diego's weblog
there and back again
Category Archives: technology
e-readers are doomed! doomed I tellsya!
Posted by on January 6, 2012
Matt Alexander, at The Loop, resurfaces the by-now well-known idea that e-readers (specifically eInk devices like the Kindle) are doomed to quick extinction. The reasoning is based on the following, quoting from the article (many of the points are repeated two or three times, “technology” in particular): Technology. The technology is “[...] inherently stunted. E-ink is [...]
hacker cooties
Posted by on December 24, 2011
I am definitely enjoying this, the tail end of 2011, living largely in disconnected mode, barely looking at news, catching up on books and movies. Come January, there will be time for frenetic engagement with the electronic world. Something I wanted to share though, was a fragment on Charlie Stross’s “how I got here in [...]
steve’s last theorem
Posted by on December 11, 2011
“I finally cracked it.” is what Steve Jobs told to Walter Isaacson when talking about a way to revolutionize TV. Given the usual insanity, wild extrapolation and rumor-mongering that goes on regarding upcoming Apple products, it’s no surprise that this got a lot of people excited. Aside from the typical unfounded speculation, see for example [...]
I for one welcome our new algorithmic overlords
Posted by on December 6, 2011
In recent weeks, “markets” (more specifically, bond markets, but that’s less important for this particular argument) have been directly responsible for the change in leadership in two countries (Greece and Italy) and at least indirectly responsible for the change in another (Spain — in the form of all sorts of perceived pressure on the electorate). [...]
too bad phone number records don’t have a TTL
Posted by on January 22, 2011
It’s been almost a day since I ported my phone number from AT&T to Google Voice, and I still can’t receive SMS or international calls. Mind you, the porting process explicitly stated that SMS could take up to three days to transfer over, but while I was doing it I didn’t pay much attention to [...]
bye bye, AT&T
Posted by on January 21, 2011
On Wednesday the story broke that Google was testing number porting for Voice, but I got there too late: the option was already gone by the time I checked. Then yesterday it occurred to me to check again, and lo and behold, there it was. It just so happened that I was angrier at AT&T [...]
two articles
Posted by on January 21, 2011
and two quotes. 1) “How much time do you spend verbalizing? Every time you talk, you destroy the memory of what you’re talking about.” from Science Proves You’re Stupid 2) “Is [the software we use] it really fulfilling our needs? Or are we reducing the needs we feel in order to convince ourselves that the software [...]
the end of the mechanical age
Posted by on July 16, 2010
Anyone that knows me also knows that I am tablet fan. My first job out of college was at IBM’s TJ Watson Research Center creating a user interface for a tablet that never shipped (this was 1998!) even though we got it working in prototype form. I have used tablets of various kinds since then [...]
the web is an app
Posted by on July 14, 2010
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what apps mean for web development, and how they intersect, and my conclusion so far is that very soon web apps will always be built… as apps. What do I mean by this? Apps are user interfaces optimized for a particular device or screen, and they communicate with [...]
the problem with iPhone 4 (and it’s not what you think)
Posted by on July 4, 2010
“Do you like your iPhone 4?” I’ve heard this question more than a few times in the two weeks since I got it, and I imagine I’m not alone. I’ve owned and used as my primary phone every iPhone since the original but for the first time the answer to this question, surprisingly, has been [...]
