Tag: Google

Categories
Life

Aging

Hello, Dr. Jones.Garret P. Vreeland: “Ageism is starting to raise its ugly head – people are judging based on wrinkles and hair color (none) now. That totally sucks. Yet my photography skills are burgeoning, and I’m up to my eyeballs in video and video editing again (yay, FCPX!). Got some good web contracts in as well. Yet I’m not comfortable yet. Goal one for my 57th year – achieve satisfaction.”

Then there’s this from a developer I have a lot of respect for.

A couple years back I went through an interview with a company I’d still love to work for. I didn’t get the gig and to this day I still don’t know why. It’s totally possible I did something completely wrong during my interviews but in the end I was told “You’re a good developer and a great communicator, but you’re not a good fit.” I was crushed. At the time I was in a bad place mentally and physically. A lot going on in life at that point in time. I didn’t handle the rejection well. That is my fault of course, but the only reason I could find that fit was I was too old for their group. Sour grapes I suppose.

I have a feeling getting a gig with Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple will come down to your ability to do the work. I’ve interviewed with Microsoft and worked for them. I’ve interviewed with Apple and didn’t get through the interview. I know for a fact that Google interviews are notoriously difficult to get through.

The best companies hire the best people. I have no doubt James Thomson could work for any of these companies. He’d probably have to prepare for the interview process, but he could do it.

Categories
Apple Cloud

Apple’s Cloud Infrastructure

Mac360: “In recent years Apple has used Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure and Amazons’s Web Services, as well as it’s own data centers, as a mashup melange which together makes up iCloud and other cloud services. That’s right. Apple’s iCloud and cloud services come from Microsoft and Amazon. And soon Google’s Cloud.”

I find this fascinating. You’d think Apple would have their own services, hosted on their own hardware, in their own facilities. Read the article and, like me, you’ll discover they just didn’t have the bandwidth to standup a facility the size of Azure or AWS or Google just to serve their customers. Wow, that is amazing growth.

I would really love to see a report outlining all the technologies Apple uses to serve iCloud customers. Everything from service providers to hardware to software stacks and how massive each of those really is. It has to be mind boggling. Makes me wonder if any one person at Apple knows the answer for all the services, top to bottom?

Categories
Business Development

The Sparrow Acquisition Is A Good Thing

A wonderful boquet of flowers.Selligy Weblog: “This is not a good trend for Apple. Apple is depending on apps like Sparrow to make the iOS platform shine. Excellent apps like Sparrow cost a lot of money to build and maintain. Apple should be working hard to ensure independent app developers can earn even more than top salaries at Google, or they will all be poached away.”

Why should, or would, Apple care about keeping developers around? If someone walked up to me with a big pile of cash and wanted to acquire my popular, or unpopular app, and I felt it was a good thing, I’d do it in a heartbeat. So would a lot of people. This is the American Free Market at its best. A company puts together a group of talented people, creates a product people love, and gets the attention of a bigger company. That bigger company comes along and gobbles up the talent. Sure, as a user of Sparrow you may be a bit bummed, but it won’t last for long. As a little guy just getting started this is an opportunity. It means if I wanted to, I could pick up where Sparrow left off and create a great email client that looks and acts just like it. Filling that hole. Heck, maybe I’ll do something MUCH better. It will happen.

I have a feeling there is a company, or individual, out there today, slinging code in hopes to bring a new Sparrow-like client to life.

That’s pretty exciting.

Categories
Business

Google Acquires Sparrow

“While we’ll be working on new things at Google, we will continue to make Sparrow available and provide support for our users.” – Sparrow

It sounds like Google bought a development team. Hopefully this leads to great new iOS and Android GMail clients.

Here’s hoping.

UPDATE: Oh, wow. From the Sparrow App Store page.

“As the team works on new projects, there will be no new features released for the Sparrow apps, other than minor maintenance and bug fixes.”

Do you think that will kill sales?

UPDATE 2: Matthew Panzarino, of The Next Web, has the best coverage. It includes a statement from Google that pretty much says they bought a development team to work on GMail.

Categories
Social

Google+, losing to Facebook

AHHHHHH!Robert Scoble (on Google+, not his weblog, like it should be): “So, why do I keep posting on Google+ and not on my blog? Well, I like the competition between Google+, Twitter, and Facebook.”

I skip 99.999% of Robert’s posts these days, because he uses Google+. It’s a philosophical thing. This content should be posted to his weblog.

Anyway, this is one of those rare occasions when I actually clicked on the link. I think it’s a great piece. He points out some glaring holes in Google+.

Oh, and Robert, start using your weblog again. Why give your content to Google? It just doesn’t make sense.

Categories
Business

Twitter, Pot, Kettle

Dave Winer: “It’s not news, and certainly not surprising. And it’s not surprising either that Twitter is upset, but what is surprising is the sheer chutzpah of Twitter complaining about Google shutting them out after Twitter unilaterally reversed course and put most of their developer community out of business when they announced they wanted to completely own the Twitter client business.”

It seems like we’re headed for a bunch of walled gardens. Facebook is already a walled garden and moves like this seem to indicate these guys are desperate for eyeballs. Captive eyeballs. Let’s just keep making the Internet more and more proprietary! Yay!

Oh, don’t worry, SOPA will be the real nail in the coffin of the Internet.

Categories
Tablet

Amazon and Android sittin’ in a tree…

TechCrunch: “It’s called simply the “Amazon Kindle”. But it’s not like any Kindle you’ve seen before. It displays content in full color. It has a 7-inch capacitive touch screen. And it runs Android.”

I’m pretty sure Amazon is pulling a fast one on Google. If they do what I suspect they’re doing they could take over the top spot in the Android OS space, ahead of Google. Yes, I think they could do it. They have their own Android store, they have the selling power of the Amazon and Kindle name. If they focus on creating a great user interface and experience on top of the Android OS why can’t they be the leader? Android is dying for someone to create an iOS, or even WebOS, experience.

Why not Amazon?

Categories
Business

Not bad for a bunch of kids

The Tribune: “Morse and Google would not confirm a purchase price, but according to website techcrunch.com, two unnamed sources pegged the acquisition price between a low seven figures and $10 million.”

Two founders, six total team members, just graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and now you’ve sold your company for a reported $10 million dollars to Google. What are you going to do next?

Bravo, hats off, congratulations, etc, etc. This is pretty unbelievable awesome news.

The only downside is we lose a startup to Google. Cal Poly has produced more great talent that’s now moving up the state to Mountain View to join “The Google.” More brain drain.

Categories
Microsoft Mobile

Microsoft won bidding war

Microsoft Cash Cow.Computer World: “IDG News Service – Nokia on Sunday hinted that Microsoft essentially won a bidding war against Google to supply software to the world’s largest handset maker and that the software giant agreed to pay “billions” of dollars for the privilege.”

That explains a lot.

I was preparing to write a post based on some tweets by Robert Scoble. I thought Nokia had kind of lost their minds based on those tweets. They definitely have the talent to make Android do what they want, it would take time to do it, but they could do it. If Microsoft is supplying them custom builds of Windows Phone that will take time as well.

Microsoft has essentially bought a hardware company to help push Windows Phone 7. Not bad, not bad at all. If this works, and Nokia can patch up the disaster this deal caused internally, it could help push Windows Phone into competition with the iPhone and Android.

It could happen.

Categories
Business Life

Oracle vs. Google

RoughlyDrafted Magazine: “Oracle’s purchase of Sun was likely done in part to get the Java intellectual property that could be used by Oracle to stab Google in the face. And yes, Oracle isn’t just after money, it’s after blood. In its complaint, Oracle does’t just demand monetary infringement damages, it’s seeking to have any code that is found to infringe upon Oracle’s copyrights “impounded and destroyed.””

If Oracle wins what does this mean for Android?

This will be fun to watch from the cheap seats.