Last week I was in New York for World to NYC and I happened to try Google Glass in the NY Tech Meetup. World to NYC is a program hosted by NYC EDC, New York City’s arm for economic development which invites founders from across the world to get to know the NYC startup ecosystem, companies, and investors.

Hey, world, I’m wearing Google Glass. I rarely shoot selfies but this was an important exception.

I never had met Jonathan Gottfried previously. But I knew him online because of his work as a developer evangelist at Twilio. We accidentally met at a startup booth in the NY Tech Meetup after-party in NYU. I asked him about trying Glass out — he was kind enough to say yes (thanks, Jon!) We went outside the big meetup room and into the floor lobby in order to not get swarmed by other people eager to try out Glass. Turns out, we did.

Let me point out that this post is more of a long essay about Glass, its future as a product and what it means for our society, rather than a simple review. Since I wore it for about 5 to 10 minutes I’m not in a position to review it.

If you follow me over on Twitter or read this blog quite frequently you already know by now how much I love Glass and the promise it carries.

There’s a Glass narrative which stretches back to July 2012. In The Next Big Thing (November, 2012) I was writing:

The most profound and quick answer that comes to my mind is Google Glass. I love its potential. And for the nay-sayers: no, you don’t look stupid, on the other hand it’s pretty cool — you look like Vegeta and, please, oh please, just imagine the potential. Retina-embedded layers.

When analyzing the tech stocks and the industry in Facebook, Google and the Stock Market (July, 2012) I was writing:

Google magically transformed and managed to inspire again. Project Glass has a gigantic potential, radically transforming our lives with entirely new paradigm shifts.

And, finally, in a 1,400-words post about the then current mobile landscape and the war between Apple and Google (January, 2013) I was writing:

Google Glass is the next big step for Google. […] from a product and tech perspective it is one of the most truly exciting things out there. And it can easily integrate with Google’s data pool, hence capitalize it and push “personalization” to a whole new level. […] Google Glass will be everywhere with you.

[…] most importantly, Google Glass will be a landmark event in Google’s history. It will depict the transition between a web/software company, from producing stuff that “doesn’t exist,” to stuff that does actually exist […] This event enables Google to capitalize a lot more on its data: use it as a generator of products both of software and hardware nature. And hardware might be a hard problem to tackle, but even at the early stages of Google Glass, we see that Google can indeed tackle it.

From the aforementioned quotes I’ll note down the following: “gigantic potential,” “retina-embedded layers,” “landmark event,” and “paradigm shift.” These few words, I think, describe in an essence all what Glass stands for. And before I jump to abstract techno-utopian philosophical conclusions about the digital nature and future of our lives and society let me first describe how Glass works and feels like.

It is lightweight. Extremely lightweight. It never feels like you’re wearing something on top of your ears and nose. More importantly, it doesn’t block your normal optical vision. When Glass sleeps (hint: most of the time if you’re not using it) it’s like it’s not even there. It truly gets out of your way — and that’s remarkable for a physical thing that exists on top of your head and in front of your eyes.

Overall, its physical design is small; yet big. And by that I mean: it is small as a hardware device, especially considering its right part which includes the battery (which, I think, lasts for about a day) and the touch interface to navigate through menus and options by swiping up / down, left / right. However, it is still big in the sense of how smaller it can (will) be in future versions given the hardware progress we can naturally depend on Google making soon.

Jon Gottfried sporting Glass

“Ok, glass…” — this is how the future sounds like. Google, Take a picture, record a video, get directions to, send a message to. These are the basic voice commands for Glass right now. There are also “make a call,” “hang out” (you guessed it right — video calls through Google Plus’ Hangout service) and more. You can also use “ok, glass, google …” in very powerful ways, just like you’d do on the web.

The display feels more like a holographic video projection between two pieces of glass rather than a monitor. Its color quality is not perfect and a little bit below of what you’d normally expect but it’s still version #1. Naturally, there’s a lot of room for improvement in the future. I’m certain this will get better. Below there is a video I recorded with “ok, glass record a video.” Unfortunately Jon couldn’t find a couple of other photos I took and I can’t upload them. But basically this is the real deal; raw Glass HD video from the NY Tech Meetup.

Here’s also a summary of what Glass can do as of now:

• Take, display photos
• Record, play videos
• Read and respond to email, texts, and Gtalk chats
• Make and receive phone calls
• Perform video chats with Google+ Hangouts
• Turn-by-Turn Driving, Biking, and Walking directions
• Personalized suggestions and information from Google Now based on your Google account history and activity
• Google search
• Download and run 3rd-party apps such as New York Times, Evernote, and more
• Browse your recent activity history over a several day period

Glass wouldn’t be nearly as great without 3rd-party apps. Exactly like the iPhone and its App Store. Currently, there’s a limited selection of said apps which includes (but I’m not sure if it’s limited to) Glass Feed (post directly from your Glass to an RSS feed using IFTTT,) New York Times (breaking news notifications,) Glass Tweet (hacked by Jon,) Glassagram (an Instagram client,) a Reddit one, Evernote, Gmail and Path. You can find more about them in this proto-directory. I’m sure there are more to come since Google released an SDK. There are also some other cool upcoming features like 360-sphere photos, snapping photos with just a wink of your eye, and facial recognition. On a relevant note about facial recognition: how about making a facial recognition technology which works sans ‘facial?’ This extremely interesting paper from Duke University explains it all: InSight: Recognizing Humans without Face Recognition (pdf link) (which I recommend to at least adding it in your Instapaper/Pocket/bookmarks.) In a test of 15 people, it was able to recognize them 93 percent of the time. It’s not integrated directly into Glass yet: it’s a smartphone app that connects to the camera via Bluetooth and displays functions on top of Glass.

Aside apps, there is also this amazing design concept about Glass and how it can visualize questions, actions, and real-time environment data. Designer Jack Morgan writes:

Google Glass is years ahead of its time, but to me it just means that the future is already here, and it’s a future that’s made of Glass.

Here are some cool photos. Be sure to check out the whole concept on his blog.

All this is merely trivial, though, when it comes to talk about Glass’ context. Sure — more and better features, better display, more ‘social’ and personalization, more reddit cats right in front of your eyes, people of the internets. Features and upgrades like these will come down the road. Plus, more wearable computing devices by competitors. And, ultimately, that’s good for us.

But Glass is something much more than a new market/industry/vertical defining gadget. In the grand scheme of things, it’s one of our baby steps to see how machines see, to augment and make exponentially more usable our world. One step closer to see like, utilize our immediate environment, and harness data with the power of machines — right in front of our eyes. More importantly, Glass signifies the potential of embedding itself in our eyes. It’ll start as contact lenses, it’ll move to something smaller, maybe at some point we’ll be born with something like Glass right within your eyes. And who knows, maybe in x years time we’ll say to kids “I remember how it was to see naturally, how all this started with a big physical device on your head” and the kids will be “Big physical device? How old are ya?!”

This future might be indeed scary and way over the freaky line for some but… this is it. And it cannot change. This is where we’re heading to. Glass is not only a landmark event for and about Google but for us, as a society and culture, as well. Not Glass itself but its concept; the heavy promise it carries. Seeing like machines is only a small percentage of the totality of new things that will be introduced and start being the norm as more wearable computing devices emerge and we’ll collectively start using them.

In the words of Alan Kay, “The computer is a medium, and like the printed book during the middle ages, has the potential to modify the thought patterns of those who are literate.” Exactly the same applies for Glass. While the need to describe more about Glass’ context allows us to use the term ”paradigm shift,” I think it’s not ideal because this implies something minuscule. ”Paradigm shift” is, I think, similar to the way we describe how mobile phones were introduced in our lives back in the late ’90s and early aughts. It was a huge change but I’m not positive it will ever be as big as and more impactful than the wearable computing devices’ one. The potential is still here though, however Glass performs market-wise. And, frankly, I have no idea if it will be a market success. Many love it, many hate it, and many more don’t understand the changes it will bring. But it’s irrelevant. Here’s the catch: no matter its performance, it will bring changes. It will re-define things, concepts, lifestyles, relationships. Relationships not only between humans but also between humans and objects. Exactly like the iPad — i.e., even if it wasn’t a best-selling device it’d still define for years to come the tablet market.

Of course, we can go on talking about techno-utopias and the co-existence of humans and machines for hours. But let me dive deeper in our contemporary world, its status quo and the issues we’re facing and maybe I’ll get back to the ‘future’ in a while. Google Glass started from something very humble in Google’s [x]Lab whose director is Sergey Brin, quite possibly also the grandfather of Glass. The idea was to fix the problem of being always needy about and distracted by our phones. It’s a hyper-connected world we live in and for some their smartphones are sometimes more important, distracting, and time-consuming than their laptops.

We’ve seen that all this technology which surrounds us, has made us prone to distractions more than ever. For example, I don’t remember the last time when I hanged out with my friends and I didn’t check my iPhone — or even my friends not checking theirs, for that matter. Our contemporary culture is heavily based on attention-seeking actions, objects, and everything in between. Sometimes it can be overwhelming. Notifications coming hourly in our phones begging for an action; “Reply me,” “View me,” “Comment me,” “Like me,” and generally all sorts of demanding stuff. From games and their useless in-app purchases about cheaper boots for your RPG character, to whom retweeted your tweet, and who added you as a friend on that obscure social networking app you downloaded the other day and still haven’t deleted it. We can do better, that’s what Brin always takes for granted. And thus Glass was born.

It is fairly easy, though, for one to argue that there’s no actual difference with Glass since everything simply changes location and medium (from your phone to Glass) and as a result comes even closer to your eyes. In fact, in front them. This approach may seem valid in the beginning, but by thinking about it a little more it is clear that it, in fact, is unsound. Glass doesn’t simply take an existing experience and replace it. It creates a new one, entirely different without the problems of the old one. For starters, when you don’t need Glass, it disappears automatically. It doesn’t get in your way, it doesn’t seek attention — Glass patiently waits for you and your commands. To fulfill them.

Core attribute of this new experience is its futuristic flare. Things don’t show up when they want but when you want them to. This is vastly different compared to the nature of mobile phones and their notification systems whether it’s iOS or Android. And when there’s nothing to show, there’s nothing to see, ergo you’re offline while always being online. Maybe our first digital hallucination — being out of the Matrix while, essentially, being inside it. Machines do know our human nature. After all, they’re the reflections ouf our dreams, hopes, virtues and vices, fears, ambitions, and most importantly, our own selves.

Everyday we’re getting closer to the machines and the machines get closer to us. They know us — we taught them how — they can predict us, they can understand us. Someday we almost won’t be able to tell the difference between us and them, unless for our own Voight-Kampff test, and all this starts right now with Glass. In essence, Glass has captured all our futuristic dreams, wishes, and aspirations spanning across generations and has started the revolution. Machines found a way on us; soon enough they’ll found a way inside us, and I for one, welcome it. It’s only a matter of time.

~ 

In 1967 George R. Price went to London after reading Hamilton’s little known papers about the selfish gene theory and discovering that he was already familiar with the equations; that they were the equations of computers. He was able to show that the equations explained murder, warfare, suicide, goodness, spite, since these behaviors could help the genes. John Von Neumann, after all, had invented self-reproducing machines, but Price was able to show that the self-reproducing machines were already in existence, that humans were the machines.

“And all watched over by machines of loving grace” is now more true than ever. Beautiful machines.

—

Upd: Today, just after publishing this very post I attended a guest lecture by Computer Science pioneer and legend Don Knuth here in Vienna University of Technology. It’s the first of the Gödel Lectures Series organized by our Computer Science faculty. I feel very fortunate to have met one of the greats. I asked him about machines and humans and this is his answer:

Computer Science is wonderful but it doesn’t answer everything. We, as humans, have some limitations and we should be humble and embrace them. Some spiritual things will never get an answer — that’s another whole different realm that science cannot provide an adequate answer for. And, if in fact, “we’re watched over by machines of loving grace” — if Game of Life is somehow applied in our reality and our universe — and our universe is a computer simulation, which means we’re simply mathematical representations and everything is deterministic and, as a result, we lose our free will, then there’s nothing we can do about it and we cannot answer it, thus we shouldn’t bother thinking about it. I’m grateful for the machines.

By 2016 88% of the world’s population will live in emerging markets. 2/3 of global GDP growth will occur in emerging markets, QZ reports. Whatever you do for a living, whatever you study right now  in school, think about those two sentences for a second. Friendly reminder: it’s already 2013 — and emerging markets are no longer emerging.

Global GDP contribution by 2020 — Source: QZ

Now do the following simile. We, the West and the so-called developed countries are the world’s IBMs, Microsofts, Googles. Multinational behemoths. We are rich, we’re doing pretty good but our growth rate is small. For the sake of the argument I set aside the current financial crisis in Europe and the 2008 one from which the US only now recovers from. Or Apple’s plummeting stock.

Emerging markets are the startups of our world. Fueled by huge growth, ready to disrupt the behemoths and their industries. Ready to challenge the status quo. And due to their astonishing growth rate they’ll soon have billions of ‘users’ — 88% of the world’s population by 2016. Daunting.

You know how the game is played. Small eats big.

The world is not what it was 5 years ago. Our contemporary landscape is changing fast — faster than ever. We can’t live our lives, build businesses, innovate, tackle big problems, or even write public policies dictated by ideas of the old world; of obscene restrictions, regulations, irrational and unrealistic world-views, and country-focused outlooks.

If you still aren’t thinking globally by default, then I’m afraid, you’ve lost the game.

(Occasionally, I also love to shoot short videos.)

My plans are programming (Java!) and reading. My Instapaper queue was pretty long lately thus I forced myself to archive all but three unread articles. Because I knew that if I wouldn’t do this, I wouldn’t read anything.

After browsing the internet and asking on Twitter for good, mainly non-fiction, long-form articles I came up with 20 quite interesting articles to read. And since my friend Alexandros, knows my obsession with tech and industry news told me to ‘back off of tech’ I felt obliged to tweet back at him my Instapaper queue saying in a way, ‘hey, look, no tech this time.’ Well, except a feature by The Verge about the latest iTunes, Apple, and the music industry.

While generally I want to be on point and concise, and after spending 3 paragraphs essentially writing about embedding my Instapaper queue here because the articles are extremely interesting, well, it’s time to do it. Here it is, people. Rejoice.

1. A Most Profound Math Problem — The New Yorker
   

   In 2000, the P = NP problem was designated by the Clay Mathematics Institute as one of seven Millennium Problems—“important classic questions that have resisted solution for many years”—only one of which has been solved since.
   

2. Every page is your homepage — Nieman Journalism Lab
   

   Reuters, untied to print metaphor, builds a modern river of news.

3. On Cavafy’s Side — The New York Review of Books
   

   Whatever his reason, his imagined Alexandria exists as vividly as the literal city. Art is an alternate form of existence, though the emphasis in this statement falls on the word “existence,” the creative process being neither an escape from reality nor a sublimation of it

4. Bill Watterson’s Speech at Kenyon College, Class of 1990
   

   When I was sitting where you are, I was one of the lucky few who had a cushy job waiting for me. I’d drawn political cartoons for the Collegian for four years, and the Cincinnati Post had hired me as an editorial cartoonist. All my friends were either dreading the infamous first year of law school, or despondent about their chances of convincing anyone that a history degree had any real application outside of academia. Boy, was I smug.

5. Bitcoin, Energy and the Future of Money — on Medium
   

   While it’s impossible to predict how the Bitcoin experiment will pan out, it has already succeeded by creating a decentralized system for settling transactions, and by re-igniting interest in alternate currencies.

6. iTunes Store at 10: how Apple built a digital media juggernaut — The Verge
   

   Ten years ago this month, a music sector ravaged by Napster and largely ignorant of digital distribution found a savior of sorts in what was then called the iTunes Music Store.

7. A New Era in Mars Exploration — The New Yorker
   

   A new era in planetary exploration.

8. The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food — New York Times
   

   Exactly what the title says.

9. When Brain Damage Unlocks the Genius Within — Popular Science
   

   Brain damage has unleashed extraordinary talents in a small group of otherwise ordinary individuals. Will science find a way for everyone to tap their inner virtuoso?

10. Margaret Thatcher: Still More Alive Than She Herself Dared To Dream — The Quietus
    

    Your celebrations at Margaret Thatcher’s death are misplaced, says David Stubbs, for “Thatcherism never died, was never truly even un-elected.”

11. Gogglebox And Why TV’s Treatment Of Real People Has To Improve — The Quietus
    

    On the day of a new C4 reality TV experiment Gogglebox, Grand Mof Gimmers asks, When did TV producers decide we were Christians to be thrown to the lions?

12. On Quitting — The New Inquiry
    

    Leaving the U.S. will not remove me from toxicity and exhaustion. At best, it will allow limited detoxification, perhaps provide me with some energy. […] and, eventually,  scars that will remain tender for way too long.

13. Consumed by Abstraction — The New Inquiry
    

    They’re going to look back on the era when people used to signal sixteenths of shares with their fingers as the golden age of analog trading – before capitalism slipped over the event horizon into an infinite regression.

14. Affective privacy and surveillance — The New Inquiry
    

    Screens don’t “watch” people or “invade” their privacy; increasingly, they are their privacy. The mildly pleasurable stupor induced by interacting with screens is the most pure form of privacy.

15. The Real Problems with Psychiatry — The Atlantic
    

    A psychotherapist contends that the DSM, psychiatry’s “bible” that defines all mental illness, is not scientific but a product of unscrupulous politics and bureaucracy.

16. How Facebook Designs the ‘Perfect Empty Vessel’ for your Mind — The Atlantic
    

    Tussling with the philosophy that’s structuring a billion social lives.

17. They Cracked This 250-Year-Old Code, and Found a Secret Society Inside — WIRED
    

    For more than 200 years, a book concealed the arcane rituals of an ancient order. But cracking the code only deepened the mystery.

18. The Normal Well-Tempered Mind — Edge.org
    

    The vision of the brain as a computer is changing so fast. The brain’s a computer, but it’s so different from any computer that you’re used to.

19. How Humans Will Respond to Immortality — Motherboard/Vice
    

    A $5M project that will involve dozens of scientists, philosophers, and theologians from around the world to examine a subject that is probably unknowable: immortality.

20. In the Land of the Coffee Nerds — The New Yorker
    

    Coffee made with care is other worldly.

Happy reading!

1. Instagram
2. Facebook
3. Path
4. Twitter
5. Flickr
6. Google+, Tumblr, and more…

Options are good but after a point they can become overwhelming and crumbersome. Each service is a different medium, tells a different story, has different target group, content and privacy settings. On top of that, sometimes I have to manually re-upload a photo on another platform because there’s no API to bound them, these two services have different corporate strategy, are rivals, etc.

Enter Qrator.

Qrator is a new Greek startup recently out of private beta with the vision to change the landscape of social by focusing on storytelling. Qrator is available at the moment only for iOS, it’s free, and you can find it in the App Store.

Qrator’s homescreen; its news feed. Here we see master artisan Tind at work.

Combining boards, music, photography and geolocation, Qrator stands where others haven’t and has a good chance to solve the aforementioned problems. I’ve been using it since its first private beta and it always felt a polished product.

Storytelling is a different and a non-conventional approach. By choosing where to share each individual story outside Qrator it’s easy to maintain consistency on different stories in different services—no need to mix things up. Automatic location detection (this is really cool) saves you time and adds an “Aha!” moment and a bit of foursquare API magic. Just like when you add a music track in your Qrator experience. An experience can hold as many photos as you want.

A Qrator experience at Rave Up Records, a record store in Vienna

The best thing is that you can organize experiences in boards. So, a trip to New York can have its own board full of personal experiences from food to sightseeing, locations, soundtracks and more. A great way to take a walk down the memory lane.

What I’d like to see in future versions

Qrator is still in its early stage with solid foundations but I firmly believe there’s still room for improvements; especially in the UI front.

For starters, I’d love to see a bigger font size and action buttons (comment, like, “More”). I don’t know if it’s feasible, since Qrator has already a strong brand and a signature UI, but these two changes would make a big difference in the user interaction and experience. (Not to forget: double tap like.)

Also: scrolling. Focusing on content by removing superfluous UI elements is a great way to showcase it, but this back-and-forth of the re-appearing top and bottom bars when I’m changing my scrolling direction makes me dizzy. I don’t remember which app introduced this scrolling paradigm some time last year, but, personally, I think it breaks the experience.

Altogether, I can only recommend Qrator. It’s a new approach to digital storytelling and sharing with lots of potential. Get it here for free and try it out.

The 6th train

Quoting New Yorker,

[…] if the borough of Manhattan were a country, the income gap between the richest twenty per cent and the poorest twenty per cent would be on par with countries like Sierra Leone, Namibia, and Lesotho.

Aside the public debate this story spurs, which is of interest and importance—to talk about our cities’ problems and issues like gentrification, urban planning and microeconomics, as well as the actual social and economic policy debate (eg. how to create growth), it also signifies the importance and potential of data journalism in our times.

The M train

Even The New Yorker, an old, prestigious magazine mainly about politics, social issues, art, and culture has started experimenting with data journalism. Their stories might not be “New York Times” yet, but it broadcasts a clear message: data journalism is here to stay and—more importantly—disrupt the journalism industry, and push it into a new domain where journalists collaborate with mathematicians, statisticians, and programmers to analyze and interpret the world and the facts.

While data alone is uninteresting as it is simply numbers (no one likes digit-filled spreadsheets and databases if they can’t be of use) the magic is in what the numbers represent; the relationships, context, patterns and stories in and of our world that are important to us and our lives. Data journalism is basically when number-crunching meets storytelling. And now that information is abundant around us, the procedure to collect it, categorize, rank, understand and process it is more important than ever.

In this context, crowdsourcing is very relevant too. The news about the recent bombing of Boston Marathon quickly broke on the Internet first—before even hitting TV—with photos, videos, texts, and more. Twitter proved to be the go-to tool for obtaining up-to-the-second news. Sharing information throughout its network takes always (on events like these) a huge viral effect. Also Reddit took time to organize and help with everything, and even make attempts to find the actual bombers with “image forensics” and a Google Docs spreadsheet.

Data will be is a force that can drive innovation, quality, objectiveness, and, overall, can revolutionize not only journalism but other aspects of our lives like health, fitness, and pretty much everything else, too.

Upd: Phenomenal storytelling by The New York Times. In “4:09:43” The New York Times speaks to 19 people near the finish line at the moment the bomb exploded in Boston.

A Moment From the Boston Marathon, Audio and Stories – Interactive Feature of The New York Times

Idea: keep a git repo of the exercises from the programming book(s) you currently read, make repo public upon finishing the book.

— Apostolos (@apas) March 30, 2013

What’s the point, you might ask. I think sharing solved programming exercises from programming books in a single, organized place like a repository is a good way to help folks make progress if they’re stuck somewhere.

Moreover, if you’re studying a programming language, reading others’ code of simple programs is helpful, enhances the learning process and helps you understand the language’s concepts from a different perspective and point of view.

I’d really like to see this idea scaled up—that’s why I tweeted it in the first place. It’d be great if more people would host their code from exercises of programming books on a repo, their blog or simply upload them in a .zip file. It’s not about copy-pasting code, it’s about creating reference sources and, potentially, help others too. And it’s very easy: while studying a book you do the exercises in the first place, simply save the files and throw them in a folder, then push the folder in your repo or share it via Dropbox link on your blog, etc.

Today I publicized my first such repo. It contains the exercises from Stephen G. Kochan’s “Programming in Objective-C” book. It’s currently a work in progress; I’ve only added exercises up to Chapter 7. I will update the repo as soon as I finish each chapter’s exercises. You can check the repo here.

On a relevant note, if you want to learn Objective-C I can only recommend this book. It’s very eloquently written and straight-forward. I’d only like to see more exercises per chapter in future versions.

Fork ahead!

Steve’s untimely death reminds us we can never give up. He could have given up at any point in the seven years since his first cancer diagnosis, but he did not. The vast majority of Apple’s unprecedented resurgence took place while Steve Jobs stared death in the face. How many of us could have lasted this long at all, let alone accomplish all that he did along the way?

Since the beginning the keynote was utterly bad. Sadly, the more it progressed the worse it got.

There was a lack of focus on product. Key features (eg: CPU) weren’t announced at all while the ones which actually did, were presented in a truly ambiguous fashion. It was all a big performance (tap dancing kid, really?)—only without substance. In certain parts it looked like the whole show was taken directly from the Jersey Shore series. Ouch.

It was cringeworthy. Sexist. Engorged with social stereotypes, bad humour and offbeat cues.

Compared to the PS4 keynote, Samsung failed even by Sony’s standards. The phone got barely introduced and demoed in a meaningful way. (Forget Broadway for a moment, folks.)

Samsung showed its true (horrendous) culture today—that it has no culture, no passion for building great products and, of course, no taste. Brute force advertising won’t get you far in the long run, though.

Regarding the actual phone: I wasn’t amused. Nothing significant or exciting. (Hey, the early ‘00s called and want their infrared back.) After Samsung copied Apple’s industrial design, Samsung now copies Cupertino’s marketing, too. Yearly incremental updates. “Tick: Galaxy SIII, tock: Galaxy S4″—The Verge communicates it better.

Keeping this in mind, the last six months were indeed hard and raised reasonable concerns for Apple. I had my doubts (which spanned across more than 1,400 words.) But today, thanks to this keynote, I’m more sure than ever about Apple’s (and by extent, the iPhone’s) future. Thanks, Samsung, for showing your true self.

One more thing…

It’s important to point out that neither Google nor Android got mentioned even once during the keynote. It’s the start of The Great Android Cold War—manufacturers like Samsung and HTC want to differentiate from Google’s content and apps monopoly by creating their own stores and OS features and to ditch native Android ones. It wasn’t the first time ‘Android’ didn’t come up in a keynote; HTC called it first at their HTC One introduction. Don’t be surprised if Samsung and HTC build, eventually, their own OSs.

Steve looks down from his buddhist iCloud and laughs, laughs, laughs.

Update: HN users chime in:

“They literally have seven grown women on stage chirping over a calorie counter, eyefucking an actual topless man, making cheesecake jokes, and doing a lush mommy dance number.”

“It’s the worst launch show I’ve ever seen, by far. Corny, tacky, misogynist, and not a single line anyone said sounded natural.”

The context behind RSS

In April 17, 2012 I was writing the following:

[Twitter is instant] RSS is not instant, yet it is contemporary. Twitter is like Reuters and Associated Press; RSS is like Time and The Economist (or any other similar media outlet based on your interests.) A good curated news platform.

It is a bitter truth but Twitter clearly killed RSS. Mainly because of time relevancy (“insant vs contemporary”), social and sharing context. We must accept this—it happened. The average Internet user didn’t know what RSS or Atom is and couldn’t bother learn it. That’s why RSS couldn’t get mass adoption. It felt weird despite syndication as a notion and practice being extremely well-known and used by many in great scale.

Reader’s shutdown is both ex– and unexpected. Expected because, let’s face it: it never took off with mass adoption as a product in Google’s online suite. Unexpected because we, geeks, knew that Google knew how beloved this product was in our niche. But this is business, not a charity.

All in all, though, RSS is not dead. There are many people who still use it as their medium of choice for receiving news and keeping track with selected blogs and websites—there’s evidence for that thanks to @asteris‘ Storify. And they’re vocal about it. But not being dead doesn’t necessarily mean one is alive and healthy. I think RSS is in some kind of zombie status. Semi-dead, semi-alive. We all loved it (and still do—RSS is the reason the blogosphere took off and why many blogs got substantial readership, this one included. I still remember the 2008 days.) but the majority of us moved on to other media which were not RSS competitors but did the same thing better.

Why I’m not mad at Google and some youthful optimism

Reason #1

As said: this is business, not a charity. Google is a for profit company with discrete and specific goals and a certain path to meet them. We can’t be emotional or hold Google morally responsible because it kills a product. It’s so kindergarten.

Reason #2

Your data is still free and Google’s a safe place for it. They still offer export features of your .xml RSS data. If they didn’t offer an export feature, only then it’d be vendor lock-in. And it’s hard to suppose that even if they were to close Google Drive they wouldn’t also offer an export feature. This isn’t a small startup, it’s a public company.

Reason #3

When Google Reader came into existence it nearly killed all desktop RSS clients. “Client innovation completely stopped for a few years until iOS made it a market again — but every major iOS RSS client is still dependent on Google Reader for feed crawling and sync.” says Marco Arment, Instapaper founder. And he continues, “It may suck in the interim before great alternatives mature and become widely supported, but in the long run, trust me: this is excellent news.” I have to agree. There’s a great market out there—remember RSS is not dead, Google Reader is.

Marco’s long run is what I call youthful optimism. Now is the time to innovate, build and challenge the publishing status quo. If you’re into RSS, that is.

It’s time to finally acknowledge this publicly. “This” — an unspoken concern rooted approximately since October 2012 in almost every conversation about the state of mobile OSes I’ve had the pleasure to have with friends. “This” — that Apple has lost “something” and just can’t perform anymore.

In other words: “Apple’s biggest problem: Google is getting better at design faster than Apple is getting better at web services.”

Truth be told, Apple performs. In fact, it performs better than any other enterprise in the recorded history of the Free Market system—ever. It seems this isn’t enough though, as it is widely considered that Apple reached its peak of huge growth, profits and products which start new industries and disrupt already existing ones. Products which are considered not only innovative but exceptional.

Android has seen many substantial upgrades the past few years while iOS hasremained stagnant apart for the incremental updates over time. By no means, though, is Android mature enough to be considered a true alternative to iOS; a product which can compete with iOS outside the realm of market share and other trivial statistics. iOS is (still) better. And probably will be. Even by a small margin, unless either a) you consider features such as sharing a photo to multiple apps from a single menu really important or b) Apple gets (for an unknown reason) to drop its immense focus on iOS while unicorns are spotted in the Cupertino campus. It’s safe to make an educated guess: b) will not happen.

While Android will face challenges, it has two distinct advantages courtesy of Google: data and Google Now (essentially, data in a more beautiful and useful way.) It’s amazing what you can do with Google Now. It is clear that Google Now outperforms Siri easily. Adding Fandango integration (Apple launched iOS 6.1 as I was writing this) looks great and thank you but it’s not something truly innovative. It’s not something I genuinely care about. It’s not a game changer.

Generally, data is Google’s biggest and most dangerous weapon against Apple. In fact, Apple doesn’t even have substantial data—it merely owns the “pipes” data gets transmitted. iTunes & credit cards are valuable but a credit card represents a small fraction of the “set of all my data,” eg. location (mobile phone), social graph (Gmail/Google+), knowledge graph (Search), routes & traffic (extension of location), and the list goes on.

Apple could capitalize its vast credit cards/payments data by buying Square (such rumours surface from time to time) and offer the best experience for offline shopping from both the consumer and retailers’ point of view. One could consider such a move a Google Now competitor in terms of data competenency among the two companies.

While Google knows you, Apple knows your wallet.

Speaking of possibilites, Google Glass is the next big step for Google. I cannot predict if it can generate revenues for Google but from a product and tech perspective it is one of the most truly exciting things out there. And it can easily integrate with Google’s data pool, hence capitalize both and push “personalization” to a whole new level. It can be what Siri was supposed to be and something more than that. For every possible situation, you will not have to find your phone, reach for it, open and speak at it—you will wear Google Glass. Google Glass will be everywhere with you.

But most importantly, Google Glass will be a landmark event in Google’s history. It will depict the transition between a web/software company, from producing stuff that “doesn’t exist,” to stuff that does actually exist, and not only exists, but helps our lives, too; a company that can have a long and prosperous future. This event enables Google to capitalize a lot more on its data: use it as a generator of products both of software and hardware nature. And hardware might be a hard problem to tackle, but even at the early stages of Google Glass, we see that Google can indeed tackle it. To add to the aforementioned transition point, there is also the Google Driverless car coming. But since Google’s car is something completely different allow me not to elaborate on it.

What lies ahead

The following are by no means predictions, nor should they be taken as such.

For starters, it is exciting to see Jony Ive having more control on Apple’s design. Both on software (iOS 7, possibly?) and hardware (new desktops/laptops/Apple TV?). He’s a symbol of hope that Apple can produce something radically better than any other company out there, something that will not only ‘wow’ customers but change the status quo.

Regarding mobile, iOS can definitely see more upgrades. I don’t think a complete UI revamp can pull it off, although it has remained the same since the iPhone’s launch. We all know Ive doesn’t like the recent skeuomorphism but I don’t think a) he will drastically change it and, b) even if he does, this alone doesn’t implies a great new upgrade. On a related note, the recent iTunes redesign was sucessful. This shows Apple is still on top of its game.

One of the most famous stories by Steve Jobs was how he reduced the product line Apple offered and grouped them in discrete categories. That’s not the case any more since there are too many iPads, MacBook Pro’s and Apple stuff in general out there. But such a wide product range is well-received by the Street mainly because Apple has more margins to receive a profit from, even when some devices (eg. iPad Mini) offer smaller ones.

Apple has to figure out a better iCloud infrastructure and also reduce its downtime. Users don’t trust it yet for data storage unless it’s about the Photo Stream (which also has some usability problems,) contacts sync and device backups. Much alike Square, Dropbox could also be (actually, already was) in Apple’s shopping list but such a scenario—a Dropbox exit to Apple—is a scenario I wouldn’t like to see played out.

Most importantly, though, Apple has to offer something that can compete with Google Now. It (Google Now) might not yet be big, but as said, it is one of Google’s biggest assets, as is the data behind it. Clearly, Siri hasn’t lived up to the expectations yet. Speaking of shopping lists: Apple could acquire PlaceMe, a startup about background location and personal data associated with it, like traffic routes, where you live, where you work, what kinds of things you are likely to buy inside stores, etc. It has been dubbed by Scoble as one of the startups that cross the “freaky line.” An exit of PlaceMe to Apple would make sense.

On the other hand, Google gets to be exciting again. Mainly because its vast pool of data about every single one of us allows it to easily enter the “contextual” age. It still needs to be proven though with great products. But the company from Mountain View is definitely at the right direction with Now, Glass and Driverless car.

Specifically for Android, while it has the best integration with Google’s suits of tools (Cpt. Obvious reference here) and data associated with it, I do think it still needs work on its UI and UX front. It would be nice to see bit more tighter enforced Play store rules, mainly to protect users from malicious software (which appears often in the news) while maintaining the essence of an open platform.

Android lacks quality (and perhaps will continue doing so) compared to iOS. That’s what Google has to improve and fight for.

Google is exciting now. It is exciting because of the promise it carries, a promise of the open web and data that can help our daily lives in a much broader scope. And, personally, that gets me excited as well. Although I haven’t lost hope for Apple. And — I guess, I won’t. Its deep in Apple’s DNA to offer distinctly better products than the competition.

(Thanks to @zacoppotamus, @kpvl and @dkalo for proofreading this post.)

The main problem when studying with digital books (PDF, epub, etc) is not found in the book in itself; on the other hand, it’s the note-taking process. An external but direct process from, and, and sometimes also on the book. (Parenthesis: I think note-taking is a great way to help you study as it enhances your thought process; you think twice—when reading and when writing things down. Hence my focus on it.) iBooks on the iPad and Preview on OS X have great highlighting tools but they lack in exportability. There is no gain if my carefully crafted highlights and notes stay only in a specific program, which in fact, is completely unrelated to the note-process.

That’s where Evernote comes handy.

Evernote was introduced to me by my friend Zac something like a year ago but I didn’t use it much until June when I interned in New York. It was a great tool to help me take notes, write down thoughts and ideas for the job as well as to explore the city. I learned to love it and was quickly moved to my iPhone home-screen — a sacred (sarcasm) place of only the most-used and important apps. Simplicity, man.

While being still hesitant to study from a PDF textbook, I gave it a try recently. And, suddenly, it just striked me!

[blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/apas/status/289101058716884992"]

For the last month I am using Evernote’s Chrome add-on (when I read something on the web and feel it’s quite worthy, I highlight, right-click, Evernote Web clipper > Clip Selection, and boom—it’s a note, full of metadata like URL, formatting, etc) I thought “hey, I can do the same with the textbook.”

Evernote Web Clipper in action

“So, how does this actually work?” you might ask. You’ll be amazed how easy this actually is. First of all, you have to specify your organizational plan. How you’ll break things down. Evernote doesn’t use folders — it has Notebooks, notes and tags. Tags are quite irrelevant in this example; don’t look much into them. Also, Evernote offers some form of nesting. You can group multiple notebooks under one — call it a “Stack.” I have a stack named Comp Sci Notes and every book I study has a notebook within this stack. And every notebook/textbook has one note per chapter.

I tried to visualize the logic behind this organizational plan

This is my organizational plan – of course yours can be different. The more interesting part though, it’s the actual note-taking process.

When studying, highlight selected text, copy and paste onto the note and you’re good to go. Also remember: close all distractions when studying (IMs, Twitter…)

When reading from the textbook, just highlight the text, copy and paste it within Evernote’s note. I used to use drag and drop because Evernote keeps some kind of formatting but just because it keeps “some kind of formatting” it isn’t as good as plain old copy and paste.

When it comes to more complex text structures (like, code, for example) or graphics (images, diagrams, etc) the best way to insert them onto the note is to screenshot them. In OS X is dead-simple: cmd+shift+4, select the desired area and the screenshot is ready in your desktop. Then, just drag and drop it into the note — Evernote is awesome with such kind of input material.

This is how images (the diagram and code block) look inside a note, Evernote is great when it comes to them

You can even search (both notebook/note-wide Evernote search and cmd+f within the note work) within images for text, thus creating a digital, searchable and indexable archives of your notes. Best part? No messy handwritten characters — everything’s in Arial. And because I’m still a “print” guy, I can print each chapter-note, bind them together, thus instantly creating a smaller version of the book, only with the notes. And as said, no messy handwritten characters.

With Evernote’s search and text recognition functionality everything’s searchable

In conclusion, I am only using this system for a few days now but I can safely say it’s a great asset in my “studying arsenal” and a productivity booster. If you’re a student (or doing something similar, anyway) just give it a try—even if you haven’t used Evernote before. You’ll love it and will see that the “digital brain,” as many people describe Evernote, is true.

PS: There’s this great The Verge article called The Verge at work: backing up your brain in which Thomas Houston explains how he uses Evernote as a memory tool for deep reading, writing, and research. It’s a must read if you want to delve deeper into the Evernote-hole.

A constant inquiry of what’s ahead after mobile bugs me lately a lot.

Right now, we see a huge disruption on how we interact with things, search for information, consume content (not only media/video) due to the very nature of “the new mobile” — local, ubiquitous, always online, fast, condensed. And, frankly, the catalyst for these innovations was the iPhone.

But I feel that we are — slowly or fast doesn’t matter — coming to a point where we need to start working on the next big thing. Mobile is saturated. I still can see many innovations for it, many new uses and meaningful features (eg. Passbook, Square, Simple, etc). Don’t get me wrong. I love mobile. It made the huge difference from “I will connect to the Internet” to “I am in the Internet.”Always, everywhere, online.

I’m not pessimist towards mobile; on the other hand, I am totally optimist. There’s so much more to do. Let’s just not focus building the ν-th photo sharing app.

So what could be the next big thing? This thing that will, once again, change how we interact and perceive our world.

The most profound and quick answer that comes to my mind is Google Glass. I love its potential. And for the nay-sayers: no, you don’t look stupid, on the other hand it’s pretty cool — you look like Vegeta and, please, oh please, just imagine the potential. Retina-embedded layers.

Retina embedded fucking layers. The awesome is too damn high!

Aside Project Glass, though, what else could determine and build the post-mobile world? We live in a post-PC thanks to the iPad. How will post-mobile look, even if it’s something entirely new or mobile itself transforms into an entirely new form and format. This gets me excited.