Island in the Net by Khürt Williams
Technology and Photography Musings. Established circa 2000.
The demands that are being created by the [Apple] (APPL) iPhone and other mobile broadband technologies threaten to outstrip the amount of spectrum available for commercial mobile, and it’s important for the country that we get long-term planning right because it takes time to identify spectrum and put it on the market.
A Chat with FCC Chief Genachowski - BusinessWeek
Privacy depends, ultimately, on people and institutions showing a reasonable regard for the privacy interests of others.
Privacy as a Social Problem, Not a Technology Problem | Freedom to Tinker
FemToCell uses YOUR existing broadband connection to make calls. Wait, you mean that you have to pay for this product, pay for your broadband connection just for a company to somehow manage to have you foot the bill for the service.
AT&T FemToCell: Why would anybody do this? | Macgasm
Blasted keeps track of the files you’ve been using on your computer and gives you super easy access to them. (via factoryjoe)
Simply put, the iPhone is the first truly ‘personal’ computer; more personal to its owners than the PC ever was. Talk to iPhone owners (not to mention, the 20M iPod Touch owners), and this truth bubbles to the top again and again.
iPhone, the ‘Personal’ Computer - Future of the Mobile Web - O’Reilly Broadcast
What if, just like becoming a cannibal or painting your face green, you eliminated righteous indignation as an option in your list of responses to various situations, no matter how unfair? What if the people you work with weren’t permitted to indulge? Just think of how much more you’d get done and how much calmer everything would be.
Seth’s Blog: Righteous indignation
We often think of journalism as encompassing what we know. But a key part of journalism that usually goes unreported is what we don’t know.
The 3 key parts of news stories you usually don’t get at Newsless.org
If you look at Microsoft’s customers, they’re only satisfied when they don’t look at alternatives. And most of its core customers are Windows Enthusiasts and Microsoft shop IT departments that are careful not to examine alternatives out of fear their faith might be shaken if exposed to some reality.
Why Can’t Microsoft Develop Software for Zune HD? — RoughlyDrafted Magazine
If you want to change what your boss believes, or the strategy your company is following, the first step is to figure out how to be the best informed person in the room.
Seth’s Blog: Willfully ignorant vs. aggressively skeptical
My friend Chris took this near the end of his work day.
Self-enforcing protocols improve security not by implementing countermeasures that prevent cheating, but by leveraging economic incentives so that the parties don’t want to cheat.
The Value of Self-Enforcing Protocols | threatpost
There’s a lot of ways to work with appreciation. You can pull out a pen and paper and list all the things you love, the things you need, the things you depend on. You can remember someone or something that is no longer in your life. There’s also that famous workshop exercise where you have to eat a raisin or a potato chip very, very slowly.
But then there’s just the simple checking in right where you are, wherever you are and discovering the appreciation that is already present.
Apartment Therapy The Kitchn | Weekend Meditation: Appreciation
Perhaps the biggest challenge for business owners is developing the ability to see the “big picture” in their particular business and to make sense of all the various parts that have to be developed, maintained and orchestrated. It is easy to get caught up in focusing more on systems — doing things right — at the expense of understanding whether they are doing the right things.
Systemic vs. Systematic | E-Myth Worldwide
What is impractical now with 3G may become routine with 4G/LTE.
Why the iTablet is Critical to Apple’s Future | Hidden Dimensions | The Mac Observer
People who love computers overwhelmingly prefer to use a Mac today. Microsoft’s core problem is that they have lost the hearts of computer enthusiasts. Regular people don’t think about their choice of computer platform in detail and with passion like nerds do because, duh, they are not nerds. But nerds are leading indicators.
iPhones come locked so they can’t be used with other carriers, so people spend hours and plenty of money to ‘unlock’ them. That’s bear shaving. Better to figure out an easy way to pay AT&T their tribute so they can be truly unlocked…
I get asked a lot why Apple’s customers are so loyal. It’s not because they belong to the Church of Mac! That’s ridiculous. It’s because when you buy our products, and three months later you get stuck on something, you quickly figure out [how to get past it]. And you think, “Wow, someone over there at Apple actually thought of this!” And then three months later you try to do something you hadn’t tried before, and it works, and you think “Hey, they thought of that, too.” And then six months later it happens again. There’s almost no product in the world that you have that experience with, but you have it with a Mac. And you have it with an iPod.
The Seed of Apple’s Innovation
If you don’t like the way someone is acting, understand you can’t change his behavior, you can only change his circumstances. … Sure, people are willing to lie, break promises, willfully misunderstand, avoid responsibility and blame others. But why? They’re doing it because under the circumstances, it seems like the right thing to do.
Seth’s Blog: He’s doing his best
The external world is remarkably consistent, and yet we blame it for what’s going on inside of us.
The only reason to go to work, I think, is to do work. It’s too expensive a trip if all you want to do is hang out. Work will mean managing a tribe, creating a movement and operating in teams to change the world. Anything less is going to be outsourced to someone a lot cheaper and a lot less privileged than you or me.
The Last Days of Cubicle Life - The Future of Work
It’s through space that air fills your lungs. It’s through space that your body moves. It’s through space in the vibration of the air that sound is heard. It’s in the gaps between veins that blood flows. Without the space between these letters, there would be no words for you to read -it would all be incoherent.
In this way, you realize something…
Emptiness truly roars. Silence speaks. Space gives birth to form.
It’s in the gaps that beauty is found.
How to Find Beauty in Life - Think Simple Now
The iPhone is the client, the MacBook (they’re all Pro) the server, and you can bring it into the office and plug into the corporate Exchange server with one click. Never has the fear of Apple holding developers or users hostage been so overstated. Apple’s rigorous march forward and its deep understanding of what the market will want next is not only keeping them ahead of the competition but building the markets they will own tomorrow. They’re like WIllie Mays and the basket catch, making the hard stuff look easy. The market may have bounced down a bit on the Jobs no-show, but Steve and company — and the smiling developers — know better.
Why Apple wins. every. time. by Steve Gilmour
Bing, of course, stands for But It’s Not Google. The problem, as far as I can tell, is that it is trying to be the next Google. And the challenge for Microsoft is that there already is a next Google. It’s called Google.
Luxury goods are needlessly expensive. By needlessly, I mean that the price is not related to performance. The price is related to scarcity, brand and storytelling. Luxury goods are organized waste. ……. Premium goods, on the other hand, are expensive variants of commodity goods. Pay more, get more.
(NOTE: I’m paraphrasing).
Seth’s Blog: Luxury vs. premium
Next time I encounter a Microsoft executive tsk-tsking about the onerous “Apple Tax” imposed by a Mac’s needless glitz, I’m tempted to ask him what car he drives—and whether he chose the model with the cloth seats and hand-cranked windows, or one with a few creature comforts.
Eight Reasons Your Next Computer Should Be a Mac - PC World
Apple is known for its savvy marketing, but its campaigns seldom target the enterprise. Its core customer base consists of students, educators, creative professionals, and individual consumers, whom it courts with a brand message that’s equal parts Porsche and Picasso. Far from being a business darling, Apple paints the Mac as the anti-corporate PC: You either “think different” or shop elsewhere.
Desktop Linux: Why it may have lost its chance | Open Source - InfoWorld
For us, it’s about doing great products. And when I look at what is being sold in the netbook space today, I see cramped keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware, very small screens, and just not a consumer experience… that we would put the Mac brand on, quite frankly. And so it’s not a space, as it exists today, that we’re interested in, nor do we believe that customers in the long term would be interested in.
Prediction: The effort required to outsource a task involving the manipulation of data of any kind will continue to decrease until it will be faster and cheaper to outsource just about anything than it will be to use in-house talent. What will you do today to ensure your prosperity when that happens?
While Microsoft is busy, fighting over the desktop Apple is busy getting people to carry the desktop with them. If you have an iPod Touch or an iPhone you know how much that product has displaced your laptop. You also realize that for most people an iPod touch or iPhone is enough computer. And this time “enough” is competitively priced.
by Chris Seibold Apr 14, 2009
Forget the “Apple tax”—maybe PCs cost less because Windows is worth less
The Microsoft discount —Dan Miller, Macworld.com
Whenever a trade association raises the barricades and tries to lobby their way into maintaining the status quo, they are doing their members a disservice. Instead of spending time and insight and effort reinventing what they do and organizing for a better future, the members are lulled into a sense of security that somehow, somehow, the future will be just like today.
Seth’s Blog: Beware of trade guilds maintaining the status quo
The studios have a very long history of betting against technology people want, and on technology people don’t want. This is just another such case. The technology people want always wins in the end — no duh — and usually benefits the businesses who fought that technology to the death. Here’s hoping the technology people want — Boxee — doesn’t wind up benefiting the studios fighting it now.
Marc Hedlund on the Hulu/Boxee splitt
Every Mac geek out there screams for this machine and screams most loudly when it comes time to buy a new computer. They look around and realize that there’s no way they need the power of a Mac Pro (and no way to justify the price) but they don’t want to feel locked in to an iMac or something. Why, they moan, doesn’t Apple make a machine for me? I want to be able to swap out the video card and really bump up the RAM.
If you’re that guy time to shut your pie hole. The reason that Apple doesn’t make that machine is because you, me, and about three other people really want it. Apple isn’t in the business of making computers for people who feel like stripping them down and mucking with the motherboard, the company is in the business of selling computing solutions to people who don’t want to mess with a computer. Face it, if you’re willing to swap out a video card and add a hard drive you’ve got both the time and expertise to trick out a Linux box or really make Vista sing.
We would have to buy 1.4 barrels of oil from the Saudi oil sheiks to produce the equivalent of one barrel of oil in ethanol.
Gatesbasher comment on MacUser.
The stability of this sushi makes eating it with chop sicks impossible…
Brad Kellet via Twitter
khurt: Ordered me a Time Capsule. My MacBook and Mac mini… http://tinyurl.com/3araaj
khurt: Pie not pi? http://tinyurl.com/3acpgl
khurt: Friday is jeans day. http://tinyurl.com/2d89my
khurt: Taking the boy to the school bus. http://tinyurl.com/2pl5ek
Getting the wife hooked on watching iTunes movies on the mac mini. Apple TV in my future?
twitter giving me errors about exceeding request limits.
khurt: MoodBlast is a standalone menubar app with a user-configurable system-wide… http://tinyurl.com/347252
khurt: AIR apps sometimes will crash on startup because the EncryptedLocalStore… http://tinyurl.com/3aytjp
khurt: Pownce or Twitter? http://tinyurl.com/36vblf
khurt: 5 Teaching Techniques that will Improve your Blogging http://tinyurl.com/ynpafd
khurt: Defend your coffee addiction. http://tinyurl.com/yv4gfk
TuDiabetes Celebrates First Year http://tinyurl.com/2zlafl
TuDiabetes Celebrates First Year http://tinyurl.com/28vgdh
khurt: 5 Amazing Mac Apps for Getting Things Done http://tinyurl.com/32xbu9
Tesing hellotxt.
Wondering how I wil survice the day on just 5 hours of sleep.
Searching for a way to “Post to Ma.gnolia” from NetNewsWire
Wishing Apple Into the Enterprise Won’t Get It There http://tinyurl.com/2y3rcq
My Amazon Unbox experience has been terrible! http://tinyurl.com/2vuwfp
submitting yearly objectives for approval.
My biggest decision today? Choosing which Adobe AIR twitter client to use.
Social networking sites need to start using OpenID. Registration takes too much time.
Adobe AIR is shaping up to be a very hot platform.
Everyone twitter user should have a go at twhilr: http://www.twhirl.org/
IMHO, Jyte is useless.
Trying out twirl. twhirl is a Twitter desktop client based on the Adobe AIR platform.
Installing Ubuntu Linux in a VirtualBox VM at midnight? I am nuts ( and tired ).
Company just announced closure of all central NJ facilities due to inclement weather.
What at idiot. I am the only one in the office and the yes, the company is still open.
Searching Scribd for documents on security metrics.
khurt: Einstein says check your intellect at the door. http://tinyurl.com/22skbs
Thought I was hacked http://tinyurl.com/yp2c9a
Mail.app has multiple personality http://tinyurl.com/25fygk
Sick.
Too much of a good thing? http://tinyurl.com/2r2os8
I don’t wanna look like the borg http://tinyurl.com/2tsl65
Using myopenid to authenticate to WordPress: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
WordPress comment OpenID: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
OpenID WordPress login: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
Importing from wordpress.com: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
XAMP Control Panel: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
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Import blog failed: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
Panera Bread Wi-Fi Access Confirmation: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
Panera Open Access Wi-Fi banner: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
Virtual Box Install: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
Virtual Box Registration: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
Virtual Box Main Screen: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
2008-02-09_0959: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
Pixelmator: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
Island in the Net Blog Stats: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
VMWare vs Virtual Box: VMWare are VirtualBox
VMWare vs Virtual Box: VMWare
2008-02-06_2009: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
The future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet
Williams Gibson
2008-01-30_2147: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
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2008-01-26_1238: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
Stop the Spying: Fourth Amendment – Protection from unreasonable search and seizure. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
CardSpace Authentication Hangs
blogs.guardian.co.uk
buynowstrip_air20080115
2008-01-12_0919: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
2008-01-12_0907: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
2008-01-12_0900: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
2008-01-12_0859: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
Khurt Williams
2008-01-11_0703: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
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2007-12-22_0942: Captured and shared with the Jing Project
The jack of all trades maximizes his number of peak experiences in life and learns to enjoy the pursuit of excellence unrelated to material gain, all while finding the few things he is truly uniquely suited to dominate.
How Addicted to Apple Are You?: Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch
WordPress.com OpenID authentication failure for http://islandinthenet.com///
Wikipedia: Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch
SnagIt Captures: Captured with SnagIt
VPN Client error: Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch
Diabetes 365, Day 16: I am a technologist. I love computers. I love numbers and data collection and graphing and… you get the point. Most of the time I get a blood glucose reading in the “safe” range ( 70 - 120 ). But quite a few are in the “low” arena (30 - 70).
Diabetes 365, Day 17: As someone with diabetes I pay attention to everything that enters my mouth. Food is an important part of my life. Spontaneous eating is a thing of my past. Each and every meal is planned and each and every gram of fat, protein and carbohydrate ( especially the caarbohydrate) is measured.
CalorieKing Nutrition and Exercise Manager: Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch
Paypal payment error
timemachine_icon20071016.png
Apple Mail Gmail IMAP.png (via Photos from Khürt)
Test, inject, eat - repeat: 1. Diabetes 365 Day 6, 2. Diabetes 365 Day 3, 3. Diabetes 365 Day 14. Not available Created with fd’s Flickr Toys. (via Photos from Khürt)
My creation: Created with fd’s Flickr Toys. (via Photos from Khürt)
My creation: 1. Day 11, 26th Oct ‘07, 2. Diabetes365 Day 10: Oct 26, 2007 - the ultimate diabetes stash, 3. Diabetes 365 - Day 12 Ketones, 4. Santiago: Word in the Hand - Diabetes365 - Oct. 25, 2007, 5. Day 23: October 26, 2007, 6. Diabetes 365 - Day 8: October 25, 2007 - Sweet Dreams, 7. October 26 2007 day 14 - Kinked up, 8. The Supply Closet - Diabetes 365 Day 19 - Oct 24, 2007, 9. The Logbook I should be keeping - Diabetes 365 Day 20 - Oct 25, 2007, 10. The Cost of Health Insurance - Diabetes 365 Day 18 - Oct 23, 2007, 11. 25 October 2007 Day 17, 12. Diabetes 365 - Day 11 Party Supplies, 13. diabetes 365 day 22 Oct. 25th 200714. Not available15. Not available16. Not available Created with fd’s Flickr Toys. (via Photos from Khürt)
Dilbert’s Internet addiction (via Photos from Khürt)
DSC01177.JPG: the low I am now having…. which I only noticed because of the slight tingling sensation in my tongue… this would be followed by shaking hands, hot flashes, and light headiness around the low 30s… (via Photos from Khürt)
The Kit (via Photos from Khürt)
The Kit (via Photos from Khürt)
DSC01170.JPG (via Photos from Khürt)
Ouch!: I can not live without insulin. My pancreas is under attack from my immune system which is slowly wiping out the insulin producing cells. To live, I must inject insulin before EACH meal. Three times a day. Forever, Until they find a cure. And yes, it does hurt (sometimes). (via Photos from Khürt)
Knowledge (via Photos from Khürt)
Control…or lack thereof: Frustration and anxiety are just one of the many emotions that I experience daily ( hourly? ). Sometimes I get bored of eating the same things for breakfast and experiment a little. What can be frustrating is that even if I eat the same amount of carbohydrates for the same meal time I can get a wildly different blood glucose result than what is expected. (via Photos from Khürt)
Breakfast: To reduce the variables that affect blood glucose ( stress, exercise, sleep, alcohol, etc. etc. etc. ) I eat the same breakfast each and every day. Yes. Exactly the same. (via Photos from Khürt)
Me.
