Coffee Is For Closers

From the Verge:

Intel promised to unveil an internet TV service by the end of 2013, but with just months to go, the project’s prospects may be floundering. According to All Things D, Intel needs additional funding to keep the project going. It’s reportedly spoken with both Amazon and Samsung about the possibility of them pitching in money or distribution services to help keep the internet TV project alive. But if Intel can’t find a partner, that may be the end of the line: ATD says that the project could simply be scrapped.
How about this: Don’t talk before you ship.

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Product

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Give ‘Em Some Time

BGR: Samsung exec reportedly admits Galaxy Gear smartwatch ‘lacks something special’

The last thing you want to do when entering a new product category for the first time is launch something that isn’t your best effort. According to a report from The Korea Times, however, a Samsung executive may have admitted that the company is doing just that with the Galaxy Gear smartwatch. “We’ve acknowledged that our Gear lacks something special,” an unnamed Samsung official is quoted as having told the site. “With more investment for user interface and user experience, Samsung devices will be better in terms of customer satisfaction.”
Give ’em some time.
As soon as they see what Apple has planned for the motion-tracking capabilities in their M7 chip Samsung will have a clear picture where they need to take their smart watch.
The expression, “lead, follow or get out of the way” comes to mind.
In the realm of mobile computing innovation we have Apple leading, Samsung following and Blackberry, well, getting out of the way.

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Influencer, Technology

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Wealth Inequality

The wealth inequality in the US goes beyond being a Democrat or a Republican.
This is not an equal playing field.

via Upworthy

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Finance

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That’s a Big Twinkie

Eric Chemi at Bloomberg Businessweek puts things into perspective for the iPhone haters:

If [the iPhone] were its own company in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, IPhone Inc. would outsell 474 of those companies–ranking between Wells Fargo (WFC) ($90.5 billion) and Marathon Petroleum (MPC) ($84.9 billion). The iPhone’s $88.4 billion in annualized revenue tops 21 of the 30 component companies in the Dow Jones industrial average–it would be the ninth-biggest stock in the Dow 30
That’s a big Twinkie.

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Business

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Control-Alt-Delete

Bill Gates on the legendary Control-Alt-Delete:

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has finally admitted that forcing users to press the Control-Alt-Delete key combination to log into a PC was a mistake. In an interview at a Harvard fundraising campaign, Gates discusses his early days building Microsoft and the all-important Control-Alt-Delete decision. If you’ve used an old version of the software or use Windows at work then you will have experienced the odd requirement. Gates expains the key combination is designed to prevent other apps from faking the login prompt and stealing a password.
Before Control-Alt-Delete was used to log into Windows machines it was how you restarted the whole computer. My father taught me this back in the pre-Windows days of the early 80s.
In middle school I taught this trick to my friend Dave. When we went to the mall we would reboot all the computers on display in Sears and then run out. The sales people on the floor were usually computer illiterate and had no idea what we had done.
It didn’t take much to keep us amused back then.

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Technology

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Beguiled

vonnegut_bl.jpg
— seen in Kurt Vonnegut’s Timequake, but thanks goes to sharp-eyed reader Patricia Miller, who correctly attributed these lines to Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.

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Literature

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Find Another Analogy

Ballmer’s thoughts on Microsoft’s inability to gain significant market share with Windows Phone:

Speaking at Microsoft’s financial analysts meeting today, CEO Steve Ballmer was refreshingly realistic about the company’s struggles in smartphones and tablets. “Mobile devices. We have almost no share,” he admitted on stage, before noting he didn’t know whether to be enthusiastic over his admission or uncomfortably tense. “But I’m an optimistic guy, any time we have low market share sounds like upside opportunity to me.” That upside opportunity is the key reason Microsoft moved to secure Nokia’s phone business.
Stevey-Steve, this isn’t a matter of optimistically seeing the glass half full. Google, Apple and Blackberry drank 96% of the milkshake in US and that’s after Microsoft trying to fill it for 3 fucking years.
Or perhaps the glass was completely full and Ballmer took a BB gun and shot a bunch of holes into it.
Or maybe It’s last call, Ballmer’s hammered stupid and the bartender isn’t serving him anymore.
Ok, I’m done with the glass analogies.

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Uncategorized

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Write ‘Em Off

From Daniel Eran Dilger at Apple Insider:

It turns out that while the tech media spent most of 2013 complaining that Apple “wasn’t innovating,” Apple was secretly developing its new Mac Pro supercomputer, perfecting its Authentech-based Touch ID technology that the industry has been flummoxed to copy, completing iOS 7 (while Google took a Kit Kat break with Android Key Lime Pie) and OS X Mavericks (while Microsoft fiddled as Windows 8 burned), while also bringing an entirely new 64-bit mobile architecture into production ahead of the world’s leading chip designers and foundries (which didn’t see a pressing need to move to 64-bit and lacked Apple’s experience in doing so), and, as nearly a side project, spending billions to build out a series of new iCloud data centers…
via Jason Putorti

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Innovation

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