Google's upcoming Android mobile platform could spur consumers to widely adopt smartphones, according to new research from ABI Research.
The report, titled "Smartphone And OS Markets," said Google's platform could push smartphones toward standardization, which could eventually push smartphone adoption beyond the 14% market share it currently holds.
Children's author Eoin Colfer has been commissioned to write a sixth instalment of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series.
Mostly Harmless, the last Hitchhiker book, was written by its creator, the late Douglas Adams, 16 years ago.
Now Adams's widow, Jane Belson, has given her approval to bring back the hapless Arthur Dent in a new book entitled And Another Thing...
Eoin Colfer, 43, is best known for the best-selling Artemis Fowl novels.
-- Robert Copeland
"To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent."
Having a goal is described as a good way to get motivated and stay on target. In thinking about goals, I came across a quote from the white House press secretary describing the President's message to the Pope during his visit to America. This 'goal' is interesting in that it is simply the President echoing the Pope's goal-- the pope says "X", the president says "America needs to hear X".
So X marks the spot, and this X seems like a universal one a lot of people could adopt:
"He will hear from the president that America and the world need to hear his message that God is love, that human life is sacred, that we all must be guided by common moral law, and that we have responsibilities to care for our brothers and sisters in need, at home and across the world," said White House press secretary Dana Perino.
More at MSN Entertainment, probably Topix.net too.Illnesses Cause 2 More Debuts at MetMarch 23, 2008, 4:57 PM ESTAt this rate, the surgeon general could issue a warning that singing at the Metropolitan Opera can be hazardous to one's health.
Illnesses have knocked out stars at dizzying speed, with six singers making unscheduled debuts in leading roles over 13 days.
Three tenors appeared as Tristan, one of whom stopped the show when a set malfunction sent him tumbling into the prompter's box. A soprano took over Isolde in mid-performance, and two other sopranos were thrust into Verdi operas on short notice.
Some singers spend years waiting a chance to sing on the Met's stage, working their way up at regional theaters with the hope they can become the next Luciano Pavarotti or Birgit Nilsson. Various viruses have catapulted those waiting in the wings into the spotlight, usually with not even a single stage rehearsal.
Angela Meade, a 30-year-old soprano still in vocal school, hadn't sung a single professional performance before her debut Friday night as Elvira in Verdi's "Ernani."
A little more than 16 hours later, tenor Robert Dean Smith sang Tristan in a performance simulcast to theaters worldwide. He jetted in from Berlin on Thursday, had a few piano rehearsals Friday and planned to head back to Europe on Sunday. Even Met General Manager Peter Gelb joked that the revival of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" was "cursed."
Original Line: There are 8 million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.
Updated to 2008: There are 8 million blogs on the Internet. This has been one of them.
Malvin Wald dies
In 1885 a New York reporter wrote that Saint Paul was "another Siberia, unfit for human habitation" in winter. Offended by this attack on their Capital City, the Saint Paul Chamber of Commerce decided to not only prove that Saint Paul was habitable but that its citizens were very much alive during winter, the most dominant season. Thus was born the Saint Paul Winter Carnival.
How do I know what I think until I see what I've written.
I've come to the conclusion that all great blogs have a topic, a unifying theme that ties the entries together and establishes an expectation amongst the readers of the blog. This blog is lacking in that category. The unifying theme? Things that I was thinking about when the post was written. Sure, that is technically a theme, but not very good for establishing an expectation amongst readers.
With that shortcoming in this blog in mind, I've launched an eight month initiative to identify a topic. Why eight months? Because I've got another long-term project I'm currently working on that should wrap up in eight months. In the meantime, I'm planning on trying out various blog topics. Today's topic: State Constitutions and their relationship to the US Federal Constitution. Yep, sounds nuts. In other words, 'and now for something completely different'. Speaking of other words, here's a quote:
"An important distinction exists between the federal and state constitutions. The U.S. Constitution contains grants of authority from the states to the federal government. All powers not specified in the federal constitution are retained by the states. This means that the U.S. Constitution identifies what the federal government can do, but the state constitutions tell the state governments what they cannot do."
- Reed, Shedd, Morehead, & Corley, 2005, The legal and regulatory environment of business
On Cherubs...
A cherub is a mighty angel. One of the functions of the cherubim was to serve as guardians. These angels guarded the entrances to both the tree of life (Gen 3:24) and the Most Holy Place (Exod. 26:31-33). Two cherubim of hammered gold were part of the ark of the covenant (Exod. 25:18-22). The living creatures carrying God's throne in Ezekiel 1 may have been cherubim.(from Wikipedia).
And I thought they were just cute cubby little angels. I guess you don't want to get on the wrong side of one of those.
The big news this week was the 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis. This has been world news, a fact that is supported by me living in the same metro area as said bridge but able to read about it on the Sydney (Austrailia) Morning Hearld newspaper's website. Why read about it there? Just to confirm to myself that it wasn't myopia-- I'm right here, of course it is news and I can relate and sense the importance. But was it really a big deal to other people? The answer has been given over the last few days, a resounding YES.
This is a Big Deal, but what does that mean? It is big in a physical sense, big in the time to fix sense, and big in the human lives were lost sense. Yet I don't know what to write about it.
The physical scale is hard to describe with words in a worthy way. You can look it up in newspaper archives today and find phrases like 67 feet above the water, a couple thousand feet long, sixty cars, an unknown number of missing people. All just words that fail to convey the sheer Big-ness of this Deal.
The time to fix enormity is hard to write about because no one knows. 2-3 years is a long time in a culture raised on 30 minute sitcoms and 30 second sound bites.
It is hard to write about the human lives that were lost because I didn't know them but I think they deserve a better description than some stranger (me) could string together with a few words.
So maybe I've said enough. Maybe if I'm right, that this is a Big deal that anyone could relate to, then you already have and nothing else needs to be said.
I just got done noodling with the Microsoft Mail Live Beta's integration with Spaces.live.com. The new 'outlook express replacement' has an option to write a blog post (or simply blog an email) directly from the mail client. Google docs offers similar functionality so I thought I'd give that a test drive too (this post was made using Google docs).
The Live Mail (beta 12.0.1184) to Live Spaces integration had a couple quirks:
(1) The title of the blog entry is changed on publication from whatever was typed (like 'thoughts on dogs') to be prefixed with the phrase "talking about...". So the post ends up as "talking about thoughts on dogs".
(2) The body of the entry, typed within a Live Mail editor much like the e-mail editor is changed on publication to be a quoted text block.
(3) The publish to blog link simply opens the browser to the web-based Spaces blog editor with the text filled in (with the changes noted above).
Maybe nice for transferring an email to a blog entry, but that can easily be done with copy and paste. Overall first impression: evolutionary, not revolutionary. That seems to be the tag line for tech this year.
Over on the Google Docs / Blogger front, there were some quirks too.
(1) Sending a document to blogger involves clicking the "Publish" tab. The user must preconfigure their blog target. If that is not done, clicking the 'publish to blog' button activates the blog target configuration dialog/webform. But you aren't done! Finishing the dialog simply configures the settings. You have to push the same button again to send off the blog post. This is all written on the screen (sort of) so if you are into reading directions, this double-pump shouldn't be a problem.
(2) Google docs offers to use the title of the document as the blog post title, or at least implies that is what it is going to do. Google docs has a 'feature' of using the first line of text in your document as the title. If you rename your document then publish, the new document name is disregarded and your post is untitled. Wierd, hard to follow, and just plain quirky.
(3) No labels support. Labels can be applied by opening the post in the blogger editor and tagging.
Bottom Line: both of these are preliminary editing tools. Some post-posting clean-up will still be required.
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This weekend’s research paper is based on the use of statistics in analyzing research data for new product launches. The scenario involves a bank assessing new credit card offerings (what a fresh idea!).
Anyway, in doing some research on banking I stumbled across this snippet regarding banking in China.
When might the Chinese consumer help really drive the global economy? Analysts at Credit Suisse Group have conjured a rosy scenario in which China becomes the world's second-largest consumer nation (after the U.S.) by 2020, up from No. 5 today. UBS is less upbeat, estimating that the middle class includes only about 25 million people--just 2% of China's population--hardly big enough to have much impact globally. And even Credit Suisse acknowledges that personal incomes, while climbing, aren't keeping pace with rising GDP. "If you think the purpose of rapid economic growth is to increase consumption and the general welfare, then China isn't doing a very good job," says Nicholas R. Lardy, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.
From CAUTIOUS CONSUMERS; The Chinese are on a spending spree, right? Not really. In fact, they're so tightfisted, Beijing is worried By Dexter Roberts. Business Week. New York: Apr 30, 2007.
Here are 77 tips related to knowledge and learning to help you on your quest.
A few are specifically for students in traditional learning institutions; the rest for self-starters, or those learning on their own.
Did you notice that Google Apps was released? Did you notice that the Google Documents Spell Checker has been broken for about a week? Bad timing eh?
I've been using the free Gooffice for about 4 months now for notes. My vote? It is impressive what they've done, but what they've really proven is that the functionality/price ratio for Word and Excel is most excellent.
Taking desktop functionality away is silly, Gooffice is all about sharing and collaboration, it is more a "sharepoint killer" than desktop replacement. Example 1: The Google document spell checker has been broken in IE for about a week now. Go for a week without a spell checker in Word then tell let me know what you think about online based desktop replacement apps. (side note: flip over to FireFox and spell check is working fine, there is a javascript error in the IE version of Google's spell check code). On the flip side? Create a document and e-mail it to four people, ask each of them to change one sentence and send their change back to you. Then see how long it takes you to merge the changes. Now go to goofice, upload a word document and share it with four people, revel in the online change integration.
Also in Googles defense I will say that GMail and Calendar have been rock solid. Google calendar can even create and reply to Outlook/Exchange calendar notices and support apparently unlimited shared calendars with appointment reminders via SMS. People who already have Outlook are not going to get anything from it, but new businesses looking for shared calendaring could be better off than small business exchange based solutions.
I was starting to think WordPress was such a good blogging tool that Blogger would become obsolete. Then I noticed something cool. Blogger has been doing Mobile Blogging for a while, but I ignored it. I really didn't 'get' it. Now I do.
The picture above (pretty bad eh? read on) was taken using my phone. I took a picture of my laptop screen showing an image on the blogger instructions for mobile blogging. Self referential, but it serves its purpose. Once the picture was taken, I sent it to Blogger (go@blogger.com). Blogger then sent me a reply with a 'token' to claim my picture. Blogger had also set up a blog for my phone (elfbug266, cute). When I was back at my computer, not too tough since I was sitting at it the whole time, I launched Blogger and claimed my picture. Blogger then asked if I wanted to merge the elfbug266 blog into my existing blog. The post migrated over and I was able to add this text to explain the very bad picture.
According to the instructions, Blogger accepts text messages as well. No photo required, same process. One nit on the whole thing: When I tried to edit this post by adding text, Blogger's text editor kept trying to delete the picture. After a few tries, I switched to 'Edit Html' view of the posting page and added some text then flipped back to 'Compose' view and here we are!
Round 1 goes to Blogger for mobile blogging. Wordpress, bring it on.
An online time capsule—every hourPart news portal and part interactive artwork, 10X10 collects the 100 most prevalent images and words appearing in online news outlets every hour—then arranges them into a vibrant collage, inviting both a user's involvement and contemplation.
