Not A Mystery
Technology
A Face For My Apple Watch Face
A few days ago we went to the Rubin Museum and viewed Steve McCurry: India, an exhibition co-organized by the Rubin Museum and the International Center of Photography. This photo from 2009 was taken in Rajasthan, India and is titled “Man Covered in Powder during Holi, The Festival of Colors”. I have a number of photos that I use on my Apple … Continue reading
All Apple Music Needs Is A Kitchen Sink
Last year Tim Cook disparaged Microsoft’s effort to merge its tablet and desktop products, saying: “You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those aren’t going to be pleasing to the user.” Tim, I love you, but a toaster-fridge would be more pleasing to me than the current controls on Apple’s Music App. Here’s one example that … Continue reading
Better Than Trump, The Ultimatium Brand
Donald Trump eat your heart out. The Trump Brand is pretty good, but its “sell-by” date is not infinite. On the other hand, the American chemist Glenn Seaborg and his team at Lawrence Berkeley Lab created a series of “Brands” in the 40’s that will live (literally) forever. As described in this National Geographic blog post by Robert Krulwich, they … Continue reading
This Is Not A Bill
While I can’t say that René Magritte is my favorite artist, several of his works resonate. Of those, the one at the top of my list would be “The Son of Man”, which figures prominently in the film “The Thomas Crown Affair”, and reminds me how I felt when I worked for a living. Next … Continue reading
How About A Little Bit Of Respect For The USPS
It’s time to give our much maligned United States Postal Service some respect. Yes. Really. If you haven’t noticed, sending a package thru the Post Office is cheaper and faster than using either UPS or FedEx. Yes. Really. The problem, historically, was that once you turned your package over to USPS, it got disappeared into an … Continue reading
Bank of America, Now Channeling Peanuts
Every year Lucy tells Charlie Brown that she’ll hold the football for him while he kicks it. We all know how that works out. This week I felt like Charlie Brown, with Bank of America holding the football. The football was my new Bank of America Debit card, which arrived in the mail appearing to be an EMV CHIP and PIN card. Wow, I’ve been … Continue reading
Hiding In Plain Site, And Coming To A URL Near You
In spite of myself, I think this latest meme is kinda neat. As reported by the NY Times, in-jokes are now getting stuffed into the URL of the websites you visit. The Internet is at peak saturation, and news sites and popular blogs are toiling to leverage every possible piece of web real estate to capture readers’ … Continue reading
We Are All PIN-Heads, If You Believe The Bankers
After a series of ever more serious data breaches, and millions of identities stolen, the banking industry promised to introduce credit cards with advanced security features this year. Just Another Fantasy. Turns out that instead of introducing ‘Chip and PIN’, they are going with ‘Chip and Signature’. Which may sound equally secure, but is in fact, a real meh. As reported … Continue reading
Are You Facebook’s Bitch?
No. This blog post is not about the recent revelation that Facebook tweeked news feeds to see if that would change user emotions. Compared to what we read about in the real world every day, that would have about as much impact as peeing in the ocean. Rather, we are here to discuss another ‘experiment’ brought … Continue reading
If The Devil Is In The Details, Google Will Find Him
For years Google has been performing so many amazing tech feats that we take them for granted. But I saw a new trick yesterday that made my jaw drop. I backup and store all my pictures and documents on Google Drive. One of its best features is the ability to search those on-line documents. As … Continue reading
DIY Snooping, You Don’t Need The NSA For This Trick.
Thanks to a common ‘security hole’ in on-line images, we don’t need the NSA for some simple snooping. Just a few years ago most of us didn’t have high-speed internet connections, so publications would compress their photos to keep our browsers from slowing to a crawl. With the right compression the pictures would still look … Continue reading
Not A Mystery 