Monthly Archives: September 2012

An evening above Toronto

Thanks to my hosts with the Conference Board of Canada, I got some excellent quality time in Toronto this week, including drinks and dinner, respectively, at the Horizons bar and the rotating 360 restaurant at the 1500-foot level of the … Continue reading

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A simple market-based solution to Apple Maps vs. Google Maps

Charge for them. Let users be customers and not just consumers. Let demand engage supply the old fashioned way: by paying for goods and services, and making the sellers directly accountable to buyers in a truly competitive marketplace. Here’s the … Continue reading

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Let’s name the crossover point

Over dinner in Amsterdam recently, George Dyson — who knows a thing or two about the history of computing — told me that a crossover of sorts has happened, or is happening now. The crossover is between a time when … Continue reading

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Earth to Mars

At Tucows, learning to use Marsedit here, from Ross Rader, who is a veteran. This is while also talking deep OPML jive too. (Such as showing off how I’m using the OPML editor to post/comment in Dave‘s Threads.) Unrelated: I … Continue reading

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A question about Apple vs. Google maps

Having both iPhone and Android devices in the household, I’ve been struck for some time by the absence of two Google Maps features on the iPhone that appear on the Android. One is adaptive turn-by-turn directions (the “recalculating” thing that … Continue reading

Posted in Business, Gear, Personal, problems, Technology | 12 Comments

The Northern Lights in the Window

When it got bumpy on the red-eye from Newark to Amsterdam two Fridays ago, I looked out the window, hoping to see auroral activity such as I’d seen a couple times before on trips like this. And sure enough, there … Continue reading

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Browsers should have been cars. Instead they’re shopping carts.

Back in 1995, one of my wife’s sisters became one of the first executives at a hot new startup called Netscape. We wore Netscape t-shirts, used Netscape’s browser, and paid close attention to what was happening in Netscape’s space, which … Continue reading

Posted in Aviation, Future, Gear, infrastructure, Links, Live Web, News, Past, Personal, Places, problems, Technology, VRM | 10 Comments

The only issue that matters

Geologists have an informal name for the history of human influence on the Earth. They call it the Anthropocene. It makes sense. We have been raiding the earth for its contents, and polluting its atmosphere, land and oceans for as … Continue reading

Posted in Business, Future, Geography, Geology, Health, history, Ideas, infrastructure, News, Past, Personal, Politics, problems, Research, Science, Technology, weather | 19 Comments