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April 30, 2003
Sprint Announces Bluetooth Phone
Until January, I'd been a long-time (over 5 years) Sprint customer. I switched to ATT because I wanted the Sony T68i phone, primarily because of its bluetooth capabilities. Overall, I've been pretty happy with it, but I liked the 1xRTT network better than I like the GPRS network. The speed was better and coverage seemed better. Yesterday, Sprint announced that they'll support the new T608 phone. I really like the T68i phone and ATT has been a reliable carrier, so I don't think I'll switch, but if Sprint had had this phone four months ago, I'd still be with Sprint.
09:10 PM | Recommend This | Print This
Organizing Data: Whence Real Integration?
I was just answering an email and realized how far we are from real integration. There were two related emails. One with an attachment that I wanted to save to a folder. One of them turned into an appointment. Don't forget my reply. I also have two related URLs that I want to keep track of related to the emails. The emails are in a two email folders (received and sent), the attachment, now modified, is in a folder, and the URLs are in my bookmark list. I really want them all in one place. Furthermore I want managing them to be easy. Here's some workarounds:
- I can save the email messages as text to a folder and drag the URLs there as well. I can't attach that folder to the appointment, however, or store the appointment in the folder in any meaningful way.
- I could blog it all, but that seems like an unwieldy solution. And here again, there's no good way to tie it to the event.
Maybe the answer is something like David Gelernter's Lifestreams metaphor, but that seems like overkill. I liked hearing that in Chandler everything has a URL. Giving everything a name in a common namespace is the first and more important step to unification.
What I want is for Apple to realize that iLife should link the things in my life: appointments, email, documents, and URLs rather than my music, movies and pictures. I think Apple is in danger of focusing too much on the gee-whiz media stuff (witness their announcement of yesterday) and not enough on the stuff that will really make a difference in the lives of their customers. I like iTunes and iPhoto, but if they went away my life would go on. Not so with my email, appointments, files, and URLs.
05:19 PM | Recommend This | Print This
The Hundred Year Language
From Patrick Logan's weblog, I found a pointer to an essay by Paul Graham called "The Hundred-Year Language." I don't know Paul well, but I have interacted with him on more than one occasion. A hundred-year language is one that people will still want to use in one-hundred years. Paul makes some very interesting points and, if you program, the essay is well worth the read---right to the end. Here's one quote I just can't resist repeating:
I don't predict the demise of object-oriented programming, by the way. Though I don't think it has much to offer good programmers, except in certain specialized domains, it is irresistible to large organizations. Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code. It lets you accrete programs as a series of patches. Large organizations always tend to develop software this way, and I expect this to be as true in a hundred years as it is today.
The phrase "accrete programs as a series of patches" is so deliciously visual that it makes me smile.