Horizon Zero

Pictures Under Glass

Bret Victor, a former Human Interface professional at Apple, has a few words on the popular vision of future technology.

I especially liked this bit at the end:

"With an entire body at your command, do you seriously think the Future Of Interaction should be a single finger?"

Tangentially related, there was an article in Wired about Adobe throwing in the towel with regard to Flash on mobile devices.

The future is being decided for you in the present. It always is.

 

Felicia Day Remains Awesome

Just in case you were wondering.

She's following up season 5 of The Guild with a Dragon Age series for BioWare.

 

Adobe Edge = Flash Capitulation To HTML5?

In their own words, Adobe's newest program "is a new web motion and interaction design tool that allows designers to bring animated content to websites, using web standards like HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3".

Which is kind of what Adobe's old flagship program was all about.

But no one likes Flash anymore. Apple forbids it on their devices and it's bloated and proprietary and too many proles use it to make ugly websites with horrid navigation, uncontrollable media and ugly fonts. (Guilty as charged, actually.)

It's still the dominant life form, but Flash's days are starting to appear numbered. And so Adobe needs to position itself to remain relevant in a post-Flash world.

But that need for relevance might also send the message that even Adobe thinks that Flash is on the downswing, which could end up accelerating the end and providing momentum to HTML5 emerging as the one standard to rule us all.

Which I guess would be good for my iPad.

Missouri Forbids Teachers and Students To Be Facebook Friends

My first inclination is to say "Good. Facebook sucks," and leave it at that.

But really, do we need a law on the books making it a crime for teachers to associate with students in a non-classroom environment? And even if we do, how does the state enforce this? Will teachers be compelled to disclose all their social media accounts for review?

The "slippery slope" argument gets used way too often in politics, but it's easy to see how something like this can descend into a morass of scapegoating and witch hunting. The first time a kindergarden teacher friends someone supporting gay marriage or a junior high science teacher links to his church site that talks about intelligent design or a 6000 year old Earth the fireworks will start - and it won't be pretty for anyone.

Want to protect your kids? Get involved at the local level. Get to know your kids' teachers and the administrators at the school. Attend school board meetings. Don't delegate it to legislators in the state capital or in Congress.

Or do. But if you do, don't complain when the one size fits all solution cooked up by strangers fails to fit your situation.

Apple Has More Money Than America

As of yesterday, the US Government had cash assets of about $74 billion.

According to Apple's June Quarterly report, the tech giant had $76 billion in cash and securities.

Also? No 14 trillion dollar debt.

Hmm, does this maybe explain the troubling additions to the iTunes EULA:

Forget Hulu, Steve Jobs is looking at a merger with Uncle Sam! ZOMG!

Wireless To Overtake Wired Connections By 2015?

Cisco is forecasting that 2015 will be the year when wireless connectivity becomes more prevelant than wired connections.

I get the 'no unsightly wires' and 'it just works' arguments in favor of Wi-Fi, but there's a trade off involved, and it usually involves reliability. There are days at home, for example, where my wireless router screams, and the signal is strong in all corners of the house. But there are also days where I can barely get a bar on my iPad from the next room over.

Meanwhile, my PC's wired connection to the router keeps on keeping on.

Also in the report - last year the average household consumed 17.1 GB of data a month. By 2015 the average household will be consuming 61.2 GB a month. By the end of 2015, global IP traffic will reach over 900 exobytes.

The Most Awesomest Thing In The History Of Awesome?

Maybe not, but pretty damn close.

Developers working with Google Chrome's Native Client have managed to port Lucasarts' Tie Fighter - arguably the best space sim ever - so that it plays completely in the browser.

This could have a big impact on the Abandonware scene, as publishers realize that there's money to be made in their backlist. Maybe not a lot, but we live in an age of .99 cent to $4.00 app games - charging a buck to play something already developed in a browser window is going to appeal to a lot of companies.

A Decade of Dabbling

According to ebay, I set up my account ten years ago today.

In all that time, I've never sold a darned thing. I had my account broken into once, and I've been burned on an auction once. Beyond that, my experience as a buyer of things I probably didn't need has been good.

Still, ten years. Ferris Bueller was right.

The Man Who Live-Tweeted The Bin Laden Operation

Sometimes, it's all about being in the right place at the right time.

Happy Birthday, FTP

The venerable File Transfer Protocol turned 40 this weekend.