17 Feb 2010 - permalink
Kontra:
Google is a $170 billion company. It employs thousands of engineers and developers. It tests, tests, tests, and tests more. In fact, its “designers” once unable to pick a shade of blue tested 41 variations of it. It’s ludicrous to think that the Buzz fiasco was simply a result of under-testing.
4 Feb 2010 - permalink
New Scientist has a fascinating story about the little-known Syringammina fragilissima, a single-celled species that can reach an astonishing 10cm across! Outside the usual definition of a cell, Syringammina contains several nuclei and though speculative, it might feed by farming bacteria inside itself. It really is amazing how life adapts and evolves.
Whatever form or strategy, surviving works.
22 Jan 2010 - permalink
Joel Johnson from Gizmodo nails it:
The fact that Apple does not reveal prototypes but shipping products is the fundamental difference between their entire business strategy and that of the rest of the industry.
A lot of people believe that the idea is what matters to succeed; that the rest is just details. I say ideas are easy. It’s making them real that takes real effort and a whole lot of time.
As Steve Jobs says, real artists ship!
21 Jan 2010 - permalink
‘‘Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like,’’ says Steve Jobs, Apple’s C.E.O. ‘‘People think it’s this veneer – that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.’’
The World of Things would be a better place if everyone kept that in mind.
13 Jan 2010 - permalink
Guy English has written an insightful article on how software use changes. Just like the internet was democratised in the nineties, the same is happening to software – particularly on the iPhone:
“Apps” is fun. It’s fun to say, it sounds unthreatening, it’s a word sufficiently abbreviated that it takes on a life of its own without dragging to the forefront of peoples minds the more sterile and technical sounding “application”. Apps are not Applications – they are their own things. They are smaller. They are more fun. Apps are treats atop your technological sundae.
12 Jan 2010 - permalink
Karl Fogel has a very interesting article on bugs in software, how it relates to technical dept and how to deal with them.
The number of bug reports is proportional to the number of users, not to the number of defects.
It is impossible to know the exact number of unknown bugs in a software system, yet it is easy to forget this when the reports keep pouring in.
12 Jan 2010 - permalink
Last year I wrote a short entry about the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. I mentioned the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO for short, and how it would bring new and better pictures of the moon. The Big Picture has collected some of the best and they are as always a treat.
11 Jan 2010 - permalink
Robert Sapolsky, professor of neurology, neurological sciences, neurosurgery and biological sciences, speaks on how the human species is similar to all other animals and where we differ. So inspiring.
From wikipedia I found this little gem of a quote:
I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.
That’s a view I too wish more would share.
7 Jan 2010 - permalink
Striking photographs of dead baby albatross chicks from stomachs full of plastic – 3200 kilometers from the nearest continent.
4 Jan 2010 - permalink
Absolutely stunning footage from the world’s 2nd largest aquarium, the Kuroshio Sea, by Jon Rawlinson. I could stand in front of that for hours. (via Kottke)