Great story from Wired about Andrew Ng and the quest to reverse engineer the human brain. Google is going after this in a big way — I suspect it’s what Larry Page really wanted to do all along. But others are in the...
Learn MoreThat was the lesson I took from reading this really interesting piece by Brian Lam. I often feel guilty because I’m not very “active” on Twitter and I feel like this makes me a bad person somehow. It’s inspiring to hear someone I respect and admire say you’re better off taking a quick look then hunkering down and doing some real work. For those of you who don’t know him, Brian was once the editor of Gizmodo, got burned out on the hamster-wheel-spinning life of a tech blogger, and decided to change. He lives in Hawaii, surfs a lot, goes diving, writes about the ocean, and makes a living by running a gadget site called The Wirecutter. And this money quote from Brian blew my mind: I just like getting away from blogs almost entirely—any place with a clicking agenda. I just know they’re trying to make noise to make traffic. I don’t want to use up my time getting involved in that. Amen. Amen....
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Just a heads up that I’m starting a new job as editor-in-chief of ReadWrite, a tech site formerly known as ReadWriteWeb. We have rebranded the site as ReadWrite and launched it yesterday with a new design and a new approach to covering tech news. Meaning: more personality, more engagement, more fun. This is not going to be Fake Steve 2.0 because, alas, Fake Steve has left the building. But it will give me a place where I can write the kind of stuff I want to write, with loads of freedom and with a small group of like-minded souls. ReadWrite has a really good staff of writers, and we’re going to be adding more voices to the mix. I’m looking for interesting, thought-provoking ideas, so send them along. My idea is that journalism needs to become more about conversation than publication. As Arianna Huffington likes to say (in her strange accent) “Self-expression is the new entertainment.” So look — come along with me on this adventure and express yourselves. Become part of ReadWrite. Add your voice to the conversation. For those of you who are still hanging around from the Fake Steve days, first of all, Namaste, and second of all, Let’s put the band back together. We have...
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That’s what I’m hearing. People around the world who were having problems with the new maps say that within hours of Tim Cook’s apology the software miraculously started working perfectly. Customers are happy, Apple has won, Google is screwed, and, in a tiny church in a remote village in Portugal, a painting of Steve Jobs (above) has started weeping real tears, all thanks to that simple, miracle-working apology. Oh, the power of contrition! By lying, but then apologizing for lying, Apple now has become stronger than before. The story is spreading like wildfire, told by Farhad Manjoo on Pando and Drew Olanoff on TechCrunch. See, in the new “perception economy,” the core deliverable is no longer the product itself, it’s the way you talk about the product. The message is the product. They are one and the same. Ergo, a company doesn’t need to make a good product; it just needs to persuade customers that the product is good. See the difference? Even when you ship a bad product, if you apologize for it, now it’s good. It’s all about perception. Or persuasion. Or how your attempts at persuasion are perceived. Something like...
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The key thing in the maps situation is what this move says about Apple and the kind of company it has become. As Roger Kay points out on Forbes: Does Apple care that its naked self interest is showing? Not at all, near as I can tell. Apple has always had disdain for what others think, even — no, especially — customers. However, for a potential customer on the cusp of deciding whether to buy an Apple or an Android phone, this blatantly dishonorable move — to take away from consumers something that they liked and put in its place a home-grown but inferior substitute — is likely to push them definitively into the Google camp. Speaking of “blatantly dishonorable,” there’s also the price gouging, the threats to cut back on retail, the shoddy treatment of workers at Foxconn which is driven by Apple’s relentless squeeze on its suppliers, and — finally — the patent trolling. Instead of competing in the marketplace, Apple is using lame patents and deep legal pockets to try to diminish competition. Apple doesn’t want to collect royalties. Apple wants to eliminate competition. This also hurts customers, including the Apple faithful, who benefit when Apple is forced to keep up with hungry rivals. All’s fair...
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