Deep Water on 60 Minutes

There will be a special on 60 Minutes tonight about the Coast Guard Deep Water Project, if you are not familiar with this disaster, it’s worth checking out.

We’ve Got Solid State Technology

Dear Ethan, there are people using this tech stuff for good. :)

Take some time to check out what the amazing folks at Adaptive Path have put together, in the spare time none-the-less. AP has come up with a device concept to improve life for diabetics; easing the burden of testing, pumping and decision-making for the user. They have posted a series of stories and insight behind the design under the Charmr category.

Further Evidence Wikipedia is For Amusement-Only

Call me crazy, but I’ve just never been a fan of wikipedia or the concept of self-regulated, community-sourced ‘facts’. The power-trip factor combined with anonymity make it a great place to push an agenda and silence opinions to the contrary. Need more proof? O’reilly Radar talks about wikiscanner, a tool to view edits to wikipedia via IP/domain. Oh Fox News, you never cease to underwhelm.

A Better Mouse Trap

Belkin has a new product coming to market I’ll be lined up to grab. The ‘Mouse Trap’ is a portable mousepad turned handy pouch, prefect for traveling across country or back and forth to work. It’s well designed, comes in great colors and looks to be a thick and flexible mousing surface, very cool.

Feed Fixed

Sorry to all the folks who have been reading via rss this past week, or not reading. The feed was broken with the new redesign, now it’s been fixed. Also the delicious daily posts should be working again as well.

Airpower Wiki - Finding Juice and WiFi

For all my road-warrior pals you may want to set your iPhones (sorry Jake) to ‘bookmark’ on this little link: AirPower Wiki. Great resource for finding power and the errant wi-fi connection in airports around the globe.

COO’s Like Pie Charts, But Only When They Get a Slice

In Scott McNulty’s latest TUAW post he shares anti-Safari leanings with Mozilla’s COO John Lilly. Both seem to focus on two things, 1) that many browser-options make the web a far better place and 2) that Safari is as awful as IE because it’s made by the maker of an OS.

Hmmmm, I take issue with both of these point. As a developer I have nothing fundamentally against Firefox, I think they’ve worked to embrace standards and have been successful at pushing users away from IE, but I disagree that more browsers make the web a better place, I think the more browsers squabble for market share (basically IE’s leavings) the tougher it makes things for developers and users. I’m sure John’s view of the world would change if the pie chart had FF as the Pac-Man eating IE, but that’s not the case. Here’s the truth…Firefox has been good for the web, but because of what it is and how’s it has come together. That doesn’t mean we need more browsers.

As for the second point, c’mon easy on the hyperbole guys. I don’t see how John (and Scot echoed) can say that Safari and IE are the same level of evil because they are made by OS developers, hogwash. IE was beyond embedded into the OS, it was within the fabric of the OS. Webkit certainly plays a role in elements of the mac OS, but you can easily remove Safari and go about your merry way. Safari is being pushed as an alternative, to which browser is up to you as a user. Frankly the comparison is short-sighted. Apple is and should be building the best possible solutions to its users problems, part of that strategy is a web platform that they can control. Why? Performance, stability, connectivity, interop, etc. More power to them.

Here’s the key, Firefox is worried because it’s another choice, not because it might magically someday remove choice…they are concerned that set of geeks and geeks-in-laws that have chosen or ben coerced into leaving IE for Firefox may revisit that decision and go Safari. They are concerned of the pressure it puts on them to innovate and manage expectations, there’s another player that is ambitious, motivated, funded and worst off for Firefox…cross-platform and backed by fanatics. Apple has the marketing and innovation to keep Firefox on their heels, IE be damned. See here’s the thing, if your IT folks at work don’t let you have Firefox you ain’t getting Safari. So the only Windows people moving to Safari already have the choice…and ability to make a switch.

This post fell apart, I’ve got no time to edit :) Take from it what you will. Firefox is a cool product, they’ve done good things for the web. They just need to own up to the reality that they aren’t the only ones that can take on IE and if they don’t keep building good stuff (and work on marketing) they might get lost in the shuffle.

Why all the craziness…Slide #2

Bashing iPhone Development

I’ve already seen a few posts bashing the fact that Apple isn’t opening the iPhone up to the world beyond Safari-based apps. Gizmodo’s Jesus Diaz had a particularly long winded rant that seemed to boil down to this…no SDK means no wicked cool games on the iPhone…sheesh talk about missing the point. I don’t remember there being a revolt when the video iPod was released sans games, that’s because it’s a media player not a console, same goes for the iPhone. While I think it’s great that people expect sooo much from Apple, they also like to stray beyond sensible. Give it a chance, more importantly give the developers a chance. It’s a new platform and I’m sure there are some wickedly creative folks who can make some brilliant, iPhone-specific apps. Let’s give them a little time.

…Of Apples and iPhones

Today’s Apple announcement of “if it works in Safari, it works on the iPhone” is both a call to action and an affirmation of effort. Web apps have come into there own in most respects, and this movement away from complied to web will force the hand of many who have held out thus far. It also positions those companies that understand how the web works and the power of social/community/collaborative products at the front of a very long line of interested parties.

Among those rejoicing the announcement are Jason Fried and the 37signals crew. Hells yeah indeed Jason. (Be advised the comments on that post have the makings of a flamewar over the merits of objective-c versus web2.0, pointless meandering ensues…) I assume you will see simlar posts and pronouncements from across the web, including Google, Yahoo and other powerhouses, I look forward to seeing the response once people get a chance to digest and connect some of the dots.

On a technnical note, I hope Apple’s assertion that there would be no SDK is an overstatement. Please, give us all some design guidance and/or assets to truly “match the look of the phone”.

Global Warming, Another Tax Mechanism

Denver is proposing strict new policies in an effort to fight ‘Global Warming’ in the absence of what Denver’s mayor feels is an “absence of federal leadership on the issue.”

My views on the subject are mixed, yes our current use of fossil fuels and consumption have a negative impact our our environment, we need to fix that and cleanup these issues. Are those issues directly related to climate change and aqn immenent disaster, no way. The motivation for the current “global warming’ hysteria is simple, money. It’s a new tax mechanism to offset and divert from those parties ultimately responsible for the pollution - big industry and the reality of global trade. The UN and now apprently local goverments under the recently signed U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement are looking to extort and blackmail citizens into some eco-gustapo.

Don’t get me wrong, I think behavior should change. But look at this plan. It links insurance premiums with miles driven. You have a city that has sprawled, as many have in recent decades, penalizing drivers for poor urban planning because they need to commute. Ok, that’s handy. All of this is a charade to cover and insulate those that are most culpable in all of this. Kudos for trying to effect change at the local level, but do it through incentive and reward based programs, at least until there’s a time that it’s more cost-effective to be clean and consume less.