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12 Myths Every Photographer Should Know
Actually has 11 myths, but does explore pretty common ones and offers explanations for each
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Cheap Android Phones Could Cost Telcos Billions in Repairs | Gadget Lab | Wired.com
Highlights the perils of android being an open platform with very little control over the hardware & end user experience. And it’s not just the users getting affected in this case.
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Platform fragmentation: It’s shorthand for saying that multiple devices — all boasting different internal components and screen sizes — are loaded with a wide variety of OS versions. In the world of Android phones, all this variance from device to device can cause problems for engineers who must perfectly match hardware builds to software builds. In the end, consumers are sometimes faced with hardware that doesn’t seem to work.
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That means pushing out lots of updates to phones that may not be ready.
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When another Android update is released the phone manufacturer must retool its custom UI in order to make the new OS work.
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Android Market Apps Known Issues
Makes for pretty sad reading for an OS that is supposed to be at version 4.0. Problems aplenty for both users & app developers.
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Microsoft’s Creative Destruction
The article (by Dick Brass, a vice president at Microsoft from 1997 to 2004) is almost 2 years old, but just as relevant after the news of the demise of the Courier tablet. Also makes you wonder whether Microsoft’s strategy of focusing on software is becoming its Achilles heel.
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As the fellow who tried (and largely failed) to make tablet PCs and e-books happen at Microsoft a decade ago, I could say this is because the company placed too much faith in people like me.
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Its marketing has been inept for years
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When we were building the tablet PC in 2001, the vice president in charge of Office at the time decided he didn’t like the concept. The tablet required a stylus, and he much preferred keyboards to pens and thought our efforts doomed. To guarantee they were, he refused to modify the popular Office applications to work properly with the tablet. So if you wanted to enter a number into a spreadsheet or correct a word in an e-mail message, you had to write it in a special pop-up box, which then transferred the information to Office. Annoying, clumsy and slow.
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Part of the problem is a historic preference to develop (highly profitable) software without undertaking (highly risky) hardware.
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Timing has also been poor — too soon on Web TV, too late on iPods.
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Amazon Launching E-Book Lending Library – WSJ.com
Nowhere close to the physical lending model yet…
“Moreover, Amazon will restrict borrowers to one title at a time, one per month. Borrowers can keep a book for as long as they like, but when they borrow a new title, the previously borrowed book automatically disappears from their device.” -
ifttt / Post diigo bookmarks to wordpress
Posts your public bookmarks on diigo to wordpress along with your description & tags.
ifttt (If this then that) is a handy internet service that lets you mashup different online services and create tasks for them. -
ifttt / Selective diigo bookmarks to wordpress
Posts diigo bookmarks tagged with “forblog” (can be changed to other tags) to wordpress
Also, if you are an internet poweruser, check out the ifttt service that allows you to mashup different online services ranging from facebook to flickr
Author: Aditya
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Interesting links (weekly)
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Ra.One
Managed to watch Ra.One this evening on the IMAX screen (the picture was quite grainy at times, so not sure if it was actually meant for IMAX), and it was definitely a unique experience for a Bollywood movie in terms of the special effects. There are plot holes aplenty in the movie, but if you go in without bias then it can be pretty entertaining (if you managed to sit through TMK, then this one’s a breeze). There are however quite a few other interesting things, including my customary tech observations about the movie:
- This movie probably has the maximum density of Apple products, given the number of iMacs we are shown, along with the customary iPhone (3 GS though)
- Which brings me to the second point that it is really peculiar that the game is being developed on iMacs…
- which have not been using NVidia GPUs for some time now (NVidia is a pretty prominent partner for the movie)
- The PS3 is probably the only product shown in the movie that uses an NVidia GPU, unless you consider the Alienware laptop & MacBook Pro used in the beginning of the movie for the demo.
- On the topic of gaming consoles, Microsoft definitely missed out a golden opportunity to showcase Kinect’s motion sensing capabilities.
- The comic book (Superman – he was a jumper initially), video game (Crysis for the suit design, and action games like Mortal Kombat, Tekken etc. for the general concept) and Hollywood (Terminator, Iron Man, Matrix) influences are very apparent.
- Talking of video games, Bollywood is definitely getting more serious about them. Even the recent flop Toonpur Ka Super Hero had a climax involving video game concepts.
- Coming to the non-technical aspects, the movie creators seem to have done quite a bit of Market Research to target the youth segment. The way they have researched action video games is pretty evident. The elite gadgets like the PSP & PS3 are also thrown in for good measure. Besides that, the impact of Japanese animes (just try switching to the Animax channel) is also pretty visible – the first action dream sequence for one. Even the soundtrack is not left alone.
- The car number plates were pretty interesting, particularly for the VWs owned by SRK – they all had featured IO (Aiyo?) in them. Rajnikanth’s was of course SUPERSTAR.
- UK seems to be getting back some of Bollywood love that it lost out to the US, with this movie (could have been due to budget constraints though) following in the footsteps of Mere Brother Ki Dulhan and Patiala House.
- Armaan Verma reminded me a lot of Ritesh Deshmukh
- SRK also seems to be pretty serious about song copyrights – this time it was “Stand By Me” (after “Pretty Woman” in Kal Ho Na Ho)
- Last but not the least, Chammak Challo will never be the same once you realise that it is G.One dancing with Ra.One
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Online Reading – 12 Myths Every Photographer Should Know
Actually has 11 myths, but does explore pretty common ones and offers explanations for each
Filed under: myths, photography
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Online Reading – Android Market Apps Known Issues
Makes for pretty sad reading for an OS that is supposed to be at version 4.0. Problems aplenty for both users & app developers.
Filed under: android, apps, market, issues, bugs, Google
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Online Reading – Microsoft’s Creative Destruction
The article (by Dick Brass, a vice president at Microsoft from 1997 to 2004) is almost 2 years old, but just as relevant after the news of the demise of the Courier tablet. Also makes you wonder whether Microsoft’s strategy of focusing on software is becoming its Achilles heel.
Filed under: nytimes, innovation, microsoft, design, politics
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Amazon Launching E-Book Lending Library – WSJ.com
Nowhere close to the physical lending model yet…
“Moreover, Amazon will restrict borrowers to one title at a time, one per month. Borrowers can keep a book for as long as they like, but when they borrow a new title, the previously borrowed book automatically disappears from their device.”Filed under: amazon, library, books, lending, ecommerce
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ifttt / Post diigo bookmarks to wordpress
Link: http://ifttt.com/recipes/7207
Posts your public bookmarks on diigo to wordpress along with your description & tags.
ifttt (If this then that) is a handy internet service that lets you mashup different online services and create tasks for them.Filed under: diigo, bookmarks, wordpress, ifttt
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Interesting links (weekly)
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Pretty convincing, and it blurs out the names & ids if you want
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Generate a Random Name – Fake Name Generator
Handy for times when you don’t want to give away your real details. Could also be used to generate name\addresses for countries that you don’t reside in.
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News from The Associated Press
No surprises here. Anyone with an MBA or even an ounce of common sense could’ve seen that Groupon’s current business model is shaky at best, especially in the long term.
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Apple’s Lower Prices Are All Part of The Plan – NYTimes.com
If you ever wondered what Tim Cook was doing in the last decade, then this is pretty much the article that defines his role as the COO
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Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the tech discontinuity & more
Have you found it odd that the first book (The Lightning Thief) in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series is bereft of cell phone references? I certainly did, and found a likely explanation in the series’ wikipedia page – the book was written in the mid 1990s (Rick Riordan completed the manuscript in 1994), but published only in 2005. Those were the days when cell phones were a lot less commonplace, and kids certainly did not carry them around. In fact, it was probably not that common among adults either. However, the remaining books more than make up for this technology gap (and even offer a post facto explanation for demi-gods not carrying cell phones).
Coming to the series itself, Percy Jackson and the Olympians was one of the first series that I have read from start to end after the Harry Potter series ended. Incidentally, I also happened to buy all of the books from the Kindle Store and read it across 3-4 devices (on my Samsung Galaxy S & iPod Touch using the Kindle Apps, and my laptop using Amazon’s Cloud Reader – the furthest read location sync is really handy). This was one of the rare times that I also happened to watch the movie before reading the book (unlike Harry Potter, LOTR etc.). I did like the movie when I saw it – quite entertaining with a bunch of special effects.
However, after reading the book and the entire series, the differences stand out and makes me wonder if they even intend to make movies from the remaining books. And the differences run far deeper than Percy’s pen-sword being a click type vs. a capped one. They’ll really need to rewrite the entire series if they want to bring out sequels, particularly because the main characters are a lot older (already look to be past their 16th birthdays), there’s no Oracle to give out prophecies and the key antagonist – Kronos – is not featured in any way (the latter two could be retrofitted I suppose). I also wonder how Percy is going to take the dip in River Styx when Charon seems to be ferrying people across thin air. The movie however went all out on the tech front with Percy using an iPod Touch as a mirror to defeat Medusa.
Getting back to the books, there’s another bit that seemed a bit forced and that was the reference to 9/11 and Ground Zero in the later parts (Annabeth’s dream of building a structure on Ground Zero) while it doesn’t come up in the Lightning Thief. This is another piece that gives away the fact that the first part was completed much before the others, and might have even had a reference to the Twin Towers in it which was subsequently edited out.
All said and done, the series did make me interested in Greek mythology and had me return to playing Titan Quest (Steam had a sale which coincided with my book reading, and I got Titan Quest & its expansion for $5) and long for Age of Mythology. Now, if only there were some Percy Jackson mods for these games…
