My Portfolio

Stocks I Own

Track all markets on TradingView

Stocks I'm Watching

Track all markets on TradingView

Crypto Currencies I Own

Track all markets on TradingView

The power and beauty of Twitter

Here are Twitter’s key people (Jack Dorsey @jack, Biz Stone @biz, Evan Williams @ev, and Dick Costolo @dickc) capturing the essence of what makes Twitter so special, so different, so important.

Twitter may be the greatest communication platform in human history to-date

As we make our way through 2013, I continue to find people who dismiss Twitter, saying "I'm not interested in hearing what someone had for lunch." Like any technology, uses for Twitter run the spectrum from useful to useless, from meaningful to banal, from the sublime to the ridiculous.

However, I think more people would benefit from Twitter if they understood what it represents. I find Twitter to be one of the greatest communication platforms ever invented. I think it takes a rightful place at the top of an august assembly of the most significant paradigm-shifting communication platforms in human history.

The truffle trade

Steve Jobs era at Apple over...again?

Image: news.cnet.com

@gkaizer's recent Computerworld article, Moves, mistakes prove Steve Jobs era at Apple over, say analysts covers analyst reactions to Apple's recent moves under Tim Cook's leadership as indicative that the company Steven Jobs built is now a "very different company." The differences are, indeed, very concerning, but not for the reasons cited - those reasons are actually symptoms of one reason that went unrecognized and, even though it is no secret, it apparently still needs to be spelled out.

It's all about power

My last post talked about power, which seems to be the theme of late. This time, I'm talking about the single, most important app on my Samsung Galaxy Note - Juice Defender.

First, you get the power

Why do so many coffee shops offer wi-fi, but nowhere near enough power outlets? I've walked in and out of four coffee shops in an area one night and found none with a seat near the too-few outlets (if there were any at all, which was not the case in every shop).

I can't understand the value of advertising "We've got Wi-Fi" when there are so few power outlets. If there were enough, I'd have sat down and, out of a sense of obligation, I'd have bought something with exorbitant profit margin baked in.

Anyway, I discovered an area in a shopping centre that had a few tables, chairs...and power outlets along the wall.So I pulled up a chair, plugged in my laptop and my Samsung Galaxy Note, and turned on the Note's mobile hotspot feature in order to wirelessly connect my laptop to the internet. 

The best part is, I didn't have to give some coffee shop $4 for a drink.

A new day

Last year, I wasn't quite sure in which direction I'd venture forth once my trusty Palm finally gave up the fight. Palm was king, and there are actually still things it did better. However, as "Larry the Liquidator" once said, the last buggy whip company probably made the best buggy whip...but who needs buggy whips in the age of the internal combustion engine? Times change. Long live the king, but the king is dead.

I went with Android (on a Samsung Galaxy Note).

And, I gotta say, it's really fun to be a part of the 21st century with the capability to do stuff while on the move.

I've Twylized my tweets

I’ve Twylized my Tweets - check it out).

Twylah organizes your tweets and essentially creates a webpage for you based on your tweets.

There are some other nifty things going on with Twylah, including how internet searches that find your tweets direct searchers to your own site rather than to Twitter, so that you can drive traffic to your site based on your tweeting. 

By the way - I did an internet search for “Twylized” and came up with nothing, so it looks like I’m the first to verbify Twylah’s contribution to social media.

BOYD - a consistent expression of capitalism that will raise costs

Just as corporations once offered flush benefits and pensions as a lure for talent, so did they offer company tools such as laptops and cell phones. Just as corporations seek to squeeze every last ounce of profitability for the owners and executive by trimming pension obligations (everyone's a "contractor" these days), so are they looking at the IT overhead and seeking ways to cut it, hence downloading the burden of device ownership to labour just as the burden of benefits and pensions are increasingly being downloaded to labour.

Sometimes, I hate Google

I am a big fan of Google, but that does not blind me to the things that drive me nuts.

Recently, I attempted to register a domain through Google. Mid-way through the process, I was interrupted. When I returned to complete the transaction, I got this evil error message:

"We found an existing order for this domain. Please contact support."

But, there was no link.

The moment I observed that there was no link for "support" I knew the minions of hell had just labelled me a new log to toss into Dante's Inferno.

Google Drive is upon us, but not quite ready for prime-time

At this point, Google Doc formats are not available offline, but PDFs, Microsoft Office documents and image files – basically, all non-Google Doc formats – are available offline.

Interesting. Seems Google’s play right now is less about ingratiating us to the use of Google Docs and more about simply elbowing in on the file storage space. 

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery - Google Drive nods to Dropbox

I'm looking forward to what can be done with Google Drive, and I've started the experiment today (I refuse to give in to using a bad pun here, it is an experiment, not a tes..)

My Dropbox and Google Drive systray options - the 15.8GB in Dropbox is free :-)

Windoze won't sleep, go figure

I don’t speak French, so there is no pretence when I say “Plus ca change, c’est plus le meme chose” sounds more exotic and poetic than the English equivalent, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” I only know what it means because of a Rush song, but I've already used that title in a previous post, also on Windows. Imagine that.

Either way, Windows 7 – so long evolved from Windows 3.11, Windows 95. Windows 98. Windows ME. Windows XP. Windows Vistahahahahaha - has all kinds of slick new features…but for all those number that have changed…one thing remains utterly the same. 

It’s Windows. Smh.

Marketing and Language

Starbucks is not infrequently ridiculed for its serving cup sizes – while it is unfortunate that Starbucks isn’t getting their due respect for the brilliance of the “tall, grande, venti” size (which is just the beginning of the entire language education required to “get” what Starbucks is all about), it boils down to people not grasping the fundamentals behind the brand cue. Marketing is definitely a broad and all-encompassing discipline. So, let’s break it down a little.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Not quite a year ago, in discussing a migration from Windows Live Mesh Beta to Dropbox, I wrote:

"Live Mesh beta phased out at the end of March, and Windows Live Mesh launched April 1st, merging Live Mesh and Live Sync... and SkyDrive, um, sort of. Confused? Yeah, me too - what a cluttered, dog's breakfast."

In this context, I chuckled upon reading that Microsoft is introducing "Windows Account" with its upcoming Windows 8 platform, which will require the phasing out of the Live brand...except it'll still be used with XBox Live...or something...um...smh, rme.