Android Engineers announced today on Twitter that the HTC G1 (aka Dream) would not support further updates. That means that I can stop fantasizing with Donut right now. The Sense UI? Yeah, sure.
I knew it from the beginning. Even before I bought it. The hardware left much to desire. The bulkiness never bothered me much. When I had my iPod I always used it with protective plates (god bless them). I soon as I got my G1 I ordered them (praise the faceplates) from OnlyG1.com. I would have probably totaled the phone by now without them. A workmate cracked her screen just by leaning on a counter. My G1 doesn’t have a single scratch, the shielding is messed up.
The software wasn’t as polished and slick as OSX but it could multitask, run apps in the backgrounds and customize ad to infinitum. I fell in love with the chubby chick. I still love it, but now I’m hearing that we were cut out. That we’ll watch from the sidewalks. Lately, every time I have an iPhone on my hands I look at it with both nostalgia and something that I can’t shake. I don’t forget my first thought when I saw the iPhone, “I’m gonna have one”. Still, I don’t want to bail out on Android. I’m uber happy with the OS. It’s flexibility is unparalleled and that’s why I still look at the iPhone with disdain when I check all the apps I’m running at the same time on the G1. What worries me, as MG Siegler from TechCrunch wrote here, is the fragmentation of the Android platform with different iterations of the OS coexisting. Devs will go crazy tailoring apps for each phone/OS. Some might run this app, some not. That’s something that hasn’t changed on Apple’s side since the iPhone appeared a couple of years ago. The latest iPhone apps still work on the oldest ones, and each new OS update has so far been compatible with the oldest model of the smartphone.
I can always root my phone, but I know the hardware won’t withstand more demanding operating systems. The G1 gets sluggish when too many apps are open at the same time, when not turned off for an extended period of time or when he’s not in the mood.
I was nowhere near of considering to upgrade my phone, I’m still not. But now I have a new item in my wish list (and I don’t yet know what it is).
OK! So here we go again… If you think the image looks like an iPod Touch, then you aren’t far off… but if you’re looking for Apple news look over to Fer 
I’m all for the non-fruity stuff. Not that I don’t reckon they come up with some impressive stuff, it’s just that I don’t enjoy the “lockedness” of their platforms.
Moving on… Right out of the vaporware and rumors Creative finally released something from their “StemCell Computing” Enabled Zii Labs. Actually there’s 2 things being released together. You have the ZMS-05 which is the chipset powering the Zii Egg running Plaszma OS.
For the basics, the player packs a 3.5” 320×480, 10-point capacitive multitouch screen. On the back you will find an HD video camera, and on the front there’s a second VGA camera for live chat. This baby will hold 32GB internally with SDHC (not mini, not micro, full SD) card expansion, Flash Lite support, GPS and Wi-Fi. One of the most remarkable feats though is that this new Creative’s chipset is powerful enough to output 1080P video. Head on after the break for the rest… Read the rest of this entry »
Something slammed into Jupiter
By Fernando Tarnogol @ 13:45 --- In: Uncategorized
22 Jul 2009
UPDATED!!! On Sunday, July 19th, Anthony Wesley, an amateur astronomer from Australia spotted a black mark on Jupiter’s south polar region that wasn’t there in recent observations. At first, the assumption was that Jup’s newest wart was a storm system (sust like the big red spot, which is currently shrinking) but additional observations from around the world hinted at a collision event. The spot is about the size of the Pacific Ocean and through the photos, an ejecta cloud can be observed to the to the North West of the spot.
Something that caught my attention was that the impact occurred exactly 15 years after the fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy dipped into Jupiter. Luck or coincidence? Could it be one of those fragments of S-L that missed the last time and came back for a second shot?
Luckily for us Jupiter’s massive gravitational well makes these kind of objects prefer it rather than our little. If it wasn’t for Jupiter we would get our butts kicked a lot more often.
Oh yeah, the social media bit of information: the news was first broken on Twitter. Phil Plait from BadAstronomy knew about it through the micro-blogging service.
[JR] Update!!! – The hubble got back to being operational to snap a better pic (best to date) of the new scar Jupiter is proudly carrying now. CNN says even though the scar is actually the size of the earth, the actual object was merely 50-100 miles wide.
Image credit: JPL, NASA
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- Tags: anthony wesley, asteroid, bad astronomy, badastronomy, comet, crash, hit, JPL, jupiter, jupiter new spot, levy, NASA, shoemaker, shoemaker-levy, slammed, Social Media, Twitter
Real Time information is here. What’s next?
By Fernando Tarnogol @ 14:14 --- In: Internet| Society / Trends| Uncategorized
13 Jul 2009
Google is too slow, RSS is too slow, traditional media is too slow, printed media is waaaay to slow. Now it seems that anything that has happened more than 20 seconds ago is old. The first sentence of this post is old (depending on how fast you read… wait… now it’s old). We are now on the verge of real time information (on the verge or already in there?). A process that started centuries ago is finally reaching its destination. Since Julius Caesar’s announcements bulletins or the chinese Tipao, we’ve been racing against time. We’ve been trying to stay on top of it, some to beat it. Our thirst for immediacy grew stronger until nowadays, when waiting is no longer an option (check a related and previous post here).
So what’s next? Future news? It will be odd to check your Fuwitter stream to see what you are gonna be doing in 30 seconds. Of course a new race will start in the direction of the arrow of time. “What’s gonna be in your mind in 2 hours?”, “What are you doing next summer?” or “What are you up to at the end of time” will be the tag lines you’ll see at the top of every popular site. Read the rest of this entry »
Gmail Finally out of Beta!
By Javier Rapoport @ 11:50 --- In: Google
7 Jul 2009
After 5 years Gmail is out of beta! The Official Google Blog announced this morning that the Google Apps (Gmail, Calendar, Documents and Talk) are finally coming out of beta. Not that they will stop the development, but they finally realized (FINALLY!) that the beta status was misleading and unfortunate.
Let’s all get together and throw a party for the release of a final Gmail! Hehehe!
Twitter spam. And the new currency of the web: followers
By Fernando Tarnogol @ 04:27 --- In: Social Media| Spam| Twitter
7 Jul 2009
I spent quite some time on Twitter this past Sunday. During one of my rounds I came across with a tweet offering to rocket my followers. Yeah, sounds familiar, right? I usually dismiss this kind of tweets. Since I started I’ve always followed only those people which caught my attention or I was interested in following. I like my stream. It keeps me updated on all the things I dedicate my fragmented attention to and sometimes, things that I wasn’t expecting; at all. I may not follow TMZ, but the 6 Twitter Degrees of Separation made that something relevant could ripple through the stream and reach me anyways. What I think, is that it’s not necessary to follow 32,000 people to exploit the service. I don’t want to get in any arguments on this. I also understand the point of those who follow everyone back as a courtesy. I just think of the service a bit differently.
I drifted off course, sorry. Going back to track… yesterday I sinned. I have seen how some people after 2 tweets get 1000 followers, I have followed people that with 5 or 6 followers, in a week jumped to hundreds and also hundreds of people followed. The concept is obvious, the more people you follow, the more chances you have to be followed. I sometimes regarded that as cheating. On Sunday, I clicked on one of those “get free followers links”. It directed me to Tweeterfollow. Without thinking for more than half a second I typed my Twitter user and pass. As you may see, the website doesn’t give too much information, if any. Once inside, I started to browse the list of people to see if I was interested in adding some of those suggestions. “It thrilled” me to realize that those “suggestions” were in fact people that Tweeterfollow added to my account. I immediately went to Twitter’s web app to check if I had been allucinating.
I wasn’t,and this is how it looks after doing some cleaning. I used to follow 130.
I opened Pandora’s box. Read the rest of this entry »
Future Shock. Too much change in a too short period of time
By Fernando Tarnogol @ 02:42 --- In: Society / Trends
30 Jun 2009
Times are changing, they always are. The particularity nowadays, is that things are changing faster than ever almost everywhere.
Alvin Toffler coined the term “Future Shock”. He referred to it as a“personal perception of too much change in a too short period of time”.
We are experiencing an immediacy of the future. The future is no longer in the future, or at least not as distant as it used to be. One other issue is that with the state of things, we are already witnessing or seeing the future before it happens (which also makes it feel closer). No, I haven’t built a time machine… yet. Think about this. Every time a new product goes out to the market we already know with quite some time in advance how that product is going to be, what’s it going to do, how it’s going to look like. And this happens because since the start of the R&D process, developers and manufacturers are already advertising or giving updates on that product.
Think about product life cycles. For how long did you keep the TV that you bought in the 80s? Remember your first walkman? Mine lasted for almost 8 years. Since 2001 when the 1st iPod came out I have already owned 4 of them, and I’m thinking of replacing mine with an iPhone soon. Read the rest of this entry »
Pandora is finally coming to Android
29 Jun 2009
YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES!!!!!
Finally! Pandora is coming to Android! Tom Conrad himself (the same guy that a couple of months ago said that Android was just not worth it) confirms that “Pandora for Android is under development now”. This is good news indeed. And two of them. One, PANDORA! Two, this is only confirming that Android is picking up some steam and finally deserves some serious development.
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- Tags: Android, Pandora, Pandora on Android
Pac-Man on Twitter
By Fernando Tarnogol @ 01:20 --- In: Humor
28 Jun 2009
Pic by Scott Hampson (on flickr)
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- Tags: pac man, Twitter
Al gran Pueblo Argentino… Salud!
By Javier Rapoport @ 11:12 --- In: Facebook| Internet| Society / Trends
26 Jun 2009
I’m just outraged beyond myself. I cannot stand the hypocrisy of some (lots).
Michael Jackson just passed away (RIP MJ!) and people cannot seem to look beyond the (true? false?) child molestation accusations. HE DEFINED AN ERA. HE’S THE FREAKING KING OF POP. HE INVENTED THE MUSIC VIDEO AS WE KNOW IT TODAY. He’s this and much more. Yet there’s this mixed feelings because of his latest years. Yes, I’m not denying that he did lots of wrong, from the self mutilation with the uncountable facial surgeries to the sleeping with children “because he loved them” (oh! come on now MJ, that one… geez). But that’s going to overpower all the greatness he left behind? I don’t know… it’s certainly is a lot of awful, but… I just don’t know.
What outrages me is the hypocrisy of lots. I can only speak from what I’ve seen in a bunch of facebook and twitter comments, especially from fellow Argentineans like myself. We adore Diego Maradona and I’m sure that 99% of those thrashing MJ today praise “El Diego”. And what? Can we just ignore the fact of him being an addict to drugs for long and messing up his career (and even a world cup for us maybe too)? Of course we can! And we do! Because he’s the very best player in an era. So OK… go on and drop all that shit now and start being for real.
Of course the same hypocrisy goes to the rest. I’ve read lots and lots of shit like this. And I bet that all of these that are nowadays ranting, they also praise someone that’s not pristine. Everyone’s got some stuff in the closet. Nobody is completely clean. True, some are dirtier than others, but still.
Long live MJ through the enormous legacy of his music. You will be missed.
/end rant
P.S.: the title of the post is part of the Argentine National Anthem, wich would translate to something like “To the Argentine people, Hail!”
- Day of sadness. My G1 became old tech after 10 months.
- Creative Zii Egg – New Awesomeness in the Horizon
- Something slammed into Jupiter
- Real Time information is here. What’s next?
- Gmail Finally out of Beta!
- Twitter spam. And the new currency of the web: followers
- Future Shock. Too much change in a too short period of time
- Pandora is finally coming to Android
- Pac-Man on Twitter
- Al gran Pueblo Argentino… Salud!
- Javier Rapoport: Wow! Awesome! Real people! Hi! :) You can find our feeds here on the right column... hit me/us on t [...]
- Javier Rapoport: Wow! Awesome! Real people! Hi! :) [...]
- Fernando Tarnogol: A real person!!! :'-) Finding a real person among the spam sea is even more thrilling than bungee j [...]
- BlueHornet: This look interesting,so far. If there are any real people here looking to network, leave me a post [...]
- Fernando Tarnogol: Thank you and welcome :) [...]
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