AI, Mobile, and Eveything Around the Cloud

I'm always been a bit jealous of the camera capability of the high-end Lumia devices running Windows Phone from Nokia.  I want those features.  I mean the camera on the 1020 is just crazy.  Sure, the iPhone 5S camera rocks but there are still new tricks the next iPhone can pick up. It's why Apple hired away from Nokia its top camera expert, Ari Partinen.  With Nokia having sold its mobile division to Microsoft, it was a perfect tiemf or Mr. Partinen to move to sunny California.  And he's exactly the type of new blood that Apple can use.  Imagine what he can bring.  Just looking at Nokia's Lumia 1020 page, I want it all.  Lossless zoom.  Better pics in poorly lit environments.  Better flash.  Truer colors.  Of course, he'll have to really be creative and innovate in ways that he was not familiar with or expected to at Nokia.  There is the design element that the new Apple hire will have to deal with.  He won't have the...

This might not be the best analogy but I'm beginning to see Beats as Apple's Instagram.  Bear with me and maybe I'll manage to muddle my way through this.  This is because I'm not entirely convinced about why Apple would want to buy Beats.  In fact, I'd bet come next week, there will be no announcement regarding Financial Time's breaking rumor about Apple plucking down $3.2 billion for Beats, maker of headsets and floundering streaming music service. So, the only thing I can think of is that Apple is looking at Beats for the streaming music service to supplement its iTunes buy/download music store as interests in streaming music has increased while downloads have decreased in the last couple of years.  Most of Apple's iTunes service growth comes from app sales.  And just like Facebook who spent $1 billion for Instagram (which as far as I know is still not making money), Apple is buying Beats to make sure it has a foot in the streaming music service.  Why no...

Source: Arstechnica . The FCC abandoning net neutrality (essentially a U-turn from its previous position has many big and small companies protesting the move.  It's good for broadband dumb pipe operators like Comcast (currently trying to buy Time Warner Cable to gobble up more bandwidth) and Verizon but not for end-users. So, while most companies like Google and Netflix are content with sending letters and lobbyists, one ISP decided to act.  So, it's taken FCC's IP addresses and throttle all connections down to dial-up speed of 28kbps.  I think that is kinda cruel considering 56K should be enough but I'm a gentle person at the end of the day. The ISP, Neocities, And they're quite funny about it too. They're giving the FCC a special "Ferengi plan" (obviously Star Trek fans there):  pay the $1000 a year (they'll accept most payments including digital currencies but not Latinum) and Netcities will remove the throttle. I think that's brilliant.  Ma...