Feb 10
Apple published 47 patents last week.
I was in an Apple store yesterday to check out the MacBook Air. They had a window display with one Air floating in the middle and slowly turning. While my girlfriend and I were admiring the thing (they are much cooler in person than any image shows) a group of teenagers surrounded us and were practically drooling over the machine. All pronounced that they must have one.
We went in and picked one up. They are unbelievably light and delicate. I would not underestimate the power of this approach to laptop design for Apple. They will iron out the kinks and own the ultra-lightweight full size laptop market, which will evolve into the laptop market. No one is going to want to lug the bricks around once they’ve picked these things up.
Like the iPhone and iPod, they are redefining a genre here.
This from Techcrunch too: A new build of Apple’s Safari browser is 2-6x faster than Firefox. They say it radically changes the surfing experience. Still in the developer stage.
Jan 04
A big problem in search may have been solved by the Google: reading text that is actually an image rather than a digital text, including text in pictures, Flash movies, signs in maps, scanned books, etc. TechCrunch reports today that Google has applied for a patent on a method for reading (and indexing) images of text.
This has major implications for the ad world and SEO because there have been many clumsy workarounds for getting these non-text messages indexed including hidden meta-tags which the search algos don’t really like. Imagine that billboard advertisers start using keywords because they know that web map users will see them when they use 3D street views. Or embedding lots of text message ads in videos, knowing they will get indexed.
Everything will be indexed eventually. Big brother is here and guess what? It’s not an evil government, it’s Google.
Jan 02
Search Insider has a great post listing 22 things to check on your sites to ensure you’re getting the organic search traffic you deserve. Call this the most concise guide to SEO I’ve seen yet.
Nov 19
I just watched the demo video on Amazon of their new portable eBook reader Kindle
that they launched this morning. Unfortunately I think this device is about three years too late to make a big splash. It seems well-designed with well thought-out software, EVDO access courtesy of Amazon (only to Amazon and a bunch of online media) and lots of available books, most at $9.99.
There’s just one problem and it’s a big one: I don’t know anyone who wants add another device to their kit in addition to the obligatory laptop and smartphone. I’m personally dreaming of the day when one iPhone type of device covers me for most of my access needs. As a writer, I’ve been using Google docs more and more, Gmail for email, and wireless for everything else. I can read online without eyestrain and I’m not a kid anymore- screens, including the little ones, are just so much better.
The other counterintuitive aspect of Kindle is that it is a limited device, proprietary to Amazon’s business model. Though it has a querty keyboard, it’s monochromatic and it doesn’t look like you can edit docs with it (you can email your docs to it and Amazon, for a “small fee” will convert them into their format). I don’t want a limited device, I want one that uses a browser. That’s the standard for mobility these days. They could have built this as an online application, offered it for free and made the money selling books.
With Apple (and no doubt others) rumored to start offering solid state sub-compact notebooks early in 2008, what relevance will this device have? The browser is where the action is and this doesn’t have one…