tingilinde

focus and the product

Fortune has a section on Steve Jobs (noted by Daring Fireball) ..  an interesting piece is comments by other business executives on why he is different.

fixing broadband access in the us

It is not working well ... price and performance aren't close to being world class and many regions of the country see terrible price and performance.  

The FCC asked scholars at the Berkman Center at Harvard for a look into the subject and got this (pdf)  (disclosure - I have several friends who have been associated with the Berkman Center and am impressed with the work that goes on there)

lots and lots of interesting data and those who are interested should plow in...

The bottom line is US ISPs won't be happy with the findings (and they shouldn't - they lost the lead some time ago) .. Ars has a good high level summary.

comments from the Ars piece:

snip

One other list really brings the point home. When one looks at the actual download speeds in various cities around the world, no US city even makes the top 20. Instead, honors go to:

1. Busan
2. Seoul
3. Göteborg
4. Stockholm
5. Yokohama
6. Amsterdam
7. Paris
8. Tokyo
9. Aarhus
10. Helsinki
11. Rotterdam
12. Hamburg
13. Kosice
14. Bern
15. Berlin
16. Copenhagen
17. Espoo
18. Lyon
19. Lisbon
20. Oslo

So congratulations, residents of Busan and Aarhus. Of course, we all know that the only reason you're winning the broadband race is because we live among the amber waves of grain while you scuttle about in concrete high rises.

Actually, the Berkman report debunks the population density argument, too. "The surprise here is that despite its high density, South Korea actually outperforms even what its high urban density would predict, and that highly dense countries like the Netherlands and Denmark also outperform what their urban concentration would predict," it says. "In general, most of the countries that appear to be positive observation models, as identified by their levels of penetration, are above their predicted penetration levels given urban concentration, suggesting that their presence in the higher quintiles of penetration indeed marks them as potential models for policy observation, rather than simply as the beneficiaries of propitious geography."

william kamkwamba on the daily show

We've talked about him here before .. grass roots engineering (thanks for the link Linda)

I wonder how many American kids could describe what goes on in a crystal radio - or how many know what one is?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
William Kamkwamba
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

for those who build stuff

I was sent a copy of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer. I'll review it later, but here is a video made before the book

cabin pressurization on airliners

I've heard a lot of speculation over the years, but a pilot who writes for Salon puts things straight.

(a very interesting guy - check out some of his earlier columns)

for those who can draw

Sketchbook Mobile for the iPhone -- a version of Sketchbook for your hand.  A full version for $2.99 as well as a free version

excellent

Now if I only had talent.

accessibility in the iphone 3gs

A video of accessibility features in the iPhone 3gs (don't know if they will be in the new Touch)  noted by John Gruber at Daring Fireball.

a nice use of multitouch

successful and unsuccessful social applications

some nice observations by Clay Shirky on the subject (thanks for the link Jerry)

npr's iphone app

The making of NPR's iPhone app (thanks for the link Sara)

I don't see my iPhone as a phone or even a smartphone.  The fact that I can find useful apps and can combine several other functions (music, video, camera, etc) - even if imperfect, trumps all.  

The largest problem is the quality of phone service - one keeps hoping that will improve, or perhaps the next generation of phone will be on a much better network.  But the phone piece is sort of good enough.

some tidbits on the making of the app

nicholson baker doesn't like the kindle

Nicholson Baker's damning piece on the Kindle that appeared in The New Yorker a few weeks ago.

As an all-purpose book substitute it clearly doesn't make the cut, but a few friends have found it useful for the type of reading they do.  Text and artwork on paper is a highly evolved technique with some attributes that are very difficult to equal.  For the time being I'll wait for standards and the ability to reproduce full color illustrations.