Hah

http://xkcd.com/612/

Man, it's a jungle out there

You know, I knew tech companies competed heavily for market share, but I guess I never thought that their moves were so strategic as shown by these two articles. I wonder, if Google is facing such heavy bombardment from Microsoft and Google, how can afford to keep their motto "Don't Be Evil"? Will they break down and start business practices that internet users may disapprove of heavily? I guess they might've already started that with their behavioral targeting campaign (Wired article).

Oh, by the way, I didn't realize Zuckerberg was such a douche (Wired article again).

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/opinion/13cringely.html

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-07/ff_facebookwall?currentPage=all

Firefox, I just dumped your ass

You were too slow, and took forever to start up. Safari's so much quicker. May your later revisions be faster.

The Submissive

I always wondered why when people are being mentored or not leading something they tend to take such a back seat in things. Basically, they seem to just go with the flow and do what they're told instead of questioning and thinking about the problems themself.

Well, I guess, as it turns out, when you're being given advice, your brain kind of just shuts off the decision making part of itself, so I guess you can't really act for yourself anyway. Interesting.

I wonder if AT&T wanted this to happen...

So I was going into New York City a few days ago and I saw this huge billboard for Sirius XM radio... on your iPhone. The ad was for an application created by Sirius XM for subscribers to listen to their satellite service over AT&T's cellular network on their iPhones.

And then I started wondering: did AT&T want this to happen?

When AT&T set up its 3G network, and when AT&T signed the deal with Apple to be the exclusive carrier of the iPhone, did it think to itself "I want millions of users to one day take up our cellular bandwidth and stream Youtube videos over our system and listen to radio over the air, and I want to have bus lines use our network so they can provide Wi-Fi cross-country to their customers, and... etc. etc."

I know 3G networks can handle a lot, but can it really handle that much? In 2007, iPhone users consumed 5 times as much data as the average AT&T consumer, and I'm sure that number's increased quite a bit considering we're in 2009 now.

Also going through my mind right now are "Tipping Points," since, well, I'm currently reading the book by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell defines the tipping point of a social trend to be the time at which the popularity of the trend suddenly exponentially explodes. A good example is the one he uses with fax machines. From Tipping Point, p. 12 by Malcolm Gladwell:

Sharp introduced the first low priced fax machine in 1984, and sold about 80,000 of those machines in the United States in that first year. For the next three years, businesses slowly and steadily bought more and more faxes, until, in 1987, enough people had faxes that it made sense for everyone to get a fax. Nineteen eighty-seven was the fax machine tipping point. A million machines were sold that year, and by 1989 two million new machines had gone into operation.

I wonder if the iPhone's hit its tipping point yet, but I doubt it. I'm seeing more and more people get smart phones whether they be Windows Mobile devices, Symbian devices, Android based devices, or iPhones, but it hasn't been that huge explosion that the fax machine saw in 1987. I'm sure there will be a tipping point, though, and when that happens, will the cellular networks be ready for it?

I guess on another note, I'm also curious as to where cellular companies see themselves going as internet providers. In 10 years, do they hope to be the next Comcast or Cablevision and be the primary internet provider for families? They're already making a pretty compelling case to do so.

Sprint's offering a $1 netbook with a two year subscription to their cellular broadband service. That's a pretty nice deal for people like my mom, who I would say is the average computer user. She uses her computer mainly to surf the web, write a few emails, maybe a Word doc or two, and that's pretty much about it. For only $30 a month more than what she's paying now for Cablevision internet, she can browse the internet anywhere on a lightweight, compact, netbook that she can carry in her purse. She pretty much gets the netbook for free (a $400 value, which covers half of the cost difference between getting Verizon Wireless broadband and Cablevision broadband), and she gets a free computer upgrade every 2 years. That's pretty sweet.

Anyway, back to my original questions: do wireless providers see themselves becoming primary internet service providers in the future? Can 3G networks (probably 4G by that time) handle all that demand? And has the tipping point for smart phones been reached yet?

I don't know the answer to those questions, but I wish I did!

Interesting Article on Giving

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/opinion/09kristof.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

A couple quick takeaways:

1) humanitarians are ineffective at selling their causes
2) the public has a distrust in the ways humanitarian groups convey their purpose and why they're needed
3) Stalin was right when he said "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic."
4) there's a new book I want to read (shoot).

From Peder Pan, the man who can fly.

His Vein!

This was a picture on the homepage of the Philly.com a while back. That's some serious vein poppage!

My first blog

Oh how naive we were. Hey "Shaz," remember this? Are you still paying for that domain, by the way? That's like $2 / yr * 4 yrs = $8 of web hosting never used!

I've been telling all my friends, so I should probably tell you too.

Not to say that you're not my friend, of course. But anyway, what have I been telling everyone? To go here. The National Alliance to End Homelessness's (NAEH) blog on, well, homelessness. As I've been saying to everyone else, I can't emphasize how much I've been wanting a blog on homelessness from a reputable source. And, well, the NAEH is one of the most reputable around. Anyway, just from skimming the most recent posts there's a ton of information there, from a brief history of homelessness to why homelessness exists. The page also makes mention of an article by Malcolm Gladwell, Million Dollar Murray, which is a neat article that kind of gives an overview of the distribution of the homeless and can give some context on the issues facing policy makers today. It also features Dennis Culhane, the professor I've been doing research with at Penn!

Anyway, be sure to check out the site. If you end up liking it, also be sure to subscribe to it and comment on it or something! Anything to give the site more hits so it can keep on writing!

http://abouthomelessness.blogspot.com/

Money and Happiness, Semi Pt 2

Ah yes, the summer months. Such are slow times at "Can I Turn that Frown Upside Down." But the reading of useless material has commenced once again so hopefully the posts will keep rollin'. For now, a link from the website of Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, who's book I've been wanting to read for a long time. It discusses money as a painkiller, and if you look at pain as the negation of happiness, then it indirectly refers to money as a source of happiness!?

http://www.predictablyirrational.com/?p=637

EDIT: Part one can be found here:
http://nicke5012.blogspot.com/2009/03/i-think-money-can-buy-happiness-for.html