Steve Jobs: Bill Gates 'Unimaginative'

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Steve Jobs accused Bill Gates of being "unimaginative", and said LSD helped reinforce "my sense of what was important", according to his biographer.

The extracts are from Walter Isaacson's much-anticipated authorised book on Mr Jobs's life due to be released later this month. He interviewed Jobs 40 times in the past two years before the Apple chief executive died earlier this month.

In the 630-page book, he said of his Microsoft rival Gates, after he left the company to work on his charitable foundation: "BIll is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he's more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology."

In another extract, Isaacson claims Jobs said that taking LSD “reinforced my sense of what was important: creating great things instead of making money, putting things back itno the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.”

The book claims that Jobs died regretting that he had spent so long attempting to treat his cancer with alternative medicine before agreeing to undergo surgery.

The Apple chief executive delayed having operations and chemotherapy for nine months after the disease was discovered in October 2003. Read on and comment » | Saturday, October 22, 2011

Flag of Finland: Google Images
Broadband: The Finns Are Putting Us to Shame
THE TELEGRAPH: Is broadband a human right? The Finnish government thinks so. From today, all Finns have the right to at least a one megabit-per-second internet connection. That’s not staggeringly fast. The UK average internet speed, for example, is around 3.6mbps.

However, by 2015, the Finnish government is promising its people blazingly fast 100mbps connections. That leaves our government’s commitment to speeds of 2mbps for all by 2012 looking rather mediocre.

Almost the entire Finnish population is online – 96 per cent of them, in fact. Granted there are only 5.3 million people in Finland – fewer than live in London – but given that their country is one of Europe’s most sparsely-populated, managing to connect such a huge proportion is quite impressive. Continue reading and comment >>> Shane Richmond | Thursday, July 01, 2010

Finland: Internet Access a Legal Right

Steve Jobs Predicts Tablets to Replace Personal Computers
TIMES ONLINE: The era of the personal computer is coming to an end and the tablet will take its place, Steve Jobs predicted yesterday.

As Apple’s iPad racked up sales for more than two million since launch two months ago, the company’s chief executive said the transition was inevitable.

In a 90-minute performance on stage at the All Things D Conference near Los Angeles, Mr Jobs trashed Adobe over its Flash technology, spoke of his concern at the spate of suicides at the Foxconn factory in China and deflected questions about his rivalry with Google by talking about his sex life.

Mr Jobs, dressed in his trademark black polo necked top and jeans, said the iPad and other tablet-style computing devices would not completely replace laptops and desktop computers in the “post-PC era” but they would consign them to a smaller niche market.

“The transformation of the PC to new form factors like the tablet is going to make some people uneasy because the PC has taken us a long ways,” he said.

He revealed that he had started working on a tablet long before the iPhone - launched in 2007 - but switched to making a phone when he saw the possibilities of the touchscreen. Handsets are a much bigger market than personal computers. Apple has now sold more than 50 million iPhones worldwide in three years.

Worries that tablet computers were not suitable for word processing and other complex types of content creation such as photo-editing would be solved in time, Mr Jobs said, standing by his description of the iPad as a “magical” device. Tablets provided a more direct and intimate computing experience, he said. Read on and comment >>> Mike Harvey, Rancho Palos Verdes, Los Angeles | Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Sick of the iPad's Smudgey Screen?

Barack Obama Criticises iPod and Xbox Era
THE TELEGRAPH: Barack Obama has bemoaned the impact of technology such as the iPod and the Xbox, claiming information is now a diversion imposing new strains on democracy.

Mr Obama, who often chides journalists and cable news outlets for obsessing on superficial coverage rather than serious issues, told a class of graduating university students that education was the key to progress.

"You're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank all that high on the truth meter," Mr Obama said at Hampton University, Virginia.

"With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, - none of which I know how to work - information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation," Obama said.

He bemoaned the fact that "some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction," in the clamour of certain blogs and talk radio outlets.

"All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy." >>> | Monday, May 10, 2010

Blackberry 'Predicted a Century Ago' by Pioneering Physicist Nikola Tesla
THE TELEGRAPH: The Blackberry was first predicted more than a century ago, by Nikola Tesla, the electrical engineer, it has been claimed.

Tesla, a pioneering American physicist, made the prediction about the portable messaging service in the Popular Mechanics magazine in 1909.

Tesla, whose name lives on at Tesla Motors, the electric car manufacturer, saw wireless energy as the only way to make electricity thrive.

He wrote in the magazine that, one day it would be possible to transmit wireless messages all over the world.

He imagined such a hand-held device would be simple to use and that, one day, everyone in the world would communicate to friends using it.

This, he added, would usher in a new era of technology.

The "Crackberry" as it has been dubbed for its addictive qualities, is popular with business executives and US President Barack Obama, but has struggled in Britain to widen its appeal to a younger demographic. >>> Andrew Hough | Monday, May 03, 2010

A Long Line for iPad


iPad More Than an Oversized iPod Touch

Mussolini Audio Is Italy’s No. 2 iPhone Application
BLOOMBERG.COM: A collection of speeches by fascist dictator Benito Mussolini is Italy’s second-most downloaded iPhone application on Holocaust Memorial Day.

The application, called iMussolini, is available on Apple’s online store for 79 euro cents ($1.11). It has been downloaded more than a video game based on the blockbuster film Avatar, according to Apple Inc.’s Italian iTunes store. A wallpaper application is the most downloaded item.

The Mussolini application makes 100 of the so-called Duce’s speeches available on the iPhone. Mussolini ruled Italy from 1922 until his death in 1945 at the end of World War II. His granddaughter, Alessandra Mussolini, is a politician and ally of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government. >>> Flavia Krause-Jackson | Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Twitter Revolution – Iran
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