arvind’s posthaven

I loved this video. It felt a lot like an old favorite Nintendo game of mine, Paperboy.

Thanks, @alexragone for sharing

I am so glad that Winamp put out an Android client. I used Winamp for years in the late 90's, so why not give it a try on my Android phone? Scan the barcode above on your phone to get started.

I spotted this in the New York Times Bit Blog, with more on the band Atomic Tom and their iPhone-powered performance. Awesome idea.

I use Evernote to keep all of my notes and photos of important pieces of paper like receipts, prescriptions, whiteboards, etc. Droid Scan lets you take even better scans of physical things and keep them in your Evernote notebook.

Google’s Do-It-Yourself App Creation Software

The New York Times did an excellent summary of Google's new App Creator for Android. Why wait for someone to build an app for your phone when you can just build it yourself. Easily.

This is a great example of why my next phone will be an Android phone and not an Apple phone. I want a phone that lets me do what I want with it, not what Apple engineers let me do with it.

I use a BlackBerry Bold now (from AT&T) and planned to switch to an iPhone next, but am thinking more and more about an Android-based phone. I'm always looking to tweak my phone, push it to the limits, and a closed OS like iPhone just doesn't allow for it. Unless "there's an app for that," I'm out of luck.

I was starting to get used to the idea of not carrying a phone and an iPod around, but I think I can live with a phone if it does everything I need it to do. I am going to have to assume all the vendors/software packages I use (Google, Outlook, Remember the Milk, Evernote, BaseCampHQ, etc) will all develop Android apps.

The App Store is for Suckers

by Jonathan Stark

Submitting (pun intended) to the App Store is for suckers.

Do you really want to:
- Give up 30% of your profit?
- Learn Objective-C?
- Endure approval delays, rejections, and yanks?
- Navigate labyrinthian code signing issues?
- etc…

The cheapest, easiest, fastest way for folks to get in on the mobile gold rush is to build killer web apps. Web apps can access location data, utilize client-side SQL databases, and even run offline.

In addition to side-stepping the App Store minefield, web apps run on more than 100 mobile handsets with zero modification.

And on desktops.

And on the iPad.

And on anything else that has a reasonably modern web browser; which will likely include everything from sewing machines to cereal boxes in the next few years.

The App Store paradigm (Apple and others) is an out-dated business model based on scarcity, middlemen, and control. It is newspapers. It is travel agents. It is used car salesmen.

The world has moved on. Don’t get suckered.

I love this commentary by Jonathan Stark on developing iPhone apps. I've sort of known that I wanted a web app for our school for a while. Athletics schedules, blog posts, access to our Moodle server, etc. But then I couldn't figure out if we should develop for BlackBerry or iPhones (and what about the Palm Pre!), but then this post just made it all clear.

Closed models = bad. Didn't the Internet teach us anything?

Thanks to natenatenate on Twitter for sharing this video, but a wonderful example of how creative photography can be used to visualize a phenomenon - in this case how RFID signals work. Sounds nerdy, but easy to grasp and worth a watch.

Enlarge This Image

 

Joshua Lott for The New York Times

Jerod Reyes, left, and Dylan Powell use their bus's Wi-Fi to do homework on their way to school.

The New York Times did a piece on the "Internet Bus" in Arizona that allows students wi-fi access while commuting to school or going on school trips. Seems like a great way to keep students connected at times when they normally aren't.

The article however, seems lacking in all of the non-academic things kids would be using an Internet connection for. An entire bus full of kids with laptops and Internet connections and Facebook/social networking doesn't even come up once? Where are the kids who are gaming? Where are the kids downloading pirated music/TV shows? Where are the kids posting photos on Facebook? The article seems to be a looking at the bus through rose-colored glasses, but I get the gist of it.

It's a neat idea, but it's yet another space where the kids used to be somewhat offline, now turning online. I suppose that they already had their phones on the bus, so it wasn't all that offline. I just wonder if there will be any offline spaces left for them? The athletics field, perhaps? The NFL had to ban Twitter from sidelines recently.

update: I missed the line in the article that talked about the students playing games. I still think it leans way to heavy on the academic use. Unless these are kids who only do homework and nothing else, it's just not a reasonable expectation that it will become a study hall bus. It will be just like the Internet in their homes - often homework, but more often media consumption.