Island in the Net by Khürt Williams
Technology and Photography Musings. Established circa 2000.
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I suspect Cook's approach to dealing with Apple's imitative competitors has been to simply cut them loose from the mother ship. Deprived of fresh ideas to be inspired by, isn't it rather telling that all competitors seem to have been able to come up with are market arguments based on display size?
That's not innovation. That's just bigger screens. Meh. Jonny Evans
The "Meh" made me chuckle.
I love my local farmers' market. I try to make it to the market every Saturday but that's not always possible. On the days when my personal schedule doesn't permit me to drop in for even for just 15 minutes, I really miss it. I've been going to the market for at least the last three years but the market has been around much longer than that.
Two of my favorite vendors this summer is Mallery's Grazin' Meats and Villa Milagro Vineyard. Mallery's meats are sourced from Simply Grazin' in Skillman, NJ. The meats are organic and the animals are grass fed. Villa Milagro is located along the Delaware River in Finesville, NJ.
Villa Milagro Vineyards uses organic and sustainable practices to provide a protective habitat for native species of birds, plants and wildlife, as well as to grow grapes without use of pesticides or herbicides.Villa Milagro
My favorite Villa Milagro wine is the Delicado. What's a Delicado? I have no idea. The wines are a blend and I was told the names are made up. But a name won't tell you how a wine tastes or if you'll enjoy it. Each of use have unique tastes buds. I love the Delicado. It's fruity, slightly sweet and very refreshing.
I normally get burgers from Mallery's but wanted to try some steak. I got some sirloin which I grilled along with some sweet potatoes.
It is traditional to drink a red wine with meat but I know what I like. I enjoyed my dinner!
The gist of my argument is that Google is a ruthless competitor that enters existing markets, upends them, and isolates itself with a seemingly unquenchable desire to dominate every single market in consumer online services; yet, hypocritically, its leadership describes Google as just wanting to get along, that Google is institutionally a nice company, and that they succeed by “building great things that don’t exist”, whereas what they actually do is build free versions of things that already exist and make money selling ads.John Gruber
That's how I see it. Google's "Don't Be Evil" slogan has become meaningless. I think the company started acting this way when it felt it's core market threatened. Mobile -- not just the iPhone -- was a threat to search and so they had to launch Android lest they be rendered irrelevant. Facebook users were voluntarily providing more relevant data for advertisers than search and Gmail so Google+ was created.
Tying together all the Google properties is an attempt to keep inside a different form of "walled garden". Now Google can track you more easily. They own almost all the major ad networks. They have most of the search traffic. I think they have most of the email accounts in active use. YouTube tracks your viewing habits -- even if you are viewing that video on another site ( presumably with Google ads ). And finally Google+ gets you chatting with people sharing links from web sites that most like have Google Analytics tracking code.
