Month: January 2011

Categories
Business

How’s that Mac App Store working for you?

Kevin Hoctor: “Besides losing cash flow, I also wanted to be able to compare direct and app store sales. Running both throughout the month of January was very revealing. My direct sales are right on target with my projections for January based on MoneyWell sales in the previous two years. Unit sales from the Apple store are three to four times our direct sales. The two stores seem to be capturing customers independent of each other. Selling my apps through the Mac App Store has almost tripled my overall revenue. I’m not complaining at all.“

Emphasis is mine. I believe tripling sales is a good thing, right? Wish I could do that with RxCalc.

Congratulations Kevin.

Categories
Technology

Pigeon Protocol?

Slashdot: “Since David Waitzman wrote his tongue-in-cheek Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers, there have been occasional attempts to actually transmit information via pigeon. One group back in 2001 successfully sent a PING command. But now there’s a practical use for pigeon-based communications: photographers working for the white-water rafting company Rocky Mountain Adventures send memory sticks full of digital photos via homing pigeon so the photos will be ready when the rafters finish up. The company has details on how the pigeons are trained and equipped. It may not be a full implementation of the Pigeon Protocol, but it works in narrow canyons far off the beaten path — and just as David Waitzman presciently predicted, they occasionally suffer packet loss due to hawks and ospreys.”

Categories
MLOTW

Movie line of the week answer

Good morning! We had one taker this week.

Congratulations to my lovely wife, Kim Fahrni. The correct answer was…

Red

Categories
Life

Egypt Disappears

renesys: “Confirming what a few have reported this evening: in an action unprecedented in Internet history, the Egyptian government appears to have ordered service providers to shut down all international connections to the Internet. Critical European-Asian fiber-optic routes through Egypt appear to be unaffected for now. But every Egyptian provider, every business, bank, Internet cafe, website, school, embassy, and government office that relied on the big four Egyptian ISPs for their Internet connectivity is now cut off from the rest of the world. Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat Misr, and all their customers and partners are, for the moment, off the air.”

Categories
MLOTW

Movie line of the week

Hot buttered popcorn and a movie, ahhh!Good morning, I’ve been a bit slack lately, haven’t I?

Here’s the line, good luck.

Frank, I never thought I’d say this again. I’m getting the pig!

Ok, quick, what movie! Send your guesses here.

Categories
Life

Ruins of Detroit

Etsy Blog: “So decrees the mission statement of photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, authors of The Ruins of Detroit. These intrepid two have approached the waning city of Detroit as a fallen American colossus, navigating buckling floors, curlicued shards of lead paint and dust covered relics they document the industrial capital’s last gasp.”

Add it to the wish list.

Categories
Movies

3D Headache?

Roger Ebert : “So: dark, small, stroby, headache inducing, alienating. And expensive. The question is: how long will it take people to realize and get fed up?”

That quote is from Walter Murch. A guy that knows a thing, or two, about film making. Go read the article for the full details.

I’m not a fan of the current 3D film craze so I hope it goes away soon. If it doesn’t, fair enough. I just hope people continue to make films that can rely on story and characters and not cheap tricks to draw an audience.

Categories
Politics

What a pair

The Raw Story: “In this corner, a libertarian, tea party hero who ran several campaigns as a candidate for US president on the Republican ticket. And in that corner, a progressive icon of the left who also ran several campaigns for the US presidency but on the Green Party ticket.”

Interesting couple, don’t you think? I like Ron Paul and wish more Republicans were like him. I hope these guys are able to rattle a few cages.

Categories
iOS iPhone

A non-geek view of the iPhone

The Daily Dish: “I guess, lastly, I’m not a geek. I use this technology and marvel at it without having the slightest clue how it really works. And since switching to Apple for everything a few years ago, the only problem I have had with the technology is AT&T and when I dropped my iPod in Cape Cod Bay and when I left my MacBook in a cab.”

Take that however you want.

Categories
Mobile Technology

Computers still needed

AppsLab: “But why not get a keyboard to attach to your tablet? Yeah, let’s replace that bulky laptop with a skinny tablet and a bag full of accessories. Reminds me of the Sony Vaio I used in 2001; all the cords and accessories I needed to make it useful outweighed the actual laptop.”

This is the same sort of stuff people said about computers when the Internet became popular. We still have computers. I don’t know about you but to do my day job I’d be hard pressed to replace my eight core beast with a tablet, or iPad. I still need computing power to get my job done. Heck, I still need a real computer to do iOS work. I see rows and rows of computers at work. The place the tablet, or iPad, will be handy is in your home. It’s a casual computing device. Much better suited for consumption than creation.