Eric Schmidt on the Future of Google.
A CNET interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt on the future of Google. Search, Chrome OS, Android, Wave... Very interesting and insightful.
Schmidt stresses the point that the future cannot be judged too far. He says that products will find their niche markets by themselves, and it is pointless for a company to try and guide a product or service into those markets. Very useful business information!Comments [1]
Barcelona + Pyrenees.
My weekend at towns I can't remember the names of, inbetween Barcelona and France.
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Bullboard.
You see these everywhere in Spain when you drive on the motor ways - they're advertising for some company, but I don't know exactly which.
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Teens Too Young For Social Networking? Response to CNN Article.
An article on CNN today talks about how kids are creating profiles on social networking sites at younger and younger ages, and raises the question as to why and what the dangers are.
I believe the easy answer is that we can't really live normal teenage lives without it. For example, when I started school in Spain just two months ago, I did not have a Facebook account (read here to find out why). On day one at school, almost the first question that everyone asked me was "what's your full name so I can find you on Facebook"? I had to admit to them that actually, I didn't have a Facebook account. The reaction from most was "What the fuck, you're kidding right?"
So, naturally, as soon as I got home that day I had a Facebook account again. We just can't function as normal teenagers without these services. And yes, I think they are dangerous - here's a piece I wrote on how and why social networking is dangerous for teens.
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Facebook is Fucked: Why Twitter Will Win.
I found this article earlier today, written by Robert Scoble on his personal blog.
It explains why Facebook will not win in the long run because it fails to offer value, i.e., you gain nothing out of using the service. Sure, staying up to date on what friends are doing. However, Twitter offers this PLUS the ability to learn while using it. The main difference is that on Facebook, "noise" is encouraged through comments and "likes". Noise is all the chatter from people about topics you share, even when you do not wish them to discuss it.
Twitter eliminates this pointless noise, and puts emphasis on the original topic. Therefore it is a better medium of exchange for almost everything. What about photo sharing, you might say? This is one point that I agree Facebook excels on, simply because of the ability to tag friends. Normal photo sharing is possible on Twitter, through the use of third party clients, like TwitPic.
With Twitter's new lists feature, you can customize what information reaches you at any given time. This feature is hugely powerful, and I expect Twitter will see a surge in traffic over November, that could last well into 2010.
To read Scoble's original article, view this page.
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Augmented Reality is Fucking Cool.
Wikipedia describes Augmented Reality as “a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with, or augmented by, virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality”.
That definition may seem a bit daunting, but it’ll all become clear once you hear about how Augmented Reality has just become available to consumers.
Yelp, a service designed to inform you of local points of interest, such as pubs, restaurants, and gas stations, has just launched an App on the iTunes App Store. What people did not realise was that Yelp had included a hidden feature in the App, that they made no announcement of.
To activate the hidden feature, you shake your iPhone three times while in the Yelp application. A small box will appear, telling you that “the monocle has been activated”. A small icon will then appear in the top-right hand corner of the screen. When pressed, your iPhone’s screen will seem to switch to camera mode.
Move your iPhone around. Point the camera at different things on your street. What you then see, I cannot think of a better word for other than “magic”.
When you point your iPhones camera at things, layered on top of the live image from your camera are little boxes with information telling you exactly what you are looking at. Say you’re walking down Lambton Quay in Wellington. You hold your iPhone up, with “Monocle” activated, and in front of each shop will appear a box telling you the name of the shop, what items they specialise in, opening hours, and so on. The App even has a “radar” in the top-right, which tells you how far you are from points of interest, such as a Starbucks or McDonald’s.
It gets even more magic. When you point your iPhone at someone else using an iPhone, around their body will appear information about them. Name, age, Twitter username, Facebook username… Obviously this could invade privacy, so there are ways to disable people finding information about you.
Think about it. This is the kind of stuff that appeared in sci-fi movies from ages ago. The potential of this is incredible, and the possibilities endless.
Unfortunately for us Kiwis, as usual we have to wait for it. The Yelp App is not yet available in the New Zealand iTunes store. No word yet from the developers or Apple as to when it’ll become available to us.
Augmented Reality uses your iPhone’s camera, GPS, and compass to show virtual items in the real world. Since the iPhone 3G does not have a compass, Augmented Reality unfortunately is only available to iPhone 3GS users.
For those of you dissappointed that you can’t use Augmented Reality yet, there’s loads of videos on YouTube showing demos. However, expect to hear and see a lot more of AR in the coming years. I predict it will become very much a part of our lives.
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