Teknovis

A belated merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year! I had a great one, and hence I have not been posting here recently!

Anyway, I have previously written here about my irrational cravings for a tablet device. However, I really am not an Apple fan, so I do not see myself ever owning an iPad!

Today I think that I might have found the perfect table for me! It is the Motorola Xoom!

Motorola Xoom

For more mouthwatering details see the marketing material or the technical details.

I am really looking forward to seeing one of these!

Tags: Apple, Motorola

I saw some cool examples of iPad art during the week:

• Apple iPad art: portraits created by David Kassan using the Brushes app on the touchscreen device
• Apple iPad art: paintings created using Brushes, ArtStudio and Sketchbook Pro apps
• Kyle Lambert’s Apple iPad portraits of celebrities: step by step

The first is my favourite!

Tags: Apple

Ouch – Security gaffe exposes addresses of elite iPaders.

The full list of email addresses is floating around on the Internet :o

Tags: Apple, AT&T

I came across an interesting article on company names during the week – List of company name etymologies.

I was familiar with the reasoning behind a lot of the listed companies, but some really surprised me such as Adobe and Apple!

Tags: Adobe, Apple

Apple have removed the controversial Baby Shaker application from the application store! I guess that it is not surprising, since Apple try not to endorse any applications that are objectionable!

To read more about this see ‘Baby Shaker’ game pulled from Apple’s iPhone App Store. There is also a great video demonstration!

Tags: Apple

Here is an old news item (August 2008) that I came across today. Actually, it was emailed to me by somebody as an example of innovation!

The main function of the I am Rich application is to display a red jewel on the user’s screen. However, it cost $999.99! Yes, really! Apparently this is the maximum price allowed. So I guess that the application’s main purpose is to act as a wealth symbol!

For more information about this application, and a screenshot, see The First $1000 iPhone Application and Apple removes $1,000 featureless iPhone application. It is free to view the red jewel using your Internet browser :D

I am not really clear why Apple removed this application from the store. If it was unhappy with the price, and the fact that people were accidentally buying it, surely it should reduce the maximum price allowed for applications.

I presume that this application never made it back to the market place again, but I wonder if the people who bought it still receive support and upgrades :)

Furthermore, is there anything to prevent somebody stealing one of the screenshots and creating their own version of this application? This could even start a price war ;)

Tags: Apple, I am Rich

I am a big supporter of standards for technology, and I was reading some specifications from one of the many standards organisations today. I suspect, perhaps incorrectly, that there are many Irish companies involved in international standards organisations. I know that standards participation by Irish companies is something that Enterprise Ireland encourages.

Therefore, I decided to write a series of articles listing the Irish companies that are involved in international standards organisations that relate to information communication technologies. I will also include non-Irish companies that have technical operations in Ireland. (It would be nice if I could replicate this for the entire EU, but I do not have the time for that at the moment.)

I am going to start this series by looking at the W3C, because it is probably the prominent standards organisation in relation to the Internet. I am basing these lists on the online membership list.

The Irish companies that are currently members are:

• Afilias
• ChangingWorlds (but see Amdocs to Acquire ChangingWorlds)
• Cibenix
• DERI (this is a Science Foundation Ireland funded research group that I should have included in Science Foundation Ireland Funded Research Groups)
• IONA
• MobileAware
• mTLD Top Level Domain (also known as dotMobi. I think that it might just use Ireland as an address for tax purposes)
• TSSG (This is a research group. It appears to be responsible for start-up companies that are also involved in the W3C such as Nubiq)
• Voxpilot

The non-Irish companies that have technical operations in Ireland that are currently members are:

• Adobe
• Alcatel-Lucent
• AOL
• Apple
• Avaya
• Betfair
• Cisco
• EDS
• EMC Corporation
• Ericsson
• Google
• HP
• Hutchison 3G (also known as Three)
• IBM
• Intel
• Microsoft
• Motorola
• Nortel
• Oracle
• SAP
• Siemens
• Sun
• Vodafone

The Irish companies that appear to be members based on their own web pages even though they are not listed by the W3C:

• Segala

That took me longer than I expected!

Tags: Adobe, Afilias, Alcatel-Lucent, AOL, Apple, Avaya, Betfair, ChangingWorlds, Cibenix, Cisco, DERI, dotMobi, EDS, EMC Corporation, Enterprise Ireland, Ericsson, Google, HP, IBM, Intel, IONA, Ireland, Microsoft, MobileAware, Motorola, Nortel, Nubiq, Oracle, SAP, Science Foundation Ireland, Segala, Siemens, Sun, Three, TSSG, Vodafone, Voxpilot, W3C

I did lots of reading during the Christmas holidays, so I will probably be writing about it here for a while!

During the weekend I read a magazine article about Steve Jobs, who is the CEO of Apple. Actually there were several articles about him in the magazine, and he wilfully collaborated with some of the authors, and refused to comment on the other articles about him.

The most surprising insight that I got from the article was that it does not seem like a lot of fun to work at the top levels in Apple, and this is mostly due to Steve Job’s personality. It seems that most people describe him negatively rather than positively! He really seems to have a strange relationship with his staff. One former Apple executive summarised him by saying

Democracies don’t make great products. You need a competent tyrant.

All of this really amazed me, since I consider that Apple is one of the most creative and innovate large technology companies.

Another interesting thing that I learned was that Steve Jobs was involved in Pixar. He bought it in 1986 for $10 million, and sold it in 2006 while remaining the largest shareholder. His shareholding is worth approximately $4.6 billion. Nice!

Tags: Apple, Pixar