While the wife is trying to formulate a final post on her blog to end the year. I thought I’d take a different tack so here are my predictions for next year.
1) The World as we know it, will NOT end. (as in period)
2) The Euro (system) for Europe will NOT collapse.
3) I will get another year older.
Now here’s a cat picture.
So tuck in, and wait it out.
If anyone has any doubts about the sanity of Nokia’s, rather eFlops selection of windows to hang Nokia’s future upon, this should settle them as Nokia Lumia 800 sales forecast gets chopped that puts first batch sales almost half of what the MeeGo powered N9′s sales already achieved. And that was even after the N9 sales were deliberately handicapped by eFlop himself into some of the most obscure markets in the world. If the N9 had been sold in the same regions that the eFlop 800 is being pushed into, there would be no deigning that Window-Phone is a flop, an Elop.
Over the past few years there has been a subject called Technological convergence not to be confused with Technological singularity In one aspect that event has happened to me this year. Because no one noticed, I have been pretty sporadic with posting on this site. Some of the reason is work related, more of it has been due to me being overwhelmed with events in and out of my control. And others have been due to some health issues.
During and between these events, I’ve been without my laptop (for some the sole source of internet communications). However I have not been without my mobile phone. But to call what I have, just a mobile phone, is questionable. I have a Nokia N900, more a small internet tablet than a phone and it has been a complete, in fact more than a complete replacement for my laptop. For more than 50 days and nights this year I have used it for email (4 POP, 2 Goggle, 1 Office) Web Browsing (Nokia, Firefox and Opera) and specialized apps for WordPress (2 blogs) Facebook, twitter ( 3 different clients) RSS readers, Podcasting, Music playback (several) internet Radio, Movie watching, Bookreading, IMing (Yahoo(2), AIM, Buzz, facebook) GPS, FM radio, Skype and Moble Telephony (telephone, who knew)
In fact, more things than I can do on a laptop, for 50 days this year I’ve been entirely ‘converged’ on my phone.
If anyone still believes that the wealthy do not receive special treatment in the legal, business and social world. Only needs to fly in an aircraft sometime.
I have come to the conclusion that if Android encounters a WiFi point that does not have WEP/WPA security, but instead, uses some corney web based HTML login code or password, Android goes bonkers.
Because Android is a very connected OS, the first thing that it tries to do on receipt of an IP address, it attempts to connect to Google services, and fails because it’s not fully on the Interet until it submits the correct HTML code. So the Android framework, that almost all Android apps depends on, Fails! And because the framework fails, the various browsers fail, and you can’t get to the login page to enter the unlock code to the portal, because you have no working browsers.
A classic “Catch 22″ issue. An issue that my N900 does not have
Android Sucks!
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I took the plunge and re-imaged my Cnm Touchpad II up to Froyo (Android 2.2.1) , And after the second try, it installed, after sweating bullets. And not only is it pretty, it’s faster, and I (after some efforts) now have the Android market.
Mind you the CnM Touchpad II is NOT the intended target for this upgrade, and I lost the use of the internal microSD card, and the fullsized USB connector to the builtin software, but I restored most of the functionality with additional downloads from the Store.
I actually like the upgrade so much I will host it here: apad710_froyo_v3.img
As you can tell this image is for a APad 710 which is really an exact copy of the CnM Touchpad II, however this image is ‘hacked’ and ‘rooted’ and ready to roll.
The recent Blowup about HP exiting the PC/WebOS Business reminds me of an old story about when Sony bought MGM, the movie makers.
The story goes like this; executives were briefing Sony Management about how profits were generated from the Movie Making business. One accountant described the process such;
“Well we make a hundred movies a year, about 10% are Blockbusters and we make millions, 60% make a modest profit, and pay for themselves, and the about 20% Lose a small amount, but help maintain our reputation, and then there are 10% that are serious bombs.”
The Japanese executives looked at each other and carried on a small side conversation and then stated;
“We only want to produce Blockbusters”
HP is like this, they only wanted to produce Blockbusters, as if this was merely a simple decision, “We only want to make Blockbusters”. As if there was no effort involved, no trial and error involved. And when the first effort fails, quit and run from the first attempt as if shedding the failure is the only responsible choice.
And I thought that the Executives of Sony and Nokia were failures, Looks like there is a Plague of idiot CEO’s out there.
NOTE 1: It looks like bad decisions MIGHT have repercussions as HP might oust Apotheker
I heard all the arguments, and if I were in a position to actually have made the decisions, or been allowed to tender an opinion on the actions taken. I know I would have made different choices. But in the end;
With the addition of a 20€ keyboard/case from Amazon my El-Cheapo 7″ Android Pad becomes a Laptop. And while the keyboard is small, it’s faster and more accurate to type on than the slightly too sensitive resistive touch screen on the pad. It really does transform the Android ‘experience’, highly recommended.
I couldn’t on my best day, speak to this better than this article.
If anything it should speak to any CEO/CFO/CTO that arrogantly enters a new company environment with preconceived notions of what strategy should be applied to their new positions. So this article isn’t just about Nokia, it’s about ignorance of facts.
I have been observing a vast increase in traffic, traffic without apparent purpose, over the last several weeks.
And I didn’t give it much thought. However I now know that its MSNBot a Bing Robot that is deeply scanning all my postings. But it’s not very thorough.
And then the evidence, it’s telling my site that it is using Internet Explorer as the browser. It not telling me it’s a search engine or a spider, it pretending to BE a browser to the statistics recorder on my site as a Internet Explorer browser. Internet Explorer has been declining in the statistics over the past few years, and it now seems that Microsoft is attempting to drive that number up on websites around the country to indicate an increase in Popularity for Internet Explorer.
Has anyone else see this in their site statistics?
In the science fiction book Fahrenheit 451 I often wondered what the catalyst was. In the current age, that has become apparent, control, with government leaders demanding ‘controls’ over the Internet, and most other communications media the books presented in the Novel are information. However, there is another aspect of books which in this age of electronic books (eBook) presents itself as a missing element in control.
While experimenting with the Kindle on Android I found that the Android Pad I was using, while reading a Kindle book was in constant communication with Amazon Books. Almost every page turn was being recorded and sent to Amazon, even the location of where I was reading them was a requirement during the reading of the eBook.
I discovered that if you turn off location features in your pad, or Android Phone, the kindle software will prevent you from reading a downloaded book. If you can not communicate with Amazon via WiFI or other wireless channel, you can’t open your books, even if they were previously downloaded.
Sometime back Amazon became embroiled in a controversy over publishing rights to a book, and directly removed it from peoples ebook readers, without the consent of the user.
Amazon/Kindle does not allow the loaning of books to others, even if they have been paid for. The owner just doesn’t have that right anymore.
All of these elements add up to the same thing, printed books are ‘out of control’ they can be read by anyone, loaned to anyone, and their content is not subject to change once printed. These are things that Amazon eBooks can do. Change content, disappear, track readers, prevent distribution and dissemination of content.
Not to get too scary, but fundamentally the loss of printed books marks a point where knowledge has peaked, and the end of freedom of thought. No longer will information be available freely. The internet will be throttled, bottled, canned and banned to suit the requirements of the controlling society. Books will be available, eBooks, with controlled revisable content, restricted to cleared and sanctioned readers from known locations. And every word will be monitored as it is read.
In my previous posting, I mentioned all the things this pad can’t or rather doesn’t do. To make this all balanced, I will put what it can do, into perspective.
For Instance, at a cost approximately the same as a Amazon Kindle You still get The Kindle eBook market.
… but then you get;
You can even play Games on it, who would have thought. And it has not added a single pence to my credit card. But I still don’t have the the ‘Google Market’ even though the calendar, contacts and Gmail still sync up with Google.
Ok, lets name all the things this new Android pad isn’t
What it does have is;
And it cost less than 150.00€
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