This is my problem with marketing and etc. Once something cool comes along marketers automatically think every single company needs to develop it for themselves too. Why the hell does Barnes & Noble needs a iPhone application? Are they adding any new service other book selling such as Amazon aren’t already providing?
Answer is no. So there goes another waste of budget money that could go to actually improving their web experience and maybe even create a mobile site. Get it together marketers for you will always fail if you just jump to the new thing without common sense.
Now really Austin? Look we are in a recession and beginning part of a depression. Spending 8.4 million on these new parking kiosks is stupid. The old ones cost you 500,000 in fines because they were broken, but who cares? How does that justify getting new ones for that amount of money now? Also, you want to make people pay for parking later in the day, so instead of free parking after 5:30pm it will be Midnight and also no more free parking on saturday. All this will do is make people who come out to eat on a weekend in downtown basically stay in North Austin and this will create money losses for the local businesses and retaraunts, which make the ustin culture in the first place. It seems liek lately that since Brarack Obama has been in office every state, city, banks and Government have been spending stupid ammounts of money. This will not help anything at this time, so get it together idiots!
I think this article brings up a great point in usability and the many netbooks out there. I was thinking of purchasing one lately for a family member, but as much as I love the price and cool size, it seems just too small to do certain work on it even if someone is on a budget. To me if these developers are going to create custom OSs for these netbooks no problem, but wouldnt that just make the netbook a bigger version of a mobile device like the iPhone, blackberry and etc. Most people want to use it as an extension of their desktop to get work done on the road, but in a much smaller package than most laptops. I still think they are usefull for some students and etc, but from the picture above I just see mobile and that to me is a turn off when it comes to any for of computer system because I already have a phone than can do that. I know the Netbook isnt a Notebook, but its still supposed to offer more to me than just a bigger screen and storage space.
This is exactly why I don’t see the point in purchasing a Kindle at all. I can only see an older demographic buying this because they most likely wont have a smart phone to use any new technologies or enhanced applications that provide eBook reading. If you do have a Blackberry or iPhone try out these cool eBook readers and you will realize why I make that statement.
So many times I hear people say “oh the iPhone is just pretty blah blah”, but that’s the point it is pretty and its also a great device. In this business we learn that without some type of glamor the device will lack appeal to the general public even though its a great device on its own. Has anyone willingly wanted to purchase a G1 lately? exactly. The iPhone is pretty with its glossy icons and etc, but the applications bring so much to it that its makes someone’s life simple by having everything in one device. Well that’s my rant on this for the day, let me know what apps are the best ones.
As everyone in the world I know uses TurboTax I figured I would give you guys another option. There are very well respected and have some ool features like walk through videos and etc. Even the State is only 13.95 with free e-file.
I love this website. Again another new logo for an old company. I honestly never got why so many companies are messing with a good thing. This is your brand and something the public has viewed as “YOU” for so long, if you choose to change it please make sure it is a great change. From this picture I see no point in this change, the new logo doesnt look any better or any worse. This defeats any purpose of the change in the first place, because it gets no press or any other reaction positive or negative. Don’t fix it if it aint broke!
Another young man killed for absolutely no reason. If you haven’t heard a young man Oscar Grant in Oakland, California was killed (executed) on New Years Day by an officer.
Grant and some friends got into a fight on the train which obviously led the BART officer to handcuff them. What doesn’t make sense is the fact that minutes later he was shot execution style. He was handcuffed and on the platform while getting shot by this officer.
Thanks to a girl on a passing train who recorded the whole act on her cell phone, we can all see what exactly happened on YouTube and even news networks.
The excuse used by the officer and the department is that the Bart officer mistaken his gun for his tazer. Sometimes I think that the public is so dumbed down that we star to just assume right in every single person even if it is right in front of us. As much as I hate violence I am glad they are protests and riots going on in Oakland because things like that cannot go on anymore.
This isn’t based on race, this is based on rights. There was no reason to pull out the tazer from my eyes because the young man had three officers on him, what more can he possibly do?. I have heard of too many people being killed by Tazer guns this whole summer so I don’t think that’s even a save way to calm someone down. How in the world are you going to explain to his parents and his family that your son has died due to mistaken weapon identity?
In this day and age Officers have way too many rights and reasons to fire a gun and in this event there was absolutely no cause for it. Sometimes important news like this gets lost and for simple reasons like news on the other coast didnt report it and etc. I hope all of you take this problem seriously as we did Sean Bell and many more in the future. I haven’t heard a peep from any politicians on this and not even Barack, but thats another story. What do you guys think fo all this?
Google gives Gmail users a to-do list As much as this seems like a pretty cool idea to jump on the task list bandwagon I don’t think this will go anywhere. It’s a light weight feature and there are so many task list applications and websites that tie with the mobile devices no one will care enough to try to use this. I have tried Zenbe with Zenbe lists on my iPhone and it works great and there is others. I can only see this being useful if Google themselves release a iPhone applications that automatically syncs with the online version and calendar then that opens up the doors to competition since almost everyone has a gmail account.
I think that it is amazing how companies are pushing applications on the iPhone and I guess this also shows that the iPhone dominance is here to stay because I don’t think any other device will bring this much excitement to the application world. That being said if you have an iPod Touch check the TruPhoneapplication out, it uses VOIP for calls and users can chat with gtalk users also. The company is trying to add support for landline calls and I cannot wait for that. This would be cool if t evolves into a way that a person can use the iPod Touch as a mobile phone or maybe apple will just shut it down if it goes that far.
It’s about time you guys! Out of all web 2.0 apps Delicious should have been mobile since th ebegining. And now since the iPhone has a huge share in the market I’m sure many iPhone users have wanted to have their bookmarks better optimized for their phone. Next up should be a native application, which would be extremely useful.
A quick overview from the folks from webware about a new iphone application that uses your voice to search the web. Honestly what is the purpose of this ? Do I really need to use this at all, like things can sound cool, but please make them useful.
I find this website hilarious due to the fact that most of its mentioned “stuff” are accurate. I think this writer is always on point and is a good read lol. I wonder if someone can create a website called stuff black people like without it being taken as offensive?
It’s about damn time! I mean out of all companies that should have a mobile website for the iphone it would be Flickr. You can still upload images with their email uploading system, but there is still no excuse a native application is a must especially after companies like Facebook have made great ones for social networking. Anyway webware talks about the new redesign and brings up some great points himself so check it out for yourself.
For all you windows users who need an all purpose chat application THIS IS A MUST! I know plenty of people who are jeleous of Adium for year, but no more so enjoy and download now.
If you don’t know me well by now I am the person who is alwasy trying out new things even when everyone else is using the norm or so call best. So here I will just list some webware and software products that in my eye are worth the shot.
OPERA 9.5 – I have for the past two years been using camino web browser instead of firefox for mac because of it’s sluggish ways, which is very annoying and can make a user unproductive. After a while I just wanted more choices in my web browser and more spead since I average 25 plus tabs a day. So I started using Opera 9.5 and surprisingly it has out performed all of those browsers in speed and memory usage, which are important to me.
Opera Web Broswer 9.5
A lot of people have just bypassed Opera but with this new version there is no way I am going back to firefox at this time. It’s new interface, updated email client, custom rendering engine and it’s amazing Opera Link, that syncs your bookmarks and Speed Dial between your computers and mobile phone are built in and just make using it great. There are plenty other items tied in with the browser like better fraud protection, but Ill let you check it out for yourself.
OPERA MINI 9.5
If you are going to use Opera 9.5 on the computer using it on the cell is a must. Opera mini is the best web browser on the mobile phone and I think will continue being so because of its innovation and anyone with less fancy cellphones and even blackberys can enjoy full websites on their mobile device so check it out.
Clicky Web Aanalyics – One day I was getting annoyed with google analytics lack of live updates to its web stats. To me I just wanted to see the habits of the users in real time and maybe even get organization names and get something extra about my future client, employer etc. I stumbled upon a blog discussing several sites that are better than google analytics and I was amazed right away. Here is a list of thing sthat are offered by Clicky.
Track outbound links
Track downloads
Bounce rates
Visitor organizations (e.g. Microsoft Corp)
Visitor hostnames (e.g. comcast.net)
Most active visitors
Track custom data for every visitor (usernames, cookies, etc)
Email reports
IP tags
Real time data
Widgets of Mass Deliciousness to put on your web site
Get your stats via RSS feeds
View popular data in a TagCloud instead of boring tables and charts
Aggregate (multi-day) view for all data
Data export to CSV, XML, and JSON
Spy (a live view of your web site)
Works with visitors who have disabled JavaScript
White label as your own product
Official WordPress plugin for easy integration with your blog
FeedBurner RSS stats integration
Google Maps integration
Clean, modern interface
Public statistics
Updated constantly
Free service
Insanely affordable premium service
(starting at less than $2/month) n/a
Affiliate program to earn you cash or free premium service
There are more products to come! I figured I would start off with a quick post, but it ended up long so I will make daily updates about new products you might be interested in so keep an eye out.
