TWO giants of technology died in recent weeks in widely contrasting fashion. Many mourned the passing of the genius who was Steve Jobs, only a few marked the demise of the genius who was Dennis Ritchie.

But despite that disparity, in life as in death, there is a thread that binds Jobs and Ritchie – that of greatness, genius and Unix.

Jobs changed technology and made it elegant, producing product after product that transformed industries — the Apple II, Mac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad. Any one of those products would have been enough to cement the legacy of a technology entrepreneur.

Jobs was uncanny in seeing technology trends. “He told us what we needed before we wanted it,” the Associated Press said in reporting his death. And it was something he was particularly proud of.

“There’s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.’ And we’ve always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very, very beginning. And we always will,” Jobs said in 2007.

Continue reading ’2 crazy ones’

HOW long do you support a losing website? Two years? Three? Five?

Failing is okay so long as you fail fast, Inquirer director for mobile JV Rufino said in a forum last Monday held as part of this year’s Press Freedom Week celebration.

Speed is even more crucial on the Internet, where one year zips by in just six months. Running a losing website for five years is akin to running a brick-and-mortar business for 10 years.

Fail fast, fail often and learn from these failures to build better products, Rufino said in the forum organized by Cebu Daily News, “Where is Journalism in the Digital World?”

Continue reading ‘Making money in new media’

In the US, 89 percent of those with smartphones use it throughout the day, according to a study published last April by Google. The study, based on interviews of 5,013 American adults who identified themselves as users of smartphones, said the device has become a consumer’s “always-on companion” and 93 percent use it at home, 87 percent while commuting or walking, 77 percent while in a store and 72 percent while at work.

Smartphones, according to the study, “serve as pocket PCs and extend the desktop experience” with 81 percent of smartphone users browsing the Internet, 77 percent using search engines and 68 percent using an app. Seventy-two percent of users also report using their phones while consuming other media like listening to music, 44 percent; watching TV, 33 percent; reading a book, 16 percent; and reading a newspaper or magazine, 22 percent.

The study offers a peek into the quickly rising use of mobile devices to access the Internet. It’s just a peek because local usage scenario would likely be slightly different. For instance, the study said 89 percent of US respondents use their smartphones to stay connected with 82 percent saying they check and send emails with their phones and 63 percent using it for social networking. The numbers will likely be the other way around for Filipinos, who are among the world’s most active group of people in social networks.

Continue reading ‘Smartphones, Smart’s Netphone’

DEATH is the “single best invention of Life,” Steve Jobs told graduates of Stanford University in 2005. It is life’s change agent, clearing out the old to make way for the new, he said in his commencement speech that regained popularity online with his resignation last week as Apple chief executive officer over medical reasons.

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.”

Jobs said that starting at 17, he’d look in the mirror every morning and asked himself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”

That question, however, became more than rhetorical when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004 and underwent surgery. He was fine for a while but needed a liver transplant, which he had in 2009. He had been on medical leave since January.

Continue reading ‘Innovation gospel according to Steve Jobs’

Eight years after it was started by a 19-year-old college freshman as a blogging software, WordPress now powers 14.7 percent of the world’s top one million websites. It is used in 55 million websites.

In his annual State of The Word address last week, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg also said the open source content management system (CMS) now runs 22 out of every 100 new websites created in the US.

The velocity in WordPress adoption and its dominance illustrate the strength of the open source model, where the community is involved in the development of the software. It is not a coincidence that the top open source CMS packages today, WordPress and Drupal, also have the most active developer and user communities.

Matt Mullenweg giving his State of the Word 2011 address.

Continue reading ‘WordPress rides the open source juggernaut’

YOU know QR or quick response codes have gone mainstream when they appear in the ample bottoms of Britain’s female beach volleyball champions. The codes, when scanned with mobile phones, direct users to a betting website.

The Daily Mail reported that Zara Dampney and Shauna Mullin have been paid a “substantial” figure to have the QR codes printed on the bottom of their bikinis.

QR CODE FOR INVENTORY. Here’s a sample QR code for possible use in an inventory system. At left is the actual inventory sticker of my computer unit. At right is a sample QR code I generated for our comptroller’s laptop. CLICK ON PHOTO TO ENLARGE

That piece of quirky news illustrates the increasing use of QR codes, which are 2D bar codes that contain data–from text to numerical strings to website addresses. It was developed by Toyota subsidiary Denso Wave in 1994 to keep track of vehicle parts.

A study by comScore said that 14 million users in the United States scanned a QR code in June. Of the number, 61 percent were male and 36 percent were in households making more than $100,000 a year.

The study also found that mobile phone users are most likely to scan the codes found in newspapers and magazines.

Continue reading ‘Use QR codes, Google Docs to set up free inventory system’