• Here's a neat iPhone timeline
• Great article from Mashable on How to Live Blog a Conference.  Good tips, definitely something I will discuss with my classes next time we do a project like that.
• Article from Forbes.com and what will happen to Apple when Steve Jobs is gone, entitled Jobs 2.0. All companies have a succession plan in place for top leaders, and Apple would be no exception.  But, how do you replace someone as brilliant and charismatic, and whose leadership has been tightly wound with the company image itself?  It's something that occasionally occurs to me, then I try to block it out, because I don't want to think about it.

Hope everyone is having a happy 4th weekend!

Who's crazy enough to camp out for a week on the streets of New York City for a chance to be first to buy an iPhone 3G?

TheWhoFarm, that's who, a newly minted publicity-seeking environmental collective with an agrico-political mission: to persuade the 44th President of the U.S. -- whoever that turns out to be -- to transform the White House's 17-acre lawn into an organic farm.

"We're here to restore the edible landscape," says Daniel Bowman Simon, 28, the group's organizer and spokesperson and a young man given to making grand pronouncements. "We want to bring seeds of change back to the White House."

Daniel and his supporters -- there are 10 in town this week, but only five braved the rain that soaked the city overnight Friday --  want to set a new Guinness World Record for "longest time waiting in line to buy something."

But that's just a vehicle to get attention for their broader concerns -- sustainability, affordable housing, energy security, locally-grown food (New York State apples are a big theme this week), and "eating right," says Simon, "especially our leaders."

In an open letter to several of those leaders -- including Steve Jobs, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Mayor Michael Bloomburg -- entitled "Waiting for Apples in the Big Apple," the group lists the tasks it hopes to accomplish in the week they will spend camping out in front of the big glass cube of Apple's (AAPL) New York City flagship store:

• We will spend a lot of time in a great public space, around the clock.
• We will use mobile solar power from Solar1.
• We will drink NYC's renowned tap water.
• We will have local healthy food (especially Apples) delivered by our community gardener friends, Greenmarket farmers, and locavore restauranteurs via bicycles and pedicabs.
• We will compost our foodscraps, to help sustain our fragile soil.
• And most importantly, we will talk to whoever happens to stop by about local organic farming as a critical element to sustainable healthy living, food security, youth education, and climate change mitigation. (link)

And, oh yes, they hope to pick up some iPhones when they go on sale next Friday, July 11. Simon plans to buy three: one for Barack Obama, one for John McCain, and one for himself. "We see it as a technology that can liberate us from our desks," he says.

Below the fold: meet the iPhone Five, mostly first names only, at least for now.

[wp_caption id="attachment_843" align="alignnone" width="480" caption="Daniel Bowman Simon, 28, born in Chicago, lives in Brooklyn. Got a BA from New York University in marketing and an MBA from the University of the Pacific. Was working for the Gaia Institute on a green roofs project when he was inspired by a speech by food activist Alice Waters. Formed an organization called Do The Right Things to encourage elected officials to lead by example — transportation commissioners riding bicycles to work, for example. Energetic and enthusiastic to a fault, he is the glue that holds TheWhoFarm together."][/wp_caption]

I'll be recommending software, blogging my experiences with Apple Customer Services and generally posting updates about things going on in my world of Mac.

FYI: I own three macs, one of which is a G4 iBook which is now busted. My wife owns a 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo Processor Macbook and I have a 2.3GHz Intel Core Duo Processor Macbook with super drive. So there.

Read on, I hope you find something useful here. And be sure to visit my other blog.

TRF

Bajan los precios de los discos SSD y Apple ha decidido rebajar su producto más aéreo. A mí me sigue pareciendo caro, pero ya sabemos desde que apareció ante nuestros ojos, que el MacBook Air iba destinado a una franja de mercado un tanto selecto y exclusivo. Para muestra la rebaja. El precio antigüo con la configuración incluído el disco de 64GB SSD costaba 2.798€ y Steve Jobs ha pensado: "Venga va, rebajadles a los españolitos 479€ que además de ganar la Eurocopa nos van a llenar los bolsillos con el iPhone a partir del 11 de julio, y se lo merecen"

Por tanto, ahora tenemos la misma configuración pero por un precio de 2.318,99€, nada mal (para Apple). En cualquier caso hay que reconocer que el MacBook Air cumple a la perfección su cometido, es liviano, portable y anoréxico hasta el extremo. A mí me sigue sin convencer pagar tanto dinero por tener un teclado tan feo, pero esto ya son cosas mías... El que se quiera comprar el MacBook Air ahora es buen momento.

Apple.com

Visto en Gizmodo

Is it even possible? Forbes does a little bit of speculating on just who might take over when Jobs takes his leave from Apple, and candidates aren't exactly jumping out of the woodwork. Jobs is about as visionary as they come -- only a guy like Steve could lead Apple from the iMac to the iPod to the iPhone, breaking records and status quo the whole time. Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall are tossed out as two names currently within Apple's ranks, but Jobs is almost as much of a company mascot as he is a CEO. As consultant Patrick Sweeney says in the article, anyone who steps into the turtleneck has to fit completely into the culture of the company, or it won't work.

It's hard to imagine an Apple without him at all.

(Via (TUAW))

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Established as Apple Computer, Inc., on April 1, 1976, The company kept its longer title until 2007, when it changed to Apple, Inc. Started in Cupertino, California, the American corporation was incorporated on January 3, 1977.

Founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, Apple, Inc., designs and manufactures consumer electronics and software for the electronics. Apple products include laptops, desktops, numerous iPods, and the iPhone; while software includes the Mac OS X Operating System, Final Cut Pro, iLife, and iTunes.

Apple, Inc., has 20,000 employees and 200 retail stores in 5 countries as of 2007. The company also boasts $24 Billion in annual sales.  Apple, Inc., also has an online store as well as iTunes which sells music, movies, audio books, pod casts, TV shows, and iPod games.

The company’s first logo was designed by Jobs and Wayne. The logo depicted Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. The logo did not last long, and was quickly replaced by a rainbow colored apple silhouette drawn by Rob Janoff. The apple, very similar to the logo used currently, had a distinctive bite in it. The logo was revamped in 1998 and was given a monochromatic color. The Apple logo is one of the most recognizable brand logos in the world. Apple includes its logo as sticker with the purchase of the company’s products.

The first Apple slogan was “Byte Into An Apple.” In the beginning, Apple used singular slogans for the company as a whole; however, today the company uses individual slogans for each of their products.

To introduce the Macintosh computer in 1983, Apple created an 18-page brochure that was sent out with a number of magazines. For a special post-election edition of Newsweek in 1984, Apple purchased each of the 39 ad pages in the magazine – spending $2.5 Million.

Also in 1984, Apple ran a promotion titled “Test Drive A Macintosh,” where people could take home a computer for 24 hours and then return it.

1984 is most famous for Apple’s Super Bowl advertisement to introduce the personal computer. Aired in the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII, the $1.5 Million commercial, titled “1984,” was directed by Ridley Scott. The commercial was modeled after George Orwell’s novel 1984.

The commercial showed a heroine, Anya Major saving humanity from conformity – or “Big Brother,” - meant to depict IBM. The voiceover in the commercial stated “On January 24, Apple Computers will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 wasn’t like 1984.”

Apple’s Super Bowl commercial in 1985 was far less successful. The commercial, titled “Lemmings.” Created for the launch of Mac Office, the ad depicted blindfolded business people following each other off of a cliff. The last man in line stops and pulls his blindfold off, while the voiceover states, “You Can Look Into It...Or you can go on with business as usual.” The commercial was developed into a print advertisement for newspaper.

Apple consumers are unusually free thinking and unusually devoted. Surveys by J.D. Power show that Apple has the highest brand and repurchased loyalty of any other computer manufacturer. Apple’s consumers are youthful, artistic, creative, and well-educated. These consumers react best to artistic, free-thinking advertising messages. Each new Apple store opening draws crowds of thousands who stand in line for hours.

Apple is an environmentally conscious company in four specific areas: product and package design, manufacturing, energy efficiency, and recycling.

In the late 1990’s, Apple’s New York advertising agency TBWA/Chiat/Day compiled the “Think Different” campaign. The campaign consisted of both television and print advertisements. Running for 60 seconds, the commercials included black and white footage of Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King Jr., Richard Branson, John Lennon, R. Buckminister, Fuller, Thomas Edison, Muhammad Ali, Ted Turner, Maria Callas, Amelia Earhart, Alfred Hitchcock, Martha Graham, Jim Hensen with Kermit, Frank Lloyd Write, and Picasso. The commercial ended with a close up of a young girl opening her eyes – and therefore seeing the possibilities in front of her.

[youtube-http://youtube.com/watch?v=4oAB83Z1ydE]

A shortened, 30 second, version of the commercial aired during the series finale of Seinfeld. Rather than close with the shot of the young girl, the commercial ended with Jerry Seinfeld.

Print versions of the campaign made appearances in magazines including Time and Newsweek. Some of the ads referenced products, while others just displayed the Apple logo and the current tagline “Think Different.”

The “Think Different” campaign was created almost entirely in house by TBWA/Chiat/Day in Los Angeles. The slogan was brought back three times after its retirement to be placed in ads on Apple’s online Home Page:

2000 – When Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize

2005 – When Rosa Parks died

2007 – When Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize

Numerous parodies of the campaign have been created and can be found online.

In 1990, Apple released the “What’s On Your PowerBook?” campaign. The company’s print ads and TV spots featured celebrities explaining how they use their PowerBook and how the PowerBook helps them with their lives.

In 1995, Apple created print and TV ads that responded to the introduction of Microsoft’s Windows 95 Operating System.

In 1998, the iMac slogan became “I Think, Therefore iMac.”

In 2002, Apple coined the term “Switcher.” A Switcher is someone who switches from Microsoft Office to the Mac Operating System. The “Switch” commercial showed real customers explaining their switch. The television commercials were directed by Errol Morris, and both the TV and print ads directed consumers to the Apple Website. The “Switch” actors in the US were different than those used for the “Switch” commercials in Japan. As with the “Think Different” campaign, numerous parodies of the “Switch” campaign can be found online.

Current commercials for the iPod show dark silhouettes dancing against brightly colored backgrounds and holding visible, white iPods. The commercials have been created for both print and television.

The iPod Nano commercials have a black background, with the iPod Nano glowing to show that the newest iPod Nano’s are colored.

The songs in the television commercials are both by known and relatively unknown artists. Some of the ads also feature the silhouettes of celebrities, including Eminem, U2, Jet, Wynton Marsalis, Ceasars, and Bob Dylan.

The ads in the iPod campaign have a consistent, unified style that can be found in print, television, posters, and public transportation wraps.

In 2006, Apple introduced the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” campaign. The television commercials are directed by Phil Morrision, with actors Justin Lang (Mac), from Accepted, and John Hodgeman (PC), from the Daily Show. The idea was created by TBWA/Media Arts/Lab. The premise of the ads is that Mac can do everything PC can do, but Mac can do it quicker and safer, with more creativity and versatility.

In the commercials, Mac wears more casual, laid-back attire, while Mac Wears business attire and is uptight and overly concerned with work.

The US version of the ads air in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, while different actors are used for similar ads in Spain, Japan and the UK. In Japan, the country’s famous comedy duo The Rahmens, star in the commercials, while the spots in the UK use famous UK comedy duo Mitchall and Webb.

There are 42 different versions of the commercials in the US with 8 additional online-only spots which run for 20 seconds and reference online ad features. There are 12 spots in Japan and 15 in the UK. Not surprisingly, there are numerous parodies of the spots online.

Apple also advertises on Free Rice – a program online created in 2007 to fight world hunger. Apple is also in discussions with New York Yacht Club to sponsor America’s Cup.

Son casi 10 años de su historia, aunque muchos no lo sepan, héchenle un vistazo haciendo clic en la imágen.

-----------------------------------

Analizando los Coolest Gadgets y IphoneGold.com

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

P.S I stumbled upon it here

- Picture

NeXT definitely was a great company. Their NeXTSTEP OS is way ahead of its time in the past. :)

After the announcement that the iPhone is finally coming to Canada, many consumers began to start protesting against the plans that Rogers and Fido have implemented. There was also a speculation that if you suddenly want to break out of your iPhone for a number of time, you will be charge a maximum of $1100CDN. Details on this can be founded at this link, although the information has been corrected after the blog posting have been issued. Many people decided to protest against Rogers and Fido's final plan structure, while others decided to go to the extreme by signing a petition located at www.ruinediphone.com (which at this time of blog posting, closed down without notice but still active). One blogger decided to post his/her views about the iPhone petition and telling the word to Mr. Ted Rogers and Sir Steve Jobs about the unfair and unconstitutional pricing.

Currently, there is no "real" competition from among many wireless carriers in Canada unlike the U.S or A. There are three dominant players in the Canadian Wireless Market: Rogers, Telus and Bell. There are some other providers out there, but the majority of these so-called MVNO's (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) run on one of the big players' networks. For example Virgin Mobile and Solo Mobile run on Bell Mobility's network, while Koodo runs on Telus' network. An auction is currently underway to see who will the next national carrier in the wireless industry.

Although no official details are not set up after the auction has ended, we can say that the new entrants will include the following:

• Globalive (known for it's Yak brand) encompasses on building a nationwide network.
• Shaw will be restricted to Western Canada (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Winnipeg)
• Quebecor will be restricted in La Belle Province (that's the nickname for Quebec, FYI)
• Bragg Communications (aka Eastlink) will operate in Atlantic Canada
• Data AV (or DAVE) will be in the urban-centric chokehold in Canada.

As for the big three players, Bell, Telus and Rogers are the majority of holding the big licences. Rogers scored 52 licences worth $929 Million CDN, Bell holds at 54 licences worth $719 Million CDN and Telus holds 56 licences worth $855.3 Million CDN. It's highly likely that Bell and Telus will team up to build and deploy a 3G HSPA/GSM network all across Canada, eventually marking the demise of CDMA - the commonly used cell phone technology in North America.

As for the iPhone, there are some rumours that the iPhone will trim cell phone rates in half. We'll just have to wait and see. What if Paul Gigliotti and Dave Thomson from the now-defunct band called "Wave" were to shoot for an ad campaign for Data AV? I can imagine if my friends Tarin, Laura and Jenny were to see those guys in a TV commercial and they want to get the phones supplied by DAVE. The rest is up to them.

References:

"Canadians Blast iPhone Pricing." PCWorld.com. 02 July 2008. 02 July 2008. <http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/147839/canadians_blast_iphone_pricing.html>

"AT&T Contract Free iPhone – Possible Relief for Canadians." GizmoRepublic.com. 02 July 2008. 02 July 2008. <http://www.gizmorepublic.com/portable/contract-fee-iphone-6210>

"iPhone Canada plans to match AT&T?." Electronista.com. 18 June 2008. 02 July 2008. <http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/06/18/iphone.3g.canada.plan.leak/>

"iPhone 3G will need 'unbricking' when purchased?." crave.cnet.com. 30 June 2008. 02 July 2008. <http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9980676-1.html>

"Wireless data rates could fall after iPhone launch." Toronto Star. 16 June 2008. 02 July 2008. <http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/444119>

"SpectrumWatch: Round 171 - Auction likely to end in next 48 hours." National Post. 02 July 2008. 02 July 2008. <http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpposted/archive/2008/07/02/spectrumwatch-round-171-auction-likely-to-end-in-next-48-hours.aspx>

"iPhone will cost about $90 a month in Canada, Web site claims." National Post. 19 June 2008. 02 July 2008. <http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpposted/archive/2008/06/19/iphone-will-cost-about-90-a-month-in-canada-web-site-claims.aspx>

iPod Touch

8GB     $299

16GB   $399

32GB   $499

iPhone 3G

8GB    $199

16GB  $299

Well now, looks like we are on to something!  Why would someone pay a hundred bucks more for an iPod Touch with 8GB or 16GB just to have a device with less capabilities than an iPhone.  Is it the service they don't want to pay for on the iPhone? Solution... buy an iPhone, get a cheap plan... after a few days.. cancel it. That gets you an iPhone minus Phone and minus GPS (yes, it uses Data) ... BUT, you still have WiFi.  ** NOTICE: This is not recommended.. this is just an idea.  We have yet to see if the phone will be locked after canceling a plan**  So, for $100 LESS, you get a Phone... GPS... Camera... and a iPod Touch built in.  

What does this mean?  Why would Apple charge $100 more for a product that does LESS than a product a hundred dollars cheaper? If I know Apple, and as a hardcore Apple user, I like to think I do.  Apple will lower the price of iPod's (even if only the iPod Touch) to be competitive with the iPhone.

NOTICE: The $199 and $299 price is a SUBSIDIZED price meaning its a specially priced product... in the case of an iPhone, its the equivalent to an upgrade price of a cell phone. (Or a reduction in price)

The first condition is a stable political environment. There can not be any long-term political stability without the consent of the governed. This consent must be reaffirmed periodically, not later than 4-6 years. When a government looses the confidence of the governed, there must be a peaceful transfer of power as and when necessary. A single party in power breeds corruption, cronyism and stalemate, no matter how well intentioned. No country in the world has sustained growth and prosperity over long periods of time, without a political consensus. How many of the BRIC countries would qualify in this test?

The second and probably the most important condition is the 'Rule of Law'. Every country must have a written 'Constitution', giving equal protection to all it's citizens under all circumstances. There must be an independent Judiciary, capable of interpreting the laws and providing justice to all including the foreigners and international agreements. The government must be accountable to the Courts and Justices. The Executive and the Legislator must stand by the law of the land. Without the rule of law and the transparency of justice, long term trade and agreements can not be sustained. Where do BRIC countries stand on this?

Another important condition for the 'Emerging Economies', is the development of Intellectual Infrastructure. We are not just talking about basic educational institutions, we are talking about the world-class universities and research laboratories. How many countries around the world have centers of excellence like Stanford, Harvard, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Cambridge and Oxford? How many countries produce innovators like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jerry Yang, Larry Page and Sergey Brin? Would Brazil, Russia, India and China, encourage students from around the world to come to their Universities and do research, find jobs, raise families and then become full citizens of their countries?

Immigration has been the foundation of an idea called "America". The United States of America was founded by immigrants. Few would know that even their 'Revolutionary War' for independence was fought by Irish immigrants who were not even born in America. Hundreds of thousands of people come to The United States every year and over time become permanent residents and finally citizens of this country. It is the genius of these immigrants, that has fired the imagination of this country. Immigrants have rejuvenated the creative instincts of this 'Economic Power House'. If BRIC countries and others around the world aspire to be the great powers of the 21st Century, they would have to learn to live with others, in peace and harmony.

Nice compilation of videos by Apple's CEO poking fun (not all though) of their main rival, Microsoft. This is just good to watch. :)

For me, going to a movie is getting away from the real world. It always has been – from going on a magic carpet ride with Aladdin to laughing at a flatulent character in "Shrek". Pixar makes funny, little kid, movies, as I expect. So when a 'little kid' movie crosses the line from fantasy to real world, I have to raise a brow.

I won't spoil anything for you, but the premise of this movie is gloomy and apocalyptic. Earth is run by a corporation and is filled with trash. The world is so dirty, the corporation sends everyone to temporarily live in a new world and markets it as the next best thing. The problem is the living situation becomes permanent – 700 years into the future. That's where the little, lonely robot comes in.

Wall-E is a trash compactor designed to clean up Earth and make it livable. But while he cleans, more trash comes. The many hidden messages in the movie are frightening to watch as an adult since the target audience are children who have no sense of hidden marketing. The messages, while seeming friendly is force fed throughout the flick – adults should recycle, kids will recycle. Oh, and Fortune 500 companies are the devil.

What makes it more frightening for adults and boring for some children is that there is no dialogue until about 40 minutes into the movie. There are only 7 character voices with Pixar possibly shelling out some cash for Sigourney Weaver, who plays the ship's computer. Fred Willard makes a few appearances as the corporation owner/earth ruler and that guy from Cheers who makes it in every Pixar title.

Also, while Al Gore's message is obvious, I get the feeling Steve Jobs helped consult on this movie. When Wall-E starts up after a solar-charge, he makes the Apple startup sound. Wall-E also owns an iPod and his love interest most likely has a "Designed by Apple in California" bumper sticker. Perhaps that was put in there to show the kiddies that not all Fortune 500 companies are evil. I looked into it, too. Al Gore is a board member on Apple with CEO Jobs. "It's all about the experience, man!"

The only thing I was thankful for while watching the movie on Sunday was there were no screaming children in there. Parents were whisking away their seeds after the 30th minute of no dialogue.

If you can filter out the hidden messages reminicent of 1984, this flick is good to watch. But, while Pixar's ninth movie sold tickets tall enough to build a skyscraper with solar panels and some wind turbines, this G-rated movie should certainly be rated "not for kids younger than 5 and George Bush Republicans."

Ademas de hablarte del malware del iPhone, si recibiste un mail con la imagen de abajo de parte de Apple para presentarte el iPhone y diste click en ¨ver la presentacion o mas informacion¨ seguramente ya tienes malware en tu ordenador, aunque parezaca un mail de Apple de eso se trata mejor no abras correos que no estes seguro de donde vienen y no lo invente yo segun los especialistas del Laboratorio de Seguridad de Websense, el spam usa una tactica de ingenieria social que al hacer click en los enlaces se instala un programa malicioso que se presenta como software benigno llamado.mov.exe, con el que se puede obtener información importante del usuario.Si tienes Linux no tienes de que preocuparte.

Estamos a solo 10 dias en Mexico de tener el iPhone compraras el tuyo ?

a lot of strange things have been happening lately to me and i am kinda ok with all of them. my root canal treatment failed and i have a swollen jaw, i have terrible cough for two weeks now, i tripped down the stairs and got a hairline fracture and from the time i gave up swimming, i have a feeling i am growing fatter,that apart, i am perfect. 

bill gates left microsoft last month to devote his time full time for charity. this man, despite what people have to tell about him has lived a remarkable life and continues to do so. bill gates was definitely not the pioneer in software industry, he was the pioneer when it came to making money through software, the man was responsible in a major way why you are reading this blog now and why i wrote it, it's definitely not about the great software, there are better OSs and better computers around but they somehow never reached our homes. microsoft did. and that's where gates the businessman comes in. gates was definitely not a stringent innovator, he was a businessman, a blunt businessman. he knew what to do where and was emotionally secure and cool almost always, very much unlike the monkey boy steve ballmer who is known to have vowed to 'kill google' and not let his children use an ipod. (yes, you can smile here ). 

this week had yet another news item as the blogosphere buzzed with verizon ceo commenting on steve jobs getting old and wanting him to die. even though he didn't explicitly state it, the meaning was obvious. people might see it any way they like, but as far as i am concerned, this is some sort of honor, your competitors are so pissed off and jealous of you, they've given up all hopes of any competition and are wanting you to die. what can be cooler than that ? given the elegance, style and the awesomeness of the iphone, i am pretty sure that there is no one in the whole market who can even come half way of what apple did. and with the costs coming down, it wouldn't be surprising if you end up seeing iphones with just about everyone in an year or two. 

two days from now and india will have it's first sci-fi movie. i am normally a persons who abhors movies but i just had this feeling that i should be commenting about this movie. love story 2050 reminds you of star wars, minority report, xmen and so many others just by the look of its trailers . the point i would want to make here is that the target market which the makers of this movie might have speculated have already a lot of sci-fi in hollywood flicks and its unlikely that they'll boo boo at it. also, you can't expect the basic indian crowd to come out and enjoy sci-fi movies. for those who are going to see it, there's nothing new in it, the others don't quite bother about it. i am no astrologer but i have a feeling that all those projects which people take up just because they are 'cool' and have 'worked before' never quite work out. 

by the way, i saw schindler's list yesterday and i think its an amazing movie.  we're all so lucky we weren't born at the time of the war. 

ps: the punctured parachute was blue in color. and contrary to what you might have imagined, it was discarded, no one ever used it. 

ASSY MCGEE'S FARTBOARD

As proxy for elect provoke, weave your speakers in consideration of"hi".

(Lay in ruins ourselves Big Crawl.)

Analysis: When I spoke recently at an IARPA conference in Orlando, and was asked to give a glimpse into Microsoft's vision of R&D trends, one of the possibly surprising areas I highlighted was robotics.  We're making a major push in that area, for reasons that might not be intuitive based on an old-fashioned impression of what Microsoft offers in the government realm.  More on the intelligence community's potential use below.

If you missed Automatica this year, as I did, tough luck - it's only held every two years, so we'll have to wait until June 2010.  The trade-show combines old-school automation and new-wave robotics: "assembly and handling technology, robotics, machine vision and associated technologies, [in] the very first international event that brings together all branches of the robotics and automation industry under the same roof in a single event," according to the agenda.  And the EU took the occasion to announce a new policy to boost European robotics, doubling official EU investments between 2007 and 2010 with almost €400 million to support European robotics research.  The EU plans to foster stronger links between academia and industry, and will fund "widespread experimentation by academic researchers and industry."

The reality is, though, robotics advance is driven less by government top-down investment, and more by the ROI recognized by industry. An Economist article last week ("Nothing to Lose but Their Chains") noted the bottom-line drivers in a report on Automatica:

"Robotic blobs, arms and devices that resemble spiders will pave the way.  A lot more of these are coming to work in offices and homes, and some will do more than one thing... Four trends were on show: robots are rapidly becoming more responsive, cheaper, simpler to program, and safer."

I'm doubly upset I missed Automatica because the event was in Munich this year, one of my favorite cities, which is apparently a central hub of Europe's robotics industry.  Microsoft has an R&D center in Germany and if I had known earlier about Automatica I probably could have contrived a trip to cover it.

Microsoft was not an exhibitor at Automatica this year, but that may change in the next go-round. The change is best described by none other than Bill Gates himself, who wrote the cover story in Scientific American's December 2006 issue ("A Robot in Every Home: The leader of the PC revolution predicts that the next hot field will be robotics").  He described the state of play then: "The challenges facing the robotics industry are similar to those we tackled in computing three decades ago. Robotics companies have no standard operating software that could allow popular application programs to run in a variety of devices. The standardization of robotic processors and other hardware is limited, and very little of the programming code used in one machine can be applied to another. Whenever somebody wants to build a new robot, they usually have to start from square one."

We've begun to address those challenges: check here for the latest release of free downloads of Microsoft Robotics Studio (MSRS), and a more robust Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008, software development kits which simplify the creation of robotic applications using a wide range of programming languages (amateur to complex).  The SDK includes the Visual Simulation Environment, a cool simulation tool that lets robot builders test their applications in a 3D virtual environment before trying them out in the real world.  There are great tutorials and lots of information to spark robotics innovation.

Adoption of Robotics Platforms

Gates described the goal with these SDK's as a parallel to what Microsoft did in its earliest years with BASIC and MS-DOS: "to create an affordable, open platform that allows robot developers to readily integrate hardware and software into their designs."  You can check out Bill's enthusiasm for MSRS in a Q&A session, podcast and video interview with Scientific American Online earlier this year.

There's been some controversy. Gregory Dudek is a prominent blogger on robotics, and professor at the McGill Research Center for Intelligent Machines; he and some others greeted the introduction of the MSRS skeptically at first in 2007, worrying (wrongly) that it would drive out independent platforms and efforts.  See here for a very interesting early post, and note in the comments that Microsoft's Tandy Trower (daddy of MSRS) responds with some thoughtful input.  Well, Dudek seems to have come around and is now actively using MSRS for his own projects on underwater and walking robot systems, winning a Microsoft Human Robot Interaction Award in the process for his Aqua robotic vehicle.

There's a lot of commercial activity using this new platform, with uses as diverse as MySpace (network modeling simulation) and Tyco (facility access modeling). But my Institute is interested in government use (see Information Week story here). 

Right off the bat, as far as the government & public sector goes, there's obvious utility in the education space.  Microsoft Research is a sponsor of the Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE), which applies and evaluates robots as a context for computer science education, a joint effort between the Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr College's Computer Science Department.  (Their blog had a great compilation of reaction to the Gates article.)  Microsoft also works with education efforts like the Arizona State Robotics Camp for high school students.

Microsoft is also sponsoring work on disaster response with the University of Massachusetts Robotics Lab.  And there's tremendous public-sector use for robotics in health-care: check out the enGadget video of French robotics company Robosoft's newest service robot designed to help the elderly and disabled, a "24-hour monitoring bot, including daily reminders, remote teleconferencing abilities, scaring off of house pets, and alerts if the patient falls or is in trouble."  It was designed virtually in MSRS and uses the software for control.

Intelligence Analysts and Robotics

When I spoke to IARPA's "Incisive Analysis" conference in May, the focus was on better technologies for analyst use.  For example, MSRS allows the use of simulated hardware, physical entities, and included 3D terrain, so the robotics problem space is actually quite relevant to many problems in "an intelligent Intelligence Enterprise." Both at their core are about services and orchestrations. Both share the need to be able to scale both up and down. Robotics simulation allows easy scenarios that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to provide to a broad audience, e.g.:

• a geosynchronous orbit-plane populated by multiple vehicles;
• a city destroyed by a nuclear device or earthquake;
• any indoor facility populated by robotic avatars.

I also pointed out to the IARPA conference that, as a commercial and user-friendly parallel to the famous DARPA Grand Challenge Race for real robot vehicles, Microsoft has launched RoboChamps, a cool simulated robotics league open to academics, hobbyists, and developers from around the world. RoboChamps is built on top of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 using the  immersive 3D simulation environments, and the best simulated robot teams can actually win real robots as prizes. It's wild!  An IARPA analogue focusing on analytic uses might be interesting...

If you're interested in wider reading on robotics, for a fairly comprehensive list of resources that will keep you busy for a while check out the Future of Engineering blog's "Future of Robotics - Robots Uses, Trends, Applications" from March 2008, highly recommended.   And the IPRE site is a great central resource for links on robotics news and developments.

Oh - and if you're in the DC Beltway area and want to get elbow-deep in this stuff, check out the Meetup group that's formed for robotics enthusiasts. 

This moment in robotics really does have the spark of the very early days in personal computing software; watch this video of those days, with Jobs and Wozniak and Gates and the like, and you'll get the comparison.

 
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