EYJAFJÖLL, ICELAND — Java programmers around the globe are in a panic today over a Wikileaks press release issued at 8:15am GMT. Wikileaks announced that they will re-release the source code for thousands of Open Source Java projects, making all access modifiers 'public' and all classes and members non-'final'.
ROTFL !
Full Disclosure, been a Java developer for god knows how long!
h/t @greenisus
Gmail is another exception and is definitely a huge success, but it hasn't yet killed yahoo and hotmail in numbers. Overall I agree with Dan Frommer that except for search Google is no 'product-killer', its definitely one of the companies that tries to do innovative stuff but many of their experiments fail. Of the all the experiments that failed for Google, froogle and Google Checkout are the most surprising ones that they let go without much fight. While Google Checkout kept failing, Paypal, Amazon pay phrase, even iTunes and some startups have been innovating and moving forward steadily.
While Froogle failed, TheFind, Retrevo and others have been making impressive moves.
Here are the Top 10 Signs you’re an early adopter:
10. You know the exact difference in features between Tumblr and Posterous and why you prefer one over the other.
9. You stalk the social web looking for alpha and beta invites.
8. You’ve lost track of how many accounts you have on hundreds of different websites.
7. You loved FriendFeed and still think that if it had held out, it would’ve become popular.
6. You accept Android fragmentation as a fact of life and don’t see what the issue is all about.
5. You have a Google Profile tailored to your needs and preferences.
4. You use your account on GetSatisfaction to report bugs and provide feedback.
3. You love Gmail and can’t figure out why anyone would want to use anything else.
2. You have RSS for breakfast.
And the #1 sign you’re an early adopter is:
1. You are still searching for the “perfect” Twitter client!
Except for the Android part, I pretty much fit this profile. Oh I also think early adopters also keep searching for the perfect rss readers!
Last night my twitter stream was all buzz about Flipboard. I tweeted saying its "amazing". I have been playing with this app all morning. I got to say its truly remarkable on what this app does. There are many great things about it, here are the things I like about it:
1. It makes reading tweets fun by being non-linear in showing tweets
2. Discovering news via twitter is great but most of the twitter clients require you to click the link/click the photo to see it, Flipboard does an awesome job of displaying enough content of the article without you launching another url
3. If a friend shares an article, Flipboard does a great job of giving that person credit by showing "Shared by..." right under the title.
4. Most importantly, brings twitter feed, rss feeds to look like a real world magazine. It lives upto its hype of "Social new magazine"
5. It makes my iPad all the more worth it
Steve Jobs, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., talks about the Apple iPhone 4 at a news conference in Cupertino. Photographer: Tony Avelar/Bloomberg
Apple Inc. posted a 78 percent surge in third-quarter profit as customers began flocking to the new iPad tablet computer and latest version of the iPhone, helping the company benefit from a rebound in consumer spending.
Net income rose to $3.25 billion, or $3.51 a share, from $1.83 billion, or $2.01, a year earlier, the company said today in a statement. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg were expecting, on average, per-share profit of $3.11. Sales in the period ended June 26 gained 61 percent to a record $15.7 billion, topping analysts’ $14.7 billion estimate. Apple rose in late trading.
The results are an early gauge of demand for the tablet introduced on April 3. The company sold 3.27 million of the devices that deliver video, e-books and Web access, and reported sales of Mac computers and iPhones that exceeded some analysts’ predictions. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs said more new products are in the offing.
“This was a blow-out quarter and strong across the board,” said Brian Marshall, an analyst at Gleacher & Co. in San Francisco. “This really negates the bear argument that the introduction of the iPad will result in cannibalization of other Apple products, namely Macs and iPhones.”
Apple, based in Cupertino, California, rose as much as 4.4 percent in extended trading, after the results were reported. It had had gained $6.31 to $251.89 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading, leaving the shares up 20 percent this year.
Bestseller Again
The iPhone was Apple’s bestselling product for a second- straight quarter, generating $5.33 billion on 8.4 million units. Apple also sold 3.47 million Mac computers and 9.41 million iPods. “We have amazing new products still to come this year,” Jobs said in the statement.
Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York, had estimated that Apple would sell 3.2 million iPads, 7.5 million iPhones, 3.4 million Macs and 10.1 million iPods. Sacconaghi rates the stock “outperform.”
Gross margin, the percentage of sales remaining after deducting production costs, was 39.1 percent. Apple, which posted second-quarter gross margin of 41.7 percent, said in April that the figure would narrow because of “very aggressive” pricing for the iPad. It had forecast third-quarter gross margin of about 36 percent.
This quarter, sales will be about $18 billion and per-share earnings will be about $3.44, Apple said. Analysts on average forecast sales of $17 billion and profit of $3.83 a share.
Apple’s forecasts typically fall below analysts’ estimates. Over the past 16 quarters, its projections have been 3 percent lower than analysts’ sales estimates and 12 percent below earnings-per-share predictions, according to Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray Cos. in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
IPhone 4
Sales this quarter will get a boost as consumers from the back-to-school shopping season, said Shaw Wu, an analyst with Kaufman Brothers LP in San Francisco.
The company also is contending with criticism over the design of the iPhone 4 antenna, which results in diminished cell phone reception. Wu said consumer demand so far hasn’t been hurt and he projects that the company will sell 10.5 million iPhones during the quarter, which ends in September.
After the phone’s June 24 debut, users complained of lost reception when they held it in a way that covers the bottom-left corner. Consumer Reports said it won’t recommend the device, the first time the group hasn’t given its imprimatur to an iPhone.
At a press conference last week, Apple said less than 1 percent of users have reported the glitch to its customer service centers. The company, which has now sold more than 3 million iPhone 4s, is giving away cases to remedy the flaw.
(Apple will hold a conference call to discuss the results at 5 p.m. New York time. For access, call 888-208-1386)
To contact the reporter on this story: Adam Satariano in San Francisco at asatariano1@bloomberg.net.
8.4 million iPhones with more than 3 million iPhone 4's. Apple's numbers pretty much should shut the mouths of the antenna-media.
Chris Dixon had an interesting post a while ago about how to find start-up ideas. The advice boiled down to keeping a spreadsheet of ideas and talking to lots of smart people (entrepreneurs, potential customers, VCs, people at big companies). It’s good advice. Paul Graham also wrote in 2008 about startup ideas he’d like to fund.
Here’s another way to come up with startup ideas: walk around your house or apartment, and look for “hot spots.” A hotspot can be an area of high information density, clutter, stress, disorganization, or any place that has a suboptimal solution. Then think about a web or cloud solution to that hot spot. Let’s take a look at a few examples:
Music CDs -> iTunes, Amazon MP3 store, doubleTwist, MP3tunes, etc.
Bookshelf -> Amazon, Kindle, iBooks
Stereo system -> Sonos, Squeezebox, Rhapsody, Pandora, last.fm, Spotify, Grooveshark, MOG, Rdio, etc.
External hard drives -> Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), PogoplugOkay, those all seem simple or obvious, right? Let’s go a little deeper. What would you do with this pile of business cards?
Pile of business cards -> CloudContacts
Here are a few more that come to mind:
Bank statements -> Mint
Photo Albums -> ScanCafe
Bathroom scale -> Withings
Pedometer -> Fitbit
Phone -> Google Voice, Twilio, Ribbit, Rebtel
Camera -> EyeFi
Stack of video games -> Steam, OnLive
DVD player -> Roku, Netflix Instant movies
Treadmill or Elliptical machine -> Nike+ shoe sensor, LoseIt! iPhone app, CardioTrainer app for Android, Fitbit
Pen -> LivescribeAll of these take a hotspot in your home and inject a cloud or web element to make life easier, more efficient or better. So what happens when you look at a pile of manuals, or receipts? Your alarm clock? Those “Learning Japanese” CDs? A stack of take-out menus? A stack of cookbooks? A hard drive full of MP3s that are disorganized? A hard drive that doesn’t have a back-up copy? An out-of-date programming book? A box full of videotapes? All those back issues of magazines? A blank wall, with no posters or other decoration? Stuff in your garage that you’ve been meaning to sell or give away? Your wallet?
Ideas are sitting all around where you live. If you have a small snag, irritation, or hotspot in your life, probably a lot of other people do too. You can make it easier to organize something (can you convert something physical to digital and store it in the cloud?). You can sell niche versions of a product (e.g. Threadless for T-shirts), you can let people make something that they couldn’t make before (CafePress for T-shirts, LuLu for books), you can pool people with similar interests (a blog like Craftzine, or a forum for book lovers or body builders), you can review products in a particular space, you can teach someone to do something. You can become a well-known expert in something and then sell your time or expertise as a consultant. You can make a free version of something useful or fun, then sell more features or consult on more involved cases. You can do meta versions of lots of these, e.g. Etsy is a marketplace for people who like to buy and sell custom crafted objects.
I’ll stop with a story. I have a friend at Google who is really good at noticing things that annoy him. While walking from his car to his desk in the morning, he can easily find six things that irritate him because they should be improved. I’m not recommending that you make yourself more irritable, but I am saying that if you notice all the times you run across something that can be improved, those are opportunities. And I think one of the easy methods of spotting start-up ideas is looking around where you live and how you spend your time. Find the hotspots in your own life and you might identify some great products or services to build.
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I like Chris Dixon's idea of spreadsheeting startup ideas and getting semi-private feedback from customers, vcs, people in big companies, entrepreneurs, friends.. 3-4 years ago, bunch of my friends did something similar, exchanged emails with ideas we can think about on a daily basis and shoot them down by finding existing solutions.
I also like Matt Cutts approach to 'finding problems' ! Engineers are very good at solving problems, entrepreneur's are good at finding the right problems to solve.
Both the swoop and the dandelions take time to code, and often slow the user experience. Both come from folks who believed in their products as works of art, an end, rather than as just a means to an end. It’s obvious in watching Steve Jobs talk about the iPhone that he believes it belongs in a museum as much as your left hand.
If you are real Apple customer, you know Apple takes care of you. Visit an Apple store if you want proof. Read this article that might help
http://theappleblog.com/2010/07/07/what-makes-an-apple-store-so-great/
The Antenna issues are media blown up, 0.55% of customers actually having problems and even for them Apple is providing options to continue or leave. Read this gigaom article which might give you a better perspective on why Apple cares for its customers.
http://gigaom.com/2010/07/16/business-tips-from-apple-steve-jobs/
"Lesson#3: Regardless of your business, it is always has been, and will always be, about happiness of the customers."
The Antennagate is a media circus and nothing else. Oh lastly, I love redfin, just not your take on Apple and Steve Jobs because Apple does take care of its customers, I know that for a fact as a customer of theirs for the past 4 years.
I have been messing with HTPCs for 3 years now. I have had my mac mini hooked up to my HDTV and having been using boxee ever since they released their alpha (couple of years ago now?). Before boxee I was primarily using my Mac Mini to watch videos on my external hard drive. After boxee came out ontop of the content in my external hard drive, I started watching netflix and you tube videos.
Last week I bought WD TV Live plus for getting Netflix in another room in my house.
Forgetting about everything else, I loved the Netflix integration they have done, especially when laying out episodes of a TV show season. We started watching 24 all the way from Season 1, its quite painful to browse the episodes in Boxee-Netflix, the episodes were not organized by date. WD Live does an awesome job of organizing the episodes visually and in addition displaying which episodes I watched and which I did not. It appears WD Live is using a newer version of Netflix API.
I only hope Boxee updates their netflix integration soon. Come October if this netflix is integration is not fixed, I am not so sure I will buy the boxee box
Awesome looking bridge 'concept'.
"The bridge tackles the problem of Hong Kong driving on the left and China driving on the right by featuring a switchover."
http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle/AllCars/250560/
hat tip to Sachin
Opinions expressed here are my own and in no way representative of my employers' views.
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