Was watching “What women want” on TV and noticed Mel Gibson working on a PowerBook that had the logo upside down. The movie is from 2000, and we’ve come a long way in terms of product placements, and so has Apple. Flipping the company logo (a Steve Jobs decision that was similarly flipped) on the laptop lid was probably one of the most useful product placement decisions ever made, and its not that old an idea either. The PowerBook seems to have starred in quite a few movies, as recent as the middle of last decade.
Category: Technology
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Before the Logo Flipped
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Algorithm to write stories, read by Essay Grading Software?
First came the software to write stories based on data collected:
Once Narrative Science had mastered the art of telling sports and finance stories, the company realized that it could produce much more than journalism. Indeed, anyone who needed to translate and explain large sets of data could benefit from its services. Requests poured in from people who were buried in spreadsheets and charts. It turned out that those people would pay to convert all that confusing information into a couple of readable paragraphs that hit the key points.
Then came the essay grading software:
The EdX assessment tool requires human teachers, or graders, to first grade 100 essays or essay questions. The system then uses a variety of machine-learning techniques to train itself to be able to grade any number of essays or answers automatically and almost instantaneously.
The software will assign a grade depending on the scoring system created by the teacher, whether it is a letter grade or numerical rank. It will also provide general feedback, like telling a student whether an answer was on topic or not.
Just a prelude to the battle to figure out the loopholes in both with each trying to game the other?
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Iron Man 3 in 4DX
4DX is an interesting concept:
4DX allows a motion picture presentation to be augmented with environmental effects, such as motion, odours and humidity, outside the standard video and audio.
However, I do hope that it doesn’t take off like 3D. I’m sure no one wants to watch Slumdog Millionaire in 4D, peanut butter & chocolate or not.
Iron Man 3 to Debut as a 4DX Film in Japan | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.
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Apple & The Default Narrative
I choose to quote a para supporting the default narrative unlike John Gruber:
That isn’t to say that Apple should be controlling and arrogant, and that their choices don’t create genuine problems worth bitching about. Nobody should pretend it’s good for consumers that Apple doesn’t let Nuance make Swype for iOS and doesn’t let us set Chrome to be our default iPhone browser and that it’s to my benefit that iCloud makes it impossible to use Byword on the Mac and iA Writer on the iPad to edit the same plain text documents. Apple definitely contributes to their own reputation.
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Apple and pricing
Given that most people think that the Post-PC era is on, it makes sense for Apple to continue its Mac pricing. The tablets and smartphones are anyway eating into the low end of the PC market:
The conventional wisdom is to pursue profits by maximizing market share. Apple pursues profits by specifically targeting only the high-margin segments of the overall market, and effectively forgoing market share in the low-margin segments, no matter how large those low-margin segments are.
via Daring Fireball: Pricing and Profit Consistency and the Halo Effect.
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Numbers: Who’s Winning, iOS or Android?
The reports may contradict each other in numbers for iOS and Android, but one thing for sure is that Microsoft and Blackberry have been comprehensively relegated to the “Other” category. It’s also clear that Google and Apple are both winning (Google wants the ad\service revenue which comes from a market share majority, while Apple wants the profits from hardware):
Android if you’re talking about market share; iOS if you mean financial success. So far, this is a strikingly different market than the PC business back in the 1990s, when market share translated directly into financial success.
via Who’s Winning, iOS or Android? All the Numbers, All in One Place | TIME.com.
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Microsoft’s last stand?
Microsoft is desperately trying to avoid the fate they inflicted on the Mac in the 1990s with Windows 9X:
Office for iPad, launched at the same time as Windows 8/RT, would most likely have killed the market for Windows 8 and RT devices. As it was, that market was already severely diminished and below expectations. But with a viable alternative tablet, it could have been game over. And the ramifications of that decision would have impacted far more than just Windows 8/RT: The PC market could have literally collapsed, much as the video game market did in 1983. The fallout would have included PC makers going out of business/being sold, a serious and potentially permanent hit to Microsoft’s bottom line and the ouster of Steve Ballmer. I’m talking tech Armageddon here.
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Hijacking airplanes with an Android phone
So now the TSA and their ilk have more things to worry about than shoe bombers. Also, this does not make it any easier for those of us who were thinking of being able to use our smart devices on flights:
To make things even more interesting – or easier – Teso showcased an Andorid application that uses SIMON’s powers to remotely control airplanes on the move.
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Raising of Chicago – Wikipedia
One of the most interesting Civil Engineering projects:
During the 1850s and 1860s engineers carried out a piecemeal raising of the level of central Chicago. Streets, sidewalks and buildings were either built up or else physically raised up on jacks.
Raising of Chicago – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
via Quora
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Microsoft, Nokia and Oracle moan to EC about Google Android dominance
A case of sour grapes that one could not have imagined happening to Microsoft a decade ago. What goes around…
Microsoft, Nokia and Oracle moan to EC about Google Android dominance – IT News from V3.co.uk.
