Archive for July, 2009
It’s Not Hell, It’s New York City
Gates, Crowley Join Obama for Hotly-Anticipated Happy Hour
Obama sits down for a beer with Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, police Sergeant James Crowley and Vice President Joe Biden.
Will Apple CEO Headline CES ‘10?
From the WSJ blogs
Those snubbed by Apple CEO Steve Jobs take heart. He won’t return calls from Gary Shapiro, who heads the world’s largest consumer electronics industry trade group.
Shapiro is chief executive of the Consumer Electronics Association, the same group that puts on the Consumer Electronics Show each January for the last three decades. The Consumer Electronics Association says that Apple has been invited to attend the convention. Apple declined to comment.
At a dinner with journalists this week in San Francisco, CEA’s Shapiro was asked whether he’s invited Jobs, who recently returned from medical leave, to keynote the show. Yes, Jobs has been asked, but nobody from Apple has gotten back to him, Shapiro said.
This isn’t the first time he’s contacted Jobs and not gotten a response, he said. The journalists at the table took note of a fellow traveler in their midst — Jobs provides very few interviews. ‘I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one in that position,’ Shapiro then said.
Despite Apple’s star power, Shapiro has modest goals for next show’s attendance, that being matching last year’s. Attendance at CES ‘09 fell around 20%, as recession-weary companies slashed marketing and travel budgets. CES attendance, in some circles, is an unofficial but prescient forecast of consumer spending.
Meanwhile, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Intel CEO Paul Otellini say they will provide keynotes at the show.
UPDATE: Apple isn’t exhibiting at CES 2010, the CEA confirmed, quashing an earlier assertion from a Wall Street Journal blogger.
(Via WSJ blogs)
Fallece el actor Beto ‘El Boticario’
Roberto Ramírez Garza, mejor conocido como Beto “El Boticario”, murió hoy en el hospital Santaelena de la Ciudad de México, donde permanecía desde hace varias semanas.
El comediante de La Carabina de Ambrosio fue internado debido a varias complicaciones en el aparato respiratorio y tuvo que ser conectado a un respirador artificial debido a su condición.
En junio pasado ingresó al nosocomio por primera vez, pero en aquella ocasión fue por su diabetes, posteriormente regresó debido a una infección pulmonar y, a pesar de los pronósticos optimistas de sus doctores, no pudo ganar la batalla contra la enfermedad.
Garza participó en innumerables cintas, pero fue en La Carabina de Ambrosio donde se dio a conocer. También apareció en telenovelas como Gotita de Amor, La Dueña y Azul.
Además de sus apariciones en televisión, el comediante nacido en Monterrey, actuó en películas como Suicídate mi Amor, El Tesoro del Rey Salomón y Tin Tán, El Hombre Mono.
What Will be the Killer Feature of an Apple Tablet?
From MacRumors.com
With the growing evidence that Apple will be releasing some sort of Apple Tablet in the next 3-6 months, analysts and writers have started speculating about the potential success or failure of such a device.
Both Gizmodo and PC World have taken the time to detail why they think that such a product will be a flop. John Gruber, however, points out that these people are incorrectly assuming that such a device would mimic present day tablets and offer no compelling new features.
This is not the first time that Apple has been close to releasing a tablet device. Back in 2003, the evidence for a Mac Tablet had reached similarly high levels, but for whatever reason, Apple ultimately decided not to release that device. We’ve always felt that the reason has been more a marketing decision than a technical one. Until Apple comes up with that ‘killer feature’ for a tablet, we don’t believe that Apple would commit to the market. Apple has always said that they won’t pursue a product line unless they feel they can offer something new and compelling. While these promises could simply be dismissed as marketing propoganda, it seems clear that Apple’s entries into the MP3 and mobile phone markets have met those standards.
Arguably, the iPhone’s killer feature on launch was its excellent mobile web browser. This feature was poached from another internal Apple tablet project called ‘Safari Pad’. Steve Jobs is said to have recognized its value and morphed it into what became the iPhone.
So the question remains, what added value has Apple decided it can provide in a tablet device that its competitors have been unable to offer? Are interactive album booklets alone compelling enough to launch this new device? Or have they finally decided to deploy more advanced multi-touch on a larger screen?
(Via MacRumors)
Foxconn Building Apple Tablet for September or October Launch?
From Gizmodo.com
Taiwanese paper Apple Daily reports than Hon Hai Precision Industry—aka Foxconn—is building the Apple tablet using previously rumored 10-inchish screens from WinTek and a battery from Dynapack, for launch in September or October.
AppleInsider says that Dow Jones carried the report as well, though it comes from a paper less well-known than say, DigiTimes. The September or October launch date Apple Daily reports is slightly more aggressive and definite in its time table than the Financial Times report that came out this weekend, which simply said that Apple ‘racing to offer a portable, full-featured, tablet-sized computer in time for the Christmas shopping season.’
A morbid thought, but if Foxconn is building the tablet, what if the tablet was the prototype Sun Danyong lost before he was driven to suicide? They wouldn’t say he lost the mythical Apple tablet, after all.
AppleInsider still thinks it’s coming in 2010, for what it’s worth. We still think never trust rumors.
(Via Gizmodo)
How an Apple Tablet Could Pit iTunes Against Amazon.com
From Wired.com
With rumors piling up about a forthcoming Apple tablet, it appears more and more likely that such a device will emerge soon.
But what’s still unclear is how this gadget will set itself apart from Apple’s multimedia-savvy product line, including the iPhone and iPod Touch, as well as the scores of failed tablet PCs that have come and gone. Judging from the company’s past moves, we’re betting that Apple’s tablet will be a media-centric device, focused — at least in part — on shaking up the publishing industry.
Apple is already prepared to blow Amazon and other e-book makers out of the water with one key weapon: iTunes. Having served more than 6 billion songs to date, the iTunes Store has flipped the music industry on its head. It also turned mobile software into a lucrative industry, as proven by the booming success of the iPhone’s App Store, which recently surpassed 1.5 billion downloads. Apple has yet to enter the e-book market, and making books as easy to download as music and iPhone apps is the logical next step.
A President Kicked Out, but Not Alone in Defiance – NYTimes.com
From the New York Times
OCOTAL, Nicaragua — When Ángel Hsiky, a farm worker, heard his ousted president’s call for supporters to help him return to Honduras, he threw a change of clothes in a knapsack, kissed his wife and 9-month-old boy goodbye and headed to the Nicaraguan border.
Defying a military-enforced curfew, Mr. Hsiky and a caravan of about 200 supporters of the deposed Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, crossed precipitous hillsides covered with coffee plantations and dense cloud forest, skirting military roadblocks by taking dirt back roads. When that became impossible, the group abandoned cars and trucks and walked through mud and rain to the mountain-ringed outpost of Las Manos, Nicaragua.
‘We’ve come to bring our president back home,’ said Mr. Hsiky, 23, who is from Mr. Zelaya’s Olancho Province in central Honduras.
Since Mr. Zelaya arrived here on Friday to taunt the de facto government that exiled him a month ago, hundreds of Hondurans have answered his call to join him just across the border in Nicaragua.
Arriving here in mud-caked jeans and ripped shirts, after sleeping on soaked mountaintops and hiding among the coffee plants from patrolling helicopters, they have set up camps in the border towns of Las Manos and Ocotal.
Steven Cohen, again
This trading titan’s net worth is down $2.5 billion to $5.5 billion since September as losses mount at flagship fund. Son of a dress manufacturer grew up in Great Neck, N.Y. Attended Wharton; became options trader at Gruntal & Co., netted $8,000 first day on the job. Founded hedge fund SAC Capital 1992 with $25 million under management. Accounts for more than 2% of daily volume on New York Stock Exchange. Steep fees: charges 3% of assets, 35% of profits on most funds. Cools trading floor to 70 degrees to keep employees on toes.
Apple targets new player revolution: the Apple tablet!
From the FT.com
Apple is racing to offer a portable tablet-sized computer in time for the Christmas shopping season, in what the entertainment industry hopes will be a new revolution.
The device is expected to be launched alongside new content deals, including some aimed at stimulating sales of CD-length music, according to people briefed on the project. The touch-sensitive computer will have a screen that may be up to 10 inches diagonally.
It will connect to the internet like the iPod Touch – probably without phone capability but with access to the web, and to Apple’s online stores for software and entertainment.
Apple is gambling that it can succeed where everyone else has flopped, including Microsoft, which tirelessly pushed a tablet-ready version of its Windows operating system as a personal favourite of founder Bill Gates.
The entertainment industry is hoping that Apple, which revolutionised the markets for music players and for phones, can do it again. “It’s a portable entertainment device,” said one entertainment executive. “It’s going to be fabulous for watching movies.”
Recording industry executives said Apple planned to use the larger screen to offer new services such as interactive booklets and liner notes that come along with purchases of entire music CDs.
While iTunes moved legal sales of digitised music into the mainstream, the digital take-up for full CDs has disappointed the industry. Consumers usually select just one or two tracks.
Book publishers have been in talks with Apple and are optimistic about being included in the computer, which could provide an alternative to Amazon’s Kindle, Sony’s Reader and a forthcoming device from Plastic Logic, recently allied with Barnes & Noble.
“It would be a colour, flat-panel TV to the old-fashioned, black and white TV of the Kindle,” one publishing executive said.
Apple does not appear to have briefed film studios, but Hollywood executives said they would be willing to contribute more content than is now available over iTunes. Large video game publishers are also eager for the product and say they could quickly optimise existing games for a hardware display that shows off graphics-intensive content.
Since demand for tablet computers has been disappointing so far, Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, has been pressing for compelling hardware functions.
Tim Cook, the chief operating officer last week ruled out competing directly with netbooks at the lower end of the notebook PC market, which have made rapid gains in an otherwise shrinking market.
Instead, the new machine could cost between $600 and $1,000, according to Oppenheimer & Co analyst Yair Reiner. “I think it will have a lot of the functionality of the iPod touch, but will be quite a bit bigger,” he said.
Mr Reiner and others cautioned that Apple might not be able to get all of the components it needs in the right packaging by the end of the year, though Apple is aiming for September or October.
Un vídeo revela que las FARC dieron apoyo al presidente de Ecuador
Un jefe militar de la mayor guerrilla izquierdista de Colombia, las FARC, ha reconocido que ese grupo aportó dinero a la campaña del presidente de Ecuador Rafael Correa, según un vídeo donde aparece el líder rebelde y cuya existencia fue confirmada el viernes por la Fiscalía.
En el vídeo, retransmitido por varios canales de televisión, aparece Jorge Briceño, alias el ‘Mono Jojoy’, en un campamento hablando a un numeroso grupo de guerrilleros de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC).
“La Fiscalía tiene un informe de la policía judicial donde da cuenta del contenido y la existencia del vídeo”, dijo un portavoz de la Fiscalía.
La cinta fue obtenida durante el registro al apartamento de una guerrillera detenida hace un par de meses en Bogotá.
En el vídeo sale Briceño diciendo que hubo “ayuda en dólares a la campaña de Correa y posteriores conversaciones con sus emisarios, incluidos algunos acuerdos, según documentos en poder de todos nosotros, los cuales resultan muy comprometedores en nuestros nexos con los amigos”.
El portavoz de la Fiscalía precisó que el vídeo se encuentra en poder de la policía judicial Dijín.
“Lo incautado lo llevó la policía judicial, en este caso la de Dijín, para analizar y evaluar todo y le entregaron un informe al fiscal del caso”, agregó el funcionario.
Pope Fractures His Wrist in a Fall
Pope Benedict XVI fractured his right wrist in a fall Friday morning while on vacation in northern Italy, the Vatican said.
In a statement, the Vatican said that the pope had slipped in his room in the chalet where he is staying in the mountainous Valle d’Aosta region, but was well enough to eat breakfast and celebrate Mass before being taken by car to the local hospital.
‘It’s nothing serious,’ the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said in a telephone interview . He said that the pope’s wrist had been ‘immobilized.’
Doctors operated on the pope’s wrist for about 20 minutes, Reuters reported, and he will have to wear a cast for about a month.
After meeting President Obama last Friday, the pope arrived on Monday in northwest Italy, where he is scheduled to remain on vacation until July 29. He is then expected to return to his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo outside Rome until September.
Father Lombardi said it remained to be seen whether the pope would keep his two scheduled commitments: delivering an Angelus message in two parishes near Aosta on the coming two Sundays.
In recent months, the pope, who turned 82 in April, has appeared tired in some of his public appearances. But Benedict, a shy scholar, has kept up a relentless public schedule, including an eight-day trip to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories in May.
It has been reported, but never confirmed, that the pope suffered a series of small strokes more than a decade ago.
(Via New York Times)
Steve Jobs Quotes – Top 10
#10. On Management
My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects.
And to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be.
#9. On Hiring
Recruiting is hard. It’s just finding the needles in the haystack. You can’t know enough in a one-hour interview.
So, in the end, it’s ultimately based on your gut. How do I feel about this person? What are they like when they’re challenged? I ask everybody that: ‘Why are you here?’ The answers themselves are not what you’re looking for. It’s the meta-data.
#8. On Firing
We’ve had one of these before, when the dot-com bubble burst. What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren’t going to lay off people, that we’d taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place — the last thing we were going to do is lay them off.
Impossible-To-Describe Clock Spins and Points
There is more than one way to skin a clock: Our own soft-haired and sensitive Daniel Dumas prefers the indecipherable blipping LEDs of Tokyo Flash watches, I rock an old school Casio calculator watch, and Wired.com editor Dylan Tweney actually measures the hour using the shadows cast by the handsome crags on his perfect face (at least, that’s his excuse for the constant mirror-ward glances).
Designer Sander Mulder, though, has opted to link second to minutes to hours in a recursive chain of hands. The big one shows hours; the medium hand, which dangles from the end of the hour hand, shows minutes, and so on.
At first, the lightning-bolt beauty obscures functionality, and it all looks a little hard to read. But try it: What time is shown above? That’s right. 3:38 and 30 seconds.
The whole thing reminds us of a cross between the Sketch-a-Graph, the hard-to-use toy for inaccurately enlarging, reducing or copying pictures, and one of those magic spiral-drawing toys. Imagine a pencil on the end of the second hand and you’ll see what we mean. Can you buy it? Amazingly, yes, but there will only be 20 of the brass and aluminum timepieces made, plus one artist’s proof. And that single word – artist – means that you’ll have to get in touch to find out the price.
(Via Wired: Gadget Lab)
Paranoid lawsuit attempts to link Apple to Italian mafia
A new lawsuit from a Beverly Hills, Calif., man alleges that Apple conspired with the Italian mafia to secretly track him, transmit threatening messages to his iPod, and insert the word ‘herpes’ into the song ‘Still Tippin” by Mike Jones.
Not just his iPod, Gregory McKenna is convinced that many things in his life were bugged, including his bedroom, living room, upstairs bathroom and Toyota Camry. McKenna alleges in his lawsuit that two iPods he owned – an iPod shuffle bought on eBay and an iPod mini purchased in an Apple Store – were affixed with receivers that allowed the Mafia to transmit threats to him.
McKenna believes that these well-coordinated ‘threats’ from Apple and the mafia were accompanied by an uncanny sense of rhythm: Recordings of mafia members saying ‘I’m going to kill him’ supposedly played in unison with a song on the man’s iPod mini in 2008.
‘The recording of death threats and other evidence,’ the suit reads, ‘prove that APPLE INC. conspired with the Mafia and other Defendants to manufacture, distribute, and sell illegally bugged iPods and other electronic equipment to Plaintiff to perpetuate the stalking, extortion, and torture.’
James May and his Mini
My friend Marco, who lives in London and whom I met in Madrid, bumped into James May while traveling to Stonehenge (to or from? well it doesn’t matter anyway). I’m surprised about his ride!
Ballmer Goes Nuts Again, Gets Confused As to What Type of Venue He’s At – Gizmodo
From Gizmodo
Steve Ballmer loves to play a lot of roles at Microsoft, and one that he takes great pleasure in is being a cheerleader to everyone who reports to someone who reports to someone under him. This ain’t the right way.
In what’s a very awkward ending to what seemed like a relatively calm interview, Ballmer bolts up goes into a crazy shout-fest, trying to excite the audience. Other than the fact that this should have been done at the start of the interview, the whole thing just seems inappropriate for the venue he’s at. The best part is the end, where it seems like he just bolts off the stage without saying goodbye or thanking the interviewer.
Man, is Ballmer a horrible public speaker. If Microsoft wants to revamp their image, it starts from the top.
(Via Gizmodo)
I know Ale is going to come after me after posting this blog! Sorry! =)
Goldman Posts Big Profits; Beats Forecasts – NYTimes.com
From the New York Times
Goldman Sachs comfortably exceeded analysts’ forecasts on Tuesday as the bank reported that it earned $3.44 billion, or $4.93 a share, in the second quarter.
The results continue a robust turnaround for Goldman since it rode out the final tumultuous months of last year with aid from the government’s banking rescue. The earnings announcement came just one month after the bank paid back $10 billion in federal aid.
Goldman’s profit was lifted by record quarterly revenue of $6.8 billion in its fixed income, currency and commodities unit, where mortgage and other credit instruments are traded, the bank said in a statement. This business has performed well because the bank has taken on greater levels of risk since the end of last year.
Its equity underwriting business also generated record net revenue, worth $736 million in the second quarter, Goldman said, as the bank benefited among other things from a rush by other troubled banks to issue shares and raise their capital levels.
Strong MacBook and iPhone sales to propel Apple stock
From AppleInsider
One week before Apple is set to report its third-quarter earnings, Minneapolis-based market analysis firm Piper Jaffray released a report suggesting the computer and portable device maker could beat street estimates on strong Mac and iPhone sales.
Given the recent successful launch of the iPhone 3GS and demand for the new unibody 13-inch MacBook Pro, the report, by senior research analyst Gene Munster, predicts that shares of AAPL stock will rise over the next three months.
Since Apple dropped the price of its 13-inch MacBook Pro to $1,199, demand has outpaced supply – so much so that the purchase lead-time is at levels not before seen by Piper Jaffray, which tracks turnaround for hardware orders.
‘Our records show that Apple has never had a 7-10 day delay on its most popular 13′ model, with the most recent significant delay being 5-7 days over 2 years,’ the report states. ‘We see this as a sign that demand is outpacing the company’s build expectations, and it may take several weeks to reach a supply demand equilibrium.’
México, el país #23 más feliz; Nicaragua el #11!
México ocupa el lugar 23 en el ‘Índice de Planeta Feliz’ y en el cual nueve de los diez países con mayor puntaje son latinoamericanos, liderados por Costa Rica.
El índice, elaborado por New Economics Foundation (NEF), es la segunda clasificación global de la eficiencia ecológica con la cual todas las naciones brindan vidas prolongadas y felices a sus ciudadanos y que sin embargo revela una imagen muy diferente de la riqueza y el progreso relativos a éstas.
El índice del Planeta Feliz 2.0: Por qué las buenas vidas no tienen que costar un mundo (The Happy Planet Index 2.0: Why good lives don’t have to cost the earth), está basado en datos corroborados de 143 países que representan 99% de la población mundial.
El IPF examina en detalle la economía desde su producción positiva (vidas con duración y felicidad variables) y sus inversiones esenciales (recursos limitados de la Tierra) y proporciona una guía de lo que fundamentalmente nos interesa: nuestro bienestar en términos de vidas prolongadas, felices y con propósito y de lo que importa al planeta: nuestro promedio de consumo de recursos.