- Steve Jobs’s Best Quotes (WSJ Blogs) — Playboy: We were warned about you: Before this Interview began, someone said we were “about to be snowed by the best.”; [Smiling] “We’re just enthusiastic about what we do.” (via Kevin Rose)
- The Tao of Programming — The Tao gave birth to machine language. Machine language gave birth to the assembler. The assembler gave birth to the compiler. Now there are ten thousand languages. Each language has its purpose, however humble. Each language expresses the Yin and Yang of software. Each language has its place within the Tao. But do not program in COBOL if you can avoid it. (via Chip Salzenberg)
- In Defense of Distraction (NY Magazine) — long thoughtful piece about attention. the polymath economist Herbert A. Simon wrote maybe the most concise possible description of our modern struggle: “What information consumes is rather obvious: It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” (via BoingBoing)
- 31 Days of Canvas Tutorials — a pointer to 31 tutorials on the HTML5 Canvas.
"steve jobs" entries
On the media reaction to the death of Steve Jobs
The events of the past week generated powerful reactions inside of the Radar team.
In the context of worldwide reactions to the impact of Steve Jobs on the arc of history, recognizing the complexity of his life and offering a balanced assessment of the impact of his legacy on this earth matters. In that context, O'Reilly editors share their reflections on the passing of one of the technology industry's iconic figures.
Publishing News: Betting on the Nobel Prize
Putting odds on the Nobel Prize, Jobs' biography to release early, and what a free Kindle could do.
The betting line on the Nobel Prize for Literature had an odd contender: Bob Dylan. Also, Steve Jobs' biography was moved up, and Mathew Ingram looked at the possible effects of a free Kindle.
Top Stories: August 22-26, 2011
The legacy of Steve Jobs, the sweet spot between data and art, and a deep dive into Google+
This week on O'Reilly: Mark Sigal examined the legacy of Steve Jobs, we talked with New York Times data artist Jer Thorp about the commingling of data, art and science, and Tim O'Reilly and Google VP of Product Bradley Horowitz discussed Google+, data portability and more.
Ruminations on the legacy of Steve Jobs
PC, mobile, music, film, post-pc: Steve Jobs played an important part in disrupting them all.
Apple, under Steve Jobs, has always had an unrelenting zeal to bring the consumer — and humanity — back to the center of the ring. Here, Mark Sigal argues that it’s this pursuit of humanity that may actually be Jobs’ greatest innovation.
Four short links: 25 August 2011
Jobs Quotes, Tao of Programming, Distraction, and Canvas Tutorials
Four short links: 19 May 2011
Internet Access Rights, Statistical Peace, Vintage Jobs, and Errata Etymology
- Right to Access the Internet — a survey of different countries’ rights to access to access the Internet.
- Peace Through Statistics — three ex-Yugoslavian statisticians nominated for Nobel Peace Prize. In war-torn and impoverished countries, statistics provides a welcome arena in which science runs independent of ethnicity and religion. With so few resources, many countries are graduating few, if any, PhDs in statistical sciences. These statisticians collaboratively began a campaign to collect together the basics underlying statistics and statistics education, with the hope of increasing access to statistical ideas, knowledge and training around the world.
- Vintage Steve Jobs (YouTube) — he’s launching the “Think Different” campaign, but it’s a great reminder of what a powerful speaker he is and a look at how he thinks about marketing.
- Anatomy of a Fake Quotation (The Atlantic) — deconstructing how the words of a 24 year old English teacher in Japan sped around the world, attributed to Martin Luther King.
Four short links: 18 October 2010
Expiring Copyrights, Network Fail, The Book of Jobs, and Android FTW
- Which Works Enter the Public Domain in 2011 (OKFN) — slowly we’re getting recognizable artists in some jurisdictions (e.g., F. Scott Fitzgerald and Paul Klee) but it’s slow going. This is a great reminder about how slow the law works: most people appropriate small bits of modern works when they need something, rather than seeking out or caring about out-of-copyright status. Either most people are lawbreakers and law enforcement will catch up with them, or most people have a new conception of fair use and the law will catch up with them.
- Android IM App Brought T-Mobile’s Network To Its Knees — rumour is that this kind of thing isn’t isolated, that carrier networks are fragile rather than robust. Not even apps, sometimes just devices can make smoke come out of the cell tower (metaphorically): In April of this year, T-Mobile disclosed in an FCC filing that “when subscribers began connecting unlocked iPhones to T-Mobile’s network, the devices repeatedly issued PDP Context Activation requests to establish a session and obtain an IP address. These repeated requests began to cause signal overload akin to a denial of service attack, requiring immediate action and network management to mitigate the massive signaling load on T-Mobile’s Packet Core network.”
- John Sculley on Steve Jobs — the full interview text is fascinating reading. Sculley gives Jobs full respect, and his insights make for very interesting reading. It’s okay to be driven a little crazy by someone who is so consistently right. What I’ve learned in high tech is that there’s a very, very thin line between success and failure. It’s an industry where you are constantly taking risks, particularly if you’re a company like Apple, which is constantly living out on the edge. Your chance of being on one side of that line or the other side of the line is about equal.
- Android (Fred Wilson) — absolutely nails why Android will be a big market, whether or not it’s “better” than Apple. My father in law told me he wants a tablet but $500 for an iPad seems high to him. I asked him if he’d pay $199 for an Android tablet. He said “where can I get one”?
Google vs Apple: Google Doesn't Need To Win
Google does not have to dominate the smartphone business; they just have to make sure that there’s an environment in which the business of selling ads thrives. While Apple wants to dominate smartphones, Google undeniably dominates online ad sales–and they clearly see ad placement on mobile as a huge opportunity. Conversely, failure to dominate mobile ad sales would be disastrous. At best, it would limit their potential; at worst, if we’re heading for the end of the “desktop/laptop era”, it could seriously threaten their core business.