Improving poor taste in upper leadership is almost as difficult as treating severe paranoia: people who don’t value taste and design will rarely recognize these shortcomings or seek to improve them. With very few exceptions, companies that put out tasteless, poorly designed products will usually never change course.
Anyone who wants to compete well against Apple is going to need good taste at the top and deep-rooted design values throughout the company.
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The Space Shuttle Discovery took its final flight this morning from Florida to Washington, DC on the back of one of NASA's 747 carrier planes used to carry the space shuttle's around the country. I went down to the National Mall this morning and stood in front of the Washington Monument to photograph its many fly-overs it took before making its final landing at Dulles International Airport where it will be put on display in the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum, at the Udvar-Hazy Center.
Below are what I think are some of my best shots I got with my 28-300mm lens (which on my crop sensor camera, turns into a 480mm zoom).
Approaching over the Lincoln Memorial.
Nice side shot with the NASA T-38 in frame.
Another good side shot.
Flying almost directly overhead.
Washington Monument flags in the foreground.
Coming out from behind the Washington Monument.
With the White House in the foreground.
Another pass with the White House in view.
Another good side shot from close underneath during its last pass.
And while I did not take this picture, I could not resist posting this awesome shot that was posted on the NASA HQ Flickr account:
Also, here is a video from my friend Ted Severson shot from the steps of the U.S. Capital building this morning:
Finally, here is a slideshow of the entire 284 photos I took and posted on Flickr:
My key problem with the proposal is that it’s being pushed through without common shareholders being given the opportunity to object. I would be OK with it if it was being voted on a one-share, one-vote basis. But instead, Google’s Troika has decided that having ten times the votes of any other shareholder isn’t good enough for them, and that what they really want is a whole new class of shareholders — including new employees — who have no votes in the company at all.
Facebook, a company with a potential market cap worth five or six moon landings, is spending one of its many billions of dollars to buy Instagram, a tiny company dedicated to helping Thai beauty queens share photos of their fingernails. Many people have critical opinions on this subject, ranging from “this will ruin Instagram” to “$1 billion is too much.” And for many Instagram users it’s discomfiting to see a giant company they distrust purchase a tiny company they adore — like if Coldplay acquired Dirty Projectors, or a Gang of Four reunion was sponsored by Foxconn.
Paul's take on this is excellent.
Jason Kottke, at Kottke.org has posted a wonderful piece on old photographs from the Titantic, before it sank. I love seeing old photos such as these, especially of historic places or events, before the event itself took place. So much of the time we think about the event itself, but not what the place, object, person or setting was like prior to this famous historic event happening.
Jason writes:
I was under the impression that not many photographs of the Titanic existed...especially those taken on the ship. But amateur photographer Francis Browne was aboard the Titanic from Southampton to Cobh, Ireland and captured many images of the ship's interior, exterior, and voyage. The photos were widely known in the aftermath of the sinking but have been little seen since then.
Make sure you check out Jason's post, as there is an additional gem at the bottom showing a screenshot of twitter displaying the ignorance and/or naivety of today's youth.
During a lecture Wednesday evening at the U.K.’s Royal Institution, Isaacson took issue with Page’s remarks, stressing that Jobs was hardly kidding around when he threatened to destroy Android, which he lambasted as a stolen product.
“[Apple's iOS] is almost copied verbatim by Android,” Isaacson said as reported by Macworld UK. “And then they licence it around promiscuously. And then Android starts surpassing Apple in market share, and this totally infuriated [Steve]. It wasn’t a matter of money. He said: ‘You can’t pay me off, I’m here to destroy you.’”
The actual quote, verbatim, from Jobs to Isaacson was this:
“Our lawsuit is saying, ‘Google, you fucking ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off.’ Grand theft. I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go to thermonuclear war on this. They are scared to death, because they know they are guilty. Outside of Search, Google’s products — Android, Google Docs — are shit.”
John Packzowski sums up:
That’s a rant uttered for show? A little anecdote to give Apple employees an “obvious competitor … to rally around”?
Hardly.
If you want to talk about things that are for show, Larry, here’s a good one: Don’t be evil.
Step 3.
Try to download Instagram from the Google Play app.
Find that it is compatible with anything at or above 2.2 (Froyo, 2 major releases behind current). If you have an older Android phone like the HTC Nexus One (not to be confused with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus or the HTC One) that has limited internal memory then odds are you many not have enough internal storage space available because the Instagram app is 16MB (which is large for an Android app).
Comically sad.
President Obama’s fruitless three-year search for compromise with the Republicans ended in a thunderclap of a speech on Tuesday, as he denounced the party and its presidential candidates for cruelty and extremism. He accused his opponents of imposing on the country a “radical vision” that “is antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity.”
More of this please.
