Financial Times has probably the most in-depth Steve Ballmer interview in a while for Bill Gates’ retirement party. A lot of it is spent on his obsession with search. But there are some savory sprinkles in the mix. Like, unless the board tosses him, we’ve got nine more years of shouty, sweaty Photoshops to look forward to.
I’m kind of worried that he states not once, but twice, that Microsoft’s key trait is persistence: “I’d call it our long term approach, which is a combination of taking on bold challenges, being patient, being persistent, being relentless.” But, hypothetically, what if you’re persistently getting it wrong?
I would like to see agility more than persistence. Of course massive companies can be persistent—inertia can be a kind of persistence. He also scrubs on Google for doing basically one thing, and just doing it really well:
“I mean, they’ve a gestalt, but gestalt is gestalt. Let’s speak about the reality. The reality is one product makes 98 percent of all of their money, search. Oh, they have two products, AdWords and AdSense. They have two products, both search-based, that make all of their money, and it hasn’t changed a lot in five years.”
Of course, Google does other stuff, but it’s an interesting philosophical question: Is it superior to do a zillion different things—a couple of them fairly well, some good, and a lot not so fantastic—or to do just a few really great things? [Financial Times, Thanks Jimmy]
It is their music, after all. They’ve historically been pretty slow to take advantage of new avenues of distributing their music, probably because the world is already mostly saturated with it. But Beatles reps were in speaks with both MTV Games and Activision, so you could be singing selections from their catalog in Guitar Hero […]
It is their music, after all. They’ve historically been pretty slow to take advantage of new avenues of distributing their music, probably because the world is already mostly saturated with it. But Beatles reps were in speaks with both MTV Games and Activision, so you could be singing selections from their catalog in Guitar Hero or Rock Band some time soon.
The thing is, it first has to be approved by the Apple Corps, made up of Paul, Ringo, Yoko Ono, and Olivia Harrison, and that’ll be a tough sell. I would imagine they’d be skeptical of the artistic worth of a game where their songs can be played any which way and modified far beyond their original say. Boy, if “I Feel Fine” was in the song list of one of these games, I might actually have to start playing. The drum parts should be pretty simple (take that, Ringo).
There are moments in which, for whatever reason, being it a scientific discovery, a voyage into the unknown, or somebody’s excessive alcohol intake, humanity advances one step forward into its destiny, a final say of clarity and peace that will take us all to the stars. This moment complies with the three reasons. Ah, you Ms. Spinning Blonde in Jeans you. We love you.
It seems a video of the Ocean 2 was up last night, but that’s clearly not the case now since we have the ability to only provide a screen shot. Not a whole lot to glean from the Heliocity message board, but it appears the d-pad is touch sensitive and the “Helio” is backlit. Looking forward to this […]
It seems a video of the Ocean 2 was up last night, but that’s clearly not the case now since we can only provide a screen shot. Not a whole lot to glean from the Heliocity message board, but it appears the d-pad is touch sensitive and the “Helio” is backlit. Looking forward to this upgrade.
The UN is meeting in Indonesia this week for a five day conference on waste management. At the top of the list of things to be concerned about is the disposal of billions of gadgets and handsets that have inundated the world in the last ten years. Over 1,000 delegates from 170 countries are attending the Basel Convention which is being held on Bali, Indonesia.
MobileCrunch has been covering the issue of recycling mobile devices for close to a year now. (See: Recycle). High officials in the U.N. must be reading us because a statement from the Basel Convention stated the delegates would “consider adopting new sets of guidelines for the environmentally sound management of used and end-of-life mobile phones.”
Well, maybe the U.N. heard about this growing problem from some other source. A polar bear afraid of drowning might have tipped off Al Gore. Whoever warned the U.N., they may have finally got one right. The statement continues: “The use of mobile phones has grown exponentially from the first few users in the 1970s to … more than three billion in April, 2008. Sooner or later these phones will be discarded, whole or in parts.”
Part of the problem arises when developed countries recycle their old mobile phones by refurbishing them and then selling the handsets to developing countries that are hungry for the technology. Many developing nations don’t have the infrastructure to deliver landline phone and Internet, and mobile technology is perfect for such situations. Cell towers are relatively cheap and can deliver a big stream of information in remote places. Unfortunately, many of the poorer nations don’t have the resources to properly dispose of cell phones. All handsets have some metals and chemicals that can be harmful to people and wildlife.
Then there are those countries that have a, “Not in my backyard,” policy. They dump their waste in countries that can’t or won’t develop safe measures of reclamation and disposal. The Basel Convention, which is an international treaty, attempts to regulate the international trade in perilous waste and aims to minimize its generation and movement across borders.
Hopefully, the convention will be able to come up with some reasonable safeguards. But asking over 1,000 U.N. delegates to come up with something reasonable in five days is probably asking too much. It might be easier to instruct polar bears to shave, so they don’t have to be out in the cold water when global warming melts even the ice in your refrigerator.
Some in Japan are counting the days, waiting for July 11 to come when the new iPhone goes on sale. The country’s number three mobile phone company, Softbank Corp. will sell the handy 8 gigabyte device for 23,040 yen, or about $215. The 16 gigabyte model will sell for around $320.
The Japanese mobile market is known for its competitiveness. In the past, mobile carriers have practically given away high-end mobile phones to get customers to sign up for service, so the companies could gain market share and earn revenue through fees. But as the Japanese market nears the saturation point, the more sophisticated handsets have increased in price.
A high-end mobile phone now costs around $470 in Japan. Softbank is hoping to break into this market with the iPhone by subsidizing the price similar to the level of help American buyers get from AT&T. The 8 gigabyte iPhone will sell for $199 in the U.S., and its 16 gigabyte partner has a $299 sticker price. Both Softbank and AT&T will take initial hits by setting the prices so low but hope to make back the revenue through lengthy franchise contracts and service fees.
There are plenty of ways to upload photos and other content from your phone to the Web. But the premise behind Jibe Mobile is simply to be able to use your phone to share social media already on the Web with your friends, whether they are on the internet or out with their phones. The service is launching this day in private beta. We’ve invites for the first 300 people to sign up here.
Jibe is a Website, a mobile app, and a Facebook app. It lets you import your Facebook friends as contacts, or invite your own. Once you download Jibe’s mobile app to any Java phone (including ones from Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson), you can text chat with any contact. I tested it on my Blackberry curve and it worked without a hitch.
In addition to the basic IM functionality, Jibe lets you send outs “shouts” (little emoticon-like avatars who say things like “What up Dude?”), share pics from Flickr, videos from YouTube, or stories from RSS news feeds. The shouts come out as both text messages and short audio messages through your phone’s speaker.
Wow!!! Apple apparently has another trick up its sleeve with a device that’s very similar to the iPhone 3G set to hit stores on July 11th. The new device is called the “iPhone G3” and appears to sport the exact same features as the iPhone 3G. I bet it costs the same, too. What’s interesting […]
Wow!!! Apple apparently has another trick up its sleeve with a device that’s very similar to the iPhone 3G set to hit stores on July 11th. The new device is called the “iPhone G3” and appears to sport the exact same features as the iPhone 3G. I bet it costs the same, too. What’s interesting is that there was no formal announcement for the iPhone G3, so it appears that Time has the exclusive on this one. Lucky!
The text hasn’t yet been corrected as of 2:00 EDT on Saturday, June 21st. Let’s see how long it stays up, shall we?
Google is finding that launching an entirely new cell phone platform is taking longer than expected. When it first announced its Android mobile operating system, Google stated the first Android phones would be available during the second half of this year. Now the mobile carriers that signed up as Android partners are pushing out their launches, with only T-Mobile still trying to get an Android phone out by the fourth quarter of this year. All the other carriers are pushing out their deployments until 2009, reports the WSJ.
Financial Times has probably the most in-depth Steve Ballmer interview in a while for Bill Gates’ retirement party. A lot of it is spent on his obsession with search. But there are some savory sprinkles in the mix. Like, unless the board tosses him, we’ve got nine more years of shouty, sweaty Photoshops to look forward to.
