Unlikely Words » technology

Daft Punk’s Derezzed as disc drive music

aaron cohen — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:28:24 +0000

Youtube user MrSolidSnake745 makes pretty awesome floppy disc music. Here's Daft Punk's Derezzed, which I think is his newest.

If this isn't enough for you, see also

Super Mario Remake,

Imperial March on three floppy drives, and Party Rock Anthem on five floppy drives.

Via Stellar Interesting

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LOL

aaron cohen — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 02:52:21 +0000

Square is hiring all the best Silicon Valley talent, not Twitter, Zynga, or Facebook. This is good because I hope they put the companies that manage credit card transactions out of business. I actually did laugh out loud at the reaction.

Our recruiter does not give Square perfect grades for its recruiting, however. She insists the company is making a big mistake hiring so many Ruby on Rails developers, who tend to be 'hipsters with neckbeards.' We asked a source close to Square for his reaction to this concern, and he said, 'LOL.'

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Foursquare 3.0

aaron cohen — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 19:03:10 +0000

All along it seems like Foursquare has been trying to make it easier for everyone to make their own Feltron Annual Report. I'm OK with that. It's certainly what I like to use about it. Looking more closely in my account a couple months ago, I found the Stats page which says it's inspired by the Feltron reports. 3.0 described here.

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Downgrading my iPhone 3G from iOS 4 to iOS 3.1.3

aaron cohen — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 21:23:50 +0000

In September, I made the mistake of upgrading my iPhone 3G from OS 3.1 to OS 4.0, making the phone a lot less useful and losing visual voicemail as a feature. (I had a big event coming up and Eventbrite told me their app would allow me to scan tickets with my phone. I said, "Really? It will work on a 3G running 3.0?" They said, yes, really. The event was looming and I needed to test the app ahead of time and so when it didn't work with 3.0, I upgraded to 4.0. Come to find out, the scanning didn't work on a 3G at all. Thank you, Eventbrite.) Since I upgraded, my 3G has been beset with some minor and major issues that make it much less useful than before. Some tasks, like browsing are usually OK, but Safari sometimes takes a while to load, other tasks like using Google Maps go from horribly slow to completely useless. Foursquare check ins can take minutes. The phone app stalls a lot when trying to make a call and, most importantly, visual voicemail does not work at all. I can still get voicemails, but there is no notification of their presence.

Yesterday, at Tim's suggestion I decided to try downgrading my phone. It did not go as planned. Recboot didn't work the way it was supposed to, and at one point, my phone was a brick for an hour. Immediately after downgrading to 3.1.3, I was left with a phone that didn't have any of my data, but did give me visual voicemail. The back up I made before starting was gone so I used a back up from 9/17 running 3.1.3.

The phone functions as it did then, much faster on Foursquare and Google Maps, and tethering works again. This would all be wonderful except I again don't have visual voicemail. I'm opposed to wiping it clean and starting over because I don't think I'll be able to download working versions of the apps I use.

I'm going to try to hang on for the iPhone 5, which will hopefully come out in July. Any ideas? Would jailbreaking the phone give me visual voicemail back?

+++
Update: Visual Voicemail is back after 4 months. After trying to reset the settings, I removed the AT&T Profile in the Profiles section of the Settings (I think Settings ---> Network Settings ----> Profiles). I restarted the phone after that and some test VMs I'd been leaving the last couple days showed up. I guess I don't have an excuse for not calling you back now.

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1985 Steve Jobs interview in Playboy

aaron cohen — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 15:29:04 +0000

This 1985 Playboy interview with "Steven" Jobs is long, but fascinating. It's from 25 years ago! This was a time where the "mouse" had to be explained to the readers because most people wouldn't know what it was. ("a "mouse" (a small rolling box with a button on it)"). I pulled out a lot of excerpts I thought were interesting:

The Apple offices in 1985, the forerunner for dotcom offices later on:

"The Apple offices are clearly not like most places of employment. Video games abound, ping-pong tables are in use, speakers blare out music ranging from The Rolling Stones to Windham Hill jazz. Conference rooms are named after Da Vinci and Picasso, and snack-room refrigerators are stocked with fresh carrot, apple and orange juice. (The Mac team alone spends $100,000 on fresh juice per year.)

On Andy Warhol and Keith Haring using the first Macintosh that Jobs had brought to a birthday party for a 9 year old:

Two other party guests wandered into the room and looked over Jobs's shoulder. 'Hmmm,' said the first, Andy Warhol. 'What is this? Look at this, Keith. This is incredible!' The second guest, Keith Haring, the graffiti artist whose work now commands huge prices, went over. Warhol and Haring asked to take a turn at the Mac, and as I walked away, Warhol had just sat down to manipulate the mouse. 'My God!' he was saying, 'I drew a circle!'

On why Jobs was more interested in talking to the 9 year old than the celebrity artists (emphasis mine):

"But more revealing was the scene after the party. Well after the other guests had gone, Jobs stayed to tutor the boy on the fine points of using the Mac. Later, I asked him why he had seemed happier with the boy than with the two famous artists. His answer seemed unrehearsed to me: 'Older people sit down and ask, "What is it?" but the boy asks, "What can I do with it?"'"

On what technology the computer compares to:

The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We're just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people—as remarkable as the telephone.

On pricing:

PLAYBOY: Aside from some of the recurrent criticisms—that the mouse is inefficient, that the Macintosh screen is only black and white—the most serious charge is that Apple overprices its products. Do you care to answer any or all?

JOBS: We've done studies that prove that the mouse is faster than traditional ways of moving through data or applications. Someday we may be able to build a color screen for a reasonable price. As to overpricing, the start-up of a new product makes it more expensive than it will be later. The more we can produce, the lower the price will get——

PLAYBOY: That's what critics charge you with: hooking the enthusiasts with premium prices, then turning around and lowering your prices to catch the rest of the market.

JOBS: That's simply untrue. As soon as we can lower prices, we do. It's true that our computers are less expensive today than they were a few years ago, or even last year. But that's also true of the IBM PC. Our goal is to get computers out to tens of millions of people, and the cheaper we can make them, the easier it's going to be to do that. I'd love it if Macintosh cost $1000.

On the iPhone:

JOBS: The developments will be in making the products more and more portable, networking them, getting out laser printers, getting out shared data bases, getting out more communications ability, maybe the merging of the telephone and the personal computer.

The big villain in this article is IBM. It's sort of jarring that Microsoft isn't mentioned once:

All these things show that it really is coming down to just Apple and IBM. If, for some reason, we make some giant mistakes and IBM wins, my personal feeling is that we are going to enter sort of a computer Dark Ages for about 20 years. Once IBM gains control of a market sector, they almost always stop innovation. They prevent innovation from happening.

On AT&T:

PLAYBOY: Which brings us full circle to your latest milestones, the Mac and your protracted shoot-out with IBM. In this Interview, you've repeatedly sounded as if there really are only two of you left in the field. But although the two of you account for something like 60 percent of the market, can you just write off the other 40 percent—the Radio Shacks, DECs, Epsons, et al.—as insignificant? More important, are you ignoring your potentially biggest rival, A.T.&T.?

JOBS: A.T.&T.. is absolutely going to be in the business. There is a major transformation in the company that's taking place right now. A.T.&T. is changing from a subsidized and regulated service-oriented company to a free-market, competitive-marketing technology company. A.T.&T.'s products per se have never been of the highest quality. All you have to do is go look at their telephones. They're somewhat of an embarrassment. But they do possess great technology in their research labs. Their challenge is to learn how to commercialize that technology. Also, they have to learn about consumer marketing. I think that they will do both of those things, but it's going to take them years.

Via Longreads

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Lighting the information super highway

aaron cohen — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 17:47:18 +0000

A company in Minnesota is using LED ceiling lights to connect computers:

A light on the modem talks back to the fixture overhead, where there is sensor to receive the return signal and transmit the data over the Internet. Those computers on the desks aren't connected to the Internet, except through these light signals, much as Wi-Fi allows people to connect wirelessly.

I've got nothing to add to this.

Via Derek

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Twitter as Information Network

aaron cohen — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 17:39:53 +0000

Mike Champion with a really smart look at the problem of Twitter as "information network". Basically, it's difficult to find Twitter accounts that Tweet only about subjects that interest you, which then creates a lot of noise. I think this might be one reason celebrities and brands are so popular; people are more inclined to find the non-basketball related musings of their favorite basketball player interesting because it's their favorite basketball player! Mike uses the example of being less interested in the non-Ruby related musings of Ruby hackers... Until Twitter makes it more possible to follow interests, rather than accounts, it'll face this challenge.

Twitter is increasingly being described as an "information network" rather than a social network or "fun-like-ice-cream" novelty. That seems accurate, but the challenge is that Twitter is currently designed like a social network. Even with its innovative asymmetrical following relationships what you follow on Twitter are accounts [1] not "interests". As a result, it is difficult to consume information effectively and to tweet for disparate audiences.

PS Congrats on the baby, Mike and Sam.

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What does it mean to be ‘fully human’ online?

aaron cohen — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 18:16:43 +0000

In general, moralizing sucks. It gets especially annoying when cultural commentators talk about how much society has changed, for the worse, with the advent of technology and the internet. Ezra Klein:

So if you're someone who likes to spend Saturday in a quiet room with a good book and a long time to think about it, you might find Facebook unnerving. And Zadie Smith and Ross Douthat do. Sometimes, I'd guess, we all do. Conversely, if you're someone who likes people but has trouble meeting them, or gets shy in unfamiliar social settings, you probably don't think the Internet has made you less human.

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Facebook is Google

aaron cohen — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 15:04:47 +0000

In an article about Google's recent surprise company-wide raise and bonus this about Facebook's staff.

Of the more than 1,900 Facebook employees with resumes on LinkedIn, 300 -- around 15% of Facebook's staff -- list Google as a past employer.

Is that a lot? Because it sounds like a lot to me. Also, the person that leaked the raise/bonus info to Business Insider got fired. They presumably will not be receiving a raise or a bonus. Unless they go work for Facebook.

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Don’t contemporary book characters have iPhones?

aaron cohen — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 14:55:00 +0000

In my best Andy Rooney voice, did you ever notice how characters in books and movies don't use smartphones/computers/theinternets the way that people (we) normally do? This goes beyond the idea of sitcom killing cell phones, though. Think about the last contemporary book you read. Do smartphones exist in that book? Are they used in any meaningful way by the main characters?

From Where Are the iPhone Addicts and Facebook 'Stalkers' in Contemporary Fiction? by Joanne McNeil.

The average fictional character is either so thoroughly disinterested in email, social media, and text messages he never thinks of it, or else hastily mentions electronic communications in the past tense. Sure, characters in fiction may own smart phones, but few have the urge to compulsively play with the device while waiting to meet a friend or catch a flight. This ever-present anachronism has made it so that almost all literary fiction is science fiction, a thought experiment as to what life might be like if we weren't so absorbed in our iPhones but instead watched and listened to the world around us at a moment's rest.

Via The Daily Dish

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I Write Like Analysis

aaron cohen — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 16:16:14 +0000

Subscribe by RSS or on Twitter or by email or on Facebook or on Tumblr

There's this nifty tool floating around the internet the last couple days called I Write Like. You put a couple paragraphs into a box, click submit, and get the name of a famous author that you write like. I was wondering how good it was, so I spent a couple hours putting in some paragraphs of famous authors to see what I Write Like would come up with.

The results were mixed. A lot of these writers write like David Foster Wallace even if David Foster Wallace writes like Ian Fleming. I found the Project Gutenberg website with the top 100 ebooks and I Write Like did pretty well with the first couple paragraphs with most of those authors. In any case, I Write Like nailed 14 of the 30 classic authors giving it a success rate of 47%. For what it's worth, Jersey Shore Nickname Generator is accurate 94% of the time. Note: The tool is fun. This isn't a fair test.

James Joyce - The Dubliners is like James Joyce.
Stephen King - The Gingerbread Girl is like Dan Brown or William Gibson depending how many paragraphs you take.
William Gibson - Neuromancer is like David Foster Wallace.
David Foster Wallace - Consider the Lobster is like Ian Fleming.
Mark Twain - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is like Mark Twain.
Ambrose Bierce - An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge is like Robert Louis Stephenson. This is my favorite short story, by the way.
William Faulkner - A Rose for Emily is like Margaret Mitchell.
Ernest Hemingway - Hills Like White Elephants is like Ian Fleming. I was pretty sure this one would be right.
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Diamond as Big as the Ritz is like H.P. Lovecraft.
H. P. Lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness is like Edgar Allan Poe.
Edgar Allan Poe - The Angel of the Odd is like David Foster Wallace.
J.D. Salinger - For Esmé - with Love and Squalor is like Arthur Conan Doyle.
Arthur Conan Doyle - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is like Arthur Conan Doyle.
Franz Kafka - Metamorphosis is like James Joyce.
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson is like Robert Louis Stevenson.
William Shakespeare - Hamlet is like William Shakespeare.
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice is like Jane Austen.
Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is like Lewis Carroll.
Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo is like Charles Dickens.
Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities is like Charles Dickens.
Bram Stoker - Dracula is like Bram Stoker.
H. G. Wells - The War of the Worlds, by is like H.G. Wells.
Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights is like Daniel Defoe.
Agata Christie - The Secret Adversary is like Agatha Christie.
Beatrix Potter - Peter Rabbit is like Arthur Conan Doyle.
Herman Melville - Moby Dick; Or the Whale is like Robert Louis Stevenson.
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein is like Mary Shelley.
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy is like Leo Tolstoy.
Homer - The Iliad is like William Shakespeare.
Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle is like Kurt Vonnegut.

Then, in the interest of pandering, I thought I'd look up a few contemporary writers/websites I like:
Jason Kottke is like (this surprises no one) David Foster Wallace.
The Daily What is like Stephen King.
John Gruber / Daring Fireball is like Stephen King.
Andy Baio / Waxy.org is like James Joyce.
Michael Lewis is like David Foster Wallace.
Chuck Klosterman is like Kurt Vonegut.
Bill Simmons is like Stephen King.

Now some pop culture folks:
Tracy Jordan is like James Joyce.
Don Draper's slide projector monologue is like Margaret Atwood.
The Real Shaq on Twitter is like Dan Brown.
Britney Spears on Twitter is like Dan Brown. (Probably because he uses web addresses in his writing?)
Britney Spears - Oops...I Did it Again is like Stephanie Meyer.
Jawbreaker - Kiss the Bottle is like David Foster Wallace.
Anthony Bourdain is like Dan Brown.

For what it's worth, when you put this post through the tool, it's like H.P. Lovecraft. Who did we leave out? Post your finds in the comments.

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Yoda Records GPS Instructions

aaron cohen — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:51:05 +0000

TomTom is releasing a Star Wars themed voice pack for it's GPS units. This is the viral ad they released to celebrate. It worked for me.

Here's Darth Vader:

Thanks, Derek.

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A New Use for Twitter

aaron cohen — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:09:34 +0000

I'm not sure this is what Biz and Ev had in mind. Last week Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff live-blogged the execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner's with 3 Tweets. Seems like Shurtleff is responding to criticism by digging in further. His latest Tweet? "Astonishing that no retweet whiner express outrage that Gardner shot 2 men in the face, & a cop; nor one word of empathy for their families."

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10 Reasons To Delete Your Facebook Account

aaron cohen — Tue, 04 May 2010 21:14:38 +0000

You name your post 10 Reasons To Delete Your Facebook Account and not am I going to click, I'm probably going to link to it, too! Click through for back up to all the bullet points. #9 is pretty important, and #4 and #1 are funny. Does anyone know what % of internet users AOL had at it's peak and how that compares to the 400 Million accounts Facebook has right now?

10. Facebook's Terms Of Service are completely one-sided.
9. Facebook's CEO has a documented history of unethical behavior.
8. Facebook has flat out declared war on privacy.
7. Facebook is pulling a classic bait-and-switch.
6. Facebook is a bully.
5. Even your private data is shared with applications.
4. Facebook is not technically competent enough to be trusted.
3. Facebook makes it incredibly difficult to truly delete your account.
2. Facebook doesn't (really) support the Open Web.
1. The Facebook application itself sucks.

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Facebook Doesn’t Care About Your Privacy

aaron cohen — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 14:03:13 +0000

Hahahaha. The motherfuckers at Facebook are doing it again. You maybe heard about their plan this week to Facebookify the web by making some social sites you're a part of more social. And just like last time, Facebook's default forces you to rely on yourself for your privacy. I don't think most people care. Hell, I don't even think I care. I DO have a pretty strong opinion of how you're supposed to do something on the web, though, and this isn't it.

Want to opt out of instant personalization? Make sure to block the applications:

How do I opt-out of instant personalization?
You can opt-out of instant personalization by disallowing it here. By clicking "No Thanks" on the Facebook notification on partner sites, partners will delete your data. To prevent your friends from sharing any of your information with an instant personalization partner, block the application: Microsoft Docs.com, Pandora, Yelp.

Newsweek Tumblr

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The Future of Facebook

aaron cohen — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 20:59:28 +0000

I've said it before, but I think in 10 years, it's even odds that people think of Facebook the way they think of AOL now. Since this column is one of the first I've seen to agree, I'm obviously going to link it.

In the world of technology even giants can stumble – or fail. Once upon a time AOL was the reigning online behemoth. At its peak in the 1990s it had 30 million paying subscribers (which at the time was a significant proportion of the online population in the US and Europe) and thought itself big enough to take over Time Warner. There was even a schmaltzy movie – You've Got Mail – based around its email service. Now it's a business-school case study in hubris.

AOL was also a study in corporate strategy from which the Facebook founders learned avidly. Initially they conceived of their service as an AOL-type "walled garden" – which implied trying to keep subscribers inside that controlled space. If one of your Facebook friends sent you a message then you had to be logged in to read it.

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Early Thoughts on Netflix on the Wii

aaron cohen — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 15:05:54 +0000

I was excited to get the email Friday morning indicating my disc for watching Netflix movies had shipped and would arrive this past Saturday. The "Watch Instantly" feature isn't one I've taken too much advantage of because I don't like watching movies on the computer unless I'm traveling. I've now used the Watch Instantly on the Wii app a couple times and have a few thoughts:

-I don't know if there was a 'Watch Instantly Queue' before, but having one now is pretty cool, especially for TV series. There's less urgency to the Watch Instantly Queue.
-Watching TV series on Netflix has historically meant having to wait for the next disc. Watch Instantly solves that problems.
-Expanding 'Watch Instantly' to a new crop of users is going to put pressure on Netflix to offer better movies. I THINK that's behind an agreement they signed with the studios to wait 28 days before offering a movie to their at home subscribers in exchange for more movies for 'Watch Instantly'. I could have all the details wrong.
-There isn't a search on the Wii app, but that's because typing sucks on the Wii. In fact, not having to log in to my Netflix account on my Wii was one of the pleasant surprises when I tried it for the first time.
-Browsing for movies on the Wii app is OK, but the movie images should probably be bigger and clearer.
-Plus, as reminded by the comment from APik below, you can manage your queue directly from the computer without having to mess with the browse feature of the Wii app.
-Am I doing it wrong, or does the movie picture always display in TV format? Send help.
-This is the future.

SO far, so good. I'm extremely satisfied.

++++
Update
One thing I forgot was fast forwarding/rewinding. The ability to resume watching from where you stopped in the middle of a movie negates this somewhat, but fast forwarding through the "Last week on" and the title sequence is annoying.

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Google and Twitter Idea

aaron cohen — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:23:28 +0000

Michael Wolff has a Future of the Internet piece that's infinitely better than Newsweek's 1995 article about the internet not having a future.

One question I had is, in the article, Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter says Twitter would generate "a billion search queries a day in the coming yeah." So how much do you think Google would pay for a little button next to every Tweet that says, "Google This". And you could highlight the terms you want to search on Google.

Wolff also talked about Barry Diller's new media company model which could have brands owning entire shows instead of buying 30 second ads. I've been waiting for that forever. Of course, I think it will only work for a year or so, while the brand can get press for the new type of advertising, but it's worth a shot.

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YouTube Adds Captions For All Videos

aaron cohen — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:25:50 +0000

I couldn't tell from this article about YouTube adding captions to all videos whether you will be able to get a transcript of the video or just see captions while the video is playing. If you can get a transcript, did YouTube/Google just release a free audio transcription service? I can see uploading interviews to YouTube and then cleaning up the voice recognition mistakes. It would sure beat typing out an entire interview.

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Newsweek on Why the Internet Will Fail (1995)

aaron cohen — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:01:49 +0000

Every word from this 1995 Newsweek article on Why the internet will fail is gold. EVERY SINGLE WORD. I can't wait to read their 1951 article on why television will never work.

Then there’s cyberbusiness. We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

Via Eric Andersen

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