Office by Alex Penny
My name is Bill, I am a recent graduate in Information Sciences and Technology from Penn State University and this is a place for me to post or give my 2 cents on the fascinating world of technology. I am now working for a pretty big technology related company whose name I will leave out just to avoid any possible complications, however far-fetched them happening may be. Music gets included from time to time as well.
Reposted from http://bit.ly/XDyfuv on February 11, 2013 at 12:39PMIn July 2012, Jonathan Dharmaraj and his girlfriend of almost a year broke up. After spending every second together — working in the same hospital and living two minutes from each other — they both went off to different…
If this actually works I believe you have met somebody special.
Project Update #16: It’s Open Season!
Posted by OUYAWe just licked the stamps and waved a fond farewell to 1,200 OUYA Developer Consoles. These are the early versions of OUYA that developers will use to start making games. They’re on their way to developers around the globe – by land, air and sea. OK, only by air — we want you to get them quick. Devs, expect them on your doorstep within the next few days.
The OUYA (one of the biggest Kickstarter projects to date) has shipped to developer’s. I’m a little concerned with the alterations they have made to the android skin after the Kindle Fire but I’ll leave it to the gamers to decide what they think of it. It’s INSANELY small.
LEAKED: Myspaces master plan to raise 50 million and re-launch as a spotify killer
I think it makes sense to go after spotify rather than the traditional social networks if they’re going all in on the music part, though it’s really hard to see them getting past the prior image of the product. I always knew about the low royalties issue but I feel like spotify losing money just kind of popped up suddenly, really shows how good of a spin artist Daniel Ek is or how good he is at finding capital. If nothing else it would be nice if myspace actually added a more artist friendly aspect to the streaming model, which it’s social roots might give it an opportunity at.
Excellent points, however I think the author misses one major component of the issue, and that is that in a lot of cases consumers aren’t technically customers. Sure Facebook and Google have to keep us happy to an extent, but ultimately the money is being made elsewhere. Unlike the tendency of others commenting on this dilemma I don’t see this as a definite threat, but it certainly creates incentives that could make decisions that are harmful to the single person enticing. It is still wrong for business practices to exploit and abuse the consumer, but what these businesses do has changed and that has played a major role in the shift in mindset.
This is actually a follow up to another TED talk I discussed a couple of weeks ago. Rather than porn and video games this one discusses pretty much just porn. Still some pretty interesting results and a good continuation of what the first speaker found. As giggly as we all get about this subject, this guy succeeds in discussing the serious repercussions (as the one in my first post did, which you should check out since no one did apparently), thoughts?
“Treating APIs as copyrightable would have a profound negative impact on interoperability, and, therefore, innovation. APIs are ubiquitous and fundamental to all kinds of program development … Allowing a party to assert control over APIs means that a party can determine who can make compatible and interoperable software, an idea that is anathema to those who create the software we rely on everyday. Put clearly, the developer of a platform should not be able to control add-on software development for that platform”
-Julie Samuels, EFF
Crazy how much support this idea has garnered. I’ve been using it myself to brush up on some programming since it’s been a while since I actually took classes for it and to translate concepts over to javascript which I had never used. So far it’s been a great refresher for me, but I can’t see it being easy for someone going in with no prior programming experience. Anyone out there trying this out with no experience? What do you think of it so far?
Really cool culture developing here. The music industry has a tendency to come off as desperately clinging to their old model so to see events like ‘Music Hack Day’ is a good sign they’re opening up to the right direction. You can also see this sort of culture developing with applications like Soundcloud and Spotify taking steps to become more of a platform recently. Very excited to see how things will progress in the near and long-term future.
Some good points, the question is are we better off as “free-lance” employees? It seems like this would give the individual more power, but it could backfire into making it easier for companies to pass off responsibility. It also seems a little messy that we’re heading in a direction where all the different parts of a piece of software are handled by different companies. Seems like an integration nightmare. However, with the growing popularity of Software as a Service and APIs there has never been a better time.
