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On companies asking local governments for tax breaks
I was reading this article about an aviation company near my hometown that is growing and came across this gem: However, he told the airport authority that property taxes are the company’s biggest challenge and that a 10-year tax abatement on the paint facility the company built in 2003 is about to expire. Hyland said…
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Thoughts on recent Google hate
Nothing particularly recent comes to mind, but in the past few months, the public perception of Google in tech blogs has been growing ever more negative. People are reaching out to predict Google+’s failure out of what could only be spite. Â Recent changing up of Google execs have people claiming they have a leadership crisis…
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What’s Apple’s next big major product?
Perhaps the biggest concern Apple aficionados have about Steve Jobs’s departure from Apple isn’t that Apple will suddenly fall apart, but that there won’t be any breakthrough new products like Mac, iPod, iPhone, or iPad. Â It’s a fear of mine as well, but I think the next area Apple’s going to revolutionize is the living…
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In defense of the Ribbon-ization of Windows
The initial reaction to Microsoft’s unveiling of the Ribbon in Windows 8’s Explorer.exe has mostly been sour. Â Of course, most of these people are using Macs and they see this as an over-complication of the UI. Â Those defending Windows accuse Apple of “dumbing down” Finder to “make it look pretty” (seriously, this is a direct…
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This is just embarrassing, Evernote!
Evernote posted a remarkably cool product in their blog (http://blog.evernote.com/2011/09/02/htc-tablets-and-evernote/) by HTC. Understanding that this is a major thing to me to say, it’s the first time I have seen an awesome feature in a non-iPad tablet that made me want to replace my iPad with it. This new notebook app is a full blown…
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So Steve Jobs Calls Me Up Again
So I’m sitting here this morning doing some meditation and my phone starts ringing. Â I notice the number is a Cupertino number. Â Excitedly, I pick up. Â It’s my favorite former CEO! “Steve, my man. Â I was wondering when you were gonna call.” “Hi, Aaron. Â I wanted to let you know that we can talk a…
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Bert and Ernie tying the knot
I was excited to hear that a petition was going around to Sesame Street’s creators suggesting that Bert and Ernie finally get married. Given the strides we have been making for gay rights this year, I feel like it’s really the right time for this to happen, and Bert and Ernie are great candidates for…
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A case for cellular carriers becoming the dumb pipe
Despite being on the approach of an effective duopoly with the AT&T-Mobile merger, cell carriers are living in fear right now of losing control over the user experience. Â The focus is shifting from things the provider has controlled to a focus on the phones and the software they are running and the user experience that…
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Will Facebook Messenger kill SMS? (spoiler: a little)
The announcement of it caught me by surprise today, but Facebook released a new app called Messenger, a standalone iOS/Android app that handles just your Facebook messages. It adds a couple features to make it well suited to phone-to-phone communication and group planning, but it’s mostly a pretty simple app. I used it a bit…
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Life without Flash
I decided a couple months ago to just remove Flash from my computer outright. I’m not really outwardly in a pissing match against Adobe or their technology offerings (though I feel like they no longer represent the pinnacle of great creative software like they did before they bought Macromedia, and incidentally I think Macromedia’s products…