Monday:
Carrying over from the week before, I saw this too late. It's a first person story by developer Craig Hunter that provides his thoughts on the Pre's webOS SDK. He thinks Pre needed to hit a home run but "stepped up to the plate and laid a solid bunt."
Somehow I stumbled on this graphic -- perhaps a tweet - from The New Scientist. It's a visual representation of the exploding Internet, compared to 2002, 2004, and 2006. Internet traffic is still growing at 50 percent annually. It's a great reference graphic for a presentation.
This one's fairly geeky, and Linux related, but does say something interesting about Microsoft. If it's in Microsoft's best interest to have Linux perform well in virtualization on top of Windows, then Microsoft will lend a hand. Otherwise, Windows just looks bad. It's just smart business and shows how, in the interconnected technical world, you can't be an island.
While AT&T is doing well with the iPhone, it's such a big company, covering such a sweeping geographic that it's hard to close all the holes. That, of course, generates some push back by the one-off cases and also leads to technical frustrations. Presented for consideration. Decide for yourself.
Tuesday
I had thought that my new MacBook Pro, bought in October, 2008, would finally have an SSD instead of an HHD. But the prices for SSDs were just too high. Here's an overview of Intel's efforts, speed improvements and prices to keep the dream alive. It's coming for everyone soon. Very soon.
When it comes to Web apps and the desktop, one of the barriers is the ability to drag and drop between them. However, the ajaxian reported on Tuesday that there is an effort, called Swell, to break down that barrier. The nice thing about computer technology: it just keeps getting better and better.
I have written before that I am using RSS less and less. Partly because I'm not on the afternoon news desk, combing for news, but also because I can only absorb so much stuff, and a lot of it is sent by the people I follow. Of course, that strategy, letting respected technical people be your filter is fraught with potential peril. This link has a more detailed discussion of the issue by Alex Payne. Check it out.
Things got fairly tense early in the week when we heard about a Foxconn employee who died under mysterious circumstances after he allegedly misplaced an iPhone 4G prototype. The Fake Steve Jobs (Daniel Lyons) put a humorous, sarcastic touch on it, as he tends to do. Presented here without comment.
Wednesday, Thursday
Got sidetracked with reviews and Hidden Dimensions. Nothing in my blog folder for those days.
Friday
Anyone who trades in the stock market will be amused by this story about millisecond, high frequency trading by supercomputers. It seems to undermine the spirit of investing and undermines the integrity of what's going on. Fortunately, the SEC is looking into it.
Twitter has take off so much that we see things like Kevin Spacey tweeting from his BlackBerry on the Letterman show. (Letterman thinks it's a big waste of time.) It's gotten so big, Twitter is changing its home page so it's not so mystifying to newbies. Hmmm... Are they scraping the bottom of the barrel here? Read Kara Swisher's interview with a Twitter co-founder to see what they're thinking these days.
Kevin Spacey's Tweet from The Late Show
(Mr. Spacey is one of my favorite male actors.)
Finally, here's a chart that shows the actual numbers for AT&T in terms of average monthly data revenue per customer and churn -- which I mentioned earlier this week. I think one has to be in the business to understand the significance of a drop in churn rate from 1.3 percent to 1.1 percent. it may seem small, but the cost of procuring customers is high, and small percentages in a Big Business add up.
This isn't tech related, but I had to sneak it in for cat lovers.
Technical Word of the Week
Freeconomics(n.) The business model of using things that are free to attract attention, then promote other, sustainable revenue streams. Source: unknown