A decade ago, I was traveling with one of the founders of the company that I worked for at the time, Timm Martin, and we arrived at the discussion of electronic books (ebooks). I said that I thought ebooks were the wave of the future and I wished that I could figure out how to start a company that was a part of that change. Timm, who was the technology visionary of our company, seemed to cautiously agree with me at the time and I think we both worried that the portable platform had yet to be created that made that prediction a certainty, at least in the near term.
I can attest to occasionally experiencing this problem. It is rather intermittent for me and I can mostly control the problem by not moving the phone from my ear during the conversation.
This is a little frustrating. I get the antenna being affected by my hand but this proximity sensor problem is just bad engineering (either software or hardware).
My thoughts on my new iPhone 4. I just received it yesterday from FedEx (it was fun watching the FedEx package being tracked from China through Hong Kong through Anchorage through Indianapolis and then to Loveland, OH where it was routed to me). I received it one day ahead of Apple’s expected revised delivery date.
I say “revised” because AT&T and Apple screwed up and missed my first delivery date. The unit was supposed to ship on July 2 but they updated their date on July 3 to say that it was going to ship a week or so later. I was upset and I called Apple – the very polite and professional rep apologized but couldn’t change the ship date. He did give me a bumper as a consolation gift – good thing too as it turns out.
Apple has recently put out an open letter explaining that they have made a mistake in calculating the signal strength bars on their hit product, the iPhone (all versions up to the latest iPhone 4). I am glad that they Apple code developers have stumbled on this bug and are producing a fix. We all know that there are a few more software bugs in every product, so it is no surprise that Apple has a bug in this portion of their code.
But, is that really the fix? No.
All wireless devices need antennas. If you are as old as I am, there is a chance that your first mobile phone was a “bag phone” or a “car installed phone”. These phones were massive and required a car or, at least, a briefcase to carry them around. The towers were so far dispersed that you needed a BIG antenna that was putting out mega-wattage to reach them. Putting that antenna up to your head would almost certainly turn your brain to scrambled eggs in a couple of weeks or so. These monsters were also analog and all you could do was talk on them (no texting – how in the world did we survive?).
Even though the economy is slowly starting to recover from the excesses of spending of the George W. Bush administration (and the equally complicitous Congress), we are still far from out of the woods. The economy is in pain, in addition to the overspending, due to poor financial market regulation which destroyed several top-notch financial firms such as Lehman Brothers (who also appeared to break some standard accounting laws and best practices). The government responded to help these big institutions because they were “too big to fail.”
Let’s face it – there should be no such thing as “too big to fail.” Most of us work for companies that are not in that category. If our employers screw up and the company goes down the tubes then we will individually hurt and perhaps the micro-economy around that company will hurt a bit but for the most part the US GDP won’t even see the speed bump. This is the way that it should be – screw up and fail then just pick yourself up and get on with life.
I am sure that you have heard of the current oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. If you haven’t, here is a link – please come back after you have caught up with current events.
I am just aghast at how stupid these companies are. Current reports are that they didn’t install an “acoustic switch” on the well. From NewsInferno:
The Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded last week was not outfitted with a safety device that might have prevented the massive oil spill now nearing the U.S. Gulf Coast. The device, known as an acoustic switch, is a last-resort protection against underwater spills, and is required by regulators in Norway and Brazil. Unfortunately, the U.S. has no such regulation for oil wells operating off of its shores.
You know it is bad when one of the greatest founders of a technology company says the following (from a Fortune interview):
It must be private, never go public. There will be no upside investors other than me and the employees. . . . I hope we can pull it off under those conditions because I would be thrilled to lead another group of smart engineers, without all the crap that goes into running a company today. I just don’t want Congress telling me how much I should be paid or firing me. I want to pretend I am back in the 1980s again.
Consumers Energy, a Michigan gas and electric company with 2.9 million customers, said it will not take a big first-quarter charge because, like most utility companies, it can try to recover the added costs from its customers through rate hikes.
I get it, health costs will go down because it will get subsidized by the taxes on energy! We can just rob Peter to pay Paul because Peter is too stupid to realize he got robbed.
The really good news in all that is we may get some more new jobs – the bill gives the IRS $1B a year to hire new employees to collect all of these new taxes – that is about 12,000 new jobs for the IRS! Obama has finally come up with a solution to unemployment – hire the entire US population so that no one is unemployed!
Scott McKain, an adviser to many on how to more effectively run a business, just did a great article on how NBC screwed up with this Leno at 10 problem.
What Scott doesn’t point out in his advice is that the change is not always necessary for the good of the company. In this case, Conan was getting his butt kicked by the more experienced (and more entertaining) Letterman.
1) Don’t EVER make the assumption that ANY productive employee is ready to be put out to pasture. We work for many reasons, and only ONE of them is money. Zucker’s assumption that Leno was wealthy enough and would want to ride off in the sunset started the disastrous chain of events.
I am not a bit surprised that Leno is in trouble at NBC. Moving that format to 10P in the 21st century was foolish. It may have been okay in the 50s or 60s but that show was doomed the day that Jay Leno walked on to the stage.
The executives that put this together should be fired. It should be the first thing that Comcast does now that they have control of the company from GE. Fire the buffoons that did this. Talk about destroying a valuable commodity! Warren Buffet says that you should only invest in companies that can be profitable even if idiots run them. I don’t know if I agree with that advice but I definitely don’t think you should invest in companies that are run by buffoons!
