iZeitgeist

Apple 2.0

A pple which started the personal computer revolution in the 1970s is surely enough making a turning point of their role in the Electronic Market. A comeback unlike the ones we have witnessed in the past. More and more of us are seduced by Apple, and we won't be happy until we crunch it. Macintosh fans and die hards have never been as touted by the Cupertino firm ever. Speaking of that, even its address had to have some appeal to it, in fact it is "1 Infinite Loop". Apple is "appley" from ground up, should we say. Stevie on the other side has never been feeling so comfortable in his shoes until the recently launched MacWorld 2006. Him being at top-notch speaker had no trouble at all making a momentum to be remembered for the years coming as a history landmark where Apple Computer, Inc. had finally took off and changed the whole Computing Industry. The Intel re-branding could not have been in a better time for the Mac. Apple could not recreate the computer by itself, had Intel not been in the mix with it, Apple would have been great, but not revolutionary.

 

An Intel clean-room-suit guy walks out of a cloud of fog with a 12" silicon wafer and says, "Steve, want to report that Intel's ready." Takes off his his helmet -- it's Paul Otellini, Intel CEO. via Engagdet 

 

Jobs has presented just about the greatest quarter ever in the history of Apple. With iPod sales exploding, Apple sold 14 millions iPods last quarter, 32 millions in the year 2005, and about a total of 42 millions iPods sold worldwide since the launch of the original one. The iTunes Music Store is now selling 3 millions songs a day, adding up to a little less that 1 billion songs sold since iTunes was released. These are huge numbers, but ought to be small compared to what is coming up on the way of the Mac. Only Apple could leverage this absolute dominance in the market of portable music players with a share 83%. Phenomenal!

Apple unveiled the first ever Intel powered iMac and a new line of notebooks dubbed MacBook Pro. The magic ship inside is the Intel Core Duo — which is actually two processors (up to 1.83GHz) engineered onto a single chip. Both of these releases will be 2 to 5 times faster than the previous models.

The key difference this time is that you CAN load Windows on the new released  Apple's machines.

"That's fine with us. We don't mind," said Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing. "If there are people who love our hardware but are forced to put up with a Windows world, then that's OK." via MSNBC

Some people don't realize how big of a deal this might be. Instead of asking why would somebody want to put Windows on a Mac, the real question is: "why wouldn't someone buy a computer where they can put Windows AND Mac OS X on ?" Apple designs some of the most attractive, stream-lined notebooks and desktop in the planet. I can see no excuses to get a beautiful Mac, if it isn't for the budget compared to the standard Dell. People will be able to run their Windows applications and test out OS X without an additional investment. Being able to dual-boot Windows and OS X would allow people to use a superior OS (OS X) while retaining the ability to run their job-related software (XP) or vice versa. This just saved someone from relying on two computers.

Although I have been a faithful fan of Sony, I can't stop being tempted to triple boot Leopard, Vista, and Debian on the MacBook (or whatever they call it), which is the upcoming replacement of the iBook. Lots of people would like to do something similar. Plus, everyone loves options!

On a different note, Apple's stock has rose about 10% since MacWorld hitting new record heights at $85 for a Market Cap of $71 billions.

       

 

Googlistic Expectations - Part 1

I have always looked upon companies that innovate, Google for instance has been on my focus for several years already. And So, it has been brought to my attention another great company. It is the second largest ISP in France, called Free. Free has always been on the edge of innovation by adding the latest features on their box called "Freebox", features that other players had on the market six months later or not at all. All at keeping the same price, which has always been 29,99 euros (roughly 35 dollars or less). Those features added up to the following list:

• 20 MB/s ADSL line
• over 100 free TV channels
• Free calls to anywhere in France
• Wi-FI box
• Freeplayer (Access and view all videos, music, and photos of your computer on your TV)
• 1 GB full featured web hosting
• Video on demand, movies at 1.99 euros per title
• Access of all your missed calls, call durations, etc..., from your TV

The good news is that they have just announced as of January 1st 2006, FREE calls to about 14 countries among them, the United States, Canada, Germany, Australia, China, Singapore, Israel, and Spain. It is just mind blowing how far they are pushing it.

Free is also the unique holder of a national license of WiMax.

Whatever it is taking Free to launch such competitive moves leave little but to wonder when is Google innovating in a bit of hardcore, and for which is concerning those free minutes, we'd love to see them anytime soon on GTalk.

It sure will make a lot of noise then.

Zoo Wants Chimpanzee to Stop Smoking

Pretty amazing how much  monkey are similar to us. Reuters has this story: A South African zoo is trying to persuade its star chimpanzee to kick a bad smoking habit.

"Charlie, a grown male chimp and the Bloemfontein Zoo, has been picking up cigarettes thrown to him by visitors and smoking them -- a habit he probably picked up by observing humans, .....He even acts like a naughty schoolboy by hiding the cigarette when staff approach the area."

the zoo said they were:

"determined to help him quit."

I let you comment on this :-)

Gmail Beta-not-to-be soon ?

Gmail has added today new interface languages beside US English, including UK English, French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Netherlands, Portuguese, Russian, as well as Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Could this be a sign for an imminent Gmail launch?
I don't think so, Spell Checker is still English only, and couple more improvement have to be made. via Blogoscoped

BTW, anyone who is still looking for a Gmail account please drop me an email to bennis+invites@gmail.com .

Should Google launch an IM Client to consolidate its services?

Google has proved itself and everyone else that they are capable to organically achieve what they believe is their mission, which is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. This phrase makes itself true and verified every time anyone use Google to get information. Google now disposes of a variety of services -whether Betas or not-  beside their search engine. Most revolutionary useful of them are Google Maps, Google Groups, Google News, Froogle, and not to forget Gmail, Gmail is just the next best thing that could happen to one if it did not already. Google's next legitimate product launch should be an IM Client to consolidate all of its services. This IM client should integrate Gmail, personalized news feeds, a watch on wish list prices, the latest history of own searched queries, pending questions in the Google Groups, a local satellite snapshot with marked points of interest and happening events, integrated Google Desktop Search to easily find any type of files in the computer, and finally quick Google searches. All these functionalities should be accessible from the client interface simply and clearly put by Google as they always do. Not only that, but all the capacity of getting information should be googlely easy to share among other users. This would launch a bomb shell in the world of the Internet making everyone migrating from competitive IM clients to the Google IM. Hoping for Google to release the GMessenger soon, one could still fantasize till then.

The War of Webmail,...at least what Microsoft is doing wit it

While Microsoft's search engine MSN is not returning any direct link to the Gmail main and login page when performing a search for the query "gmail". And when actually Gmail's privacy policy page is the second search result after the about page, a sign from Microsoft to emphasis Gmail's privacy issues which actually aren't true, only to spread fear in the heart of Internet users. This couldn't be without the Okay -or maybe even the proposal- of big players of the company.For Google on the other side, last 1st of April was indeed the 1st anniversary of Gmail, although still in beta, it has doubled the 1st GB of storage and is still counting more free storage at the rate of 2.80MB/Day to close 1st April 2006 at 3GB. Worth mentioning is the last feature of Rich Formatting added to the Gmail editor. Beside making your emails look like a rainbow, the real key features hidden behind this is that it will allow you to Reply or Forward gmails with out losing everything to plain notepad text. What a difference in the philosophy of competing to be the best.

Google Interactive Zeitgeist

Google has released an interactive 2004 year-end Zeitgeist. It is very helpful to highlight all what has been important to this year for Google. This is only available to English speaking folks. It is made in flash, and is very pleasant to the eye. The Zeitgeist is broken into months, and then each month is broken into three sections: Most Popular Query, Most Popular Image, and Most Popular News. Each of these sections has three or four entries. Along with these sections, every month has a representation of the location and summary of significant events that have happened. In addiction, each month is corresponding to a previous Google logo to remember the spirit of the time being in focus. Very Insightful indeed, Check it out!

I Blog, therefore I Exist

It is finally time for me to start my own blog. I have been thinking about this for a while, but the hardest thing was to start, well here I am. I blog, therefore I exist. My first obstacle was obviously the name of my blog, after extensive thinking, I came to the decision that iZeitgeist is my best fit. Google first familiarized me with the word zeitgeist; Google Zeitgeist is the term to refer to search patterns and trends to reflect tidbits of information related to the search behavior of Google users. It is after googling zeitgeist that I came to its real explanation.

Zeitgeist Explained
zeit·geist | Pronunciation: 'tsIt-"gIst, 'zIt | Function: noun | Etymology: German, from Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit) | Date: 1884 | Meaning: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.
By permission from Merriam-Webster's Collegiate® Dictionary.

Therefore, zeitgeist is the spirit of the time; the general intellectual and moral state or temper characteristic of any period. Where we come to iZeitgeist, where I will be giving my two cents, my thoughts and counter-thoughts; specific to this chronological-spatial setting in which we live in; about certain more or less though provoking sequential logical-consequential events that have happened (Life),as well as breakthroughs that have expanded our limits and ability to do more, better, and faster (Technology), and also about opinions vis-à-vis controversies that are debated (Politics). Everyone from every culture, background, and religion is VERY welcome to be here. This is your Write, stand up for it! Let it be a wonderful journey, and enjoy.