Chromebook Glory Days

The glory days are ahead, but the Samsung Chromebook already looks like a Macbook Air, at a quarter the price.

New Chromebook: Getting Better, but Its Internet Dependence Is Limiting

a bare-bones version of the Linux operating system capable of running only one application: a Web browser ..... Chrome OS has at last matured from a quirky experiment to something that make sense for consumers. .... 11.6-inch screen .... woke up in less than five seconds. .... If you don’t pause to ponder the difference between an “app” and a bookmark (often there is none at all), it works surprisingly well. .... Chrome OS has the same minimal feel as a smartphone. The constrained space of a mobile screen often forces designers to display fewer options, and less information, at once making for a less cluttered experience. ..... The speakers are also impressive for a small, cheap device. .... Offline photo editing is impossible, which is a shame because a Chromebook would be a good companion on a vacation, when you might take a lot of photos. ...... even the company’s own lineup of offline apps is weak..... There’s a version of Gmail that works offline, and it’s possible to create and edit word-processing documents offline using Google Docs, and read other documents offline.

The Chromebook happened before HTML5 happened. This book is ahead of the times.

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"I Am The Motherfucker Who Found The House. Sir."

I saw Zero Dark Thirty last night at a movie theater near Times Square. The inside CIA work was intriguing to watch, although I had already read about it. The actual operation I had sucked the details out of in the 2-3 days right after it happened. That is the power of Open Intel. It is a technical term. Publicly available information counts for a lot these days. I predicted this movie. They are going to make a movie out of this, I said. They did. And a good one too.

So I did not come out having learned details about the operation I did not know. I came out feeling the movie was a statement on gender. Islamists are the most rabidly sexist people on earth today, perhaps. It is poetic justice then that Osama Bin Laden, the ultimate Islamist, was felled by a woman. The CIA can go on and on about teamwork, but this work was out of the box thinking, and the woman does get immense credit. She found the needle in a haystack.

The CIA is a man's world. DC is a man's world. Still. The movie shows.

That is not to discount the role of the guys who actually carried out the operation. Job well done. The action beats action movies. Actually the guys who carried out the job came across as the least sexist of all guys in the movie. Excellent analyst meet excellent operatives. Good match.

I am on record at this blog - in 2007, also earlier - saying Bin Laden is not in a cave, he is in some big city. I was thinking Karachi. I was wrong. But he was not in a cave.

You also come out really admiring the people who run the US government. And by that I mean bureaucrats, faceless bureaucrats who run the machinery, people who get demonized by small government ideologues. There are a lot of very qualified professionals doing very good work in there.

But it has been wrong of the CIA to refuse this woman her well deserved promotion. Some day she should be CIA Director.

The Bin Laden Operation
Bin Laden: Dead
Bin Laden Was In A Huge House
Did Pakistan Know Where Bin Laden Was?
Where Is Bin Laden?
Barack Said In 2007 He Would Do This
What Obama Said On Pakistan

Acting C.I.A. Director Criticizes ‘Zero Dark Thirty’
Review: 'Zero Dark Thirty' is utterly gripping
Review: 'Zero Dark Thirty' is massive, meticulous
'Zero Dark Thirty' review: Jessica Chastain shines in nail-biting thriller

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The Email Quagmire

What would a perfect email program be like? Right now that is anyone's guess. A good program would allow you to ignore all emails you don't mind ignoring.

Just like Craig's List is not one service, it is many services, email is the same way. Facebook is an email offshoot. You don't need to share photos over email anymore.

Asana doing task management takes a lot of load off email. Calendaring is another key function.

Character Limits In Email
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Email Solutions

Startups Aim to Bring E-Mail Back to the Future

There hasn’t been a big shakeup since the release of Gmail in 2004, which brought threaded messages and a gigabyte of free message storage (an eye-popping amount at the time). By now, many of us are encountering so-called e-mail overload on PCs, smartphones, and tablets. And e-mail shows no sign of disappearing. ...... unlikely that we’ll see another large, independent e-mail service emerge anytime soon ... toting our Hotmail, Yahoo, and Gmail addresses around with us like cell-phone numbers. .... we’re trying to use it in ways that were never intended—as an organizer, for example, or to facilitate collaboration on group projects. .... Mailbox is trying to reimagine the in-box as a workflow tool ..... E-mail is based on two protocols, IMAP and POP, which are decades old and have never changed much. .... his service aims to bring context to communication—telling you what’s happening around you, who’s e-mailing you, how you’re connected, why they’re important. ..... small in-boxes, poor search, and a preponderance of spam. ...... Flow control: e-mail is always coming in, and we’re expected to be checking and responding to it at all times. ...... “Unfortunately, that’s not something you can fix with technology”

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12 Light Years

This feels doable in this century.

Possible habitable zone planet is a mere 12 light years away

there are several planets around the nearby star Tau Ceti, and one of them is likely to be within the star's habitable zone. ...... Once they had that in hand, the astronomers turned to the actual data from Tau Ceti without any added signals. And, this time, three signals did pop out, with each of them adding between 1010 and 1017 to the statistical fit with the real data. The authors concluded that there were three planets in this signal, orbiting with periods of 14, 35, and 94 days. ...... adding two more planets to their model increased the fit, although not by nearly the same degree. One orbited with a period of 630 days, the second at 168 days. The latter one is the object that resides in Tau Ceti's habitable zone; it has a mass that's at least four times that of Earth's.

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Twitter's Growth Rate Accelerating?

They say that about the universe. Not only is it expanding, the rate at which it is expanding is accelerating.

Twitter Passes 200M Monthly Active Users, A 42% Increase Over 9 Months

This does not surprise me. Twitter can come across as geeky. But once you know how to use it, it is actually more delightful than Facebook. I am glad I am not being forced, but if you were to force me to pick between the two, I'd pick Twitter.

But the experience can be simplified further. And photo filters on Twitter would be a big hit, I think. One huge blind spot Instagram has is it is not on the web.

I have not yet joined Instagram because my first smartphone is still on its way. But if Twitter filters show up I might not even join Instagram. Except that I am on Facebook, and if there is closer integration I might have joined by default.

An Hour Spent On Twitter
Twitter Was Great On Election Night
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I still don't understand why I can't access all my tweets, why all my tweets don't show up in Google search results, why I can't embed multiple tweets at once. Why can't I search through all tweets, mine and that of others?

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Online Payments

Online shopping has been growing by leaps and bounds. Every year the holiday shopping season seems to bring with it an increased percentage of online sales. There are advantages and disadvantages to shopping online:

Advantages:

Convenience - You can shop at any time, and won't have to wait in line.

Certainty - You can search for the best deal on any given product without having to drive around to different stores. Simply click and purchase.

Conjestion Free - You don't have to fight the crowds, or deal with sitting in traffic.

Disadvantages:

Confusion - Sometimes it's hard to tell what a product is like without seeing it. Make sure you check a websites return policy before making a purchase.

Cost of Shipping - Sometimes there is a cost involved in shipping a products. Look for sites that offer free shipping. Many websites offer this during the holidays.

Customer Service - If you have a question, sometimes it can be hard to get the answer. This is getting better as more websites are figuring out ways to serve their online customers better. Some websites have a section of their site dedicated to FAQ's, have a live chat option, or a toll free number to call.

While the rest of the world (read "old economy") has been reeling in deep recession, Amazon.com, the ultimate online retailer seems to have no signs of hard times.

The ability to make an online payment is fundamental to the growth of e-commerce. It's important for the consumer to be able to make payments safely and securely. Online retailers are working with merchant accounts to make this part of their customer satisfaction guarantee. Check a website before making a purchase to make sure they have a reliable online payment option.

(This post sponsored by The Merchant Account Guru)

Commercial Break

And now time for a few commercial breaks.