June 29th 2007: Apple releases the iPhone
August 8th 2007: INTERDUBS supports the iPhone
June 17th 2008: Beam.TV launches mode to support the iPhone.
As for all others companies in the space: Nothing. Yet.
The other day a colleague observed me wrangling some obscure firewall / ftp issue that came up for one of my clients. Once I had fixed the problem he proclaimed: “you really leave no bug behind”. I like that expression. It matches what I am trying to do with INTERDUBS. Actually so far each bug got fixed twenty four hours after it had been reported. Other feature wishes can take longer to get implemented: Some people had to wait months before they could create reels via drag and drop.
The ‘all bugs get fixed right away’ mantra has a huge benefit: Low support efforts. Actually I carefully evaluate each support call / email to see if the software / documentation could have helped with this. I sure don’t mind talking to my clients, but I agree with Don Norman that products need to designed so that they work with their users as well as they possibly can.
Nicolas Carr asks Is Google Making Us Stupid.
The question is provocative, the underlying mechanism interesting. His conclusions seem predictive and not very helpful I am afraid. Reading the title I hoped for the wrong article. One that would illuminate and much more interesting question: “How does google change the way we think”. It certainly does. I am amazed how quickly I find myself forgetting things. It was worrying at first. After all I make a living based on the application of knowledge. The foundation of knowledge was being able to remember things. I say was. And -actually- I think it is quiet ok.
The apparent loss of memory was frightening when I observed how I would google for things again and again. The nicest anecdote I mention frequently: Reading my own blog without noticing that I am fixing an issue following a recipe that I wrote myself.
Nowadays I think that my brain just realized that it is a waste of time to compete with the internet and google as it’s access if it comes to all those mundane details that make up my job. Once a decent phone book function comes along (be it as a book or function of the phones software) we quickly forget most numbers we used to be able to remember. Just how it goes.
With a MacBook you pay around 50 extra to get it in black. Now with the iPhone 3G there will be a white version. But that will only be available for the larger 16GB version. I never ever have filled up the 4GB I had. So you have two choices now with the iPhone 3G: pay too much because you can and don’t show people (get the black one) or let people know that you don’t need to care about the extra 100. The new price of 199 is pretty low, compared to last years launch. But I would guess that the 20$ a month extra for 24 months rule is still in place. You pay AT&T or whomever, but you pay. That’s 480 dollars extra that any iPhone will cost you. So the price started out at 1079 for the 8GB / 979 for the 4GB and now has arrived at 879 / 779 respectively.
Turns out that the data plan is now $30 and not $20 any longer. So the total price for an iPhone2 is $1019 / $919.
Funny how Apple sometimes ‘fixes’ things by giving the remedy a new name:
Under 10.4 the ‘fancy’ cache would go made quiet frequently. Basically you’d see the wrong web page, while other commands like
ping etc still reach the proper server.
sudo lookupd flushcache
used to fix that. Of course the bug has not been fixed in 10.5.2 but the remedy is called now:
dscacheutil -flushcache
Probably the only music video that starts out in OS X 10.4 and ends in 10.5:
Or -to say it better- the only one where it’s that apparent.
We have indeed come a long since theCMX 600
Today Interdubs crossed the 80K file mark. 59 days for 20,000 more files. Last time it took 83 days to grow that much, and before that 118. Something seems to be working here.
What makes me even happier is to hear the following from a new client: “you must have worked in our field for a while”. That would be true, and it delights me that it seems to show in the application. Intentions are one thing. Seing that they apparently manifested themselves at least somewhat is very rewarding.
unbelievable how bad it actually it. From start to finish. Idea to execution. Whom are these people kidding?
still worth reading
even after a couple of weeks. Thx BlogsNow
It turns out that I was wrong then I thought I was wrong about the Next-Gen of movies on a disc: Blu-Ray sales declined. Bluray might become the first class of enteraintment: Coach has many more seats that 1st. Specially on inner american flights.