AI, Mobile, and Eveything Around the Cloud

If I own a business, and it would not matter any kind, that caters to services or interaction with customers on a daily basis, I would make it my mission to see to it that I cater the mobile warriors. It'll serve to make my life (and employees's lives), customers'' lives, and the services better over all. I started thinking about this as I sat here at a local car wash. Free WiFi is great. However, I think they can take the next step and over other mobile incentives. Being able to use Google Wallet would go a long way to help mobile payments and cut down on the need for a full service cashier. Use a service like Square also makes sense. Cut down on paperwork and offer receipts to be emailed or sent to a dedicated app for the business. Offer added services or incentives through something like iPhone's Passbook. All of these mobile options, and there are plenty over ways to use mobile to expand a business and outreach, could be a good different...

Those sickly colors of the iPhone 5C or whatever Apple's gonna call them are just downright ugly.  And this post stem from an online discussion with a friends in Asia.  And I think we need to have this discussion on a wider scale. Here and now.  The white is okay.  But the red, green, and blue (I've seen a  yellow one) just are doing it for me. They just make me wanna puke. And seriously, they are just not the colors that we are accustomed to seeing from Apple.  And if they are indeed the colors Apple has picked for the 5C, boy, Apple missed Steve Jobs more than I expected. Now, there's a part of me that hopes those colors are just fake leaks from pranksters looking for attention or even Apple themselves trying to show off its competitors and the media.  Imagine Tim Cook and company trying to get Samsung to follow them. And we have seem some of these colors from Nokia and I can tell you after seeing those in person, they are just not doing i...

This is only a preliminary thought on the news that Steve Balmer will be stepping down as CEO of Microsoft. He screwed up Surface bad and the board wants him gone.  He had number opportunities to compete against the iPhone and Android and he failed to deliver.  With Windows and the PC market in a critical condition and at an inflection point, Windows 8 was worse than Vista ever was.  And Windows Phone is gaining shares but only because Nokia is selling devices at a loss or break-even. I'm excited that Microsoft might bring in someone who will rejuvenate the company and put Apple and Google on notice.  A product guy who gets it.  Not another sales guy like Balmer.   However, I also wonder if it's too late for Microsoft.  Think Palm.  Dell.  HP.  And now more recently, think Blackberry.  Turning a company around isn't easy.  Having said that, Steve Jobs did.  When he took over at Apple, it was weeks from going bankrup...

Have you had a game where you woke up in the morning, and you're not sure if it's going to be a good day or not? I have one of those mornings today. I woke up at 5 AM. As my custom, I reach for my Nexus, and I opened up my RSS feed reader. It's a Friday. Nothing happens on Friday. Are so I thought. Still only 5 AM. I was greeted with two headlines that I thought was a joke. The first one was that Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, will be resigning within 12 months. I mumbled to myself, "Nah, this is wrong. He's never going to go. Microsoft is life". However, it's got to be true. That's because I checked another source. Like Steve Ballmer or not, him leaving Microsoft is a good thing for us mobile warriors. The second headline, that's the one that had me thinking my Friday might be not a good one. The next Batman is none other than the man who ruined Daredevil and Tom Clancy's iconic American spymaster, Jack Ryan. Jack Ryan, who was played masterful...

I wonder if Apple could get away with charging more for the new gold hue, champagne, that will be joining the white and black for the new iPhone, iPhone 5S or 6 depending on who you talk to.   I'm guess specs and storage for specs and storage, Apple probably would get chastised for trying to cater and gouge users just because it can by pricing the gold iPhone higher.   However, there is one way Apple can avoid charging more for the gold version.  What it can do is offer the gold version at 32 and 64 GB - forcing the affluent or those who might want to appear rich to pay $100 or $200 more.  They would still get something out of it - bigger storage whether they need it or not.   And here's the thing, an extra 16 GB isn't going to cost Apple much and most of the $100 extra are just pure profit anyway.     And trust me, the rich will have no problem paying for it.  My guess is that most of them already shell out for the 32GB or more a...

Source: Business Insider Via Dave the Mobile Sage. I'll be honest with you.  I'll willing to shell out the full retail price for an iPhone only because I refuse to give carriers the satisfaction of overcharging me and then I take the phone and use the cheapest plan I can find.  And luckily, I save all year or two for one. Now, living in Southern California, I see a lot of rich folks.  But the new Chinese immigrants are especially affluent.  So, when I read how they're willing to shell out nearly $500 for a new iPhone Color, I was not at all surprised. In fact, there are many who speculated that a new color, champagne, for the iPhone 5S or iPhone 5 could be aimed squarely at the rich in Shanghai and other major cities that affluent lives. While the new iPhone Color could be a boom for Apple, I still don't think it'll be enough to allow Apple to gain significant sales there only because the gap between those who can afford to pay $500 for a phone is so wide ...

ZDNet has hits and misses with their posts, particularly about Apple.  In this post , I generally consider it a good post because, while I don't agree with most of it, it's a good analysis of why Apple would release a high end iPhone as well as a mid-range one with different colors. It's worth a read to get at what Apple is planning. For the most part, Apple doesn't play defense.  It play offense whether it releases a new revolutionary product and moves into a new market, improves on existing ones, or when it allow one of its products to cannibalize another as the iPad is doing to Macs - just as long as it is taking up PC share as well. Even with the iTunes ecosystem, Apple continues to add new contents while it works on improving its hobby, the Apple TV. The thing is you cannot take each product unto itself and focus on it.  You have to sit back and see the various pieces within Apple's mobile strategy and how to work to expand Apple's size of the mark...

Apparently, Steve Jobs' attitude towards schools and the rigidity of the educational systems has not only be captured in history but now also in practice.  O4NT, or Onderwijs voor een nieuwe tijd  (Education for a new era), is looking to put an iPad into the hands of a young student and provide them with a virtual school that allows them the flexibility to new skills - communication, collaboration, problem solving and creativity, and, of course, school subjects as well. This is their Website - I'll let you click through to see more of what they offer.  Recommended. Just recently, the Los Angeles Unified School District, signed a deal, the biggest of its kind, to provide its students with iPads.  And I just hope that someone at LAUSD is watching this as well.  The concept that I love about O4NT is that with the iPad, it's possible to have school all year round as they'll likely be carried around by the students. Even during summer months when students g...

Steve Jobs once said that Apple made the icons in OS X look so good that you want to lick them.  He wasn't joking.  Okay, he was but you totally get what he means if you've been in Apple's sphere of influence for any number of years.  The thing is, Apple paid great amount of attention to designs of its hardware and software that is unmatched by anyone else in the industry. I'm sure there are a few who wanted to lick their colorful iMacs and iPods.  Now, it looks like Apple wants you to lick the next iPhone as well.  There is a model that Apple will introduce on September 10th that will sport a variety of colors, maybe around five, no one know for sure how many and which colors. The point is, these colorful iPhones will be Apple's gateway drug into its ecosystem.  That's not all.  Apple will price them low enough to entice some mid-market users but not so low that it dilutes the iPhone brand.  And that's in 2013. In 2014, Apple will li...

Source:   Forbes  (thanks to Dave the Mobile Sage for the Link) Yeah,  1984, by George Orwell , is probably going to happen.  The issue is whether we remain a happy society somehow or one that falls into darkness like in the book or lives behind the Iron Curtain during the dark days of the Cold War.  Either way, we are controlled - every aspect of our lives, self-censorship, probably under constant threat to give powerful gov groups more and more power, etc. Well, we're not quite there yet but given the lack of privacy these days because of government data collection, such as  PRISM operated by the NSA , it's no surprise that the government, not the US as I'm sure other powers are moving closer towards this, is trying to make it easier to collect more information about us and maintain massive databases from which powerful computers can mine information and connections about us that we might not even know. The United States Postal Services has a contra...

When independent coffee shops were fighting a losing battle against Starbucks and other coffee chains, they did what they could to drive in business and foot traffic.  Wi-Fi was a powerful lure - free Wi-Fi that is.  It hooked me into some coffee shops that I would otherwise not frequent too frequently.  However, some now are beginning to change their attitudes towards mobile warriors and their laptop carrying ways. The reason is simply.  The experience that Starbucks created to get people to use their stores as a hangout place or mobile office has now permeated through society and has permanently been etched our social psyche. As a patron, I'm a bit ticked off about this but I also understand the business aspect of this.  And this is the subject of this NBC post .  One thing mentioned in the post is the wasted space where one guy has a laptop on a small table while the other seat is open but no one will sit there because who wants to sit with a stra...

Didn't realize this when I downloaded my copy last night but apparently, my copy of the latest Star Trek movie, Into Darkness, was released on iTunes even before it went on sales as a DVD copy. Blu-Ray even. Weeks before release on physical media. This was both a surprise and a sign of things to come. And it makes sense the more I've had time to think about it. Digital distribution is the future whether retailers and consumers like it or not. In fact, I have not bought any movies on DVDs for years now. More than that, we may also see a realignment of the whole movie making and viewing experience as companies, especially Apple, continue to push the bounds of the whole viewing experience. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Here's a good post regarding Star Trek and what the likelihood of Star Trek returning to the small screen is (what post about Star Trek isn't good?). Via  Huffington Pos t and  Blastr , Michael Dorn, aka Worf, talked about his Captain Worf idea and how it'll fit into the Star Trek reboot from J.J. Abrams. Dorn had been working and pitching his Star Trek idea to anyone who will listen. And apparently, because of the star power of Abrams, folks are afraid any Trek show could step on his toes.  Now with the second movie out of the way, perhaps, there is an opening for Dorn. However, as interesting as a series about Worf captaining a Bird of Prey or Starfleet vessel, I don't know how much Klingon honor and traditions viewers are willing to take.  Throughout Worf's development on  The Next Generation  and  DS-9 , I have seen him grow as an individual who walked a delicate line between the blood lust of his people, trying to stay true to honor, and uphol...

Source:   Huffington Post . My first wrist pedometer/calories counter/sleep band was the Jawbone Up. The first generation one and it gave folks trouble.  Which is why I switched to the Nike Fuelband as a backup. But even the Fuelband (already with one exchange) is dying (battery).  So I'll soon be in the market for something new. So, as I was googling and checking out the Fitbit, I came across this.  Apparently, Bashar Assad's wife uses Up.  So, I don't know what Jawbone thinks about this or if they even know. The thing is, whatever reason the wife of a despot who brutalizes, murders, and rapes his own people and armed terrorists would choose Up, the thing is it is a very good device now that the kinks from the first generation has been worked out. I'm looking hard a the Fitbit because it means stairs but I also like the ruggedness of the Fuelband.  And unlike the Fitbit, I won't lose the Fuelband or Up because they're constantly on my wrist. ...

I generally only install apps from big developers or ones that have a level of trust within the community of mobile warriors regardless of whether they're on iOS or Android.  However, I do have to admit that I'm more adventurous on my iPad and iPad than on my Android devices like my Nexus 7.   In general, all those stories of Android's malwares, security holes that Google isn't willing to plug or won't get to, and apps that just wanna steal my contact lists has me a bit wary.  Very wary in fact. However, this story about how researchers at Georgia Tech found a way to sneak in malware into Apple's walled garden was delicious and eye-opening.  However, it was not totally unexpected because anyone can climb over a wall.  It's just whether you've got a tall enough ladder or the right tools to dig underneath it. And it's good to see Apple bruised a bit on this.  Because of the walled-garden mentality, good or bad or open or close, it can give ...

I'm not entirely 100% up and up on how I feel about saving my data in the cloud with Apple, Google, or anyone else.  Least of all Google since we all know they look through them, not for any real malicious reasons, to sell ads to us. But the main reason is that we know they're sharing our data with the US government and, probably, others as well.  And you can forget about Facebook.  They're probably the worst in my opinion. Which is why I think there is room for the need to save data to the Mac and on the Mac, which is better for some who are more concerned with privacy than convenience. Macworld here has a tip on just how to do that.  However, it's not something that we are used to with Windows or the older OS X system which allows us greater choices and freedom.  For the average Mac warrior, Apple's emphasis on iCloud isn't going to be an issue. As time rolls on, iCloud will only get more robust and features, both good things.  For those of us ol...