Jacob Terry

I bleed blood.

Putting the Phone Call in its Place

The iPhone, as is evident from its name, started life as a phone. Despite Steve Jobs clever reveal [http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/live-from-macworld-2007-steve-jobs-keynote/] of the iPhone as three separate but equal products in one package (an iPod, an “internet communication device”, and a phone), most consumers saw

Microsoft Continues to be Dishonest about Bing Copying Debacle

There’s been quite a brouhaha over Google’s accusation that Bing is copying their search results. Personally I think Google is overreacting, but regardless of my stance I really wish Bing would be clear about what’s happening. Even after two [http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/

The Identity Opportunity

> Think about this: you can’t build ANY service that needs identity if the service usefulness is smaller than the cost (mind and time) of the login process. – Davide ‘Folletto’ Casali answering “What’s wrong with OpenID?” on Quora [http://www.quora.com/What-s-wrong-with-OpenID/answer/Davide-'Folletto'

A New Twitter Feature to Facilitate Conversations

Despite the constant of addition of functionality to most of the Twitter clients out there, none of the ones I’ve looked at have a simple function that I find myself interested in time and again – the ability to quickly see all the tweets directed (via @) at someone besides me.

Interview with a Netflix Movie that I Had for 17 Months Before Finally Watching It

Interviewer: So your run is coming to an end. How does it feel to retire on top? The Other Side of Heaven: It’s been a roller coster, that’s for sure. But you know, it’s not over yet. Interviewer: What do you mean? TOSOH: Well, right now the

By the time terrorist plotters make it t...

> By the time terrorist plotters make it to the airport, it is, generally speaking, too late to stop them. Plots must be broken up long before the plotters reach the target. If they are smart enough to make it to the airport without arrest, it is almost axiomatically true

Creation as Stunt

John Gruber of Daring Fireball has recently been posting links highlighting the use of the iPad for content creation, accompanied by a comment about these individuals “not getting the memo” that the iPad is a consumption device. Here are two recent examples: > ‘Apple of My Eye’ [http://vimeo.com/

Sony's Controllers: It Gets Worse

Related to my last post [http://jacobonline.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/sony-and-attention-to-detail/] on Sony’s poorly thought-out rechargeable controllers, it gets worse. This from Game Informer’s Move review [http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/09/01/move-hardware-review-motion-controls-evolved.aspx] : > The battery life for the motion controller is

Sony and Attention to Detail

Sony makes some really amazing hardware and software. That’s why it’s so frustrating when they flub the small things that can ruin what would otherwise be a tremendous experience. A few recent news stories have reminded me of my own experiences with Sony’s inability to sweat the

An Education in Ashley Terry

iPhoto ’09 added the “Faces” feature that allows you to tag people in your photos. As part of the feature they use face-detection technology to find the faces in your photos and suggest possible matches for those faces. It doesn’t work that well. Every single person in these screenshots

Proposition 9

“Couldn’t legalizing gay marriage be seen as a positive for the Church because it would bring us one step closer to legalizing polygamy, a practice the Church still believes in?” This was my comment in Sunday School during a discussion of gay marriage. There was an awkward silence afterwards.

Don't Trust Analysts

From the New York Times article, “In BP’s Record, a History of Boldness and Costly Blunders” [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/business/energy-environment/13bprisk.html]: > BP stepped into another tricky political situation last year, when Iraq offered foreign companies $2 a barrel to help it increase

i didnt write it my dad did im only fifthteen what do i know about obama im from austraila so is my dad hes a werido he tinks he can beat gladiator

I had a pretty entertaining conversation with Clint today about internet comments. The above is from a Barack Obama YouTube video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44_GDWsm1ZA). It’s indicative of the quality of many internet comments. Our discussion focused on all the one-star reviews the Hulu Plus

First Vegetables

These aren’t actually the first vegetables – I picked two cucumbers on Saturday. This group includes some cucumbers, cayenne peppers, jalapenos, and a banana pepper. I think I picked the banana pepper too early. In my head it was called a banana pepper because of how large it could get,

U-Verse Update

It’s been nearly four months since I switched from Comcast to U-Verse. Shortly after signing up I wrote a post, AT&T U-Verse Compared to Comcast [http://jacobonline.wordpress.com/2010/02/13/att-u-verse-compared-to-comcast/], which praised the service and outlined some of the pros and cons. So how

We have to let go of this notion that fo...

> We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win Microsoft has to lose. We have to embrace the notion that for Apple to win Apple has to do a really good job. If others are going to help us, that’s great, because we need

Garden 2010

The garden. And Bowser.

Apple Critics Can't Decide

Remember when Steve Jobs first revealed the iPhone and he tried to make “Web Apps” sound awesome because Apple didn’t have an SDK or an App Store? And remember how everyone said that was crap and they should be allowed to develop native apps? A year later Apple allowed

Spring

The tree in our front yard has flowered.

I continue to believe that the Wii audie...

> I continue to believe that the Wii audience will buy good games, and think that third parties have done a poor job of making them for the Wii. There are a handful of exceptions (my favorite is Zack and Wiki), but most third party Wii games just plain suck.

AT&T U-Verse Compared to Comcast

> UPDATE: Read my updated impressions [http://jacobonline.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/u-verse-update/] after four months of U-Verse service. On Tuesday of this week I had AT&T U-Verse installed at my house. Previously we had Comcast, which I was not happy with, for most of the usual

Thoughts on "The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance"

I just came back from a refreshing weekend in a cabin in North Georgia with some good friends. While I was there I read a book (on a Kindle, but that’s for another post) by Elna Baker – The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir. The book,

Recently I've been reading (mainly at a...

Recently I’ve been reading (mainly at arstechnica) how the entire I/O stack of current operating systems is designed around the slow seek time of a hard disk. That’s part of the reason that we aren’t seeing the huge jumps in performance hoped for from SSD. I’

Programming is Exciting

Looking back at my progress, it feels almost guided. I think it’s really just the natural progression of learning in life (line upon line [http://scriptures.lds.org/en/2_ne/28/30#30] – a similar scripture is in Isaiah [http://scriptures.lds.org/en/isa/28/10#10]

Trees in Fog