Malaysia Air’s “Banana Pancakes”
My name is:
Mykel Nahorniak
I founded:
Localist.com
ELF
I helped organize:
Beehive Baltimore
I'm also on:
100 Top Entrepreneurs Who Succeeded without a College Degree
Abraham Lincoln, lawyer, U.S. president. Finished one year of formal schooling, self-taught himself trigonometry, and read Blackstone on his own to become a lawyer.
Benjamin Franklin, inventor, scientist, inventor, diplomat, author, printer, publisher, politician, patriot, signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Home-schooled with less than two years of formal education.
David Karp, founder of Tumblr. Dropped out of Bronx Science at the age of 15, then homeschooled. Did not attend college.
Walt Disney, founder of the Walt Disney Company. Dropped out of high school at 16.
Holla at my boyz, Abe, It’s All About The Benjamin, and Walt D!
I’ll consider lists like this when they exclude anyone born before 1965. You can’t cite them as a reason to not go to school when a college education was a rare opportunity for most people until recently.
Toilet humor
In the morning a few days ago, my toilet was plugged. After a few valiant flushing attempts, I knew it was a lost cause. Because I hadn’t yet purchased a plunger, the bathroom was off limits until I had the means to unclog.
I turned off the water line and headed to work.
At noon, I stopped by the grocery store to pick up the secret weapon. They were out. Hopped over to the Rite Aid. Not in stock. I ended up going to “Ye Olde Hardware Store,” and picked up the best looking throne sword I could find.
10 minutes later, the sparkling clean toilet was ready for service. Unfortunately, things were about to get a lot more annoying.
Upon reactivating the water line and performing a test flush, a very loud clarinet started playing. Almost deafening. It turns out the water line must be tuned to the perfect spot, or else it WAILS like a horn. It literally sounds like an aircraft carrier is trying to dock in my bathtub.
I am scared to go to the bathroom now.
Looking forward
Google recently announced they are officially dropping Internet Explorer 6 from the list of supported browsers for users of Google Apps.
Unfortunately, they’re continuing to support IE7, a browser that is only marginally better than IE6 at rendering pages.
Ultimately, the goal of getting users to upgrade is to help Web developers save weeks of additional time spent making a site compatible with older browsers. Not very much of this time will be saved until the majority of users have upgraded to IE8.
Instead of, “we’re dropping IE6, but still support IE7,” all companies in a position of influence should say, “we’re dropping IE6, so you should upgrade to IE8!”
Let’s keep the ball rolling… not just give it a push up the hill.
App Store
One big takeaway I got from yesterday’s iPad keynote is how much Apple is depending on the App Store library to sell its new device.
“140,000 apps at your fingertips!”
The issue is, out of those 140k, about 139,500 suck and are near-useless. Of the remaining 500, 400 are games. So we’re talking about 100 truly well designed apps that are realistically useful to most people.
Of course, developers have the option to create apps specifically designed for the iPad. Unfortunately, there’s less core functionality available on the device than an iPhone, meaning iPad-specific apps can’t do things like VoIP and augmented reality.
Even something as simple as a front-facing camera would have made the iPad a truly revolutionary product. Imagine being able to have a video chat with someone while walking around the house. I realize that’s technically possible now with a laptop, but it’s annoying enough to not be a common practice. Making the notion of mobile video chat monumentally easier is worth writing home about.
I’m the target customer for the iPad. I own a MacBook Pro and often leave it at work, because I can do 95% of work-related tasks from my iPhone if I’m away. Unfortunately, using an iPad instead of an iPhone remotely wouldn’t make me any more productive, so it’s impossible to justify buying one.
All in all, I think Apple should have considered exactly what users would realistically use a tablet device for, then build on that, instead of using the bloated App Store library to gauge demand.
The 3Com Audrey © 2000.
As soon as Jobs mentioned “grabbing the iPad from the kitchen,” I thought of this — as its pitch was identical. “A kitchen-counter Web tablet”
Why are tablet devices always equated to being used in the kitchen? Can’t I just sit in the chair in my office and use it? I don’t want to get food all over my computing periphs!
Uh... that's it?
Steve Jobs:
“In order to create a new category of devices, those devices will have to be far better at doing some key tasks — important things — better than the laptop and smartphone. What kind of tasks? Things like browsing the web…
That’s a tall order — better than a laptop at browsing the web? Enjoying and sharing photos, videos, enjoying music, playing games, reading e-books.
Some people have said: oh, that’s a netbook. The problem is netbooks aren’t better at ANYTHING.”
I haven’t heard anyone say “Oh, that’s a netbook.” Don’t act like you just unveiled a revolutionary product that is literally the Apple version of crap Microsoft et al were churning out in 2000.
The iPad, AKA the iPhone with a MacBook Air screen, is as annoying to carry around as a laptop, and is as oversimplified as an iPhone. So, the new device takes the flaws of both and muddles them together.
I don’t get it.
Incredible piece of art. You buy an object on eBay that automatically posts itself on eBay.
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“ As I am very aware how boring it is to hear about other people being happy, I say only this: I get up every morning at 5 a.m. simply because it’s more exciting to start working than to turn around and sleep some more. I do seem to have a lot of energy. After enjoying a giant pot of coffee and a medium-sized cigar for breakfast, I start my daily schedule of little experiments. This is coming along very well.
Daily Routines- Stefan Sagmeister (via rickyv)
