Great feature from the Economist on the state of the Israeli hi-tech scene: Israelis innovate because they have to. The land is arid, so they excel at water and agricultural technology. They have little oil, so they furrow their brows to find alternatives. They are surrounded by enemies, so their military technology is superb and creates lucrative spin-offs, especially in communications. The relationships forged during military service foster frenetic networking [...]
Permalink: http://liamgetreu.com/2012/01/24/the-economist-reports-on-the-state-of-the-start-up-nation/
Ever wanted to play real life Angry Birds? Turns out you can go to China and do exactly that.
Permalink: http://liamgetreu.com/2011/09/07/go-to-changsha-china-and-play-life-size-angry-birds-in-their-theme-park/
A profile of Steve Jobs, recently resigned Apple CEO, from the New Yorker in September, 1997. Jobs had just come back from an oblivion, with Apple having purchased his ailing but visionary company NeXT, and the speculation and hype and worry was in abundance. One tid-pit to highlight how much Jobs was up against, and how well he ended up doing.
Related reading: Permalink: http://liamgetreu.com/2011/08/26/the-new-yorker-on-jobs-and-apple-14-years-ago/
Judaism in the 21st century: can’t find a real life noisemaker for Purim? No matter, just download the iPhone app, free in the App Store. Choose from noises like: “Boo Haman!”, three (three!) different gragger noises, a whistle or record your own noise! Then, just shake (spin) your phone around and you’ll be making noise in shule in no time! p.s. While you’re in the Purim mood, you can check [...]
Related reading: Permalink: http://liamgetreu.com/2011/03/19/an-iphone-app-for-purim-the-igragger/
This is a video worth watching — on this week’s Saturday Night Live, Mark Zuckerberg drops in on Jesse Eisenberg’s opening monologue. Of course, in between them meeting, Andy Samberg comes on pretending to be Zuck, too. It’s not actually that funny, but it does at least show, just by virtue of him willing to appear on the show, that Zuckerberg has a sense of humour. That and billions and [...]
Related reading: Permalink: http://liamgetreu.com/2011/01/30/video-who-would-have-thought-mark-zuckerberg-on-saturday-night-live-shows-he-has-a-sense-of-humour/
The new Google Instant — drawn to my attention via a very cool ad and video on the New York Times website:
Permalink: http://liamgetreu.com/2010/09/19/google-sings-faster-than-bob-dylan/
From Tweetage Wasteland: When confronted with the realtime web’s constant flow of incoming information, who has time for a full set of facts? We each take a few seconds to consider a one hundred forty character blurb and then hammer out our reactions by way of a Tweet or status update. Interesting thoughts on how we react to the things we see on the web and the phrase that’s becoming [...]
Permalink: http://liamgetreu.com/2010/07/24/reactions-to-the-live-web/
In honour of Mother’s Day, Facebook offers some stories of their engineers mums and some of their (cute, weird, annoying, embarrassing, etc.) interactions with them on Facebook: My mom, wanting to see what I’d been doing recently, was browsing through my photos and stumbled upon one of me in a large group. She decided to add a comment: “Olive! You look so skinny!” She didn’t realize that all 12 others [...]
Permalink: http://liamgetreu.com/2010/05/09/mothers-day-and-facebook/
Who’s an addict to iPhone? When interstate on business and staying at a hotel, do you wake in the middle of the night and reach for your iPhone to check the time? And when you check the time do you also think “I might as well see what emails have come in”? And as you briefly reply to a 2am email, do you think when you press the “send” button [...]
Permalink: http://liamgetreu.com/2010/05/06/checking-2am-e-mails-on-my-iphone/
Um, so this is odd. In response to the bizarre news of the Apple engineer who lost the 4G iPhone prototype, Lufthansa has offered to fly him, business class, to Munich, to continue his drinking of German beer and enjoying of German culture. Weird.
Related reading: Permalink: http://liamgetreu.com/2010/04/24/lufthansa-free-trip-to-munich-for-lost-4g-iphone-engineer/
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