AI, Mobile, and Eveything Around the Cloud

Apple should come out with their own magazine for the iPad that would serve as a model for other media publishers to follow. Another alternative is for Apple to work closely with a couple of major magazines that can serve as showcases on how to transform print into the digital age. Nexus One, Google's model smartphone, was a brilliant move even though it did not sell in the numbers expected but it did act as a showcase device for other device makers to follow and gave a kick in the butt for those in the Android market. Without it, the Android market may not be where it is at today. It is why Google continue this with Nexus S. It's a model that Apple can follow. Steve Jobs should lead a team that can put together and publish an Apple-backed magazine. I don't know what subject it could be about. Anything really. But it will allow Apple to lead the way and show how to leverage technology and tools such as social media that are readily available for publishing a dig...

I don't know where this came from but I found it absolutely ridiculous when I heard it. And if I had to guess who the culprit is, I'd have to say it came from an idiot Wall Street analyst. So, essentially, there is talk about Verizon would announce the availability of a CDMA iPhone at CES beginning next week. Right. Verizon Wireless will announce to the world that Apple will make available the iPhone on its network. This is the same Apple that left Macworld a couple of years ago and said that it doesn't want to be a part of any trade shows that force it to make announcements when it was not ready. The same Apple who's Steve Jobs said that by making announcements so close after the Holidays, its engineers were not able to spend time with their families. So, bottom-line is this: Apple makes its own product announcements. Apple does not give up control to someone else to market their products and risk being screwed up or misrepresented to the consumers. When...

I know that Apple has made it easy to design, code, and publish apps for the iOS devices.  Three hundred thousand apps and likely five hundred thousand apps by the middle of 2011 is a testament to how Apple can really shine when it wants to. However, outside of iTunes and the App Store, Apple's effort into other media has been met with mediocre success as with TV and movies.  And it has so far floundered with ebooks.  What should Apple do? How about an iBookstore SDK?

I do own a couple of shares of Apple that I did not sell from way back when things were still bad. As a believer, albeit naïve at the time, I thought things would turn around. The naïve part would have come true had Steve Jobs not entered the halls of Apple Proper and took things over and shook the music, PC, and, now, the mobile markets. I was watching a CNBC video today where two analysts, pretty much clueless about tech and what we mobile warriors are about, took both sides of the Apple stock. One thinks it’ll go up while the other thinks things about to come to a head for Apple’s stock price. Where do I stand?

I've been using the iSpot for about three weeks now with the iPod Touch.  My goal is to determine whether the combination of these two devices, iSpot providing wireless Internet and the iPod Touch acting as a communication gateway, can effectively replace the more expensive iPhone 4 with its $70 and up monthly plan or other smartphones with similarly priced monthly fee. In my last update, things more or less worked out as I had hoped.  More than less.  To quickly summarize, I hooked up my Google Voice number to my Whistlephone number.  Whenever I dial out, I use the Google Voice app which then connects to my Whistlephone app.  The iPod touch will notify me of an incoming call, I'd answer it, and the call to whomever goes through. When someone tries to call me on the Google Voice number, the call gets forwarded to Whistlephone (Whistlephone offers free domestic calls in the US).  Great and it's free. And while it was not intended to be so, this past Christma...

As it happened, I ended up babysitting on this fine rainy weekend in Southern California. And one of the things that I thought my brother and his wife had really ruined for my god-son is that they allow him to watch a lot of TV. Well, no more. In the past, we would spend all day watching TV. There was just no way to entice him to do anything else. Even when we are playing, he wanted the TV on. It's the same for the baby (14 months old). With the iPad, the TV was not on until my brother's wife turned it on because she wanted to watch. Still, my nephew paid no heed to it. He was content with drawing and playing matching games on this magical device. Still, I have to say that the iPad is no substitute for human interaction. I forced him to sit through a couple of physical books and played with his toys. But in a short time, he has been able to learn and trace some letters. So, I am not a TV guy for kids and the proliferation of iPads and tablets will really ...

Just for fun, I like to go to the Apple's online store and put together various Mac configurations.  From Macbook Air all the way to the 17" Macbook Pro, it allows me to see just how much a decked-out mobile Mac computer will cost.  Then wisely, I close the browser. On a couple of occasions, I even put it on my shopping cart.  Just to feel what it's like. Obviously if I wanted to, my credit doesn't have the heft to carry such a balance anyway.   But I was struck by the fact that there still isn't a quad-core CPU option for any of the MBP while PC makers happily sell them to users.  Perhaps that is why I never went ahead and ordered a MBP, 15" or 17", because for the same amount of money, I could have gotten a 27" iMac with quad-core support that'll let me fly when I work on my videos. So yesterday, I learned that Intel's Sandy Bridge mobile chips will only come out with quad-cores at first had me really excited.  Perhaps, we'll see 2011 a...