Red Pandas Playing in the Snow

Happy Monday,and thanks to the Macalope.

No iPhone 5 in June?

From AppleInsider:

Apple is not expected to introduce a new iPhone at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference in June, as it has done in years past, and will instead focus on software for the 2011 show, according to a new report.

Bull.

It's a Dark, Dark Day...

From the Houston Chronicle:

'Mad Men' season 5 premiere likely delayed ... maybe until 2012

Filming on TV show "Mad Men" has been put on hold as financial wranglings between TV bosses threaten to push the next season back until 2012.

The fifth season of the program, which stars Jon Hamm and January Jones, was due to start shooting in April or May ahead of a summer TV debut.

But bosses at the network behind the show, AMC, have reportedly failed to agree a deal with the Lionsgate studio which makes the series, leading to lengthy production delays.

A start date has yet to be agreed, meaning the season premiere looks likely to be pushed back until 2012, according to the New York Times.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

The Texsun Post

There's a brand of juice that they serve in the break room here at work called Texsun. With a name like Texsun, you' think it would be based in Texas and feature Texas orange juice.

And you'd be wrong.

Texsun juice is actually from Florida. How do I know this? Because it says so right on the side. See? "Distributed by Citrus World, Inc."



But I doubt even the Florida connection (and in fact I actually suspect that we may be buying some fell-off-the-back-of-a-truck black market Chinese OJ because of the next sentence:
"A COOPERATIVE OR CROWERS BASED IN LAKE WALES, FLORIDA, 33853, USA"



So who's based in Lake Wales - a cooperative or a crower? And what the heck is a crower doing making orange juice? Shouldn't they be, you know, crowing instead?

How did no one catch not one, but TWO typos on the can?


[EDIT:] After I posted, I happened to turn the can over to see if it was expired. This is what I found:



Texsun, it turns out, is neither a product of Texas nor Florida. It's made in Mexico. So much for truth in packaging.

Canon's Connection of DOOM

So, wait. I can't disconnect the USB or the power source while the camera is connected to the computer? But my camera is using battery power, so it is the power source. And if I can't disconnect the USB cable while the camera is attached to the computer, how am I supposed to go and shoot more video?

Does that mean I can never disconnect it ever again?

And I can't turn off the camera, either? Geez. Thanks, Canon.

The Difference is that No One Is Going To Die From Bad Creative

From AdAge:

Take a look around the room at your next gathering of professionals. Each of the following is classified as a "professional" based on experience, education, certifications and credentials.

Lawyer: college + law school + a little thing called "The Bar"
Architect: college + apprenticeship + test for licensing
Doctor: college + med school + internship + residency + lots of tests

Now, let's take a look at the training, testing and certification of an account executive, graphic designer or other agency professional. (I will pause for a moment so you can imagine the sounds of crickets breaking the silence.) Yep. All you need to call yourself an art director or copywriter is a computer, phone and a copy of "place any do-it-yourself marketing book here."
Even Realtors and interior designers require testing and certifications to practice their trade, and it just seems wrong that our industry does not require the same amount of quality control. In the end, I guess the question we need to answer should be, "Is what we do important?" How can we expect clients to respect us if we don't even take our industry seriously enough to insist on testing and licensing?

What about continuing education? Yoga teachers and speech pathologists are but a few of the professionals that are required to attend continuing-education classes to maintain their licenses. Yet advertising and marketing professionals have no such requirement. I don't think the human body has changed nearly as much as our industry in the past 10 years.

The Weinberger/Powell Doctrine is Dead

From Cato@Liberty.org:

[...]the doctrine that sought to prevent the United States from engaging in risky and counterproductive missions that had nothing to do with protecting U.S. vital interests (e.g. Lebanon 1983; Somalia, 1991; and Kosovo, 1999) is dead. Shovel dirt on it.

To review, the doctrine was first coined by Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, in a speech at the National Press Club in 1984. Weinberger was aided by a rising military officer, Colin Powell, who later adapted the concepts for his own purposes as National Security Adviser for Reagan and later as Chairman of the JCS under George H.W. Bush. The essential elements boil down to five key questions:

1. Is there a compelling national interest at stake?
2. Have the costs and consequences of intervention been considered?
3. Have we exhausted all available options for resolving the problem, i.e. is force a last resort?
4. Is there a clear and achievable military mission, and therefore a well-defined end state?
5. Is there strong public support - both domestic and international - for the operation?

The current operations over Libya fail on at least four counts.

Very good article. Highly recommended.

Nature's Laser Floyd

Timescapes Timelapse: Learning to Fly from Tom Lowe @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

Simply amazing. Beautiful photography. Beautiful movement. Amazing angles. And great music.

Be sure to check out Timescapes.org for more videos.

Huge thanks to Angus for showing me this!

Thoughts on NFC and the iPhone

Appleinsider reported a few days ago that Apple has decided not to include NFC - Near Field Communication - in the iPhone 5. I've always been dubious of NFC because of security reasons. I've never understood why people feel that it's acceptable to put some of their most sensitive information - their financial information linked to their bank account - on a credit card or key fab that can be read simply by being in proximity to it. And I wondered why the heck Apple would choose to do such a thing in the iPhone.

Lots of companies are using NFC for payments. But what if that's not what Apple was intending it for?

But while I was listening to an older episode of my new favorite podcast, Hypercritical with John Siracusa I realized what Apple might be trying to do with NFS. The conversation in the episode I was listening to revolved around input and out put and the size of the dock connector. Siracusa mentioned that the iPod dock connector is larger than the size of the shuffle, forcing Apple to use the headphone jack as a sync, and that the thinness of the iPod Touch was approaching the width of the dock connector itself.

But what if what Apple was trying to do was to remove the dock connector altogether?

One thing people - myself included - have been wanting ever since the original iPhone debuted in 2007 was a way to wirelessly sync the content. What if Apple is looking into ways to do just that? What is there is some sort of a NFC chip on steroids that Apple has been playing with that has a fast enough data throughput that it can sync wirelessly via Bluetooth. Now, granted, it won't be as fast as USB. But Apple is known for its tradeoffs, isn't it? And how would you like to never have to plug in your phone or iPod ever again? I'd like it a lot. And I'd especially like that I wouldn't have to remind my wife to sync her phone from time to time. She would just put it down on the desk near her computer to sync it.

An interesting note to this effect can be found on the NFC News blog:

Electronic News: Let's go back to the range. How will a short range be a benefit to the consumer electronics world?
Duverne: NFC can be seen as a connectivity technology that is very short range. If you compare it to Bluetooth, for example, NFC is just a few centimeters, less than 10. The thing about it in terms of consumer electronics applications is, because it is very short range, you can make applications very intuitive. With Bluetooth, when you carry out a Bluetooth transaction, you need to go through many steps and identify which device talks to which device. Because NFC is very short range, it is enabled by a very intuitive pairing of devices. In the consumer electronics world, that is very interesting and we see a number of applications in that space. For using NFC, actually, in combination with other wireless technologies.

Electronic News: In combination with Bluetooth?
Duverne: NFC in combination with Bluetooth for initiating a connection via NFC, then doing the transition of data with Bluetooth, which has a longer range. The way it would work, for example, is you have a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone and you want to download pictures from your PC or TV set, you bring the two devices next to each other for initiation of the [NFC] link, then you can take the two devices away and the download of the pictures will be carried out by Bluetooth.

But if the iPhone doesn't plug in, how will you charge it?

Great question, but the tech already exists. It's called inductive charging. I used to have a shaver that could be charged just by placing it into a little cradle. It allowed the shaver to be waterproof and I didn't have to plug it in every day, avoiding wear and tear on connectors. You see inductive charging technology on display in the "charge mats" that are appearing in stores. And in the example mentioned above, my wife could charge her iPhone by placing it directly on her MacBook.

But, sadly, most people who have iPhones use a PC and not a Mac. And even those of us with Macs don't have the newest Mac. So how do people with PCs and older Macs use the technology? I suspect that Apple would need to make available its own flavor of charge pad, which connects via USB to their computer. But such a charge pad would need to come with a new iPhone, not come as a separate purchase, which would drive up the cost of the phone. And if the iPhone comes with its own charge pad, what's the use of building the technology into a MacBook, which would also add expense? I suspect that such dilemmas are why Apple reportedly has opted to wait on NFS.

So it may not be ready yet, but I'd bet that Apple is working on imbedding wireless technologies to sync and inductive charging technology to charge a device with the intent of making the iPhone, iPod and iPad ridiculously thin and light. Wireless is the future, and that means wireless everything.

If anyone can do it, it's Apple.

FUD Alert: "Plume to Hit the U.S."

The NY Times today is showing a map with the the path of a radioacative plume originating in Japan and headed toward the United States. Here are some screenshots:








Notice anything weird? Check out screenshots four and five. Radiation is hitting the U.S. mainland, but it popped up out of nowhere, independent (and well ahead) of the approaching plume.

Some additional shots:




Run for your lives, people! Start freaking out NOW! California is going to start generating radiation of it's own!

At least then it might help to explain all the freaks that live there...

Obama Fiddles While the World Burns

From White House Dossier:

The Middle East is afire with rebellion, Japan is imploding from an earthquake, and the battle of the budget is on in the United States, but none of this seems to be deterring President Obama from a heavy schedule of childish distractions.

Saturday, he made his 61st outing to the golf course as president, and got back to the White House with just enough time for a quick shower before heading out to party with Washington’s elite journalists at the annual Gridiron Dinner.

With various urgencies swirling about him, Saturday’s weekly videotaped presidential address focusing on “Women’s History Month” seemed bizarrely out of touch.

Obama Friday took time out to honor the 2009-10 Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks. Thursday was a White House conference on bullying – not a bad idea perhaps, but not quite Leader of the Free World stuff either.

Obama appeared a little sleepy as he weighed in against the bullies, perhaps because he’d spent the night before partying with lawmakers as they took in a Chicago Bulls vs. Charlotte Bobcats game.

Meanwhile, the president has been studying for weeks whether to establish a No Fly Zone over Libya, delaying action while the point becomes increasingly moot as Qaddafi begins to defeat and slaughter his opponents. And lawmakers from both Parties are wondering why he seems to be AWOL in the deficit reduction debate.

What the hell?

Is Obama In Favor of Torturing American Citizens?

From Salon:

On Friday, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley denounced the conditions of Bradley Manning's detention as "ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid," forcing President Obama to address those comments in a Press Conference and defend the treatment of Manning. Today, CNN reports, Crowley has "abruptly resigned" under "pressure from White House officials because of controversial comments he made last week about the Bradley Manning case." In other words, he was forced to "resign" -- i.e., fired.

So, in Barack Obama's administration, it's perfectly acceptable to abuse an American citizen in detention who has been convicted of nothing by consigning him to 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement, barring him from exercising in his cell, punitively imposing "suicide watch" restrictions on him against the recommendations of brig psychiatrists, and subjecting him to prolonged, forced nudity designed to humiliate and degrade. But speaking out against that abuse is a firing offense. Good to know. As Matt Yglesias just put it: "Sad statement about America that P.J. Crowley is the one being forced to resign over Bradley Manning." And as David Frum added: "Crowley firing: one more demonstration of my rule: Republican pols fear their base, Dem pols despise it."

I can't wait to see what the Obama apologists cook up to explain this one.