real book stores? Should they buy Borders? Do we even still need real book stores?

(.. yes, yes, and yes ..)

[NyTimes]

• "8 Spruce Street by the Architect Frank Gehry" [nytimes]
• "Hackers Clash With HBGary Over Secret Inquiries" [nytimes]
• "Search Engine Optimization to Lure Readers" [nytimes]
• "E-Book Sales Rise in Children's and Young Adult Categories" [nytimes]
• "Mobile Apps for Economists" [nytimes]

[Links]

• A VC: Continuous Deployment [link]
• The Three Functions of a Management Team [link]
• The Seven Deadly Sins That Choke Out Innovation [link]