Instant smile

Remember this?

Tums bear commercial

Nicely done. I really relate to that bear.

Biden cracks oath joke, Obama indicates "not so much"

Great clip for many reasons. For starters, it makes these guys look like the Keystone Kops, which I think is funny. Nothing wrong with ribbing them a little bit. Second, Biden cracks wise about the Roberts oath flub, but Obama is having none of it, first raising his arm to urge Biden to get on with it, then subtly shaking his head, and all the while, not smiling at all.

I'd say that's about as close to an outright Obama freakout as we've ever seen.

Obama's Al-Arabiya interview

Bam.

This is what it's like to have a good president.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/01/the-al-arabiya.html

Homemade B-29 and X-1

Incredible. Make sure you catch 2:00 to 3:00.



Thanks to Kris for this.

Some great stuff here...

Chance
by titounetsan

Most meetings are a waste of time

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/jobs/18pre.html

The numbers

Brace for impact this week.

This is on the heels of the lowest new home construction numbers since 1959.

"Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/21/AR2009012104249.html

A little bit more on the Palm Pre

Sounds like they've got some really innovative software on that thing.

Moving in and out of the White House

The New York Times has an interesting article.

Obama Inauguration Speech Ruined By Incessant Jackhammering

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/obama_inauguration_speech_ruined

It's so good

There's not much to say beyond that it's impossible to put to words how excited I am about our new president, Barack Obama.

I have high hopes but no expectations beyond a slight improvement in our government's competence, transparency, imagination, and effectiveness. I think it's safe to say that we'll get at least that.

And as for what it's like to have the first African American president... It's profound, because African Americans have suffered so much in this country, and to have arrived at a point where one of them is our leader is magnificent.

But even beyond that, to me the most awesome aspect of Barack Obama's identity is that he is the first non-white president. We are a country of the world, a place of immigrants, open to everyone. And finally, after 43 presidents that only represented the heritage of the most privileged classes of Americans, we have chosen to elevate one of our minority immigrant classes to the highest post.

With Barack Obama, the face of American leadership is more truly the face of America than ever before.

Change

Wow.

It's amazing.

I go to sleep tonight ecstatic about tomorrow's inauguration and the direction our country is headed.

The fact that I feel this way tonight- and the simply amazing and unlikely series of events that have lead to this eve- are the result of America.

This is unique.

This is my country.

God bless America!

Letterman's final "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches"

The end of the second era of Steve Jobs at Apple

The second era of Steve Jobs at Apple began in 1997 with his triumphant return to the company and Apple's subsequent years of success. It ended today, with the announcement that Steve Jobs will be stepping down for six months to take care of a health issue.

Jobs may well get through this issue and emerge healthy and strong- and return triumphantly to Apple some time in the future to confound the skeptics and usher in a new era of influence over the company.

But make no mistake: Apple as we have known it for the past twelve years, the company personified by Steve Jobs, is now changed forever.

What started last year as a series of gradually growing rumblings about Jobs' health has now played out in a manner that confirms the worst (or near-worst) fears of the people who made his health an issue in the first place: that Jobs was sick, he could very possibly surrender his leadership position in the company at any time as a result, and that until Apple made some significant changes, Jobs' loss had the potential to seriously harm the company because of his inextricable connection to it.

So this has more or less transpired.

I hope he's okay and I wish him all the best. He is an icon, a hero, and a figure who will go down in history as one of our greatest artists, entrepreneurs, and cultural influences. And while I have no specific reason to believe we're ready to begin fearing for the worst, Apple and everyone else with anything positive to say on the matter have proven that we can't take their commentary seriously, and that the people with the most skeptical eyes and cynical fears could quite possibly be right.

That's a shame.

The good news is that in the past few weeks, and months, Apple has taken clear steps to establish itself as being capable of being Apple without Steve Jobs. Phil Schiller's Macworld keynote was a solid piece of that process. In the long run, I think Apple will probably be fine.

In the short term, though, I'm left a little saddened and confused by the fact that we're suddenly confronted by a situation at Apple that is contrary to what Apple and Jobs had implied would be the case, and is exactly what a lot of very cynical people thought would happen.

I don't want to end this post on the tone of the previous paragraph, though, so I do think it's also worth noting that all of this is about a deeply personal matter connected to a man that many of us respect deeply, and who has asked for privacy and respect as he moves forward.

Audition goes bad

The cost of using Google

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece

Playmobil Security Check Point

Oh my God...

http://www.amazon.com/Playmobil-3172-Security-Check-Point/dp/B0002CYTL2/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=toys-and-games&qid=1231611464&sr=8-3

Link from my wife, courtesy Alexa.

BigDog

Incredible, and creepy. Courtesy same friend.


Unbelievable: Boston Dynamics BigDog (March '08) - Watch the best video clips here

iPhone and the "extended mind" thesis

A fascinating article, passed along by a friend.

The next-generation Air Force One

Interesting article.

Macworld 2009 keynote

I just finished watching Phil Schiller's keynote presentation. He did a really great job. He captured the essence of Steve Jobs' enthusiasm and showmanship, brought some of his own style of humor and eagerness, and demonstrated that Apple can still be Apple without Steve Jobs.

I was extremely impressed with the products showcased.

Some of the software enhancements in iLife and iWork '09 are, simply put, stunning. iPhoto '09 in particular stands out as a real big leap forward with its Faces and Places functionality.

Faces in particular just blew me away. It uses advanced software (which is becoming commonplace) to recognize faces in photographs, and lets you tag specific people. This type of functionality is great and a welcome addition to iPhoto, but alone is not revolutionary. But Apple takes Faces to the next level by searching through all of your photos and finding people you've previously tagged in photographs that have not been tagged yet- and makes recommendations that make it easy for you to subsequently label people. Even better, iPhoto can automatically crop photos to make the subject's face the focal point of a shot. There's a lot of additional polish to the implementation; they've really taken the basic technology- the idea that the software can identify people- and extended it to enable some profound user scenarios.

Ditto Places. Apple's implementation of geo-tagging goes well beyond simply letting you know where a photo was taken. I won't go into the details here, but watching the functionality in action amazed me.

I was also extremely impressed with Apple's integration with Facebook and Flickr. Finally, Apple is acknowledging that there are online services beyond MobileMe that are the norm for online photography. Now that I can use iPhoto as my interface to Facebook, I'm much more likely to use both iPhoto and Facebook. And the two-way syncing of face data between iPhoto and Facebook is really slick.

There were a ton of other really impressive things shown, including really cool updates to iMovie, a whole new educational aspect to GarageBand, a wealth of updates to the iWork apps, and iWork.com, an online extension of the iWork suite aimed at collaboration functionality.

This is starting to sound like a press release or a poorly executed fake blog post written by an Apple PR hack, so I'll stop now and won't go into the other things covered in the keynote.

But overall I was very impressed, and Apple demonstrated why they are Apple: their software is so slick, so polished, and so finely tuned to let people do things with their computers that will amaze and delight.

Did I mention I liked the keynote?

New MacBook

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Macs vs. The Rest

Right now I'm watching Phil Schiller's keynote speech at the 2009 Macworld tradeshow- a keynote that was dominated by Steve Jobs in the past. I think Phil's doing a great job. This thought lead me to thinking about what it means to be Apple or Mac-like, because obviously there is more going on than Steve Jobs' showmanship.

And I believe that a good starting point is with the following, which I just tweeted:

Mac vs. PC boiled down to essentials: Mac is basically user-based, PC is basically Microsoft-based. Or a-ton-of-vendors based. Period.

In other words, the Mac represents an attempt to provide a computer that "works" for all of us, without regard to legacy issues such as the technical legacy imposed by the DOS/Windows/Microsoft way of doing things.

Boeing's Dreamliner (the 787)

Originally supposed to enter service last year, the Dreamliner has yet to make its first test flight. When all is said and done, assuming no more delays, it seems like this airplane will be around two years late.

That said, 2009 is shaping up to be a big year for the 787. First-flight later this year, and the first plane pulled out of the hangar for the first time (besides a rush-job photo-op back in 2007) just a few days ago.


Dreamliner One Line Move from Liz Matzelle on Vimeo.

"Lighthouse"

A very nice short film, link courtesy Michael Landow.

The Israeli/Palestinian crisis

This is really tough for me. I'm Jewish and was raised to believe that Israel was a miracle that could do no wrong.

Obviously, the reality is more complex.

But to me, the bottom line is this: if you believe that Israel has a right to exist- as I do- then you must accept that fact that a) a lot of people in that region, and around the world, do not believe in that right, and b) a lot of the motives, policies, and actions of those in the area are geared toward the destruction of Israel.

The issue is not one-sided, of course. The above-mentioned facts notwithstanding, the Israeli treatment of occupied Palestinians has been asymmetric, heavy-handed, and contrary in spirit to the very essence of what Israel means to me as a Jew, and to what it means to be a Jew.

The current situation- the occupations, the settlements, etc.- is not viable, and in many ways is the result of the flawed history of Israel's creation.

We need true leadership from both sides in order to move forward. The Middle East neighborhood needs to genuinely accept Israel's right to exist. The Palestinians need their own state. Israel needs to abandon settlements not on their own land (whatever that means) and pull back to their "real" (again, whatever that means) borders.

Then, and only then, can we have conditions where we can maybe begin to move forward.

The looming end of Bush

We've still got 20 days to go, but now that it's 2009, the departure of George W. Bush feels a little more imminent.

Bob Herbert does a nice job summarizing the catastrophe of the past eight years of the American presidency.

Happy 2009

I think 2009 is going to be a year of dramatic change for a lot of us. Cheers to the notion that we can embrace that change and use it to better ourselves.