No, no, no. That's just the old geezer in you, talking.
This is just the logical outcome of rewarding our snowflakes for each and every inane thing they did when growing up. "You got an 'A'!" Here's your reward! "You got a 'C'!" Here's your reward!
"You participated!" Here's your reward! "You lost!" Here's your reward! "You're breathing!" Here's your reward! "You can say, 'potato'!" Here's your reward!
There is one reason to get MobileMe: contact groups
MobileMe is the only big name to support automatic/bidirectional syncing of contacts in multiple groups. I like keeping my friends, family, co-workers, and business numbers separate. The only big question here is whether multiple groups is worth the price. I think it is, but others won't.
Google's idea of contact sync is to shovel all of your contacts into one big steamy pile (on the iPhone, since we're talking about MobileMe -- I think multiple groups are supported on the android). I imagine that they'll fix this someday, but I think "someday" is still years off. Until then, I'm stuck with MobileMe (although there are one or two alternatives on the horizon).
People may think this is funny, but there's a metric *ssload of truth there.
While Diaspora may still be successful, Diaspora and all of the other social networking wannabe's will never, ever, be as successful as facebook if they don't have the equivalent mindcrack. IMO, a huge part of fb's success is not due to plain "social networking", but to the totally inane mindcrack games that sucks on peoples' souls: like farmville, castle age, mafia wars, etc., etc..
Note to Diaspora, Google Me, and all other social networking wannabe's: if you want to achieve facebook-level success, you need to have soul-sucking mindcrack games.
Given the design of some "standard" barrel batteries, I can easily imagine the possibility of the positive terminal shorting out both of these special contacts. Some lawyers are probably drooling at the thought of that.
I'll be amazed if this ever appears in a standard-barrel-battery-taking product that is not sued out of existence.
Yes, they are both making money off the deal, but the money from google is financing firefox.
If google decided to stop funding/break off the search relationship, google wouldn't be hurt much, if at all. Firefox, on the other hand, would likely be on life support, if not dead. Granted, this isn't going to happen in the near future, but who knows, long term? One mitigating factor may be Microsoft, who'd probably gladly pay to be the default firefox search engine.
To see the financial dependency of firefox upon google, just do a google search for "google mozilla funding".:-)
As much as want to believe this, Firefox is heavily dependent upon Google financing, and I just don't see Google continuing to finance Firefox for more than, oh, say, 5 years from now. I don't think Google will abruptly stop financing, but I think they'll slowly decrease it to a trickle. Aside from goodwill, Google doesn't have much incentive to continue financing, and chrome provides a lot of incentive to kill firefox.
My first guess would be a non-802.11 device such as a video or audio sender. They can take out many 2.4GHz channels at once, where a microwave oven usually only knocks out a couple.
This, or, as others have said, an old cruddy analog 2.4GHz wireless phone. A microwave is also unlikely due to the long interference period, unless someone is trying to cook everyone around him....
While mobileme isn't bad, gmail is still better. Not only does gmail have integrated calendar, tasks, doc, and chat, but the gmail web interface runs faster. I dislike the mobileme web interface because it feels slow and clunky.
On the other hand, mobileme is great if you want syncing of contact groups with the iPhone (google contacts doesn't support this -- google seems to think that everyone should have all of their contacts scrambled together in one ginormous pile).
Meh, I hope google fixes gizmo's uber-borked billing system. A while back, I tried to buy gizmo5 minutes (just $10), but they refused to sell me any. I think I tried 2 or 3 different credit cards, but gizmo5 kept on cancelling the orders, with the lovely reason, "Cancelled". I'm a US citizen, in the US, with good credit, and I've never had a problem like that (Skype came the closest, with their silly "one account == one credit card" rule). As much as I would have liked to have used gizmo, they didn't want to take the money that I was trying to throw at them, and so my gizmo account has been dormant for the past year or two.
Maybe. That doesn't explain the existence of the iPhone "Pinger Textfree" app, which gives you free unlimited US texting via an sms-only number. (Yes, I know that they used to charge for texting, but now it's free and unlimited within the US, since it switched over to an ad-supported model.) H*ll, even the kids with iPod Touches know about and use it.
One issue is that Mozilla is fairly dependent upon Google's funding. Given that Google would like Chrome to succeed, Google has a lot of incentive to decrease funding.
(Yes, yes -- I'm sure that Google will continue funding for a while. However, it wouldn't surprise me if the funding dropped significantly, or even down to zero, in five years' time.)
What this data tells us is that consumers are embracing a smartphone OS outside of the iPhone. Apple isn't capturing the same level of market/mind share domination as it had with the iPod. The space will get even more exciting when Microsoft releases what looks to be a solid OS in Windows Phone 7.
I think a big reason for this is the iPhone's AT&T exclusivity. If the iPhone was available on Verizon and Sprint, I'd guess that the iPhone would be doing a lot better against Android. Carrier (i.e., cell phone service availability) is still a big issue in the US.
Frankly, I'm amazed that Apple has stuck with AT&T so long. iPhone sales appear to be leveling off (maybe even decreasing), and opening up the iPhone to multiple carriers is a virtual sure-fire way of significantly increasing sales (in the US). (Yes, yes, I know about the 5-year contract but, as others have said, there are probably ways out of that. Apple must probably have gotten a really sweet deal with the iPad....)
Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear enough: while, IMHO, the main target audience is regular (non-technical) consumers, I didn't mean to imply that this was the only audience, or that technical users did not buy it. It's just that the non-technical marketplace is larger, and Apple would be crazy to not target the larger audience.
It's just that so many technical people here seem to think that, because the iPad isn't useful for them, the iPad can't possibly be a success.
The iPad is easy-to-use, and has a decent battery life. Flash issues aside, it's the perfect device for non-technical users. Sure, it doesn't do a lot of things well, but it does them "good enough" -- good enough that the non-technical users don't care or can't tell the difference. And many (most?) don't care if there isn't a physical keyboard -- a lot of people can only type via hunt-and-peck, and most of them probably don't care if they're pecking on a real or virtual keyboard.
Of course the iPad is disliked by a lot of people on slashdot, but advanced users aren't the target audience. Allow me to use a word that many people here might understand: it's for the "n00bs". Many consumers still have only little to modest computer expertise, and the iPad is a great, toaster-like device for them. (Apple will probably make a metric a**load more money selling to novices than advanced users.)
Not really. AFAICT, javascript can only be turned on or off for an entire page. That is, if a page references UI javascript, web marketing javascript, user tracking javascript, and bad-guy-hacked-this-website-to-install-bad-trojan-crud javascript, you can only choose to disable them all, or enable them all. It's an all-or-nothing thing.
Noscript, on the other hand, allows you to individually enable/disable each of them.
If I'm wrong, I'd really, really like to know about how I can disable javascript and then individually enable each javascript site simply by clicking on a script name (like noscript -- manually typing in site names and patterns to match is unbelievably user hostile).
Chrome's adblock is nowhere near as good as firefox's, because chrome's is really an ad hider, and not an ad blocker. Chrome still downloads all of the ads, with all of the assorted performance and privacy issues.
Yes, yes, I know that people have been saying that this will be fixed someday, but I'll believe that when I see it. Google has a lot of incentive to disallow this and other features.
And, as others have said, lack of noscript is a deal breaker.
I use the mobile gmail web interface in safari, as I find it much more useful than the Apple's minimally-featured mail app. Searching may not be instantaneous, but it's fast enough, and I don't need to waste precious iPhone storage.
Sure, you need an internet connection, but that's basically true of Apple's app, too.
It's probably worse than that. Mozilla is heavily dependent upon Google's funding, and Firefox competes with Chrome. Long-term, there's really no reason for Google to continue funding of Mozilla (except, perhaps, for goodwill reasons). While I don't see anything changing in the short-term (say, 1-3 years), I think there's a good chance that Firefox will go the way of Netscape within 10 years.
Also, since both Apple and Google have the marketshare, it doesn't really matter what people here think.
While this technology will probably be workable someday, that day is still a while off. If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say at least 5-10 years off. Smartphone processor/GPU performance has got to increase, and the cellular providers must be able to supply the necessary bandwidth (c.f., the recent AT&T stories on how they allegedly might start penalizing high bandwidth users). This, of course, assumes that politics doesn't enter into it (e.g., suppression or disallowing of certain apps).
Remember that Apple tried the webapp-only approach with the first incarnation of the iPhone, and we all know how that turned out.
And, keep in mind that this model falls apart if you have no cell service, such as on an airplane or in the mountains. (Yes, I know that airlines are starting to add in-flight wifi, but I'll bet that the pricing will be initially be at rape-and-pillage levels. I imagine that it'll be years-and-years before it'll be adequately cheap and usable.)
There really is no special iPhone infrastructure. The device has a connection to the Internet, and requests are not sent through any proxy or processed in any way.
While this is true for general internet usage, I'm pretty sure that all push notifications go through Apple's servers.
Thanks. Yes, I have been following the digsby blog, but I haven't yet decided what I'm going to do. In terms of features/functionality, I think Astra is my only real alternative (on the PC), but I'm not crazy about the UI; while Miranda and pidgin look nice, they just don't meet my needs. I haven't yet upgraded, and so I might just turn everything off and see how it goes.
Slashdot Mirror
No, no, no. That's just the old geezer in you, talking.
This is just the logical outcome of rewarding our snowflakes for each and every inane thing they did when growing up. "You got an 'A'!" Here's your reward! "You got a 'C'!" Here's your reward! "You participated!" Here's your reward! "You lost!" Here's your reward! "You're breathing!" Here's your reward! "You can say, 'potato'!" Here's your reward!
There is one reason to get MobileMe: contact groups
MobileMe is the only big name to support automatic/bidirectional syncing of contacts in multiple groups. I like keeping my friends, family, co-workers, and business numbers separate. The only big question here is whether multiple groups is worth the price. I think it is, but others won't.
Google's idea of contact sync is to shovel all of your contacts into one big steamy pile (on the iPhone, since we're talking about MobileMe -- I think multiple groups are supported on the android). I imagine that they'll fix this someday, but I think "someday" is still years off. Until then, I'm stuck with MobileMe (although there are one or two alternatives on the horizon).
Sure.
1) Can I farm till 3am?
People may think this is funny, but there's a metric *ssload of truth there.
While Diaspora may still be successful, Diaspora and all of the other social networking wannabe's will never, ever, be as successful as facebook if they don't have the equivalent mindcrack. IMO, a huge part of fb's success is not due to plain "social networking", but to the totally inane mindcrack games that sucks on peoples' souls: like farmville, castle age, mafia wars, etc., etc..
Note to Diaspora, Google Me, and all other social networking wannabe's: if you want to achieve facebook-level success, you need to have soul-sucking mindcrack games.
Really???
Given the design of some "standard" barrel batteries, I can easily imagine the possibility of the positive terminal shorting out both of these special contacts. Some lawyers are probably drooling at the thought of that.
I'll be amazed if this ever appears in a standard-barrel-battery-taking product that is not sued out of existence.
Yes, they are both making money off the deal, but the money from google is financing firefox.
If google decided to stop funding/break off the search relationship, google wouldn't be hurt much, if at all. Firefox, on the other hand, would likely be on life support, if not dead. Granted, this isn't going to happen in the near future, but who knows, long term? One mitigating factor may be Microsoft, who'd probably gladly pay to be the default firefox search engine.
To see the financial dependency of firefox upon google, just do a google search for "google mozilla funding". :-)
As much as want to believe this, Firefox is heavily dependent upon Google financing, and I just don't see Google continuing to finance Firefox for more than, oh, say, 5 years from now. I don't think Google will abruptly stop financing, but I think they'll slowly decrease it to a trickle. Aside from goodwill, Google doesn't have much incentive to continue financing, and chrome provides a lot of incentive to kill firefox.
My first guess would be a non-802.11 device such as a video or audio sender. They can take out many 2.4GHz channels at once, where a microwave oven usually only knocks out a couple.
This, or, as others have said, an old cruddy analog 2.4GHz wireless phone. A microwave is also unlikely due to the long interference period, unless someone is trying to cook everyone around him ....
While mobileme isn't bad, gmail is still better. Not only does gmail have integrated calendar, tasks, doc, and chat, but the gmail web interface runs faster. I dislike the mobileme web interface because it feels slow and clunky.
On the other hand, mobileme is great if you want syncing of contact groups with the iPhone (google contacts doesn't support this -- google seems to think that everyone should have all of their contacts scrambled together in one ginormous pile).
lol, that was the first method that got cancelled ....
Meh, I hope google fixes gizmo's uber-borked billing system. A while back, I tried to buy gizmo5 minutes (just $10), but they refused to sell me any. I think I tried 2 or 3 different credit cards, but gizmo5 kept on cancelling the orders, with the lovely reason, "Cancelled". I'm a US citizen, in the US, with good credit, and I've never had a problem like that (Skype came the closest, with their silly "one account == one credit card" rule). As much as I would have liked to have used gizmo, they didn't want to take the money that I was trying to throw at them, and so my gizmo account has been dormant for the past year or two.
Maybe. That doesn't explain the existence of the iPhone "Pinger Textfree" app, which gives you free unlimited US texting via an sms-only number. (Yes, I know that they used to charge for texting, but now it's free and unlimited within the US, since it switched over to an ad-supported model.) H*ll, even the kids with iPod Touches know about and use it.
One issue is that Mozilla is fairly dependent upon Google's funding. Given that Google would like Chrome to succeed, Google has a lot of incentive to decrease funding.
(Yes, yes -- I'm sure that Google will continue funding for a while. However, it wouldn't surprise me if the funding dropped significantly, or even down to zero, in five years' time.)
What this data tells us is that consumers are embracing a smartphone OS outside of the iPhone. Apple isn't capturing the same level of market/mind share domination as it had with the iPod. The space will get even more exciting when Microsoft releases what looks to be a solid OS in Windows Phone 7.
I think a big reason for this is the iPhone's AT&T exclusivity. If the iPhone was available on Verizon and Sprint, I'd guess that the iPhone would be doing a lot better against Android. Carrier (i.e., cell phone service availability) is still a big issue in the US.
Frankly, I'm amazed that Apple has stuck with AT&T so long. iPhone sales appear to be leveling off (maybe even decreasing), and opening up the iPhone to multiple carriers is a virtual sure-fire way of significantly increasing sales (in the US). (Yes, yes, I know about the 5-year contract but, as others have said, there are probably ways out of that. Apple must probably have gotten a really sweet deal with the iPad ....)
Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear enough: while, IMHO, the main target audience is regular (non-technical) consumers, I didn't mean to imply that this was the only audience, or that technical users did not buy it. It's just that the non-technical marketplace is larger, and Apple would be crazy to not target the larger audience.
It's just that so many technical people here seem to think that, because the iPad isn't useful for them, the iPad can't possibly be a success.
The iPad is easy-to-use, and has a decent battery life. Flash issues aside, it's the perfect device for non-technical users. Sure, it doesn't do a lot of things well, but it does them "good enough" -- good enough that the non-technical users don't care or can't tell the difference. And many (most?) don't care if there isn't a physical keyboard -- a lot of people can only type via hunt-and-peck, and most of them probably don't care if they're pecking on a real or virtual keyboard.
Of course the iPad is disliked by a lot of people on slashdot, but advanced users aren't the target audience. Allow me to use a word that many people here might understand: it's for the "n00bs". Many consumers still have only little to modest computer expertise, and the iPad is a great, toaster-like device for them. (Apple will probably make a metric a**load more money selling to novices than advanced users.)
Not really. AFAICT, javascript can only be turned on or off for an entire page. That is, if a page references UI javascript, web marketing javascript, user tracking javascript, and bad-guy-hacked-this-website-to-install-bad-trojan-crud javascript, you can only choose to disable them all, or enable them all. It's an all-or-nothing thing.
Noscript, on the other hand, allows you to individually enable/disable each of them.
If I'm wrong, I'd really, really like to know about how I can disable javascript and then individually enable each javascript site simply by clicking on a script name (like noscript -- manually typing in site names and patterns to match is unbelievably user hostile).
Chrome's adblock is nowhere near as good as firefox's, because chrome's is really an ad hider, and not an ad blocker. Chrome still downloads all of the ads, with all of the assorted performance and privacy issues.
Yes, yes, I know that people have been saying that this will be fixed someday, but I'll believe that when I see it. Google has a lot of incentive to disallow this and other features.
And, as others have said, lack of noscript is a deal breaker.
It's Gizmodo. I'm not surprised.
I use the mobile gmail web interface in safari, as I find it much more useful than the Apple's minimally-featured mail app. Searching may not be instantaneous, but it's fast enough, and I don't need to waste precious iPhone storage.
Sure, you need an internet connection, but that's basically true of Apple's app, too.
How about the easy way: use the clicky, "turn off buzz", link at the bottom of the gmail page ...
It's probably worse than that. Mozilla is heavily dependent upon Google's funding, and Firefox competes with Chrome. Long-term, there's really no reason for Google to continue funding of Mozilla (except, perhaps, for goodwill reasons). While I don't see anything changing in the short-term (say, 1-3 years), I think there's a good chance that Firefox will go the way of Netscape within 10 years.
Also, since both Apple and Google have the marketshare, it doesn't really matter what people here think.
Uhh, a quick google search shows these links:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/12/04/how-to-convert-hexxehs-chrome-os-build-image-to-a-virtualbox-v/
http://www.unixmen.com/news-today/706-chromium-os-zero-released-
Agreed.
While this technology will probably be workable someday, that day is still a while off. If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say at least 5-10 years off. Smartphone processor/GPU performance has got to increase, and the cellular providers must be able to supply the necessary bandwidth (c.f., the recent AT&T stories on how they allegedly might start penalizing high bandwidth users). This, of course, assumes that politics doesn't enter into it (e.g., suppression or disallowing of certain apps).
Remember that Apple tried the webapp-only approach with the first incarnation of the iPhone, and we all know how that turned out.
And, keep in mind that this model falls apart if you have no cell service, such as on an airplane or in the mountains. (Yes, I know that airlines are starting to add in-flight wifi, but I'll bet that the pricing will be initially be at rape-and-pillage levels. I imagine that it'll be years-and-years before it'll be adequately cheap and usable.)
While this is true for general internet usage, I'm pretty sure that all push notifications go through Apple's servers.
Thanks. Yes, I have been following the digsby blog, but I haven't yet decided what I'm going to do. In terms of features/functionality, I think Astra is my only real alternative (on the PC), but I'm not crazy about the UI; while Miranda and pidgin look nice, they just don't meet my needs. I haven't yet upgraded, and so I might just turn everything off and see how it goes.