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Rooting for the CrunchPad
Image credit: CNET
It sounds like Mike Arrington is getting closer to shipping the CrunchPad - a device that does one thing (surf the web) hopefully really well. Even though I am consolidating my technology, I want to see the CrunchPad succeed. There are a three reasons why:
First, I love the idea that any individual can, through smart sourcing, become not just a software entrepreneur but a hardware one too. It's not only a great American story, it's another great flat earth tale too. Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison never felt intimidated by giant competitors. So neither should Mike.
Second, I root for anything that puts the web in more people's hands at an affordable cost.
Finally, it keeps everyone else on their toes and innovating.
Good for Mike. Go CrunchPad go.
How I am Declaring My Independence from Technology Today
For those of you in the US, Happy Independence Day! There are lots of ways to celebrate this amazing holiday. In New York, the Statue of Liberty crown is finally re-opening. Every town, it seems, has a parade. Here's another idea...
I am celebrating July 4 by declaring my Independence from some of the technology that clutters my "psychic RAM," as David Allen terms it in Getting Things Done. Last year there was a National Marked All as Read Day. July 4 is my own reminder to do the same.
I am simplifying my technology in five ways...
- First, I am eliminating any bookmarks, software/webware that I haven't used in the last seven days. This is an idea I picked up from my friend Jeff Sandquist at Microsoft.
- Second, I am down to two devices for everything - a laptop and a cell phone. Period, end of story. This means my Kindle is going on eBay (eBay is one of our clients).
- Third, all my critical data seamlessly syncs between these two devices. If a service doesn't allow me to sync stuff via the cloud and access it both online and off, it's toast. Evernote and Google (Google Reader, Gmail IMAP, CalDAV) are lifesavers here. My business data already syncs wonderfully via Exchange.
- Fourth, I dumped tons of of stuff: RSS feeds and virtually every email newsletter, with two exceptions - Marketing Charts and the Social Media Smartbrief
- Fifth, I am setting up lists on Friendfeed to help me find signals in the noise and so that I can do the same here for you, my audience
Photo credit: Mark All as Read Day on Flickr by Sidereal
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Mediterranean Piracy on the Fourth
US hostages held in foreign country on Fourth of July, including a former Congresswoman, after having been captured in a naked act of piracy in international waters after the Americans attempted to respond to a crisis provoked by crimes against humanity, as detailed by Amnesty International.
Once upon a time, Americans would have had the guts to mind such a thing.
See also Paul Craig Roberts.
Gazans and other Palestinians under Israeli occupation do not enjoy "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," and have not been able to "institute" a "government" of their own to secure those rights. The occupation authority that rules them does not derive its "powers" from the "consent of the governed" The occupation government has become destructive to these ends. I think we know what the American Founding Fathers would say the Palestinians need.
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Remembering Iran's Protests on the 4th of July
Remembering the protests in Iran in pictures and film on the occasion of the America Declaration of Independence:
Aljazeera English on "Mousavi and the Masses", part I:
Mousavi and the Masses," Part II:
Parnaz & Ashkan:
"The Owner of this Land":
And some relevant print reports:
LAT on one innocent man's 10 days in Iran's labyrinth of a prison system, just because he stopped to help a fallen protester.
A coordinated international response is building against Iran's plan to put Iranian UK embassy employees on trial.
Fareed Zakaria's (implicit reply to Bomber Bolton):
CNN: What about a military strike?
Zakaria: It would be bizarre to bomb Iran-- which means bombing Iranians -- now that we have seen the inside of that country. Moussavi and his supporters want a less confrontational approach to the world. So do many members of the establishment.
Moussavi attacked Ahmadinejad repeatedly for his aggressive foreign policy. So we now know the answer to the question, "Are there moderates in Iran?" Yes, millions of them.'
End/ (Not Continued)
My Yahoo Adds Peer-to-Peer Polling
Do you My Yahoo? I still do, occasionally, though I iGoogle more these days. I have been using My Yahoo for over 10 years, but what's great is that they haven't stayed still. Now My Yahoo is getting more social.
Yahoo today added a new social feature that lets you poll your friends right from the personalized page. You can grab it here. Unfortunately, this experience only integrates with friends within the Yahoo network. You can, however, share a link to your polls. It would be great to see this more seamlessly integrate with Twitter and/or Facebook Connect since that's where people are spending time these days.
Question of the Day: Can a Phone Replace a Laptop? (My Take: Probably Not)
This is something I have been thinking about lately: as smart phones (pick one, any one) get more sophisticated, can one get away traveling for business sans laptop? For me the answer to date has been: sort of. Basically, if the trip is less than two nights and I know I won't need PowerPoint, I take the risk. Still, my laptops remain indispensible.
For more, see/comment on this post from Zee on Friendfeed. What's your view? As netbooks get thinner, lighter and cheaper this may all be a moot point.
Friendfeed Brings "Best of Day" to Lists, Helps You Spot Trends from Friends
See and download the full gallery on posterous
One of my favorite Friendfeed features is called "Best of Day." I use it all the time to hone in on the most liked/commented conversations. If you're logged into Friendfeed, you can hit this link to see the most interesting conversations from your friends over the last 24 hours or this one for the past seven days. The problem with the feature, however, is that it only worked across all of your friends. This can be problematic if you follow hundreds of people, as I do.
Last night, however, Friendfeed quietly added a killer feature that brings "Best of Day" to lists - groupings of friends you categorize. Now you can more easily spot trends from friends. The screen grab below shows you the most interesting items over the last month just within my "favorites" list. This smart filtering of content plus the recent addition of real-time search on Friendfeed is exactly what those of us who participate in the social web need.
This incremental innovation gives me just another reason to be excited about Friendfeed. It's also why I love Gmail, Posterous and Evernote. They constantly keep innovating all the time even through the tough times.
Google Knows You
Here's a fun little find for a Friday. If you have a Google Profile and you're logged in to your Google account, search for the word me. Your profile will come up as the top result. This is great if you get amnesia.
Mousavi Said Calling for General Strike; Hard Liners Call for his Arrest
In what may be a major development, it is being alleged that Iranian opposition leader Mir Hosain Mousavi and his wife Zahra Rahnavard are calling for a general strike next week. Such a strike would be harder for the regime to forestall than crowds coming into the streets, and whether it has a big effect or not would be a way of measuring the support for the reformists in the country.
Predictably, hard liners in the Iranian parliament are calling for Mousavi to be arrested. As it is, seven members of what the regime calls "anti-government groups" from Tehran and Qazvin were arrested yesterday.
Not satisfied with having held an Egyptian-style election, some Iranian politicians apparently want to adopt the Burmese model. How do you say "Myanmar" in Persian?
A
Meanwhile, one price the regime will pay for phonying up the election results and violently repressing peaceful demonstrations is even greater diplomatic isolation. Although this LA Times piece questions whether sanctions will be tightened, I think that is also a possible outcome. Many Iranians are fearful that what was done to Iraq, in reducing it to a fourth-world country, will ultimately be done to Iran by the US/UNSC if things go on like this.
The 27-member European Union is intervening with Iran over the holding of British embassy personnel. This is a powerful intervention. One third of all Iran's trade is with the EU and it is Iran's number one trading partner. The EU imported 11.3 bn. Euros in goods from Iran in 2008 and exported 14 bn. Euros to Iran-- maninly "machinery and transport equipment (54.6%), manufactured goods (16.9%) and chemicals (12.1%). "
End/ (Not Continued)
Saddam, the FBI and Cliocide in Iraq
Joyce Battle (with help from Brendan McQuade) has posted twenty interviews of Saddam Hussein by the FBI to the National Security Archives at George Washington University, having done the hard work of FOIAing them.
In this pdf file, the FBI interrogator asks a lot of leading questions about al-Qaeda and Saddam shoots them down effectively.
In this pdf file, Saddam explains, "Hussein stated Iran was Iraq's major threat due to their common border and believed Iran intended to annex Southern Iraq into Iran. The possibility of Iran trying to annex a portion of Southern Iraq was viewed by Hussein and Iraq as the most significant threat facing Iraq. hussein viewed the other countries in the Middle East as weak and could not defend themselves or Iraq from a attack from Iran. Hussein stated he believed Israel was a threat to the entire Arab world, not specifically Iraq."
Aljazeera English reports on Saddam Hussein's fear of Iran (the reason he did not publicly admit to having destroyed his chemical and biological weapons), his distaste for al-Qaeda, and his toying with a new alliance with the US against Iran.
As a professional historian of the Middle East, I am appalled by these documents. They are very odd because the agenda for the interviews was clearly set by Cheney and they were intended to justify the Bush administration. The historical questions are naive and elicit no interesting new information. I can't think of anything in the documents that couldn't just have been found in Saddam's old speeches. And the blanked-out document is very suspicious; presumably the answers there reflected poorly on Bush or Washington or something.
Saddam Hussein was a tyrant and a mass murderer. But to have him so shoddily and self-interestedly debriefed and then lynched by the Mahdi Army was a great disservice to history. It is the sort of thing we came to expect from the Bush administration, which oversaw the destruction of the entire twentieth-century historical record for Iraq, as well as crushing and destroying under tanks and helicopters entire libraries of ancient Iraqi civilization, a crime I have dubbed "cliocide."
End/ (Not Continued)
Amplifying the Drumbeat on the "Overdraft Protection" Racket
Gibbs: "I Seem to Have Forgotten My Amex"
Some Optimism for the Future of Science Journalism
Video: PBS Mediashift Interview
I spoke with Rubel a couple months ago when he was visiting San Francisco for the Ad:tech conference. We met at B Restaurant near Moscone Center and I interviewed him with my Flip camera. Mark Glaser writing for Mediashift on pbs.org
Timestamps of the interview are on the PBS site if you want to drill down into a topic.
The Tweetest Taboo
More PitneyGate Fallout?
Video Interview: Marco Arment of Instapaper
I took a quick trip uptown today to learn more about Tumblr and meet with their team. (I will have a video interview next week up with Tumblr's co-founder, David Karp.)
While I was there I shot this five-minute interview with Marco Arment, who developed Instapaper as a side project. (Follow him on Twitter @MarcoArment)
If you haven't tried the fantastic Instapaper service, be sure to check it out. Instapaper, which works on many mobile devices, is really for active web readers. It makes it a snap to save articles for future reading. Though we don't have it on video, Marco showed me some of the forthcoming features in Instapaper 2.1 for the iPhone. The new version, which should be out in a few weeks, has stronger integration with Twitter and Tumblr.
