RIM Dies, Waterloo Cries

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Well written human interest piece by Jesse Hicks at The Verge on the impact RIM’s slide is having on its hometown of Waterloo, Ontario:

As Google is to Mountain View or Apple is to Cupertino, Research in Motion is more than just a company. It’s a symbol of accomplishment, a defining feature of the community’s self-image.

This is really important: I hope the folks in Waterloo realize what an opportunity RIM’s demise could have for the city.

I just spent a few days camping in the middle of no where in central Oregon. The area we camped was in the Cascades mountain range that runs all the way from Canada down into California. Mt. Rainer, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Hood, Crater Lake, and Mt. Shasta are all part of this range. There are dozens of beautiful mountains in this amazing, tree- and river-rich landscape.

The forests in which we stayed are decades if not centuries old and over that time period the trees have grown quite large. We saw some that had to be at 200 to 300 feet tall. But those trees form a canopy and that canopy keeps rain and sun from getting to the forest floor, snuffing out new trees in the process. Eventually, though, these trees die and fall over. Not only does sun and rain get to the forest floor but these trees are stock-full of nutrients that new sprouts use to grow. These fallen monsters are called nurse logs.

Waterloo, you are in an amazing position. One of the worlds largest conifers is dying off and could, if the conditions are right, become a nurse log for the next generation of your companies.

I sure wish Portland had one of those!

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[via Watts Martin]

A Little R&R

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Periodically it is nice to get away. Last week was that time for my family and me as we drove 1200 miles across three states, saw lots of family and swam in some beautiful swimming holes in central Oregon’s Cascades.

Whenever I go on vacation, though, it seems like I work twice as hard before I leave and twice as hard when I return. Compounding this is that we spent four days of the past 10 in a place where there was no reception at all. A good thing? Maybe. It is weird to be out of touch for that long.

Whatever the case it is good to be back, trying to remember what I was doing before I left. I read two books while I was away, had a great time with my kids, and have memories that I will always remember.

Vacation is good. I’ve been back one day. When’s the next one?

Google v. Everyone

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Om Malik wrote this a month ago and he couldn’t be more right on:

When you stand back from all the announcements made by Google today and increase the periphery, you start to notice that this is a company that is fighting a lot of battles on many fronts. In some places it is winning, but most places it is trench warfare.

He goes on to outline exactly how Google is fighting with Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon.

This reminds me of two things. The first is that in war it is nearly impossible to fight on multiple fronts. Just ask Germany in the 1940s.

The second is this video clip:

Is Google fighting a land war in Asia?

Micro Apps Suck

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I’m very frustrated with the state of apps. It seems instead of getting more powerful applications that focus on solving a big problem we are getting smaller and smaller apps that focus on a subset of the problem.

Let’s start with photo taking. I don’t want one app for photos and another for video and another to share pictures and another to shoot panoramic. I want one app. Apple alone provides three photo apps: camera, Photos and iPhoto. There is a logical line between iPhoto and the other two as the former is focused on editing pictures and the other two are focused on taking, seeing and sharing photos. But why both camera and Photos? Why not give me a button in the camera app to see my pictures, share and delete them? And the same in the Photos app? I want one app on my home screen.

Apple is making this horrible mistake again with Music and Podcast apps. Apparently in the next OS version Apple removes Podcasts from the Music app and forces you to download a new one from the App Store. I listen to both music and podcasts. Why do I have to have two apps? My first problem is that my car does bluetooth streaming seamlessly with the Music app. Now I will have to specifically go launch the Podcasts app to listen to them. The second problem is that if you download an mp3 file that happens to be a podcast but not labeled as a podcast it will not be organized at all with the other podcasts.

This splitting into micro apps is causing me to create folders on my home screen, making it harder for me to find apps and causing me to drill down too many levels to do the things I do all the time. This tread across the App Store is driving me nuts.

Here is the logical approach. I say to myself, I want to listen to something and to listen to something I launch the Music app. Then I look for what I want. Easy!

In this new universe I have to decide what I want to listen to, figure out where that may be stored and then run that app. If I don’t know where it went then I am hunting around looking for it.

Apple, this is worse than files and folders. And I know how much you dislike files and folders.

The Camera You Have With You

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Marco Arment wrote a great post on the camera you have with you:

As part of my 2012 computer-setup shuffle, I also replaced my laptop with a Retina MacBook Pro, and the first thing it screams for is a high-resolution desktop wallpaper. Great, I thought, I’ll just use one of my photos.

Almost nothing I’ve shot since 2010 is usable.

I have been looking through our photos the last few years and have found the same phenomena. Our primary cameras have been iPhones during this time frame.

The cameras on these devices are great for capturing the little moments but they are horrendously bad at really good photographs. There is no way to hold them still enough. This is the beauty of products like Instagram. Those filters cover up so much of that photo garbage.

I’m not in a position to start shooting digital SLRs again — I hope to be in the future — but I sure enjoyed photography a lot more when I got high quality results.