CNNMoney:
“We’re very, very concerned about it,” said David Teater, senior director at the nonprofit National Safety Council. “The auto industry and the consumer electronics industry are really in an arms race to see how we can enable drivers to do stuff other than driving.”
This is the flip side of putting more and more technology within arm’s reach of the driver. I know I’m an outlier on this but, as a motorcyclist, these kinds of technologies scare the crap out of us.
MacStories:
The problem with iCloud Tabs is that they’re limited to Safari, so if you’re using Chrome or Firefox on OS X, you can’t access the tabs that you have open on your iPhone or iPad. For this reason, Josh Parnham has devised a simple and clever solution: CloudyTabs is a menu bar app that lists iCloud Tabs open on all your devices.
I’m surprised at how often I access them and how useful iCould tabs are.
The Sweet Setup:
Between losing an iPhone, never-ending security issues, and the NSA, having an account accessed by an outsider is more likely than ever. While having a good password is critical, enabling 2-Step Verification is a great way to ensure data you’ve stashed in an online service like Gmail or Dropbox is limited to your eyes only.
Yes, 2-Step verification can be a PITA but trust me, “getting hacked” is a bigger one.
The Week:
According to a recent study by Ookla Speedtest, the U.S. ranks a shocking 31st in the world in terms of average download speeds. It falls behind countries like Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Uruguay.How did the country that literally invented the internet fall behind so many others in download speeds?
It’s the same situation here in Canada – little competition means no incentive to get better/faster.
Observatory:
Historically, Apple has been very smart about strategy, while Microsoft has been very … shall we say … un-smart.Now that Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella has appointed Mark Penn to the position of Chief Strategy Officer, it’s a whole new ballgame, right?
Not so fast.
From what we know of Mark Penn, the gap between the quality of strategy at Apple and Microsoft isn’t about to shrink.
Ouch. Ken Segall is very unimpressed with Mark Penn.
Unmark was just released today and I signed up. The interface is very nice and it’s really easy to use. If I had one complaint, it would be the window that pops up when you save something to read later—I don’t need that, but I don’t see a way to turn it off. An FAQ on the service has been posted too.
As the web gets more commercial, more companies want to track and know the real you. The backlash against this — and the desire to have “ephemeral” interactions in the digital world — is why Andrew Busey, the creator of iChat 19 years ago, has built Banter, a chat app with no names and little storage. The app lets people sign up with any user name and discuss … well, anything they want.
LG’s newest commercial is… odd.
I don’t disagree, but Google seems a little bitter.
Benjamin Mayo:
This means that in the future Getty could replace your image blocks with other images, advertisements … or well anything. It also means that your site now has a dependency on Getty’s CDN uptime. If their servers are down, your site has no images.
Good points.
Fascinating.
There are conditions of course, but this is huge.
I like it—the site is minimal, but shows a lot of information in an easy to read site. I have some issues with the fonts used, but overall, a good job.
This is so great.
The Winklevoss twins — Tyler and Cameron — have bought tickets on Virgin Galactic using bitcoins, according to a blog on the Winkelvoss Capital website.
Or, to put it another way: Rich twins buy tickets on unproven spaceship using suspect virtual currency.
This has to be the cruelest product ever invented.
A behind the scenes look at Slash recording his new album.
If you’re talking tech with Americans, you may want to avoid using any jargon.
Sweet baby Jesus, this is scary and hilarious.
I missed this the other day, but it’s worth a look.
Interesting to see Media Temple get into this segment of the business. It makes a lot of sense, especially considering how popular WordPress is these days. I started The Loop on Media Temple and it was an absolute disaster, but I’ll keep an eye on this service. Shawn Blanc has some thoughts on the new service too.
I like this better than Google’s offering because it has an onscreen interface. While it doesn’t rely on a smartphone to control the device, it is an option, in addition to the included remote.
An interesting experiment, but apparently it didn’t work.
Good review by Bojan Djordjevic.
Lisa Fleisher for WSJ:
Speaking at the Saïd Business School in Oxford, U.K., Steve Ballmer, who stepped down from Microsoft one month ago, admitted that he would re-do the last ten years if he could.
“We would have a stronger position in the phone market today if I could re-do the last 10 years,” he said. The answer, he said, is to pick up and try to catch the next wave.
It’s good that he admitted something we all knew for a while now.
This is pretty amazing.
A new feature of Eddie’s revamped Web site: Ask Eddie.
And rather than looking like a knockoff of Apple’s MacBook Air done in plastic, as the existing Chromebook does, it’s got a gray case done up in a stitched, leather-like material, a look also seen in other Samsung devices such as the Galaxy Note 3.
Fake leather? Really?
If you are wondering about iOS security, you should read this article by Rich Mogull.
Like millions of other people around the world, I cheered Tim Cook’s comments in response to a question from the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) at last Friday’s Apple shareholder meeting. The organization asked Cook to commit to only those things that were profitable—Cook refused, saying that Apple made decisions for a variety of reasons.
The strategy today is simple: In order to move fast, build what you can’t buy or risk losing control of your fate and becoming the next Palm, Motorola, or HTC. And if, in the process, you disrupt an Oracle or a Qualcomm? So be it.
This is really interesting. I had no idea Facebook built its own servers, but it makes a lot of sense—if the incumbents can’t do it, build it yourself.