Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Mantra is ‘Bullshit,’ Adobe Is Lazy: Apple’s Steve Jobs

Steve_google

This is an amazing article on Wired with Steve Jobs opening up in public about going after Google and Adobe. 

After a big public announcement of the sort Apple had this week for the iPad CEO Steve Jobs often takes time in the day or two afterwards to have a Town Hall at One Infinite Loop, making himself available for questions from employees bold enough to stand up and take one right between the eyes.

This time, the big topics included Google and Adobe — no surprises there. Google recently unveiled its own Android-powered handset, the Nexus One, whose release Jan. 5 prompted Jobs to perhaps over-react by announcing on the same day that the iTunes store had served up three billion apps and that “… we see no signs of the competition catching up any time soon.” Apple’s billionth iPhone app download was greeted with great fanfare, but the two billionth not so much, so it felt a tad like Jobs was feeling some heat.

And the absence of Adobe Flash support on the iPhone for three years and counting, and now on the iPad, is either celebrated by users as a poke in the eye of one of the web’s most dextrous tools, or the most over-rated and overused crutch for decent design.

Jobs, characteristically, did not mince words as he spoke to the assembled, according to a person who was there who could not be named because this person is not authorized by Apple to speak with the press.

On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: “It’s bullshit.” Audience roars.

You know I miss the days when Apple (as in Steve) went after Microsoft and IBM with a vengeance.  That battle didn't turn out too well for him, but it was fun to watch. It would be fun to see Apple and Google go at it. 

The real battleground is the iPhone and Android phones. One one side you have a slick closed platform (iPhone) that is a single piece of hardware controlled by Apple. On the other side you have an open platform (Google's Android) that can run an infinite number of mobile devices that are not controlled by Google. The history of the PC vs. Mac wars showed us that an open platform (as in able to be installed on any non-apple device) wins over a closed platform controlled by one company. It will be interested to see what happens this time around. 
 
About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.

While I would heartily agree with Steve that HTML5 is the future the world is moving away from Flash, I don't think he should start rocking the boat too much because if Adobe really wanted to stick it to Apple they could stop releasing Photoshop on the Mac and just release it for Windows and Linux.  If this would happen, you probably see a large portion of the creative and educational markets move away from Apple. This is a hammer that Adobe has always had over Apple but used it because it didn't make financial sense to them. 
 

The world, of course, includes Google, which last week in a somewhat more modest development bypassed Apple’s iPhone app blockade by unveiling an html5 version of Google Voice, which takes full advantage of mobile Safari on the iPhone. Wired.com found it to be an impressive variation of the app Apple has neither approved nor officially rejected.

And it is, of course, in keeping with Google’s stated view (Android app marketplace notwithstanding) that the future is really in web-based applications and not in mobile apps at all. Web-based applications of the sort html5 makes much more viable.

So, great work rallying the troops, Steve — but be careful what you wish for.

via. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/01/googles-dont-be-evil-mantra-is-bullshit-adobe-is-lazy-apples-steve-jobs/#ixzz0eAH4tDef
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Send a $10 Donation to the Red Cross for Haiti Relief by Texting ‘Haiti’ to 90999

American Red Cross Pledges Initial $1 Million to Haiti Relief

Send a $10 Donation by Texting ‘Haiti’ to 90999

Editorial note: You can make a donation by calling 1-800-REDCROSS or 1-800-257-7575 (Spanish) or click on the Donate Now button.

National Headquarters
2025 E Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20006
www.redcross.org

The American Red Cross is sending money, supplies and staff to Haiti to support relief efforts there after yesterday’s earthquake, which caused catastrophic damage and loss of life.

According to reports, as many as three million people may have been affected by the quake, which collapsed government buildings and caused major damage to hospitals in the area. 

The Red Cross is contributing an initial $1 million from the International Response Fund to support the relief operation, and has opened its warehouse in Panama to provide tarps, mosquito nets and cooking sets for approximately 5,000 families.

via. Red Cross Website

$1.2 Million in Donations for Haiti, via Text Message

Update | 6:51 p.m. Adding more information about the campaign and updating the total raised.

In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on Tuesday, thousands of Americans are sending financial support — through their mobile phones.

Anyone with a mobile phone and an account with a major wireless carrier can text the phrase “Haiti” to the number 90999 and donate $10 to the Red Cross. That amount is charged to the donor’s cellphone bill.

The texted donations are being handled by a company called mGive, which started the campaign in a joint effort with the State Department and the Red Cross late Tuesday night. Thanks to a mention on the White House’s blog and lots of word of mouth onTwitter and Facebook, the campaign had raised more than $1.2 million by Tuesday evening, mGive said. 

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My Kindle Arrived Today

Img_0002

My last Christmas present arrived today and it does live up to the hype. I'm sure this is going to be the gadget that my wife and I will have to learn to share.

I also have to say that Amazon has picked up something from Apple about how to package and deliver a product.

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God Mode in Windows 7 and Vista

If you have Windows 7 or Vista (will not work on XP) and you want to feel like the Almighty by making Windows bend to your will try this:

  1. Create a new folder anywhere on your computer's C: drive (ie. My Documents or the Desktop)

  2. Rename the folder to GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} 

  3. The folder icon should change, double click on it, and you should see something like this

Godmode

One more thing, you can replace GodeMode with anything as along as you have .{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} at the end of if it without any spaces. 

Pick your preferred diety:
  • Yahweh.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
  • Elohim.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
  • Jesus.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
  • Jehovah.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
  • Allah.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
  • Bhagwan.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
  • Krishna.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
  • Rama.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
  • Shiva.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
  • Zeus.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
  • Apollo.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

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Business Card Websites #in

Just reserved markkoberlein.me and I'm thinking about doing something like this.

Originally posted by Chris Spooner on line25.com

Inspirational Showcase of Business Card Websites

Inspirational Showcase of Business Card Websites

 

Free Web Design

 

The term ‘business card website’ has become widely associated with the popular style of website that has cropped up on the personal domains of designers and developers. The site is essentially a simple, single page design that displays personal information, contact details and links through to other social profiles, much like a traditional tactile business card is used to display basic information.

 

Business card websites come in all shapes and sizes, but popular charactersitics include a compact, lightweight design, often small in size. Business card sites also tend to make use of Javascript to enhance the user experience and are commonly designed with a fresh take on the interface, taking inspiration from the clean style of Apple’s OSX.

Let’s take a look at an inspiring collection of examples, each with an individual twist on the original business card idea.

Tim Van Damme

Business card website

 

Rogie King

Business card website

 

Florian Pichler

Business card website

 

John Bloomfield

Business card website

 

Salya Howald

Business card website

 

Nathan Plante

Business card website

 

Dean Harris

Business card website

 

Marco Bauli

Business card website

 

Thierry Castel

Business card website

 

Samrat Mazumdar

Business card website

 

Guy Lewin

Business card website

 

Zhuoshi Xie

Business card website

 

Ben Word

Business card website

 

Rendian Therianto

Business card website

 

Katrina Neufield

Business card website

 

Greg Thongsophon

Business card website

 

Ali Bahşişoğlu

Business card website

 

Clément Simon

Business card website

 

David McGeorge

Business card website

 

Chris Rowe

Business card website

 

Dimas F. Gorostarzu

Business card website

 

Eugen Buşoiu

Business card website

 

Jamie Calder

Business card website

 

Chris Carey

Business card website

 

Timothy Armstrong

Business card website

 

Lee Adams Norris

Business card website

 

Michael Dyer

Business card website

 

Christian South

Business card website

 

Ryan Glover

Business card website

 

Mark Tyrrell

Business card website

 

Patrik Inzinger

Business card website

 

Gert Pellens

Business card website

 

Joshua R Jones

Business card website

 

M Dimas Maulana

Business card website

 

Jonas Lekevicius

Business card website

 

Michael Villar

Business card website

 

Nico Kaiser

Business card website

 

Sebastien Couture

Business card website

 

Gabor Szauer

Business card website

 

Pedro Duarte

Business card website

 

Michaël Betsch

Business card website

 

David Merfield

Business card website

 

Maximilian Schöning

Business card website

 

Karsten Rieger

Business card website

 

Andy Croll

Business card website

 

Preshit Deorukhkar

Business card website

 

Chris Wallace

Business card website

 

Raffaele Rasini

Business card website

 

John Phillips

Business card website

 

Maykel Loomans

Business card website

 

Daniel Genser

Business card website

 

Chris Harrison

Business card website

 

Tyler Galpin

Business card website

 

Mattias Kretschmann

Business card website

 

Osvaldas Valutis

Business card website

 

Craig Wilson

Business card website

 

Luke Stevens

Business card website

 

William Donahoe

Business card website

 

Peter Eggington

Business card website

 

John Saddington

Business card website

 

Appenstein

Business card website

 

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How to Remove an EFI Partition in Windows

Disk-utility

Awhile ago I used a USB drive to update OSX on a Macbook.  To do this, I had to create an EFI partition on the drive in order for the Macbook to boot from it. I created the EFI partition using the Disk Utility on the Macbook. Today, I needed to transfer 60 gigs of data from my Windows 7 desktop to my netbook and the EFI partition was giving me some problems.

I had issues copying the files over to the USB drive because something was wrong with the file system. I tried to delete the partitions and format it using the usual disk management tools in Windows but it would not let me delete the EFI partition. So that leaves DISKPART.  It's a command line tool that isn't intuitive but it only took a few steps to do the job.

1. Open a Command Prompt or PowerShell window and type DISKPART at the prompt

2. The first thing that you want to do is have DISKPART list the hard disks that it sees so that you can tell it which one you want to work with. 
    DISKPART>list disk

3. Then look at the list and you will propbably see a disk with a small partition (around 200mb) which should be the EFI partition. You will need to select the disk because all the commands are applied to the disk you selected.
    DISKPART>select disk 2

4. Now all you have to do is tell it to clean the disk. This will remove all the partitions on the selected disk.
    DISKPART>clean

That's it, not too hard. Now, you will have to partition the disk, format it, and assign a drive letter to it in order for you to open it up in Windows. You can do this through DISKPART and the command line but I prefer to open the Windows Disk Management and do everything there visually.  If you would like to try to partition the disk in DISKPART then I would suggest reading Microsoft's KB doc on it: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

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HP Slate and Android Netbook

Hp_slate

I'm going to be buying a Kindle in a couple of days but I really wish this was out now because I think digital books are going to look pretty good on this device. This may have stole some of Apple's iTablet thunder but I think that Microsoft is going to have to work on the UI a bit more because I suspect the default Windows 7 UI won't be as intuitive to use on this touch screen device.

via http://www.thenextbench.com/t5/Voodoo-Blog/HP-Slate-and-Android-Netbook/ba-p/51982

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2010 Web Developer Resolutions

New_years_resolutions-saidaonl

A new year can bring hopes and aspirations to find love, lose weight, or stop smoking.  Well I have love, I don't smoke, and I could lose some more weight but the real resolutions I would like to make deal with web development. 

2009 brought a lot of changes to my coding workflow.  I switched from PHP to Python, from Zend Framework to Django, and from YUI to jQuery.  All of these changes occurred because I tired of writing a lot of code over and over again. Python, Django, and jQuery have allowed me to spend less time hacking code to solve simple problems. Now I can spend more time thinking about how to implement features and enhancements that will make my websites easier to use.

So as 2010 begins here are two things that I want to focus on: 

No More "Create an Account" on Websites

Newyorktimes

NYTimes.com - An example of a lengthy process to create an account.

Problem:  I'm tired of creating new accounts on websites that require me to have a unique username and password in order to log into the site. As a web developer, I understand the need for a website to store a user's credentials so that the site can track activity. As a user, it's a pain to do this for each site.  I have a pretty good password system that enables me to create a unique and secure password for each website, but I still have to remember it.  Maybe it's my old age but I find myself using the "Forget Your Password" option a lot on sites that I view once a month.  

Stackoverflow

Stackoverflow.com - A good example of logging in without creating an account  

Solution:  There are 3 websites that I visit everyday: Google(Gmail), Facebook, and Twitter.  I use the same username for each site but I also have a unique password for each. I have already gone through the process of creating an account on each of them.

When I go to a new website and I am asked to create an account, I want to be able to click a Google, Twitter, or Facebook button and enter my password for that site. The new website should use that as the authentication instead of asking me to create another password. The new website can still create an account for me but this should be done behind the scenes. 

I shouldn't have to enter my first name, last name, zip code, or have to verify my email address for each website that I want to access.  I've already done those things on Google, Twitter, and Facebook and there are ways for websites to interface with them. 

We should be able to assume that almost everyone online has an account on either Google, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo, or AOL.  Each of these sites use authentication methods like APIs or OpenID to verify the username and password and then pass the verification over to the site that the user is trying to log in to.  It's the web developer's responsibility to learn these shared authentication methods in order to make the web more usable by reducing the amount of times users have to create new accounts.

Mobile UI (iPhone and Android) for All Websites

Iphone_techcrunch

TechCrunch.com - Does not have a mobile version for the iPhone.

Problem: I have had an iPhone for about a year now and it has totally changed my view of the mobile web.  Before the iPhone, I used a Blackberry and Windows Mobile phones but the web browsing experience was dismal. If you tried really hard you could search for a phone number of a local restaurant on Google but that was about it. The mobile web on these phones was painful to use and avoided if possible.  The iPhone is a completely different experience. I don't always have to make time to go to the office desktop or open up the laptop to look up something on the web. Instead, I can pull the iPhone out of my pocket and open up Safari

While the mobile web is a lot better on the iPhone, the experience can be amazing if the website is configured for the iPhone's resolution.  You can pinch, zoom, and move around any page in Safari, but this still can take a little bit of time to do.  When I open up mobile Safari, I usually want to search for something quick on Google or open a bookmarked site where I can quickly scan for some information.  This can be easier and faster on a site that has a mobile version which is formated for the iPhone.

Iphone_mashable

Mashable.com - Has a nice iPhone web interface.

Solution:  Is a mobile version of a website really necessary?  On newer phones like the iPhone and Android maybe no, but if we want the web to be more usable then yes. The mobile web is the future and web developers should embrace it by developing an alternate version of their sites that offer the same content but is formatted for the smaller screen. In the future, everyone will probably carry an iPhone or something similar that will be their primary internet browsing device. This has already happened around the world.

However, two of the top tech websites, Engadget and TechCrunch don't have mobile versions. They acknowledge that iPhone users are a large portion of their audience but either they don't have the resources to create a mobile version or they don't see the need.  Mashable, a competitor to TechCrunch, does have a mobile version and it's the one that I have bookmarked and view daily.  

Conclusion

I'm guilty like many other web developers of taking the easy route of using "create an account" pages and not developing mobile versions of the sites I've worked on. Even this blog on posterous.com does not have a mobile version.  Hopefully, posterous will release this feature in the next year and if not I may have to move to another blog platform.  

My new year's resolution as a web developer is to make the websites that I work o more usable by reducing the "create an account" pages and making them easier to access on mobile web browsers.  It will take more time but the end result will be a better experience for the web users.
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