I think at some point people need to assess the value that they personally place on their data. Google simplifying their privacy policy and data collection practices are primarily aimed to coincide with the recent ui redesigns across all their products. In short, its a slow transformation of a company and with it, the web.
The era of being blissfully unaware of how your data is being used is ending. Google has anticipated and recognizes this, and is therefore reacting accordingly while providing additional value to users.
I strongly agree with this. Working at a NYC startup, talking with developers at other startups, and observing the broader tech scene, the focus here is certainly not "technology for technology's sake".
This is one of the fundamental differences between NYC and SF. NYC does have a rather amazing tech ecosystem, but I don't believe its as granular or technologically substantive as SF/Silicon Valley.
I think each region has its strengths and its great to see NYC develop its tech sector. There are some pretty amazing startups here and lots of excellent hackers doing interesting work.
NYC is an excellent place to find work as a developer. You have a ridiculous selection of awesome startups and larger companies to choose from. The last Brooklyn.js meetup I went to had more people looking to hire front-end developers than people looking at a ratio ~5:1.
Where did the $1000 figure come from? Currently, their stock is hovering around $324, so an increase of $676 would be extremely unusual. 2011 will probably see a MacBook Pro refresh, a new iPad, and possibly a new iPhone. There could also be a completely new product introduced. If their stock would hit $1000, they would need a proportional increase in revenue and profits.
Given how Apple is already breaking sales records every quarter and experiencing strong demand, their stock will undoubtably rise. An increase of >200% over the course of a year is, however, unlikely.
I don't know anything about Adam and the team at Hipmunk, but I no longer even consider other sites when it comes to searching for flights. The people who I've recommended Hipmunk to have said the same. Their focus on user experience is (even for a startup) uncanny.
The word disruptive is thrown around a lot and often way out of context. I believe Hipmunk and Airbnb are actually disruptive.
I've been enjoying the 'A minute with Brendan Eich' podcasts. They're short, insightful, and always about very recent technology topics surrounding JavaScript.
Industries with scale that are deeply embedded into the American economy (as the cable companies and now the wireless companies are) will always be able influence regulation and legislation in their favor.
I'm pretty excited about this as I've been wanting an official app for awhile now. Every android RSS app I've tried left a lot to be desired. I've also noticed that (with the tiny exception of NewsRob), android RSS apps have pretty ineffective UIs.
This app looks great and has worked excellent so far. RSS on android just became a whole lot better with this release.
One way of distinguishing between the two would be that user experience is the cognitive interaction with features. If you start with a basic web app, then add a user chat feature and then a group chat feature, ux would be how new and existing users interact with those features and your entire application.
Put another way, user experience encompasses the design aspects and the behavioral aspects of an app, as where features include the different components that make up the overall user experience. Its the interaction with the existing features that compose the ux.
Great explanation. The price discrimination of note here is third degree price discrimination. I think the most vivid example of this type that people here have seen is how Apple's product lineup is composed and the various pricing they offer to different types of customers.
Also, most startups that have incremental pricing on their products (eg: wufoo, heroku) do this as well.
This is a good way of showing what deadweight loss is. Another way of explaining it could be anytime you have an economic loss with no gains elsewhere in the economy. For example: trade quotas and tariffs create deadweight loss in a economy because they transfer value from the consumers to the producers by raising prices.
Also, anytime you have a market where theres a monopoly, deadweight loss will typically occur.
Alex Grey's artwork is very intriguing. I like a lot of the concepts he illustrates. Essentially, I think Alex Grey shows us how infinite and special humanity is.
Yahoo, within the last five years especially, seemed to fall victim to the economics of the search engine space. That is, they failed to properly differentiate their product in any meaningful way and never once had a very strong focus on the experience of search. Web search just became too important and they were relegated to continually play catch-up while Microsoft crafted their strategy which, from this bit of news, seemed to have been fairly effective.
For books I recommend the Javascript Cookbook ( http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596806132/ ). It was released a few days ago and from the parts I've read so far, covers a lot of use cases for the language as well as lots of HTML 5 + ECMAscript 5 bits.
If you're interested in building something with a client-side js framework, you should check out this tutorial http://howtonode.org/express-mongodb . It covers how to build a simple blog app with node.js and express.
I found this interview pretty engaging. Particularly, Gates insistance on the fact that technology companies can't become complacent. Despite Charley's focus on Microsoft's successes, Gates never once gives any indication that things will always be that way, and shows that a company could easily come in and change the landscape, just as Microsoft did with IBM.
Looking back at this now, its interesting to note how he never mentioned 'search' as a type of company that could derive significant revenue from an advertising based business model on the internet. In fact, at no point during this interview did he discuss internet search. It was exactly this oversight by Microsoft and the wider technology industry that paved the way for Google.
I understand where you're coming from in regards to kids who graduate leaving. On the other hand, theres a ton of people in their 20's flocking to areas all over the triangle. The glenwood south area of Raleigh, Chapel Hill/Carrboro, and some parts of Durham come to mind.
It seems to me that whenever I visit Raleigh its growing so much that the people who graduate leaving doesn't seem to be that much of an issue. I think what the triangle area needs (and has needed for a long time) is critical mass that makes it an established place in peoples mind of a startup hub. Theres lots of great tech companies and startups, but there could be a lot more :-).
Would be awesome to see more BBC radio shows added in the future.