In that regard, Siri might actually be more valuable not as a standalone application, but as something that is deeply integrated with the iPhone platform. It could take what Google’s voice search does for Android (), but place it at a more robust level. Think about the possibilities of voice-driven technology to search data and applications on your phone or on the cloud at any point.

For instance, I could be looking at Twitter (), see a tweet about an upcoming movie, use a gesture and voice search to say, “buy two tickets for Iron Man 2 May 7 at midnight” and then have that action take place in the background. A pop-up would confirm my order while I’m still using my Twitter app.

Think about how powerful something like Siri could be if it could not only plug into the API streams of its connected services but also to the data stored and being used on the local device itself. Think about using Siri within the Facebook iPhone app, connected to all of your different accounts and services via the Facebook () Open Graph.

That’s got a lot of potential, both for more standard monetization and also for simply building a more robust and compelling user experience.

This is the kind of stuff that's exciting to me.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

This cuts to the core of not only why Flash won't be a permitted dev tool for the iPhone OS, but also why tools such as MonoTouch shouldn't be allowed either.

Well, it's started. The drivel that'll be called "Top Gear" America and shown on the History Channel (huh?) is already in the works with filming being done in California. (oh, for the love of God, California is not the center of the damned universe, nor of this country).

In the line-up thus far: a Hyundai Genesis Coupe and a Ford Mustang.

Are you freakin' kidding me? These are already all over the place! They're already boring as it is because you can barely look around without seeing one of these things. How are cars you see in mass quantity as it is the least bit interesting?

I know it can't be super cars we can't afford all the time. I get that. How about highlighting the more obscure and dare I say, foreign? I've been begging for a while to see Fiats and Alfa Romeos over here. Yeah, according to AutoBlog, they're coming, but as Chryslers and Dodges. Taking good automotive design and beating it with an ugly stick is not the way to go. But I digress...

I guess what disappoints me the most about this whole Top Gear America is that the American auto market (the big 2.5 especially) is quite generic, dull, and uninteresting at the moment. Top Gear America will only highlight just how generic, dull, and uninteresting it is on this continent while trying to make itself and the cars they go on about interesting.

Credit to pixelgeek for the title of this post.

Cheerful software, above all, honors the truth about humanity:

Humans are not rational beings.

A human is a walking sack of squishy meat and liquids, awash in chemicals

This is a concept that I've found myself subscribing to more and more lately. The point is developers and even a lot of designers are so focused on what can be measured quantitatively and prescribed in a recipe-like set of standards, they forget that they're supposed to be designing their interfaces for humans, not spec-sheets and overly-analytical requirements documents. Trying to rationalize the inherently irrational will not only frustrate ourselves, but the humans that are our users.

Follow the link above for the full message.

After I shared the link with some peers, I got a terse response, "Form follows function."  However, the near religious following of that mantra is why we have so many highly "functional" websites with no soul.  They're just data and link dumps that fail to make any positive emotional connection with the user.

Today, of course, it’s an entirely different story: we’re all intimately familiar with the concept of the little computer in our pocket. We fell repeatedly for watered-down Palm handhelds which, in reality, we used rarely; we replaced them with iPhones, which we use too much.

Now the same critics who shit-canned the Newton for the wrong reasons are shit-canning the iPad for the wrong reasons.

The iPad, though, unlike the Newton, is going to win, and win on an epic scale.

This is why it sells so well despite the digirati's protests. As people use it, they also learn they don't need the big, expensive computers for most of their computing needs.

In fact, it can get you fired. Losing a prototype in the bar, not so much. If anything, demoing a new device to the company co-founder, and especially one such as Woz himself, should be required.

This article on Ars is a great visual trip through the Blizzard offices. I just wish the game made it possible for casual people like myself that can't commit to multiple nights a week to play without having to hop on that character leveling hamster wheel. With all my priorities, even getting on as regularly as Friday nights doesn't help much despite the new raiding changes. Raiding with D'Gentlemen was the best fun I had in WoW.

"The system — called “SpeedSpike” — figures your average speed between two points, captures an image of your license place and reports you if you’re going faster than the law allows. Oh, and if you’re hoping Great Britain’s notoriously gray weather will save you, you’re out of luck; the system works even when it’s cloudy or dark."

This is just the first step. Enjoy driving now while it's still fun.

...

They found they were able to bend visible light by using a two-dimensional array of coaxial waveguides arranged in a hexagonal configuration. The waveguides were composed of two layers of silver sandwiching a gallium-phosphorus insulator; they could maintain a negative refractive index for light of wavelengths as short as 450-500 nanometers, corresponding to the color blue.

The literal invisibility cloak is stll incomplete—as it stands, the metamaterial described here would be able to bend away every color except violet, so anything "cloaked" would just be highlighted purple. Even if researchers do eventually conquer violet, an invisibility cloak might still be noticeable to the human eye. Still, the ability to bend shorter wavelengths brings scientists a step closer to a new way of beating the diffraction limit and creating superlenses that can see features even smaller than the wavelengths we use.

Nature, 2010. DOI: 10.1038/NMAT2747  (About DOIs).

If they get this working, it's one step closer to me getting my own Klingon Bird of Prey.