Berlin airport fiasco an embarrassment for Germans

"Many politicians want prestigious large-scale projects to be inseparably connected with their names," said Sebastian Panknin, a financial expert with the Taxpayer's Association Germany. "To get these expensive projects started, they artificially calculate down the real costs to get permission from parliament or other committees in charge."

This is the biggest problem with state run projects. Ego driven politics that use lies to get approved and then explode in the face of the public. But then it doesn't matter anymore.

Shame on them. Shame on all of them, all over the world.

Mirrorless cameras and the Sony RX-1

I'm not a photographer but I love photography. I'm an aficionado, a budding photographer, an amateur. Whatever you may call me, the bottom line is I use a camera almost everyday but I don't earn my living out of photography. That disqualifies me, in some people's opinions, to say what I think about this special subject. I agree. I'm not qualify to talk about photography. I'm not good enough to critique you but I'm good enough to know what I want in a camera.

Lets start with the Sony RX-1. Looks like a great camera. Real Photographers love it. I want to love it too. I want to try one and I would love to own one. I mean, just look at it:

But I wouldn't use it as my main camera.

I understand it's an amazing device, leaps and bounds better than the cameras I'm used to use. It has a huge full frame sensor which is amazing given it's dimensions. And even knowing this, I wouldn't have it as a main camera. It has two big flaws for me:

1. It has a fixed lens. It's a great lens, no doubt. But is fixed. I may use only one lens in my Nikon but I know I can change anytime I want. And I've done it. This is a big flaw with this camera as it is now but it will be eventually worked out.
2. It's got no viewfinder. This is a big problem with mirrorless cameras in general. Screens are simply worst than a mirror. They live a few milliseconds in the past so you'll be always late for that special moment. They're low quality so you don't see every detail until you view the photo in your computer. But the worst part is that they're screens. Think about how many times you have tried to look into your smartphone in bright daylight and found it impossible.

Screens suck when it's bright outside and that's a big problem for photography. You want light. All of the light. And you can't have it cause the dinky screen won't let you use your camera.

This is the biggest flaw, in my opinion, in mirrorless cameras. And as long as they don't fix this (and I don't know how they're going to) I won't be switching my old DSLR for one of them.

The power of a Jedi. Pre-order now!

This is too cool

Galaxy S3 Bug Results in Crashing When Text Is Copied

You’d think if anyone would have a Copy function that worked perfectly, it’d be Samsung.

 This!!!!

John Gruber has joke skills.

This is very cool

We have seen an abundance of services pop up in the past few years that promise a way to share our files with ease and speed. Most of the times, all we want to do is share a file from one of our devices to the other. In such a scenario, going through the painful process of uploading it to such services or emailing it to yourself and then re-downloading it again on the other device seems like an overkill and is painfully slow and time consuming.

 It's like Droplr or Cloud.app but with its own special twist. I like it.

Security bug?

Brent Simmons explains a little security caveat with Twitters preferred method of authentication, OAuth:

I should say what bothers me.

Yes, I can go into my Twitter settings and revoke access to any one or more apps. And: I’m a developer, and I’ve written OAuth client code — I’ve even written Twitter-specific code.

But here’s what normal people think: I’ll change my password and everything will be okay.

When you change your password in a site that uses OAuth (like Twitter does), any app that was previously authorized keeps working. OAuth doesn't use passwords, it uses a token. That token keeps working until you de-authorize it. 

That's fine in a day-by-day basis, but when there's security breaches, you're in trouble. I think Twitter (and any site that uses OAuth) should, in the event of security issues, inspect your account activity, look for suspicious behaviors and if necessary, deauthorize anything that matches certain criteria.

It shouldn't be hard to do.

Sure, they'll have some false positives. But when you look at all the compromised accounts you start to see patterns and repeated app names. That should give them a hint where to start.

An update on our war against account hijackers | Official Google Blog

Have you ever gotten a plea to wire money to a friend stranded at an international airport? An oddly written message from someone you haven’t heard from in ages? Compared to five years ago, more scams, illegal, fraudulent or spammy messages today come from someone you know. Although spam filters have become very powerful—in Gmail, less than 1 percent of spam emails make it into an inbox—these unwanted messages are much more likely to make it through if they come from someone you’ve been in contact with before. As a result, in 2010 spammers started changing their tactics—and we saw a large increase in fraudulent mail sent from Google Accounts. In turn, our security team has developed new ways to keep you safe, and dramatically reduced the amount of these messages.

 Excellent job done by Google protecting their users privacy. Ha! There's plenty of jokes you can make with that actually. Still, great job by Google's security team.

Why doesn’t anybody copy Apple?

My own suspicion is that Apple is more aware of what makes it special than they are letting on. In other words, I believe that Apple is self aware but being careful not to share what it knows. However, as Tim points out, it’s not a formula. There is no silver bullet, no single trick.

It’s complex, it’s subtle, it defies explanation but it’s not magic. It’s a process that requires a degree of faith and fortitude. It’s collecting but ignoring data and trusting judgement when data tells you to move in a different direction. It’s a lot of willful rejection of conventional wisdom. It’s asymmetric approaches to competition. It’s art as much as science. And most of all, it’s a lot of mind-numbing polishing while trusting that only by doing great work is survival even possible.

 Lots of myths surrounding Apple's ability to innovate. Lots of folklore. You can't copy magic seem to be the main theory. Horace tries to see beyond the magic.

Sony DSC-RX1 Review

Wielded by a competent photographer, the RX1 produces results arguably as good as any other camera fitted with a 35mm prime f/2.0 lens available at any price, and it does so with remarkable aplomb and unobtrusiveness. It’s the best lightweight digital camera I’ve ever put my hands on, and has become one of my favorite cameras ever. Period.

 I don't consider myself a competent photographer but this camera looks terrific. I really want to give it a try. Duncan Davison, on the other hand, is an excellent photographer and what he has made with this little piece of engineering is extraordinary. My DSLR, in comparison, looks ridiculously large and heavy. I love where this is going.

It took only twenty years

The Daily is dead. It was an expected departure. We all knew it was going to happen, not because we are savants of this industry but because we just knew its model was untenable. In simple terms, they just spent too much to get too little.

Although that way of business makes very little sense, News Corp. the biggest news conglomerate in the world, pushed it all the way to the tomb.

Why?

That's the big question. Why did this very succesful business found itself in such a bad position, spending millions upon millions without a hint of better things to come? It all started some twenty years ago.

Twenty three years ago, something called the World Wide Web was invented. At first it was looked as a fad. Some doubted it could ever be useful for anything other than some geeks sharing jokes. But as time passed, the web became the platform. It changed everything.

For me, the biggest change the web made was the destruction of agency costs for information. Let me explain:

Before the web, if you needed to research a subject, you went to libraries. You went to archives. You read page over page looking for a hint of the information you needed. Indexes were your best friend and biggest time saver. So information organizations had lots of employees doing research.

At the same time, if you wanted to know what was happening in the world, you bought a newspaper or watched or listened to news broadcasts. Big institutions with big budgets and lots of employees controlled the flow of information.

News empires used to thrive in this world without World Wide Web, where they were the gate keepers of all what was important. They had the monopoly of information and they used monopolistics practices to skim the profits out of it.

The web disrupted this by slashing the agency costs. Information flowed freely from person to person. You didn't need Reuters or the Associated Press to tell you what happened in the world, you can now just read about it from the protagonists of the news.

News Corp. has been slow to adapt to the change. Very slow. And stubborn. They don't want the world to change, they want the world just as it was before the web. So they kick and scream while the world changes around them. The Daily was one of its kicks. It has the old world DNA and as such it wasn't a good fit for our new world view.

The Daily was made for a different time, a time where people needed to be told what to think about the world. That world doesn't exist anymore. So The Daily had to die.

But, do all publications have their days counted?

No.

I think the new breed of publications that are starting to appear have a great future ahead of them. I'm talking about The Magazine, Next Draft, Evening Edition, and others that are reshaping the information market as we know it. Small, subject specific publications with very little staff and a lot to like. They take advantage of this new world and making money while doing it.

I believe these won't be the only ones. More will come, from different countries, in different languages and with different interests. It will take time (right now there's a barrier to entry which is the need to know how to make a web or an app) but they will come.

The web has, again, proven it has the power to change industries. I really want to know which industry is the next.

War on drugs

It has been said "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results". This chart about U.S. government spending on drug control really brings that point into a different light

Virgin America: Why an Airline That Travelers Love Is Failing

This is why we can't have nice things:

So who is to blame if an airline that’s comfortable and treats passengers well fails, while a carrier that annoys and nickel-and-dimes customers at every turn is a run-away success? We all are.

This is why a race to the bottom isn't a good thing. When good products fail, innovation stops. Nobody is going to one up Virgin America. And because of that, innovation is going to stop in that market.

Felix the fearless

The beloved Felix Baumgartner thinks space exploration is a waste of money. He says:

So I think we should perhaps spend all the money [which is] going to Mars to learn about Earth. I mean, you cannot send people there because it is just too far away. That little knowledge we get from Mars I don't think it does make sense.

Felix strongly believes we should devote all our efforts in maintaining our planet, that is in dire conditions. I certainly cannot disagree with anyone who advocates for taking care of our planet. But I have two things to say to Mr. Baumgartner.

1. Considering the damage we have done already to the planet, to do any significant change would involve enormous amounts of resources and energy. And we don't even know where to target those resources. Think about an hypothetical machine that could turn back the climate change. How long do we use it? What is the objective of this? to go back to 100 years ago? What if we miss and create a glacial age with this kind of machine?

2. Many years ago, when NASA was thinking on sending a manned mission to Mars, a nun wrote to Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger asking how he could suggest spending billions of dollars on such a project at a time when so many children were starving on Earth. Dr. Stuhlinger answer (which you should read) its a nuanced account of the benefits of investing in science as a whole. And how space exploration it's already helping to make a better world for all o us.

The distribution of the food to the needy is a completely different problem. The question is not so much one of shipping volume, it is one of international cooperation. The ruler of a small nation may feel very uneasy about the prospect of having large quantities of food shipped into his country by a large nation, simply because he fears that along with the food there may also be an import of influence and foreign power. Efficient relief from hunger, I am afraid, will not come before the boundaries between nations have become less divisive than they are today. I do not believe that space flight will accomplish this miracle over night. However, the space program is certainly among the most promising and powerful agents working in this direction.

Mr. Baumgartner: space exploration is a good thing on its own. It makes the world a better place to live and in the long run, it will help us know more about the earth than we've ever hoped for. I understand your concerns and I too wish for solutions that, as of today, are hard to get. Lets hope that one day we can understand enough of the world to save it.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake

John Kirk compares Amazon and Google selling devices at cost to Gillette selling razors, at cost, to beard loving men.

When your competition is giving razors to men with beards and hoping to make their profits on the sale of blades, you don’t attack them – you ignore them.

Very smart analysis.

Changes

This is how it used to be:

And now is like this:

Outlawed by Amazon DRM

Martin Bekkelund's friend Linn had a little problem with Amazon. Her Kindle was erased and her account blocked. Here's what happened.

Apple Special Event October 2012

Todays event can be streamed live from an Apple TV, Mac or an iDevice. Nifty!

It might be time to stop calling it that way

The Osborne effect is a term referring to the unintended consequence of the announcement of a future product ahead of its availability and its impact upon the sales of the current product.

It's a thing. The expression comes from when, back in the 1980's, the Osborne Computer Corporation announced that its next product would be so much better (with data like screen size or amount of memory) but it would ship for at least a year. That made the sales of the current line of computers to stop because people were waiting for the new product. It happens to Apple every year, as people wait until the new iPhone comes out thus making the sales of the current iPhone drop compared to the prior quarter. The difference is that Apple doesn't announce the product until is ready to sell so people aren't so sure a new better thing is comming soon. It's just rumors. But today, news come that Nokia has effectively Osborned itself when they announced the new Lumia phone lineup, a couple of months ago.

Company officials and analysts attributed the slowdown in Lumia sales to consumers waiting for handsets that run Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 software, which it plans to start selling later this year.

Nokia’s existing Lumia lineup runs on Windows 7.5 software and the phones cannot be upgraded to Windows 8.

“It was not a surprise that the Lumia results in the third quarter demonstrated that people were delaying new purchases,” Nokia’s chief executive, Stephen Elop, said during an interview Thursday.

I think the stupidity of that (and the Redmond backstab of not allowing current phones to update to Windows 8) deserves that the Osborne effect be renamed to the Elop Effect (for Nokia's current CEO, ex Microsoft Office head Stepehn Elop).

Why?

Simple. When Osborne made his mistake, he didn't knew better. Sure it was stupid and plain common sense should have discouraged him to do so. But it wasn't a documented thing. Nowadays, the Osborne effect is part of business school teaching, everybody knows about it and how to avoid it. What Elop and Nokia did is not a mistake. It's plain dumb. And that should be remembered.

Inside Larry Ellison's Insane Plan to Turn America's Cup Into a TV Spectacle

Off shore racing had not changed much during the last century but now that Larry Ellison (CEO and founder of Oracle) has put his eye on it, it looks like we could be seeing a new revolution in the making. 

From a helicopter hovering at 1,200 feet, the city of Venice looks like a dusty labyrinth. Red tile rooftops crowd together in heaps. The canals that slice the city into micro-islands glow a milky green. Contrasting sharply with this ancient landscape is a futuristic fleet of nine enormous wing-sailed catamarans flitting across the waterfront just off St. Mark’s Square. Their sharp, carbon-fiber minimalism crackles against Venice’s faded elegance, like an iPhone clutched by the Queen of England.

True or not, this piece by Adam Fisher of Wired is worth a read

Steve Jobs vision for the iPad, 27 years ago.

When people say Apple is just marketing I usually say yes. Apple is the best marketer in the world. But in the whole sense of the word. A good marketer creates great ads and campaigns to help sell their products. A great marketer creates great products too.

Matthew Panzarino writes in The Next Web:

“Apple’s strategy is really simple. What we want to do is we want to put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you and learn how to use in 20 minutes. That’s what we want to do and we want to do it this decade,” says Jobs. “And we really want to do it with a radio link in it so you don’t have to hook up to anything and you’re in communication with all of these larger databases and other computers.”

 And they take their time to do them perfectly. Apple waited 27 years to complete the iPad. That shows how committed to their vision they were. And it points to where Apple wants to go in the future.

Two years ago, an interview with John Sculley, former CEO of Apple got unearthed. In it, Sculley said something that has been printed in my mid since then:

Steve had this perspective that always started with the user’s experience; and that industrial design was an incredibly important part of that user impression. And he recruited me to Apple because he believed that the computer was eventually going to become a consumer product. That was an outrageous idea back in the early 1980’s because people thought that personal computers were just smaller versions of bigger computers. That’s how IBM looked at it.

Apple's vision, during Steve Jobs tenure was to do great products for consumers. That vision is being fulfilled today with the iPad, a computer that everyone can carry around like a book, learn to use it in twenty minutes and that has a battery that lasts a whole day of work.

All of this iPad mini talk is interesting, if you look at it from this angle. If the iPad is so important, then Apple must go for market share and domination. And they will.