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Showing posts from July, 2012

2 things likely to shake up established industries that need a good shaking

Ouya I'm not a gamer, but this idea could really shake up the game industry.  The basic idea is that it's a very accessible console for independent developers. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console Interested to see how this goes.  Getting into just about any real console as a developer is difficult (and costly); that low (and cheap) barrier is a big reason why the iPhone and Android platforms have attracted so many developers.  Offering a $100 console built on open source / available technology that anybody can develop games for is an obvious idea, but as far as I know, nobody's done it to date. AMC and Breaking Bad AMC and Dish Network are currently in a few big fights; there are a lot of details but you can find them pretty easily.  The interesting thing that's coming out of this is the fact that while AMC is no longer available on Dish Network ( as a Dish Network customer, it's a move I'm less than thrilled

The perils of internal spam

Let me tell you a little story.  The names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent and it's vague because I'm not really so great with specifics. Let's call the subject of this story Steve.  Steve sent out a message asking how he could set up his corporate email on his iPad.  Unfortunately, instead of sending that message out to the proper person or mailing list in his company, he figured "bigger is better" and sent it out to as many people as he could - 4000 users seemed to be the limit, so Steve was sure to use up all the resources he could. In 1989, it would have been a lot of paper. This little action seems to be pretty innocuous at first, but it has huge ripple effects that still affected message delivery hours later. The problem starts out simple.  Let's do a thought experiment so we can see the repercusions of this one message. Let's assume that the mail server can do only one thing at a time, and that copying this first mes

One laptop per child: seven years later

When the OLPC initiative first hit the news back in 2005, I remember having a lot of admiration for the program.  The goal of building a laptop in 2005 - back when even low-end notebook computers were well over $800 - for $100 was ambitious, but respectable.  Distributing computers to low-income countries in the hopes of improving education seemed like a great idea at the time. In 2006, the first machine (the XO-1 ) was delivered, and while it was impressive, it fell short of a few goals.  It cost close to $200, and while rugged and innovative, its hardware was pretty limited; still, for the time it was rather inexpensive.  Unfortunately, looking back - it seems now that in 2005 this was a "right now" solution to a problem that would have to be solved in the future. The ASUS Eee PC came out in 2007 and very quickly, low-cost / moderately powered laptops became mainstream.  They weren't nearly as rugged as the XO-1, but the hardware and price were comparable

Awesome things from the Internet: Krispy Kreme

A few weeks ago I came across this on the Know Your Meme website:  http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/krispy-kreme-rapper It's really great stuff, it sounds pretty good, but the videos are just absolutely ridiculous in a really juvenile way; still, they're reasonably well put together. Right away, I think most people were thinking this was one of 3 things: Somebody with some video and production talent was putting some random kid up to this and was trolling Krispy Kreme himself was trolling Krispy Kreme was earnest about all of this and somehow managed to produce these songs and videos I really wanted it to be #3.  In the last few days, though, it seems that it's looking more and more like #2.  This other guy on YouTube    (  http://www.youtube.com/user/SnapsNJays )  is claiming that Krispy Kreme's real name is Tyler Cassidy and that Krispy Kreme is really some kind of genius.  He links to a PDF ( http://blog.mlive.com/flintcommunity_impact/2008/06/Gradua