iPad, iPad: Are you a toy or “business toy“? This is the question I am asking myself in the last few days. A toy is something I don’t need (at my age) but may be nice to have. A “business toy” is one I should get because it may make me some money one day. So it is a toy that is good for business.
May be I should wait 5 minutes and then get iPad 2.0 with the cameras (yes, two cameras). Or may be I should wait to see if I should give the HP Slate a try?
“[...] Yeah, I got an iPad [...] I have to say that I’m surprised by how much I love the damn thing. Over the past few months, I refrained from publicly join the chorus of naysayers who pre-emptively dismissed Apple’s God tablet as just an iPod Touch on steroids; I secretly harbored the same suspicion, but decided to wait and see.
[...] On Saturday, there were 360,576 tweets name-checking the iPad. This morning Apple revealed that it sold over 300,000 iPads on Saturday
[...] Apple itself scored 121,135 tweets on Saturday
[...] iPad users downloaded more than 1 million apps from the App Store and more than 250,000 e-books [...] on Saturday, according to Apple.”
Q. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE 3D CONVERSION? THERE’S BEEN A LOT OF TALK THAT IT’S NOT UP TO SNUFF.
A. Well, what did you think? Be honest.
Q. WELL, TO ME, IT WAS LIKE WATCHING A VIEW-MASTER.
A. (laughs) It’s funny, that is one of the things I was saying to them. Don’t make it so much like a ViewMaster — so … so puffied up. Listen, it was not my intention to do it in 3D; it was not my decision to convert it in 3D. [Kempton: very honest comments.] Now, people love 3D. People will go see it in 3D, and it will play in 3D; it’s like a ride.
If you love 3D and the studio is giving you the opportunity to see it in 3D, go see it in 3D. If you don’t like 3D, don’t go see it in 3D.
Conversions, they all look like this. “Alice in Wonderland” looks like this. Remember the technology was not ready, so it’s Warner Bros saying we are giving you the best of what we can do.
note: Money talks. Titans director seemed to have not much say when it comes to 3D conversion.
“Look at the appointments to nine of the 10 lieutenant-governor positions Harper has filled across the country, the source suggests. The appointments have been largely senior public servants at the end of their careers, some with experience as legislative clerks or as assistant deputy ministers, familiar with how government works.”
“The Trailhead Queen was dead. At first, there was no overt sign that her long life was ending: no fever, no spasms, no farewells. She simply sat on the floor of the royal chamber and died. As in life, her body was prone and immobile, her legs and antennae relaxed. Her stillness alone failed to give warning to her daughters that a catastrophe had occurred for all of them. She lay there, in fact, as though nothing had happened. She had become a perfect statue of herself. While humans and other vertebrates have an internal skeleton surrounded by soft tissue that quickly rots away, ants are encased in an external skeleton; their soft tissues shrivel into dry threads and lumps, but their exoskeletons remain, a knight’s armor fully intact long after the knight is gone. Hence the workers were at first unaware of their mother’s death. Her quietude said nothing, and the odors of her life, still rising from her, signalled, I remain among you. She smelled alive.”
“Paul Allen and I saw the Popular Electronics article and called to say we were doing software. They thought that was interesting. We worked hard and a month later we called back to ask what instructions to use to connect to a teletype. They said we were the first people who had asked that so maybe we did have something. [...]
Paul flew out to MITS with the paper tape and Ed met him at the airport. Paul figured out how to load the BASIC and it ran the first time on one of the few kits MITS itself had ever assembled. Everyone was amazed. This was in April 1975.
I went on leave from Harvard in June and negotiated the license agreement with MITS in July. Microsoft got a royalty for each BASIC sold. Then we wrote fancier versions of the BASIC – 8k Basic, Extended Basic and Disk Basic. Paul actually worked for MITS as VP of Software although I did not. We got a software library going and wrote regular articles for the Altair newsletter that David Bunnell was hired by MITS to create. I gave my first speech at an Altair convention. MITS got a big GM van and went around the country helping to set up computer clubs.
[...] MITS sold over 10,000 of the Altairs and had to hire people to deal with the volume. Ed deserves to be called the father of the personal computer.”
I recently discovered a very interesting and insightful advertising executive from Hong Kong, his pen name at Apple Daily and his blog is Bud (畢明). I saw the following interesting & inspiring YouTube videos from Bud’s blog. Enjoy and thanks Bud.
Message on a fly! This one is super cool! Apparently the string holding the message to the fly is made of biodegradable material! [HT Bud]
What a slick BBC Winter Olympics ad! Very creative. [HT Bud]
This is an AXE ad so if you want political correctness, this one is NOT for you! :) [HT Bud]
A cute AmEx ad (but I think my lowly “free with cash back” VISA card has the same advantages)! [HT Bud]
Finally got around to watch the very enjoyable Oscar-winning NFB documentary “Flamenco at 5:15” (full documentary online). Nice to feel the energy of the dancers.
“This Oscar®-winning short film is an impressionistic record of a flamenco dance class given to senior students of the National Ballet School of Canada by two great teachers from Spain, Susana and Antonio Robledo. The film shows the beautiful young North American dancers–inspired by the flamenco rhythms and mesmerized by Susana’s extraordinary energy–joyously merging with an ancient gypsy culture.”
If you are a film buff or an aspiring film buff, check out this CBC article and you will understand my love for the Criterion Collection DVDs, which lucky for me, the Calgary Public library has a good collections.
My expectation of “Lost in Austen” (fantasy adaptation of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen) wasn’t high but I ended up quite enjoying it. If your library has the DVD or you can rent it, check it out.
Posted by kempton 
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Subscribe by email
