This is funny enough for me to share, but too long for a tweet.
Wil Wheaton is playing Adventure on Atari:
Nolan: "You realize you’ve gone into that dead end five times, right?"
"Quiet you. This is how we did it back in the 80s."
Nolan: "You ran into the same dead end over and over again?"
"Yes, it was part of Reganomics.
See the rest here.
Ok, quickie post here. I’m still alive but busy on university projects and studying for exams 
.
In no particular order
See the suggested captions at FriendFeed here.
“Statement from Israel on boat collision involving former US Congresswoman McKinney: http://www.bnonews.com
To which Evan Brown commented: “Thankfully, McKinney is no longer in Washington screwing things up. Unfortunately, she is now oversees screwing things up”
I beg you to read the hilarious comments on FriendFeed here.
To be honest, emailing Steve Jobs is a bit daunting. But I will get round to it.
So come on, help Scoble get an interview with Steve Jobs: email Steve: sjobs@apple.com. @joshaidan says to make it personal.
Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find.
– Peter Ustinov
Right. There is no denying it. I am suffering through a period of writers block.
Granted, blogging, tech news, commentary and open source software aren’t my main priorities in life.
I’m even having trouble fitting in the photography and the photo editing.
So what’s up man??? I’m not going into it ( I have no wish for things to pop up in Google searches for the rest of eternity), but suffice it to say that its easier being lazy than getting on with it, at the moment.
The 7 habits ( which I really think it is a great book) don’t get followed religiously. However, the 7th habit itself, sharpen the saw says the essentially we need to look back at times and get our heads right, the previous 6 habits right before we can more forward. At least that is my interpretation of it. I’m a great fan of the notion that you have to win the private battle before you can tackle the public one. This acknowledges that fact that the public and private can be very different sometimes. And the fact that we can retreat into our shells sometimes.
So while I’ve absolutely no intention of giving up blogging, FriendFeed, my RSS feeds, I’m also not declaring a hiatus. I’m just saying that posts may not come thick and fast, but they’ll come.
I have ideas, I have things I’d like to do. But just can’t get round to them.
So. Who has tips for getting things jumpstarted?
It is all over Techmeme and FriendFeed: Sequoia Capital (the venture capitalists behind Yahoo and Google, to name just two), have called off the tech boom and told their companies to start preparing for the worst.
Lets think about this for a second. Is the technology sector as a whole vulnerable to this downturn? Yes, but probably not that much.
Consider Google as an example. Google gets bundled with every install of Firefox ( and if memory serves, some OEM PCs as well). And Google is pretty much the homepage of the Internet. So Google’s traffic probably wont suffer that much.
However, Google make money off ads,and it requires advertisers to buy those ads (or be charged for them). Now this could be very bad or very good depending on the industry doing the buying.
For example, Jeremiah Owyang just said on FriendFeed:
“The economic downturn is a good thing for social media, it’s going to force innovation, revenues, and productivity benefits –the other tools will fall by the wayside. Agree or disagree?”
So either ads will become more aggressive in an effort to lure ever reluctant consumers into the open.
Or they will cut back. Some ads just don’t work as well as traditional methods.
My bet is that, as Jeremiah said above, the online space of ads and social media will be leveraged to an ever greater degree and firms try their level best to stay above water.
So why did Google’s stock drop yesterday? Again, I think that investors are nervous that Google, while having a very broad range of services, hasn’t spread its revenue streams widely enough.
Google need to figure a way to monetize Youtube ( for starters), rapidly. Youtube gets millions of views per day that Google earn $0 from.
I’ll tell you what Google should do. They should go to Adobe and license that audio-to-keyword tech in CS4 and run every video on Youtube through it.
Gmail is another one. Personally I have never EVER clicked on a link from the Ads in the sidebar. Sure they are accurate and frighteningly well targeted, but I have never clicked on them.
For the tech industry as a whole, software is integral to the lives we now live. It ain’t going away anytime soon.
Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane.
- Philip K. Dick
With the release of the 2.0 software update for the Touch, Apple has made a mockery of every smartphone on the market as well as the DS and the PSP.
Short of an iPhone, it is quite simply the indispensable gadget to have on you at all times.
I have no Exchange servers to connect to and haven’t tried MobileMe. But I have been in the App Store. And boy, have been buying.
I’m a Crash Bandicoot fan from the dark old days of the PS1, so the first game I got was Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart Racing 3D. And it does not disappoint. The tilt controllers make it a compelling game, as well as a challenging one. And one you will strive to master. Just play it standing still as the tilt sensors are sensitive.
iPint is hilarious. For a free app its brilliant. I’ve been generating laughs with it all weekend.
I installed DutchTab as well. Thought I’d get a chance to use it over the weekend, but it didn’t present itself. Calculating how to split the tab is difficult so I usually don’t bother, just leave an unusually large tip. This should change that.
However, not all the applications in App Store are iTouch compatible. GPS and Camera apps naturally will only work on an iPhone.
This makes the iPhone 3G a really compelling device to get.
There has been lots of discussion over on FriendFeed about how this changes the nature of personal computing ( see here, here and here for a selection). The basic idea is that it changes personal computing in a big way.
I’d also say that the idea of ubiquitous computing comes closer as well. With a device like the iPod Touch and the iPhone, we take computing power where ever we need it – it seamlessly integrates with our lives. We take the web with us as well, fulfilling the dream of constantly connected devices. Push email is not a new idea – Blackberry owners have had it for years. But Apple had taken it to a whole new level. Using the touch screen, ur interactions with our devices become so much more natural and compelling. A keyboard and mouse reminds you of what you are using, a touch screen uses the human mediums of touch, feel and gestures to communicate.
This is where computing is going in the next few years. I prefer using my Touch for web browsing because of the touch screen – its feels more natural. Windows & will have touch screen built in, and Microsoft Surface is already capitalising on the naturalness of the touch screen to re-definite the way we interact with computers – and redefine computers themselves.
As science fiction writer William Gibson said:
The future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet
This seems to sum up programming:
He may be mad, but there’s method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It’s what drives men mad, being methodical.
– GK Chesterton
Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn’t mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.
– Edward R. Murrow
Echoes’ outlines Microsoft’s biggest challenges: the inordinate amount of time they spend on developing products that are either a platform or a suite forces them to make too many compromises. One can’t blame the company whose DNA is Windows (Platform) & a Suite (Office.) This is a malady which makes them unable to move ahead and define the future.
Normal posting resumes shortly.
Robert Scoble and 20000 people walk into a bar. The bar man goes….
Speaking about ears, I have to say that Robert had some of the biggest ears ever seen on a human being, with the possible exception of Barack Obama. While people always talked about Robert’s big mouth, Robert said that his big ears, which allowed him to hear almost anything, were more important than his big mouth.
Know Robert Scoble? Know Twitter? Heard of FriendFeed? Read the rest of the (hilarious) story here.
On My Link Blog
