Categories
Business Life

You want it? You got it.

SFGate: “They see the megafarms squeezing out the little guy on economies of scale, industrializing the crop the way big business has done to food and creating monocultures in a pot industry that now grows hundreds of varieties.”

The Marijuana debate in California rages on. The folks that want to legalize it are now up in arms because the big guys are going to jump in and crush them. Hey, welcome to American Capitalism. If you got busy building a business instead of smoking your product you’d have been ready for such an eventuality.

As you can tell, I’m a bit opinionated about the use of pot, but to each his own. I still say we should do one of two things, but of course it’s not as easy as this.

  1. Regulate it at the Federal level and dispense it via pharmacies.
  2. Legalize it and allow it to be sold through Government approved, and regulated, facilities.

If it’s to be treated as a medicine we have a dispensing mechanism that works, use it. If it’s to be completely legalized and treated like alcohol, we should monitor it, like we do alcohol, and tax it.

I’m not an expert on the matter, take what you want away from this. It’s my opinion of the situation, but don’t cry when your “dreams come true” and you realize it’s not what you expected.

Categories
Business

Naughty AT&T

Computerworld: “Like it did with the Backflip, AT&T has removed the option to install unofficial apps onto its new HTC Aria phone. If something’s outside of the Android Market — a beta program such as Swype, for example, or one of several tethering apps offered only through developers’ Web sites — you won’t be able to install it; the option to do so is mysteriously missing from the “Applications” settings menu where it’d typically be found.”

Categories
Business

NY Times, not so smart

Curly, the original knuckleheadBoomTown, Kara Swisher: “The Times’ lawyer, Richard Samson, sees it differently, apparently since it is a paid app rather than a free one, noting in its June 3 notice to Apple, which came two days after the Times’ article about Pulse:

“The Pulse News Reader app, makes commercial use of the NYTimes.com and Boston.com RSS feeds, in violation of their Terms of Use*. Thus, the use of our content is unlicensed. The app also frames the NYTimes.com and Boston.com websites in violation of their respective Terms of Use.”

He also complained about how the Pulse was marketed in the App Store”

Emphasis is mine. The NY Times really wants to go out of business. If I were the developers of Pulse I’d create a “knucklehead list” and ship it with the app. The knucklehead list would be updatable remotely so when other knucklehead’s would like to join in on the fun the Pulse guys could update their list on the server and have the application automagically remove the RSS feed from their app.

As for the NY Times. I really don’t get this, not at all. They are publishing an RSS feed for heavens sake. If you don’t want people to read your content via the web, REMOVE YOUR FEED. Instead you come down on the little guy that’s taking advantage of something you published.

Knuckleheads.

Categories
Business Indie

The Joys of Freelance

Brian Hoff: “This might sound familiar to some most of you: I received an email from a potential client inquiring a new website. After a few emails back and forth, the talk of money came into the equation, only to have the client question why my rates where so high as “they too were freelancers or small businesses.” They also asked if I’d consider slashing my rate by two-thirds. How about this one: I received emails looking for a $1,000 website because large firms I’ve contacted charge in the six-figures.”

I’ve heard from indie designers and developers that tell this same story. Because they’re small people believe they’ll cut a deal. It’s hard to make a living cutting deals to every Tom, Dick, and Harry on the block. You have to learn how to say one little word, no. I’m sure it’s tough to do, but you have to do it for the sake of your business, otherwise you’ll get buried in work you don’t want, and when something good comes along you’ll either have to pass on it or you’ll kill yourself trying to get it done.

Pick your battles. Easy to say, hard to practice.

Categories
Business

RxCalc 1.1

RxCalc 1.1Apple Core Labs Blog: “When we released RxCalc 1.0 we felt the need to focus most of our effort on making sure our math was correct. We felt if the standard user interface was good enough for Apple, it was good enough for us. Since that time we’ve collected a bit of feedback, some great, some not so great, and a couple of really horrible comments that made us cringe”

It felt good to finally get that release out the door, and to celebrate we started working on the next release. We’ve made some great progress.

If you have a request please feel free to drop me a line, rob@applecorelabs.com or rob.fahrni@gmail.com, I’d love to hear what you have to say. You can also get it touch with us via one of our contact addresses.

Categories
Business

Ellison critical of blogs

Information Week: ‘Praising Sun’s engineering prowess while damning the company’s leadership, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said Sun’s engineers were given direction that “was so astonishingly bad that even they couldn’t succeed.” Of former Sun CEO and ardent blogger Jonathan Schwartz, Ellison adds, “Lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of sales.”‘

I’m not sure it was the blogging that was a problem, rather lack of sales, Sun was giving stuff away. With that in mind I say “DUH” to the collapse of the company.

Categories
Business Development Life

NY: Help Wanted, Coders

Matt Mireles: “New York City has a shortage of entrepreneurially minded technical talent. It’s not that there’s not enough engineers. Hardly. Columbia, NYU and the rest of the eastern seaboard spits out engineers in spades each year. But somehow those aren’t funneled into, aware of or interested in the NYC startups, at least at the early stage. Local engineers, it seems, want to be employees, not co-founders.”

I’d imagine a lot of kids just out of school would like to learn a bit about the business before they venture out on their own. Maybe they’re interested in working for one of the biggies; Apple, Microsoft, Google, or maybe they’d like to work for one of New York’s own exciting startups like Tumblr, those guys are kicking some major butt at the moment.

It is interesting to see this happening in New York City.

Categories
Business Microsoft

The end of Microsoft?

CNNMoney.com: “We are fully entrenched in the world of Cloud 2. Smart phones that run apps have replaced PCs. We are mobile. We touch, not click. We are social, not siloed. Our location is known, not anonymous. We know more about what our friends are doing than our own employees, and sometimes our own families. Facebook, Apple, and a new generation of technologies are defining our daily experiences. The old model looks older every day as it tries to hold on in a last gasp of updates based on stability instead of innovation.” – Never count Microsoft out, to do that would be a huge mistake. They still have money, lots of money. Sure, they’re down, remember that’s when animals are the most dangerous, when they’re down and hurt. They’ll learn from Apple and Google and Facebook, or they’ll eventually be a line item in a history book, but isn’t that an inevitable fate of all companies? The world continues to change around us at a frightening pace. Does anyone remember when MySpace was the second coming? Yeah, me neither. Look at some of Apple’s recent moves. No more Apple Developer Awards for desktop developers. That move leaves you going “Hmmmmmm, wonder what that means?” Apple knows where they’re headed, the future, and they’re helping to define it. They’re becoming the new Goliath while Microsoft slips into the background. Question is, who will dethrone Apple? Yes, I believe it’ll happen, just as it did with Microsoft and IBM before them. Of course I’m not betting against them, I’ve become an Apple Fanboy, but they’ll eventually make a mistake like Microsoft did before them, and IBM did before Microsoft. I only wish I could figure out who’s going to take their place?

Categories
Business Life

Keep out of Facebook’s business

AHHHHHH!CNN: “Washington (CNN) — Four Democratic senators called on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday to reconsider the recent changes in its privacy settings and asked the Federal Trade Commission to streamline guidelines regarding privacy on all social networks.” – Oy. That’s the first word that popped into my head. Why does the government need to get involved with this? If you don’t like Facebook’s terms and conditions, or feel you don’t understand their privacy policy, or that it’s too liberal with your data, here’s an idea.

DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT.

Now Senators don’t have to feel the need to get involved.

Problem solved.

You’re welcome.

Categories
Apple Business iPad Mobile

Being first isn’t always good

Green Apple LogoScobleizer: “It’s sad that Bill Gates tried to get Microsoft to deliver the Tablet PC vision but Microsoft mostly failed where Apple has largely succeeded. Some because the market is more ready for a Tablet PC today (we have wifi in a lot of places now, and 3G coverage is getting there). Some because technology has evolved (battery life is dramatically better than back then and lighter too). Some because prices have come down.” – Think about Apple for a minute, their successes, their failures. The iPod, Sony was in this space long before Apple. Apple perfected it, brought us integration with the desktop, and great online store integration. The iPhone, there were many, many, other cell phone companies. Apple perfected the smart phone, brought us integration with the desktop, a great online store, and the web anywhere, at any time, the way we wanted it, and gave developers a way to make money and not have to worry about distribution. Now, we have the iPad, Apple has once again perfected, or at least have a great start to perfecting it. Apple brought us great integration with the desktop, a great online store, web anywhere, books anywhere, movies anywhere, and gave developers a great way to make money and not have to worry about application distribution.

See a pattern here? Apple may not be first, but they definitely know how to perfect the user experience.