The breaking news about Brewer led to one of this blog’s readers requesting that I relink to a story about how Jan Brewer first came to national attention back in 1990. At the time, Brewer shared the spotlight with Donny Osmond and the alternative newspaper New Times. So here’s a link to the story about Brewer’s first brush with fame, based on research I did back in 1990 when I lived in Arizona.
The Pew Foundation has a new report out on how people are using their tablet devices. According to Pew (and what do we learn about the media these days that doesn’t come from Pew Foundation studies…), here are few things we know:
11% of US adults now own a tablet computer of some kind. (That’s me!)
Half of tablet users get news on their tablets daily. (Me, too!)
77% of owners use their tablets daily. (Me again.)
Top activities on a tablet:
54% – Consuming news (me)
54% – E-mail (me)
39% – Social networking (me)
30% – Gaming (nope, own Angry Birds but haven’t fired them up, yet.)
Many more examples from other movies at the links. Thanks to Nezeka Pfeifer for the link to the composite illustrations. I fear I’m the one responsible for coming across the link to the evil versions…..
As you may know, Apple has just released its new iPhone 4s. Analysts and the stock market were not impressed, with Apple’s stock taking a pretty significant hit in the days that followed. And then Apple reported selling 4 million iPhones in the three days that followed…
One of the key features of the new iPhone is a program called Siri that is a voice-activated personal assistant that will respond to natural language inquiries. So if you ask Siri “Do I need a coat today,” it will respond with a weather forecast. Apple has labeled Siri as “beta” software, which means it’s still in the testing phase, not completely ready for prime time.
Tech bloggers are having a great time experimenting with how Siri will respond to various questions. One of the most popular tests is using the great request from the movie 2001:
In fact, Siri has multiple responses to that question. And it is certainly familiar with The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy:
If you’d like to see a nicely curated collection of Siri answers to unusual questions, pay a visit to the S*&% Siri Says Tumblr blog. Great stuff. Hint about the content – the blog name is actually NSFW at some places….
Today, center-right commentator David Frum stepped down in his role as a commentator for American Public Media‘s business radio news show Marketplace.
Frum, a former speech writer for George W. Bush, has represented the right/conservative/red point of view on the show in counterpoint to former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich on the left/liberal/blue side of things.
Frum writes that in many ways he was able to fairly represent the mainstream right when it came to topics such as “green jobs or NLRB regulations or immigration.” But when it came to other issues, such as “healthcare reform, monetary policy, social spending to aid the unemployed, and … the American response to the euro crisis,” he found it difficult to represent his views as being that of the conservative mainstream.
Because Frum felt, correctly, that he could not serve as a spokesperson for the right, he resigned as a commentator for Marketplace.
And the world of political/policy commentary is worse off for his decision. Why on earth do we need to have a pair of commentators who will give us reliable party talking points? Don’t we have political press secretaries for that? One of the first concepts I teach my commentary students is to avoid the DTPs, the Dreaded Talking Points. And by this I mean parroting back the same tired rhetoric we get out of left/right balance. This is making the assumption that we can learn something significant about a topic by having a lefty and righty say the same things over and over again. The two will never actually respond to the others point of view, and heaven forbid that they ever see a common ground.
David Frum is one of my favorite commentators because I never know exactly what he’s going to say. And whatever he does say, I know that it will come from a well-reasoned place. I don’t care whether I will agree with him. What I want is someone who will say something thoughtful and interesting.
How do we expect to learn about a purple world when only primary colors are allowed?
Jon Stewart had it right when he was on Crossfire back in October of 2004:
Washington Post: Loving the Warrior
A Yale honor student in love with a wounded platoon leader. How the wars we are in connect with those who are usually a long ways away from them.
New York Times: Dealing With Aging Prisoners
With long, mandatory prison sentences the norm, states are having to deal with an aging cohort of lifers. A Rick Bragg story from 1995. (Pulitzer winning story)
Steve Jobs died today, Oct. 5, 2011, following a long battle with pancreatic cancer. As I am writing this, cable news hosts and commentators are lionizing him and Internet trolls are savaging him.
To me, Steve Jobs was a hero. And if you read your Greek mythology, you know that there is a big difference between a hero and a saint. Not the same thing at all. Steve Jobs had a commitment to excellence that I believe developed during the time after he was fired by Apple in 1985. After he left Apple, Jobs founded NeXT Inc., which built an innovative UNIX-based computer that was used by Tim Berners-Lee to create the World Wide Web. With NeXT, Jobs was able to essentially start from scratch on building what he considered to be the ideal personal computer workstation, without any concern of making it compatible with existing PCs or Macs.
In 1997, Apple took Jobs back, and bought out NeXT Inc. The software that made the NeXT run became Macintosh’s OS X, a radical reboot of Apple’s operating system that was not compatible with old Mac programs. Jobs’ attitude was essentially, This is how it should be. Take it.
And people did take it. Jobs ushered in an era where Apple went from near bankruptcy to being the most valuable corporation in the world. Jobs envisioned a computer that would not just be a computer but rather a digital hub for all types of media and entertainment content. In 2001, Apple introduced the iPod and its accompanying iTunes software. And with these, he solidified his company as a major player in the new media business.
Jobs did many things people told him he couldn’t do. He persuaded the major recording labels to offer their music through Apple’s iTunes store. He persuaded the major broadcast and cable networks to sell their television shows through the iTunes store. He persuaded major movie studios to sell and rent their movies through…. Oh, you get the idea.
Jobs also found success in the movie business. He bought Pixar, a $10 million computer graphics company from Star Wars director George Lucas, and turned it into a $7 billion animation house that has created some of the most memorable cartoons of recent years, including the lovely WALL-E. In 2006, Jobs sold Pixar to Disney, and Jobs became Disney’s largest single stockholder as well a member of the company’s board of directors. (This is the Disney that owns ESPN and ABC….)
Jobs was a notorious perfectionist who was difficult to work with and for. He was notoriously secretive, claiming initially that a six-month leave of absence in 2009 for having a liver transplant was for a “hormone imbalance.”
In August of this year, just two months ago, Jobs retired as CEO of Apple:
“I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.”
In the hours and days that followed, you might have been excused if you thought Jobs had died. The tributes poured in across the media. And I thought to myself, Jobs must be really ill if he’s actually going to step down as CEO.
As it turns out, he was. Forty-one days after his resignation, Jobs died.
I said at the beginning of this that to me Steve Jobs was a hero, not a saint. He was a hero because he stood up for a single-minded pursuit of excellence. He had a vision of what products should look like and how they should behave, and he never let anything interfere with that.
He had us look at computers, tablets, media players, streaming TV boxes, and ask, “What should these be like?” rather than “What should their specs be?” And I think that was his greatest gift as a visionary.
All across the net tonight, people are going to be linking to Steve Jobs’ famous commencement address from Stanford, and I suppose I could do that. But instead, I would simply quote the brilliant two word mission statement from an old Apple campaign. Steve Jobs was a hero because he could “Think Different.”
