1. They say the shortest distance between two points is a straight line … but they forgot to mention hills!
2. Just because you ran during a break in the rain doesn’t mean the ground won’t be soaking wet and that strangers won’t find it funny when you lose your balance.
3. Getting lost when you have a GPS on your phone has no noticeable downside besides the constant feeling of “vuja de” (aka, the experience of never having been somewhere before).

Now onto more mundane topics … while not a long run it still topped off a good month for me. 15 runs during the month totalling 77.2 miles. My longest distance for a month so far (although not by much).

- wise words from ken.net

- wise words from ken.net

What’s good:

• I have tremendous freedom and flexibility on how I run my day. This is probably going to decrease soon as investors and employees come in to ruin my perfect world. :^)
• I am learning every day and I’m learning things I’m interested in
• I’m not dependant on a vast army of people doing their job or complex set of dependencies. It’s all down to me.

What’s not so good:

• I’m not getting paid yet. Hopefully that will change but for any immediate time horizon I am suddenly in a lower economic bracket than I’m used to.
• I have to do everything myself. Yeah I know I made it out as a plus but it’s both and it depends on what side of the bed you wake up on (or how much coffee you’ve had so far).
• I don’t have a “partner in crime” (figurative expression only) to bounce ideas off of. This really hurts me as I am an extrovert and want to think externally. There is only so much you can bounce off family and friends effectively.
• There is a lot of stress and self-doubt that inevitably creeps into building a product. This is particularly pronounced when competitors are springing up every time you read the paper and you don’t have any customers yet. Trust me … it ain’t easy; it requires a combination of professional skills, confidence, compartmentalisation, coping skills, and assumed ignorance. All I can say is thank god for exercise and my innate ability to foster unrealistically grandiose self-beliefs.

Well that’s all for now. I probably have more to say but no time to say it right now … I’ve got a product to build.

- wise words from ken.net

I’ve had  a lot of problems with the WordPress plugin for email subscriptions so I’ve moved to an alternative way of providing this functionality. If you’d previously subscribed please subscribe once more … apologies for this but there was no way for me to migrate people over.

You can subscribe by adding your email and pressing subscribe in the sidebar.

- wise words from ken.net

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein

- wise words from ken.net

On a entrepreneurial discussion group I’m a member of there a random conversation erupted about the inaneness of news these days. One of the guys came up with this workflow that I thought was brilliant so I made it a bit more visual. As part of the same discussion someone also posted this hilarious YouTube video of Jonathan Booker (BBC journalist) lampooning himself and his industry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aHun58mz3vI.

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Not to be kept in “darwin’s waiting room” any longer I’ve shed my troubled and embarrassing iPad 1 ways in favour of the “New iPad” (which I refuse to call anything other than iPad 3). I also pre-ordered the new Apple TV. The gadget gods have surely shined on me today. ;^)

- wise words from ken.net

Why a new Apple TV should share the stage with the iPad 3:

There’s increasing evidence that Apple’s March 7 event will bring not only an update to Apple’s iPad tablet, but also to its Apple TV streaming box. With inventory winding down and new Apple TV units not expected in stores again until March 8, there has been an uptick in rumors that the streaming box will receive updated hardware as well. But it seems also more than just a coincidence to me that these two products could both be announced at the same event, and I believe it’s likely that the next versions of the Apple TV and iPad will have deep integration for developers to take advantage of.

Compared to rumors swirling around the next-generation iPad, expectations for the Apple TV are relatively muted. That said, there’s already been some discussion about what we can expect from the new  hardware, which has not been updated since Fall 2010. Zatz Not Funny! has a pretty extensive list of possible features for the next-generation Apple TV. I’d bet that the upgraded box will probably come with a new chipset, which could give the Apple TV the ability to deliver crisper 1080p HD video, which is an upgrade from the current 720p that it displays. But a new chip could also add the extra horsepower necessary for enabling a more robust app ecosystem.

The opening up of Apple TV to third-party developers will be key to increasing adoption of the platform, and could serve as an entry-point for Apple to enter the TV market in earnest. Apple is reportedly working on an actual HDTV, which would put it up against consumer electronics manufacturers like Samsung, Sony and LG. Creating a robust and open app ecosystem for the Apple TV prior to the release of such a product could give consumers a reason to actually buy an Apple-branded HDTV set.

More importantly, updating the platform for third-party app developers opens the door for more integrated and converged applications between Apple’s various services, mobile devices and its streaming box.

Here are a few of the things I’d expect to see from a converged mobile-and-TV app ecosystem:

Better control and navigation. Oh, and Siri

You can already control the Apple TV through your iPhone or iPad using the Apple Remote app. But other than providing better text input when you search for a title, the app does little more today than act as a replacement for the physical Apple TV remote. The big problem in the current Apple TV user experience is that you must navigate to the home screen to switch between apps or pick new content whenever you want to “change channels.”

By connecting mobile devices to the control mechanism of the Apple TV, however, users could theoretically browse, search and discover content through apps on the second-screen device — all while content continues to play on-screen. There’s also the opportunity to link Siri’s voice search capabilities to the control mechanism, which could reduce the amount of text input or manual browsing necessary when looking for a certain title. This was already foretold by the New York Times months ago, but it could finally fall into place if the two platforms converge.

True second-screen interactivity. Also, interactive ads?

Today’s second-screen apps are a mess. Most that try to provide a richer interactive experience to viewers while they are watching certain types of content require some sort of manual check-in before they can offer up additional multimedia content. It’s a laborious process for users and for content owners alike.

But what if those apps on the mobile device were tied directly into the apps on the streaming box? That would enable an app maker like HBO, for instance, to provide pop-up or push notifications to the iPad with behind-the-scenes footage or more detailed background information on characters in series like Game of Thrones or True Blood. HBO experimented with that sort of interactivity in its browser-based Game of Thrones streams last year and is looking to enable similar functionality in its iPad app for Season 2. This is one way to do so without taking up too much TV screen real estate or disrupting the viewing experience.

That kind of convergence could also enable interactive, second-screen ads to be built. To many marketers, being able to reach consumers on the second-screen device that they’re looking at while ignoring the ads on TV is kind of the holy grail for the next generation of converged applications. They love the idea of having a call-to-action appear on a touch-enabled computing device that can lead consumers deeper down the sales funnel, offer up special deals or coupons and provide more information about products they’re hawking.

Frankly, Apple has never been great at the ad game — just look at the iAds debacle for proof of that. But as long as it doesn’t try to control the interactive ad ecosystem — instead, enabling standards and best practices to emerge around its converged TV and mobile platform — it could prove invaluable to content partners and marketers alike.

Gaming, with your iDevice as a controller

One of the possible features that Zatz Not Funny! suggests is the release of a gaming controller akin to the one that comes with the high-end Roku 2 XS model. But the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, with their accelerometers and touch controls, could take the place of the gaming remote. There are already some apps that take advantage of this type of functionality — but with the ability to beam the action to the biggest screen in the house, Apple could open up a whole new genre of gaming.

Much will depend on the processing power of the new Apple TV — but assuming it’s powerful enough, porting games like Grand Theft Auto 3 could be a huge win for game developers. There’s also the possibility of enabling board games like Scrabble, or card games like poker, to use the TV as the game board while putting individual playing pieces on user’s mobile devices.

Only Apple knows what the future holds

Of course, we’ll have to wait until next week to see what Apple truly has in store for the next Apple TV. But with Samsung getting serious about converged mobile-TV applications on the next generation of its connected TVs and tablets, as well as Microsoft’s addition of voice and gesture controls through Xbox Live and Kinect (not to mention its integration of Xbox Live into Windows Phone devices), it seems the perfect time for Apple to make a bold

- wise words from ken.net

D-Preview Preview of Mark III. Ubergizmo article below …

Canon EOS 5D MK III officially announced:

 

Canon fans, the long wait is over as the company has officially taken the wraps off the Canon EOS 5D MK III, a full frame DSLR camera that has since seen a couple of improvements over its predecessor, such as a slight bump in megapixels to 22.3MP, along with a new 720p HD video recording mode that is capable of recording at 60fps. (more…)

(Via Ubergizmo)

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Read on for more information.

Novel Magnesium Compound Reverses Neurodegeneration – Life Extension:

(Via www.lef.org)

- wise words from ken.net