I love BlogsNow for bringing things like Bent Objects to my scattered attention.
Somehow the Internet also lost someting after we started to never went further than one or two clicks away from Google.
the small chronies (50K in tax money wasted for this site) get caught
Actually those monkeys at Desyne kick out a 403 to me, since my IP is not one that is in the US. How pathetic.
I would have not missed much. Just verbage like:
Our clients range from global Fortune 100 corporations to local retailers. They all, however, share one thing in common: an absolute commitment to a strategic marketing approach wrapped around a comprehensive web-based technology capability. It's a formula for success we have delivered to more than 1000 clients since our founding in 1996.
Awesome that they all share “an absolute commitment to a strategic marketing approach wrapped around a comprehensive web-based technology capability”.
That evokes strong mental images. No, really.
Last pre macworld ’08 apple related post. I hope. Thinking about what the future might bring I thought about the past. And, actually, in all that stellar success that Apple has amassed there are a couple of products that were actually not doing so well.
Apple TV. Who has one? And, more importantly who would need one? It took a genius like Scoble a mere couple of years to realize that a MacMini could things better.
Apple “Hifi”. Yes, they made a stereo once. I bought one. And then there were 5 other people.
Lamp iMac (gen2). Not really Apples fault. Good design, just to different for people to pick and drag home.
Starbucks: I have not seen any numbers, but i am pretty sure that sales are horrible for those ‘oh I like what I am hearing and like to buy it right now’ impulse idiocracy Pawlows impuls buys.
Aperture. But I rather not talk about Pro products. That’s a whole nother story.
pre Iphone “video” iPods. What was that resolution again? Those were proof that people really will buy anything. OK, they elected Bush the younger 1.5 times as their president, so nothing should surprise.
Hard not to predict anything right now. Here what I think that will happen tomorrow. Is it actually tomorrow that Uncle Jobs comes down from the Mountain? Anyhow.
New Laptops: Third Generation for what is called the “ProLine” now. First was Titanium, second Aluminum (that stuff that bends when you look at it, keeps AppleCare so profitable). Now there will be a third one. It’s about time. The 12″ not making into into the brave new Intel feature left a gap in the revenue potential field for a suspicously long time. Not sure if the 17″ has such a bright future. Depends what how easy it is to squeeze out a new flavor of laptop.
There will be Blu-Ray. One could speculate that the MacPro bumps last week were announced after Warners killed HD-DVD. In other words: takes Blu-Ray now more Steve time, and the Pro upgrades fell of the key-note schedule because of that?
Those new laptops might have built in high speed internet connection. I would appreciate EVDO. It’s nice. And the Amazon showed that you can built it in, and that Sprint is willing to make deals. Imagine you buy a new laptop and get free non bullshit (t-online / starbucks I am looking at you) internet whereever you are. I use EVDO since roughly a year and it’s just great. Nothing short of that. Technically you get GPS with EVDO for free, I wish that Apples puts GPS where it should be: in every freaking machine. Yes, I like to Google for something and get results that are optimised for my current whereabouts. But GPS would
put the iPhone on the spot for not having it. Something to spin. (Apple likes has a pathological history of lying around battery life).
One could dream that Apple becomes an ISP. The iPhone worked great for them. But AT&T? They get their money, but nobody started to like AT&T. They are still considered the necessary evil. Who loves his ISP? Which ISP is known for being awesome? Nobody. Interesting. There is a market. People are not paying their landline or even cable bills anymore, but they keep their cellphones going, and probably also their Internet connections. That’s money that still is out there. And Apple is known to show a strong desire for that kind of thing. Sucessfully.
Speaking of Money, AAPL trades at 176. I think it will touch 190 after the keynote.
One of the reasons will be that there will be something that let’s people imagine that profits that used be over at Blockbuster Netflix will now also flow to Cupertino. iTunes is a money making machine.
The Laptop prices will look like the current ones. But by the time you have added the things you would like to have those new machines will be pretty expensive. I think a company that managed to get 1,000 US$ for each phone (!) they sell, is looking at money differently after that.
Finally there will be some iPhone news that will keep the sales going. Probably some (3rd party) Application(s) that can be downloaded. I doubt a hardware version 2 of the device. If so, then it would need to be in stores in a very few weeks, so that there would be no gap in the sales.
While the rest of the country sobbers up from the stupid real estate bubble fueled growth delusions, Apple will go on very strongly. So will Google btw. And not many more.
since it is pretty tricky to google for, here the wonderful scary as hell wikimedia addition that lets you add raw html code in your pages:
[make sure to read the end of this post]
< ?php
# RawHtml.php - raw HTML extension
#
# Defines the tag pair
# Sends the content out without any processing.
#
# To use, include this file into your LocalSettings.php
# To configure, set members of $wgRawHtml after the inclusion.
#
# include 'RawHtml.php';
#
# $wgRawHtml = array('JoeUser', 'JoeUserBot')
#
# Adapted from code by Jan Steinman
class raw_html_settings { };
$wgRawHtml = new raw_html_settings;
$wgExtensionFunctions[] = 'wf_raw_html_ext';
function wf_raw_html_ext() {
global $wgParser;
$wgParser->setHook('RawHtml', 'render_raw_html');
}
function render_raw_html($raw_html_src, $style='') {
return $raw_html_src;
}
?>
found here.
It really is easy to use: Just add the file as RawHtml.php and then add in the end of LocalSettings.php the following lines:
include 'RawHtml.php';
$wgRawHtml = array('user-name-to-use-this-goes-here' , 'this-would-be-a-second-one');
It turns out that the user names get absolutely ignored. So actually this is really dangerous to do, since ANYBODY that can edit the wiki can also insert any html code. Which is ok in a non public wiki, but NOT out there on those internets.
So the code above is plain malware: A bot could crawl the sources of wikis and could insert any html that might please in those pages. Allot of harm can be done that way.
For a decent explaination how to add your own addition look here
I ended up boiling up a couple of probably horrible php lines myself:
?php
#mimg.php
#insert image in wikimedia pages.
#to use add code like:
#
#please note that I have no freaking clue what I am doing.
#this will only work with local links to images, since all
#characters apart from numbers, letters slash and dot will be filtered when rendered
#to install save this in a file and include in LocalSettings.php
class mimgclass { };
$mimgo = new mimgclass;
$wgExtensionFunctions[] = 'installmimg';
function installmimg() {
global $wgParser;
$wgParser->setHook('mimg', 'mrender_mimg');
}
function mrender_mimg($mimg, $style='') {
$mimg = preg_replace ('/[^a-zA-Z0-9\/\.]/' ,"",$mimg);
return "";
}
?>
It is interesting to see how different the current workflows can be. Like
this or that.
Judging by the end this is already from 2003, but still worth looking at:
Robert Rodriguez talking about HD. It was never a fanboy of his,
but I think he expresses a couple of very interesting concepts rather well in this piece.
Running and developing a system in the same time is allot of fun. An idea can be quickly added and / or tried. Some are more
involved though. At this moment there are 42,658 files in Interdubs. So uploading happens allot. There was a ftp interface, but people
need passwords and needed to remember the folder name.
It could be easier. And now it is. It’s as simple as clicking on a link:
A transmit droplet with the proper parameters get created and downloaded automatically. Those droplets can be kept in the dock or on the desktop, and uploading is even easier than it was.
As with so many nice and easy things the underlying technology is actually not that simple. It was great to be able to draw from the resources and experience of the amazing people at Oneiric to get the backbone for this service addition installed. David Green was super helpful, without him this feature would have taken weeks longer to implement. Working with David is allot of fun, since everything he says he will do he does. And it works, since he has tested and checked it from the get go.
It is truly interesting how a small company with people that care can have so much more impact that larger ones that take weeks to move.
In their recent PS3 sales success and blu-ray coup I had totally forgotten how thick Sony can be.