Peon's Place

Steve Jobs has officially resigned from his job as CEO of Apple, though he has been elected Chairman. Tim Cook, Apple’s long-time COO, who acted as CEO during Steve Jobs’ medical leaves will replace Jobs as CEO.

Apple’s Board of Directors today announced that Steve Jobs has resigned as Chief Executive Officer, and the Board has named Tim Cook, previously Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, as the company’s new CEO. Jobs has been elected Chairman of the Board and Cook will join the Board, effective immediately. “Steve’s extraordinary vision and leadership saved Apple and guided it to its position as the world’s most innovative and valuable technology company. Steve’s extraordinary vision and leadership saved Apple and guided it to its position as the world’s most innovative and valuable technology company,” said Art Levinson, Chairman of Genentech, on behalf of Apple’s Board. “Steve has made countless contributions to Apple’s success, and he has attracted and inspired Apple’s immensely creative employees and world class executive team. In his new role as Chairman of the Board, Steve will continue to serve Apple with his unique insights, creativity and inspiration.”  Read the rest of this entry »

Get ready, because in October when the iPhone 5 comes out, it’s being packed with Sprint’s amazing 4G speeds as well!

Well. Almost. Actually word around the Cupertino campus is that the iPhone 5 will be only 3g, making Apple substantially behind the competition.

But hey, at least Sprint will be the only carrier to offer unlimited data plans, now that AT&T and Verizon have cut users off from unlimited freedom and enjoyment! Actually, wrong again. Sprint plans to end, or at the very least throttle, data plans on the iPhone.

So much for excitement, right? Maybe you can go to T-Mobile, the only major carrier now without an Apple device.

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Pluto might not be a planet anymore, according to the definition of planethood adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 2006, but the icy little orb on the edge of the solar system still has a lot going on. Today NASA’s Hubble telescope has discovered a 4th moon around the new non-planet. The space telescope was searching for rings around the planetary oddball at the edge of our solar system when it came across P4, the temporary name for the newly discovered moon. With an estimated diameter of 8 to 21 miles, P4 is the smallest of Pluto’s four moons, the U.S. space agency said in a statement.

Will tomorrow’s living room be dominated by Vizio?

There are some companies, like Apple or Microsoft, that people tend to point to and say that they “get” what consumers are after. In Apple’s case, they point to the streaming options available in the company’s Apple TV. Microsoft is celebrated for delivering an exceptionally worthwhile gaming and entertainment opportunity to consumers through its Xbox 360.

But what about Vizio? Though it might not come up outside of discussions on televisions, the company has made a name for itself in the living room for delivering outstanding products at affordable prices. And its place as the top LCD maker in North America has helped it secure its position as a major player in the technology space.  Read the rest of this entry »

I recall the days when MySpace was “the place to be”. We all had our profiles, decorated the way we liked, with our favorite songs starting up whenever anyone went to our profile page. Some profiles would never finish loading since people decided that 500 sparkly animated images about how cool things are was simply too awesome to pass on up, and they wanted to share them all with the world. Of course, this is one of the reasons MySpace died. Mass advertisements (removed by AdBlock, thanks very much!) and slow loading profile pages.

This is when Facebook began to flourish. Simple, clean pages, fast loading times, and you could easily find what you wanted to: your friends and their updates, all in one neat looking spot. Then began the now real of Facebook, with the online free gaming system, one Facebook application at a time. And as such, continued on went the days of slow loading pages, clutters and messes and not finding what you really want to see, and the needing of sorting through trash to again find meaningful updates from those you associate with.

It feels to me that every 4-5 years we are in need of a new social media connection. Google tried and failed with Wave, Buzz, and now their new toy is out, Google Plus. Will this finally be the magic trick that Google succeeds with?

I’ve taken a run through of the new Google+. For now, with limited friends, it does feel like Facebook, but reinvented for our new decade. More ajax framework, more ability to easily move and sort and group content and friends in the ways that you like. Classify any bit of your online life, how you choose. That’s how I would sum it up so far.

You can see the official website here: https://plus.google.com/

Google+ is designed around “Circles” that allow users to group people within their social sphere into different categories. Google says that the people you tend to meet up with on Saturday nights, for example, can be grouped into their own category, while parents can be placed into another. You can then decide to share only certain information with different Circles.  Read the rest of this entry »

I would have to say to, upon seeing the title of  a study by LinkedIn. They released data on the differences between men and women when it comes to networking professionally online, from their 100+ million member base.

To declare a winner in this battle of the sexes argument, LinkedIn developed an online professional networking “savviness” ranking. Globally and in the U.S. men are savvier online professional networkers than women. LinkedIn defines online professional networking savviness as a ratio of two things: the ratio of connections that men have to connections that women have and the ratio of male members on LinkedIn to female members. ”Having the right connections can make a difference when it comes to sealing a deal or landing a new client,” said Nicole Williams, LinkedIn’s Connection Director and best-selling author of the book, “Girl on Top.” “Women can sometimes shy away from networking because they associate it with schmoozing or doling out business cards, when in reality, it’s about building relationships before you actually need them. Networking in person can be intimidating, so women should look at a site like LinkedIn as a place they can go to cultivate their networking skills.”  Read the rest of this entry »

Thank goodness, too, because I was getting tired of seeing freeloading drivers in the high-occupancy lane just because they purchased a specific vehicle during a specific time period. You’re no more carpooling than I am, why do I need to sit in horrendous bay area traffic?

My largest gripe lies within 3 lane freeways; one lane is dedicated to carpoolers, or those with the stickers; one lane contains nothing but big rigs who go 15-20 MPH slower than the rest of the traffic and literally leave a football field worth of space between them, and the middle lane contains normal commuters, going to and from work so they can pay their taxes.

The Mercury News parking lot yesterday held an event for drivers to mourn their past 6 years of free carpool lane rides. Good grief. View the video:  Read the rest of this entry »

I recall the days of using AIM, ICQ, and eventually Yahoo Instant Messenger to contact friends online. That, as well as phone calling, has been replaced by text message. Mass texting insanity.

A Nielsen study analyzed the mobile phone use of more than 3000 teens between the ages of 13 and 17 and found that, on average, teenagers send and receive 3,339 texts. In. A. Month.

The study looked at the teens’ cell phone use during the spring, as in, when school was still in session. It would be interesting to know how the rates changed when teens didn’t have silly things like classes occupying their time. 5,000 or more, possibly? Call that crazy.

LG hosted a texting competition in the US and, not surprisingly, a 13-year old girl walked away with the title and a cash prize of $50,000. Hailing from Brooklyn, NY, Brianna Hendrickson won the competition, in the final round by texting: “Old McDonald had a farm, Ei, ei, oh! And on this farm he had a champ. W/a txtr here, and BFF there. Here a text, there a text, erywhere a text-text!”

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Are you paying $30 per month for your Verizon unlimited data smartphone plan? Well it’s unlimited no more. Starting July 7, you’ll no longer be able to purchase an unlimited data plan through Verizon, which is moving instead to a “usage-based” model. This isn’t the first such move as AT&T dropped its unlimited data plan last summer, but it does seem to represent a tipping point for the industry.

Mobile phone companies have been ditching their unlimited data plans (which encompass streaming video and music, Internet use and e-mail) for a few reasons, but primarily because the amount of Internet traffic from phones has surged over the last few years, and will continue to do so in the years ahead. According to Cisco, mobile traffic will grow 26-fold by 2015, and total mobile video traffic will expand to 197 million gigabytes over the next four years. That’s the equivalent of roughly 13 billion YouTube videos. In a letter to Verizon’s employees, the carrier’s higher-ups said that data usage had more than doubled in the past three years.

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It appears as if the Vizio VIA tablets are hitting the stores very soon. I shouldn’t be much longer until my Vizio phone is here as well, just in time as my iPhone 3GS 2-year contract runs out this week!

Do I really want the tablet? Not entirely. It’d be nothing more than a supplement to the phone + television cycle of products.

This tablet will rock an 8-inch display, GPS, and a front-facing camera. No 3G/4G sadly, but being that Vizio is new to the tablet/phone world, their next models should include them (once a tablet carrier (Verizon? AT&T?) is found).

I posted about the VIA tablets & phones several months ago – read more about it right here!