In followup to this post
And yes, I had kimchi at Thanksgiving. 
Equally interesting is what [Siri] portents for Apple. Just like the App Store began the intermediation and exclusion of Google by offering users a better experience interacting with data in apps than via a web search, Siri continues it by theoretically making it easier and more enjoyable to engage in query/response with Siri than with Google. In typical fashion, Apple isn’t building a search engine to compete with Google, they’re building something to obsolete the current conception of search engines. And they’re not doing it by becoming a walled garden — there’s no profit in that. They’re doing it by becoming a walled gate with a multi-directional toll system.
Great observation. Reminds me also of how Apple got out from under the Microsoft Office Sword of Damocles with Safari and iWork.
I suppose musings like this are very common among Apple haters. Basically the complaint boils down to:
“325dpi? Bah! Even a 1986-era laser printer does 300dpi and my newspaper does at least 600dpi. Until you get there, the print is smudgy and causes eye-strain.”
What a crock of shit.
Continue reading about eye acuity and displays after the jump. →
Overheard: “Only Apple can get away with calling something ‘magical’ and not have people call bullshit.”
Now that this site has been down for a month (Thank you, SARSxSW), I tried to see restart this blog with a deep thought.
I couldn’t come up with anything.
So instead, I’ll talk about the tech news. Recently a lot has been going on about Steve Jobs latest missive: “Thoughts on Flash” to which, Adobe’s CEO quickly responded to in the Wall Street Journal.
Instead of rushing to Apple’s defense here, I thought I’d provide some thoughts on these “thoughts.”
Buried in a previous article, instead of carrying the paper manuals around, I mentioned that you should download your manufacturer’s camera manuals onto the iPhone for reference. But I didn’t explain how this could be done or why it is useful.
Here are three applications I’ve used that render PDFs:
I’ll be talking about Air Sharing, Dropbox, and GoodReader. If you want to know the solution I use for camera manuals, skip to the section on GoodReader.
Continue reading about reading PDF manuals in Air Sharing, Dropbox, and GoodReader after the jump →
I’ve always said that the best camera is the one you have on you, and I’ve mentioned that that cameraphones have a lot of versatility.
I haven’t been shooting seriously in over a year and my cameras are screaming for me to take this stuff seriously again.
Even my iPhone camera.
With my car finally back from the shop, my rear mirror finally repaired, me in the passenger side, and the latest burger from McDonald’s in my lap, I felt a lot of regret I couldn’t snap this with my Leica or Panasonic LX1. But then I remembered I was charging my iPhone…
Well this solves one problem in the morning…
By the way, despite having purchased the iPhone 3G the day after release day, having a plan which I never use with infinite texts stuck on, I don’t qualify for discounted pricing until 12/13/2009.
I’m curious how AT&T does that computation. Some sort of cost-benefit on when I’m might leave them vs. when they lose Apple exclusivity?
In 2000 I asked someone to pick up an alarm clock from Target—something simple, stylish, and loud. Of the three, it was only the latter. Now you can’t unset the alarm! Argh! And I’ve since learned to wake up to much less noise. In my life I’ve averaged about an alarm clock every decade.
I purchased the Vers 1.5R clock radio from Feel More Human.
One of the iPhone updates I downloaded last night was the New York Times app. Trying to figure out how it was better than the previous version I was hit with the announcement that there is a Kindle app for the iPhone.
Here are some screenshots with commentary:
The Kindle icon is nice. I put the app next to Stanza which is, by far, the best free book reader for the iPhone. Yeah, my battery is running out.
This screen is the same as the Kindle 2’s UPC symbol.
All my purchased books are synced and the covers are in color. Nice.
On the other hand, none of my sample chapters synced, none of my documents synced, and my magazine subscription The New Yorker didn’t sync. I was hoping to see the latest cover in color on the iPhone. 
Kindle app wirelessly synchronized my page position from my Kindle 2. Slick! You flick tap to change the page, tap hold to pull up the menu. They’ll probably have to change the navigation UI to be more in line with other iPhone readers.
For some reason the scroll is too slow for page flipping. You flick to fast you just get a white screen. You can change the font size but you cannot rotate the display.
Images on Kindle books are supposed to be color. Not for me! Maybe it depends on the book, but the print version of this book is clearly color, while the Kindle version is black and white. Also you can’t pinch zoom or tap zoom any of the images. So much for using the Kindle for my pr0n needs. Argh!
There seems to be a bug where both “Beginning” and “Cover” jump to the cover. Beginning is supposed to jump to the first readable area.
Note that the app syncs my notes and marks from my Kindle 2.
The jump menu is the only thing clearly better on the iPhone. I can jump to the section with just a flick and tap. Those of you who take a lot of notes know how frustrating it is to navigate the Kindle 2’s eInk display.
BTW, there is no text-to-speech. This is disappointing. I know the iPod has spoken menus and there is a way sync high quality voices to it. I’d love for a high-quality voice like Alex read my books while I’m driving (and then sync my book position back to my Kindle 2. [If I have time I’ll archive my notes later in this article]