Category: Technology

Reporters say, Believe the iPhone Hype


Over on one of my other blogs, High Tech Duck (which looks suspiciously like Magic Lamp right now), I have a couple of pointers to what the NY Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal columnists are saying about the iPhone: It’s not completely perfect, but you should “Believe the Hype”.

Apple and AT&T have worked out a deal for unlimited bandwidth for the phones, so that means you’ll be able to surf the web as much as you like. Without leveraging the web, the iPhone loses a lot. It still has that built in iPod, so you’ll be able to watch movies and listen to music, but you’d be missing out on what they’re calling a first class browser (Safari), YouTube videos, at least while you’re on the road.

Now, you’ll notice I said “while you’re on the road”. The iPhone has built-in WiFi, which means that when you’re near your own network or a public WiFi network, you’ll be able to use that instead of the cell network, Edge, from AT&T. You won’t be able to get phone calls over WiFi, but you will be able to get to the web.

So what does that mean for TV addicts? Well, a lot of big media are posting their shows to the web these days, and quite a few use YouTube.

Good thing the iPhone has a big battery.

Apple’s iPhone

Steve Jobs announced the iPhone today. Very impressive. It has a touch screen, gesture recognition, a sensor that detects when you’re turning the phone so you can use it sideways (to read web pages, for example), it plays iTunes, you can use Google Maps with it, it has WiFi…. There’s a 4 Gig version for $499, and an 8 Gig version for $599.

Yes, I want one.

Maybe two.

You know, as for a spare.

…Anyway, it’ll be released in June, and Cingular will be carrying it. I imagine we’ll be seeing some deep discounts on Palm Treo and Windows Mobile phones this year. It’ll probably be a loooong time before they discount the iPhone though.

The Goog Life

Aaron Swartz makes a very interesting blog posting called The Goog Life: how Google keeps employees by treating them like kids on this blog Raw Thought.

From the posting:

“It’s about infantilizing people,” she explained. “Give them free food, do their laundry, let them sit on bouncy brightly-colored balls. Do everything so that they never have to grow up and learn how to live life on their own.”

Read the rest here…

Google Transferable Stock Options

Over on the Official Google Blog they have a posting about transferable stock options which they intend to implement soon.

From the posting:


Typically, employees get value from stock options by exercising them after vesting, and then selling the stock they get from the exercise at a higher price, provided the company’s stock price has appreciated since the time of grant. With the TSO program, employees will also be able to sell vested options to the highest-bidding financial institution, which may be willing to pay a premium above the difference between the exercise price and the market price for Google stock (even when the exercise price is higher than the market price). The premium paid is for the time value of the options.

Via Google Blog

Google Web Toolkit Code Released

Google released their code for the Google Web Toolkit under the Apache 2.0 license.

The interactive applications you’ve seen from Google, like GMail, use this. It allows you to write programs in Java, and then deploy them as Javascript applications and HTML. There are a few demos of applications available on the site, plus tips on how to get started.

Java 6 Released

A few years ago, Graham Hamilton announced Java 6 at the Alumni Fireside Chat at the JavaOne conference, and now it’s been released.

What is there to look forward to in Java 6?


  • New Security Features and Enhancements

    • Native platform Security (GSS/Kerberos) integration.

    • Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS) login module that employs LDAP authentication

    • New Smart Card I/O API

  • Integrated Web Services


    • New API for XML digital signature services for secure web services

    • New Client and Core Java Architecture for XML-Web Services (JAX-WS) 2.0 APIs

    • New support for Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB) 2.0


  • Scripting Language Support (JSR 223)


    • New framework and API for scripting languages

    • Mozilla Rhino engine for JavaScript built into the platform


  • Enhanced Management and Serviceability


    • Improved JMX Monitoring API

    • Runtime Support for dTrace (Solaris 10 and future Solaris OS releases only)

    • Improved memory usage analysis and leak detection

  • Increased Developer Productivity


    • JDBC 4.0 support (JSR 221)

    • Significant library improvements

    • Improvements to the Java Platform Debug Architecture (JPDA) & JVM Tool Interface

  • Improved User Experience


    • Look-and-feel updates to better match underlying operating system

    • Improved desktop performance and integration

    • Enhanced internationalization support


Java 6 released