Polarized Thinking, Print and Radiation

Print isn’t dead, there will always be people that prefer looking at paper over an LCD screen. What will die are most newspapers, but only because they have completely failed to adapt a new business model after the birth of the internet.

I prefer an LCD screen, but only because it is so convenient and usually free. These days it’s hard for most people to imagine going through the pains of going to and buying a newspaper if they don’t have a subscription and I agree. Phones take the place of almost everything nowadays and all we have to do is wait for everyone to get cancer from radiation before that technology gets replaced (or the radiation gets under control).

I actually turn my phone to 2G a lot and when I’m hanging out in one area take my phone out of my pocket and place it next to me. You can say I’m pretty scared of getting cancer, but I have a lot of things I want to do in this life before I leave it.

The point here is we think in yes and no ways, print won’t die it will just diminish and become a smaller niche market. Who knows though, the niche market could become the majority when everyone dies of cancer.

Android 2.2 Finally Bridges Phone to Computer Gap

Next month I’m getting one helluva graduation gift, but it isn’t from anyone I expected. Android 2.2 is being released by Google for my shiny new Nexus One and the already-incredible smartphone will evolve into something new.

I already knew before purchasing my handset that it had incredible potential with custom ROMs which go well beyond other phones because the kernel can be modified, optimizing and even overclocking the hardware in the device. What I didn’t know is Android has been holding back on us, but the 2.2 update looks to solve some of these issues dramatically.

Big features like full Flash 10.1 are included as well as a lot of other misc tweaks to the interface and additional applications. That is very impressive in itself, but a new feature called JIT, or Just In Time is a hardware compiler that will be utilized by Android’s Kernel now. Early reports of test JIT builds show a 2.5 – 3x boost in overall system performance, putting it at the level to render full Java as well. The browser is also supposed to be able to support full HTML5 later this year as well, making it a full-fledged internet machine.

Ever since I got my Nexus One I haven’t used my laptop near as much, and I think that trend is going to continue after graduation. I hope you’re excited too because you’ll be blessed with this as well too!!!

Bridging the Problem Solving Gap

I grew up around technology, and I even have grandparent-deemed classic photos of my grandpa holding me in his lap showing me how to use his Commodore 64 system when I was still a football shaped diaper baby. The point is I live and breathe technology by childhood instinct and as a result I end up helping A LOT of people out with their computer problems.

Up until recently I just helped them, showed them how to USE their computer to not get viruses and spyware, but sure enough 6 months would go by and their computer would be ridden with spyware and viruses yet again. It was so fun to fix the same problem every 6 months so I wanted to share that joy with the world.

On the contrar, every strength has a weakness and my weakness was with my family’s computers which would frequently break. My touch of life would turn into the touch of destruction I would end up leaving their computer worse off than it was when I began.

Just about a year ago I figured out that most people are just lazy as hell and I didn’t want to be the only one putting forth effort anymore. It isn’t that they don’t know what to do, they just don’t want to put any effort into figuring it out.

Now when someone asks me about a problem, I tell them the Google search string I would use to find the problem just as I would if I were to fix their computer. Computer freezes when loading a program?  Instructions would be to Google: “PowerDirector freezes at startup,” then find someone with a similar problem to you and read the comments.  Computer slow from all the free goat porn? Google: “Microsoft Security Essentials” and “Spybot: Search and Destroy.” Easy, and it works.

Although I don’t get paid for this advice, it actually does give a lot of people the start they need to figure out their problem. The best part though is its their turn to suffer and it feels soooooooo goooood.

More in smaller amounts of time, what everyone wants!

I actually do the same annoying habit I’m trying to break my girlfriend of right now. When she reads a book she opens it and starts reading wherever. It wouldn’t be a problem except she always ends up missing the greater point that only comes together when you read a book from start to finish. Along with most other people when I read an article on the Internet I rarely read the entire thing. I don’t even usually click the links, so I end up taking everything I read online with a huge grain of salt.

Recently Google released FastFlip, an easy way of flipping through articles data mined from news sources.  This is a useful tool but allows users to over-embellish their already-bad compulsive eHabits.  On the other side of the fence this service brings a new audience to news articles these readers would never spend the time to find and read in a newspaper. (or even online)

One study found Internet readers have a high probability of reading books, and while it says nothing about newspapers we can only assume some of these readers want something physical to hold and turn to newspapers at least part-time. Unfortunately when I read articles a lot of the time there is too much “fluff” talk to keep me interested. When I want to read about something I want to only read about the subject matter and not the author’s opinion unless they have something insightful to say. This is rare, so much of the time I don’t read the entire article.

Hello new processor. Goodbye new processor.

When we go to the store today to purchase a computer, we are buying something almost completely different than we bought twenty years ago. After I outgrew my Commodore 64 my mom purchased and built my first very own computer with a cutting edge 486 DX66 processor. That processor was used for sound, video, applications and pretty much everything else with the exception of components that were in place to assist with just a few simple tasks (for example sound cards would offload a small amount of cycles to free up the main processor’s usage).

Now, even less expensive computers come equipped with graphic processors that have the capability of turning itself into a processor with hundreds of cores that assists the main processor with tasks that have nothing to do with graphics. With the recent release of Directx 11, these graphics cards have the capability of being used by Windows just like the main processor does. This gives the advantage of being able to process a ton of information at once at a slower speed (GPU) alongside of being able to process less at very high speeds (CPU).

Interestingly enough NVIDIA has based their Tesla super computer systems off of these graphic chips, charging literally thousands of dollars more for a GPU turned CPU that is 5 generations behind the currently available GPU chips that come in normal computers nowadays. Soon everyone will possess this same power.

At the same time, Intel is taking strides to eliminate the need for a graphics card or chip completely with the recent release of their Core i3/i5/i7 processor line. Now that we have multi-core CPUs, Intel is integrating graphics instructions to be used by one or two of the processor cores which drastically lowers the power requirements of the device and makes the whole computer simpler and cheaper.  Prepare yourself for a new age of super fast portable devices.

Demons don’t leave the Internet…

Ever since my first days on the Internet I knew the importance of keeping my tracks covered.  While I never actually did anything on the Internet to warrant keeping my tracks covered, I felt that in the future something foolish I did as a child on the Internet could easily come back to haunt me.

The problem is, we live in an age beyond that of historical record.  Almost everything that takes place on the Internet is logged somewhere, and it takes installing one of a few types of software to ensure your privacy when surfing. Unfortunately for everyday use it is impractical to use an anonymizer, since it takes significantly longer to bounce information randomly through a network of computers instead of going directly to the site.

Something I’ve found funny is the Internet mostly keeps record of major events and news that is interesting to the average Internet user. While almost all news does somehow land on the internet thus creating an excellent record, storage media we use is sensitive and does does not stand up well to wear and tear. If we were to all disappear today our history stored on flash memory or hard drives would be rusted or corrupted in less than 100 years, but a lot of print would still exist. The Internet is a great place to backup print media since multiple copies will surely be made by Internet archiving bots.

My Windows Mobile phone is better than yours…(insert guitar wail)

We haven’t heard much about Windows Mobile lately but you’ll be surprised by their recent developments.  Windows Mobile with phones made by HTC have been overwriting their stock OS flash memory with custom firmware “ROMs” made for their model cell phone for a couple years now, and its paying off big time now.

I have an HTC Rhodium model phone, Rhodium being HTC’s name and Touch Pro 2 or Tilt2 through a cell phone carrier, and every few days new Windows Mobile OS builds of multiple development branches are released. These XDA-Development forum threads serve as a HUB for ROM “Cooks” (The people that develop their own version of Windows Mobile) where new releases are updated every few days.

To get an idea of why all of this is exciting, reading the release notes of the Energy “Leo” 23541/21892 thread shows the latest developments of one of the most popular ROMs out there.  Quite literally every aspect of the phone is updated in quick intervals, and the software gets faster and more usable every time.  Oh, and we can now dual-boot Windows Mobile and a very-close to fully working Android 2.1 build ROM so we get the best of both worlds.

This isn’t to be without its quirks, since we’re essentially using mostly beta software, one must learn there are stable versions of these ROMs that aren’t cutting edge, but instead faster and less quirky.  Lately I’ve been using the faster, older OS builds because it doesn’t make me want to shatter my phone when I have to pull the battery just trying to look at my TWITTERRRR

I Have an Idea! Let’s Let Others Decide Our Unique Interests!!!

I’m not much for “stacking” interests because I like to expose myself to as much as possible. Today’s news is based on feeding us what we’re immediately interested in by our previous activity, and now I don’t find completely new, random interests anymore like I used to.

Just like anyone else I like to read what I’m interested in, but without forcing some sort of variation for the consumer they get more what they want with less variation.  How are we supposed to discover new things now?  We have to actively search “new things,” and without anything to base that search off of it makes finding something new and unique a daunting task.

While searching for negative press on Google’s recommendation engine, it was nearly impossible to find any sort of bad press.  Through another search engine, I was able to find one significant complaint about Google’s recommendation engine. This just goes to show you that searching for negative press about Google, in Google will always result in the real news and opinions being buried.  If negative press about Google should appear when other searches are conducted and doesn’t, we have to ask if we are really choosing for ourselves or not.

Now, recommendation engine ideas are public and can be adapted by any company. Too much company control of our exposure can lead to a very selective listening future.  Not like anyone cares though, until Google does something really stupid.

Newspapers drop like DiCaprio into the ocean.

Journalism isn’t going anywhere, but newspapers could be a different story. Even though the “newspaper generation” is getting older and fewer, technology is making it easier to find the news you want when you want. It’s even cheaper than it has ever been before, which is why I read news now.

Now if you’re wondering what that mysterious underline I was doing there, it’s because I HATE NEWS. I used to read the paper, but one day I felt a strange déjà vu with a certain story. While pondering where I had read the story before I realized it was only because newspaper articles report on similar stories and have standardized writing in a way that made my head want to implode. Without another newspaper in the area to read, I read the magazines and the INTERNET all too happily.

Lately, many have questioned if the internet will compromise credible facts.  I say the only difference is the news is personalized. Unlike the past the customer will decide what is a credible news source and what is not. The only difference now is we have more places to choose where we get our news from, fraudulent news will fall to the bottom of the search lists one way or another.

Others have a business outlook, and for good reason. It is natural for every business to need to evolve over time, and newspapers just plain have not. Let’s keep a positive outlook though, IN 2010 NEWSPAPERS WILL REIGN SUPREME!