That’s the motto for the group that created the USB connector.
I guess they never had to deal with actually finding and plugging in the right USB cord to connect or charge a device. And for each of those below there are corresponding male and female connectors. Such a hassle to have so many cords and power supplies just because devices have different USB connectors.
Can’t we just have SuperSpeed Wireless USB and inductive charging already?
(1/6/10) The rumor mill has been running at full-tilt that Apple will introduce the iSlate tablet computer during a January 27, 2010 event. Seems like a pretty solid rumor but the thing that gets me is that it appears that big newspapers like the New York Times are thinking this new gizmo will save the dying newspaper industry.
I’m sure the execs have been standing too close to Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field and have eaten up all he has said to them about this new ‘i’ device. And I’m sure it will be a beautiful device but really folks? I highly doubt newspaper readers will drop anything more than $200 on yet another gizmo in this bad economy.
Why would anyone spend the money if they can already read the newspaper on the computer they already own? And older folks who are used to and love the paper product are not going to buy some expensive shiny new tablet computer. And folks who already own an iPhone can currently read many news publications formatted just for their the smaller form factor.
Face it. Jobs is hoodwinking the newspaper industry to promote this device which is going to be a flop for newspaper readers. So newspaper readers won’t buy it but college students would buy it if all their textbooks are on it. Book publishers would sell books to be published on it, probably even Amazon.com too even if it appears to be a threat to the Kindle (I already buy and read Kindle books on my iPhone since Amazon created a Kindle app).
The newspapers will gush and glow all over the iSlate, since they think it’s going to be their savior and thus give it tons of free advertising. Jobs is playing them like a grand piano.
Update (1/26/10): Okay, it’s the day before T-Day (Tablet Day) and I still think dynamic textbooks will be the killer use. And as I said on Facebook, being able to view a cookbook and actually change the ingredient lists so they’re viewable by humans with normal vision would be great. On TWIT Leo Laporte talked about video possibly being a killer app and I’d have to agree. Having a great screen that has the same field of view as some $5,000 HDTV in your lap would be nice.
Also all this talk about Microsoft meeting with Apple to put Bing.com on the iPhone OS, yeah that could happen but maybe they’re meeting for a deal to put Silverlight on the iTablet. That’s what Netflix uses instead of Adobe Flash to deliver streaming movies on the Mac so why not have it on the iTablet and even on the iPhone in lieu of Flash.
A half day away Steve Jobs will show us something fantastic, we’ll want to buy one but in reality it won’t be something brand new, but Apple will have done it with the style and simplicity that has made their products hits. Sell your Kindle, sell your HDTV prepare to upgrade to RoadRunner Business Class cable modem at home.
This past week I just listened to To the Best of Our Knowledge and they featured Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog (if you don’t know what that is consider yourself to be young or maybe you were just too stoned at the time).
Brand talks about how globally things cooled down when Mt. Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines. Globally temperatures dropped .5 degrees Celsius a year after the eruption due to the massive amount of Sulfur Dioxide emitted into the upper atmosphere. Brand even suggests we may have to pump SO2 directly into the upper atmosphere to combat global warming which he feels is already out of control. He also advocates nuclear power, not that he’s so pro-nuclear but because it’s the fastest way to get off the fossil fuel diet.
Now we have a new volcano ready to blow in the Philippines, the Mayon Volcano. Though generally volcanic explosions are bad, especially if you live close to one due to ash, mudslides, tons of rock being ejected and that matter of molten lava making a mess of things, could this help reverse global warming slightly buying us time?
You can listen to the broadcast with Brand here.
Hurricane Felicia bearing down on the Big Island. click on the image for a larger view
If you fire-up the application Google Earth you can zoom in and tilt over the view so you have a look at Hurricane Felicia aiming to roll over the State of Hawaii. It’s like being the backseat driver for a hurricane. Yikes!
So I was building a Google Map today and came across this via the satellite view. What is this? A set of containers? Buildings? And did they put them this way on purpose to spell out a letter or number? And if so what?
Zoom out with the minus-sign to see where it is on the slopes of Mauna Loa. If you grab the map and move around the surrounding area you’ll find all kind of other stuff. Military? Science stuff? Future resorts?
19º 36.934'N, 155º 36.788'W Elevation: 7,547 feet
Above a a screen snapshot from the Google Earth view. To view in Google Earth you can get the .kmz file by clicking on this and opening the file with Google Earth. (you may have to right-click save): we3m.kmz
From the scale on Google Maps the height of the ‘E’ is 200 feet which would make each one of the white objects 25 feet in length.
I put together a tutorial for my photojournalist friends who want to know how they can transmit images from the field to an FTP server via the iPhone when on assignment.
This is a typical problem for photojournalists. They’re far from a WiFi hotspot, paying for a USB modem is expensive but they need to make their deadlines.
This method doesn’t require the user to hack their iPhone via Jailbreak or other methods. The only extra app you’ll have to buy is FTP On The Go for the iPhone.
This will also work for the iPod Touch if you connect via WiFi with it. So if you don’t want to lug your computer into a hotspot zone you can just carry your iPod Touch.
Apple’s MacBook gives you wings.
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