Monthly Archives: September 2012


If you like the idea of a Ford Fusion wagon, https://plus.google.com/1141334242…

If you like the idea of a Ford Fusion wagon, https://plus.google.com/114133424228405038490/posts/PBJBt9CwofA
head over to the +Ford Motor Company's social site and cast your vote for this idea submitted by a writer from +Jalopnik 

Gotta bring the Fusion Wagon
Love the look of the new Fusion–can\’t wait to see it in person. What I would really like to see is the wagon version– like they have in Europe ( the Mondeo). 2.0 liter turbo, with all wheel driv…

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The whole Maps issue is the prime example right now about how Apple may be beginning to… 8

The whole Maps issue is the prime example right now about how Apple may be beginning to lose its way.  Between 1997 and about 2010, the key to Apple's success was to focus first on providing products that provide the best possible customer experience as defined by Steve Jobs, although he was mostly right on this stuff. 

Having determined what would serve customers, Tim Cook and his team did an impeccable job of executing to provide those products efficiently. By giving customers what they want in a cost-effective manner (from the company perspective) Apple generated huge profits.

On the other hand, the switch from +Google Maps to an in-house system was apparently driven by internal business decisions in the battle against Google and +Android. Rather than focusing on what was best for customers, Apple was looking at what was perceived to be best for Apple. At some point Apple Maps may be superior to the Google product but it's clearly not today.

When creating the iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air and other products, Apple waited until the product was ready for prime time to avoid alienating customers. This time they rushed and customers are paying the price. No company is perfect.  How Apple follows up this hiccup in the next year or two will tell us a lot about the post-Steve Jobs era.

Apple had over a year left on Google Maps contract, Google scrambling to build iOS app
Apple’s decision to ship its own mapping system in the iPhone 5 and iOS 6 was made over a year before the company’s agreement to use Google Maps expired, according to two independent sources familiar….

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Anyone that's been paying any attention knows that Google drives traffic

Apparently Rupert Murdoch has finally realized that Google is not the cause of the problems in the newspaper business.

Reshared post from +Jeff Jarvis

Should I say it? Oh, what the hell, I can't resist…
NYA NYA NYA!
Murdoch backs down from his high horse about Google as a parasite and now wants the gentle giant to link to his Times of London, which is obviously showing chinks in its pay wall. 

Mark Sweney
NI attempts to attract new readers by allowing search engine to show headlines and the first two sentences of articles. By Mark Sweney

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The names that Apple has come up with for its two newest interface ports are both… 6

The names that Apple has come up with for its two newest interface ports are both inaccurate and inappropriate. 

First Apple came up with Thunderbolt, the crazy fast port that it developed with Intel and they followed that up with the Lightning connector for the new iPhone and iPods.  If you think of weather, we don't get bolts of thunder, we get bolts of lightning. The ports should probably be called LightningBolt and Thunder.

Then there is the problem of physics. Lightning is of course the arc of electricity that we see as a bright flash of light. Light travels at about 700 million mph. Thunder is the sound that accompanies a flash of lightning and it travels at about 700 mph. Despite the fact that thunder travels at about 1/1,000,000th of the speed of light, that's the name that has been applied to the speedy computer interface while the Lightning is used to label the relatively laggardly USB2 based iOS connector.

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Apple loses one in the IP realm

The trademark office said that the orange music note icon that denotes the music app on iOS devices looks too much like the existing trademark originally registered by iLike and now owned by MySpace

Apple denied trademark for music icon thanks to… MySpace
Apple lost an appeal to protect its famous music icon after trademark judges ruled that consumers were likely to confuse it with a mark now owned by MySpace.

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This is too funny 4

It reminds me of a testing incident I had in early 1992 as an engineer at Kelsey-Hayes. I was working on the an early test mule for what would become the Ford Windstar several years later. This development vehicle was cobbled together from another brand of minivan and the front axles were made from two pieces joined by a threaded stud with the seam welded. During one stop, I heard a loud snap! and when I tried to pull away, the engine revved but the vehicle never moved. Thinking the transmission had failed, I climbed out to take a look and found the two separated halves of the axle now hanging down toward the pavement. We ended up towing the vehicle back to the garage and removing the axle parts so we could get it welded back together. Not quite as catastrophic as this one, but it still disabled the vehicle. 

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Several years ago as we transitioned to smartphones I looked into phone insurance… 4

Several years ago as we transitioned to smartphones I looked into phone insurance again and decided against it. With four phones in the family and the ridiculous rates and deductables on these plans, it just wasn't worth it. The few times that I've had to replace a broken or lost phone, it's been easier and cheaper to just activate a previous generation phone or buy a used one from ebay. 

Reshared post from +Jim Fawcette

Don't Buy Mobile Phone Insurance

SFGate.com's James Temple does a follow-up on his stolen cell phone and explains why getting insurance isn't worthwhile.

* Deductibles are high, such as AT&T's $199 for the iPhone
* You're not guaranteed a true replacement even with insurance. "Replacement equipment may, at our option, be refurbished equipment or different equipment of like kind and quality."
* Cracked displays may not be covered. 
* Loss due to nuclear war isn't covered (really! both fission and fusion)
* If the carrier doesn't provide adequate coverage, you've signed away your right to sue.

Temple: "Instead of buying insurance, Consumer Reports recommends that consumers hold onto their previous phone and simply switch back for the remaining term of the contract in the case of a loss. "

I take it back: Don’t insure cell phone
Earlier this month, I described the unhappy experience of losing my iPhone mid-contract and learning I’d have the privilege of paying $450 for a replacement. In the concluding paragraphs, I state…

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Bill Nye for President! 2

Bill Nye for President!

Reshared post from +Dan Gillmor

Bill Nye deserves the thanks of anyone who wants actual science to be taught in science classes.

America's economic competitors hope he'll fail, of course — they want US schoolchildren to learn religious myths rather than reality.

‘Science Guy’ Bill Nye says religious-based dismissal of evolution endangers US science
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The man known to a generation of Americans as “The Science Guy” is condemning efforts by some Christian groups to cast doubts on evolution and lawmakers who want to bring the Bible i…

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To Terry Jones, Fred Phelps and any other fundamentalist that comes to Michigan just…

To Terry Jones, Fred Phelps and any other fundamentalist that comes to Michigan just to raise up a bogus shit-storm, I have one request. Stay away! We don't want or need you!

Southeast Michigan and particularly Dearborn is home to what is reputed to be the largest concentration of Arabs anywhere outside of the Middle East. Many if not most of those people of Arab descent are Muslims of various sects including both Shia and Sunni, but many are also Christians and there are even atheists. 

Those Arabs live side by side with people descended from Europe, South Asia, the Far East and just about everywhere else practicing Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sihkism and every other faith or lack thereof under the sun. For the most part they coexist in relative harmony aside from the usual crap that afflicts any urban center, pretty much anywhere in the world. They all live under the same laws as Americans anywhere else in the country. 

Left to their own devices, the vast majority of people will just try to go about their own daily lives, earning a living, raising families, and trying to have a little fun along the way. Being in a continuous stay of conflict is just too damn hard. No matter what part of the political or religious spectrum you hail from, extremism is never a good thing. If that's what you want, please go find yourself an enclave in rural Idaho and keep to yourself. 

Leave us peaceful folk alone!

Dearborn: Where Americans Come to Hate Muslims
How a city of 97,000 became a must-visit location on the newly established anti-Muslim protest circuit.

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