I sit at the water’s edge, and I wonder what I should be thinking. I walk the shore and look out and see the boats and the sky and the water. It’s calming to some degree, feeling the breeze on your face, and warmth of the sun beating down.

I’m thinking about a lot of things, what the future brings. I’m not certain any more what lies in that road ahead and in a lot of ways, i’m pretty happy with that.

Sometimes you don’t want stability. Sometimes you want the unknown. Sometimes you want the ability to change, you want to be able to change course whenever the moment, the whim strikes you.

I’m taking a deep breath, I’m not sure what will happen next.

Welcome inside

The place where miracles hide.

I can’t figure out all the answers,

yet there are things I surely know.

I want to fall… In Love,

Closer than just a friend.

Me and you on the horizon,

Forever to the Day.

Our binds shall never break,

And our love shall never depart.

So naturally, I can hope that

Miracles will happen.

All I know is I didn’t even know.

It was too late from what I was told,

I felt like not a chance,

I missed the signs,

I should have known.

I’m smitten, and bitten, and still not shy.

I want it back, but alas that’s not to be.

You are so lucky when you find out what love is,

And sometimes, you just have to pine away.

I don’t know where it went,

I don’t know where did it go.

A philosophy yet to be learned.

I sit and contemplate the future,

I sit and contemplate the past.

We are the creatures of today and yesterday,

Molded like clay, carved like blocks of ice.

We are so fragile.

Hey, There was fraud in Iran, better change my avatar to green! That’ll show ‘em.

Sorry but I call BULLSHIT!

Do you want change in Iran? First off why? Are you convinced that a regime change might change their Nuclear Weapons development program to a screeching halt? Do you think that this country is a true democracy that is being denied majority rule? What is your angle?

Point me to a website with your view, because I don’t really know what YOU stand for.

How long will you be green? Until the next folly comes to Twitter perhaps? You know where we need to change Healthcare, Climate Change, Gay Rights in the US, better health care for our wounded vets?

OK, turning green brings awareness, but it’s like carrying coal to Newcastle. (you can look that analogy up). The Twitter audience is keenly aware of many things, and they are the people that need to used for a call to action rather than call for awareness.

Do you want to have a call to action, then what will you do?

• Write letters to world leaders that could influence the Muslim world particularly in Iran.


• Tell Oil companies not to buy their oil from Iran until they sponsor free elections.


• ????? Anything else?

Where is the OUTRAGE? Where are the PROTESTS?

Some have put Yellow Ribbon magnets in support of the troops on their car, but don’t really give a fuck, but it feels good; So you change your avatar and don’t think about it ever again.

People are up in arms over the new developers terms that effectively are going to shut Adobe Flash developers out of the iPhone.

There are accusations flying and terms that aren’t making a lot of sense regarding how Apple operates, and let’s just cut to them.

Apple designs a complete ecosystem, hardware and software. No one complains about the closed ecosystems for gaming platforms such as the Wii, Xbox or PS3. And they are unarguably very successful.

The real question you might ask yourself is who is Apple’s customer for mobile devices. Is it Adobe? Microsoft? Google?

It’s the end user, and quiet honestly, the end user has pretty simple needs. How often have I heard a person riddicule the iPhone or smartphones saying, all I want to do is make a phone call! Simplicity!

Apple got it with the simple apps that come with the phone.

Flash support means that Apple will have to support another technology on it’s phone and ensure it is stable and doesn’t interfere with the product. According to Apple, it drains battery life significantly faster.

But what about…

What about what? Apple makes both the hardware and software. They don’t license it to anyone. For 1 full year the idea of an App was foreign unless you jailbroke your phone. One page of Apps was it. People still bought the phone. No one complained that it didn’t have Java Apps or lots of other stuff.

Why? Because there was no expectation.

Oh yes, I’m a fan of Apple. But I also offer criticism when that’s due too.

Personally I believe that the flash/CS5 deal has more to do with Adobe’s lack of OS X support for 64 bit with Photoshop, which may have moved Mac Sales to Windows PCs.

Who bit whose hand first? Huh?

Of course you can’t write terms of service that say, if you use flash, it won’t be supported, now can ya, so they made it generic.

I think that the people who have more room to criticize are Independent Musicians who use iTMS to sell their music.

But atleast music has gone DRM free.

If you don’t like the Apple mobile experience, there are plenty of other well established competitors, Blackberry, Android, Palm, Windows7 mobile. Just to name a few, not to mention all those feature phones out there.

Criticism is good, but let’s not call it a monopoly.

What do I want to see?  Well it’s pretty obvious:

1. Multitasking.  I don’t want to exit Pandora because I want to check some email… Jeeze!  I think we should at least be able to have 2 or 3 apps run simultaneously.  I can understand if there is a limit.


2. Better App Navigation.  For those who only have 30 Apps, well, this doesn’t apply to you.  For those of you and you know who I’m talking about; you are laughing and crying with 11 pages… you need much much more.  But you know, the pages thing kinda sucks, I’d rather have a most frequently used page, and be able to navigate using some sort of hierarchal method.


3. Printing.  Yeah, it would be WiFi based, but with a home network, wouldn’t it be great if it could find a printer and send the job out, especially for the iPad.


4. Better integration of Mobile Me, so when a family of people who all have their own accounts want to share music or Apps, they don’t have to just have one account and sync multiple devices, rather that App or music (DRM) is considered purchase for all of the account holders under that family plan.

I don’t think I’m asking for too much.  I think we’ll see at least one of those things, but I won’t hold my breathe.  Let me know what you think.  The announcement can’t come too soon, huh!

Right now there are only a handful of companies that are providing the Aerospace Engineering and hardware capable of any launches.  On the Cape Side, Lockheed Martin and Boeing Corp combined forces to create United Launch Alliance (ULA).  This company launches payloads off of Pads 41 and 37, Atlas V and Delta IV respectively. If any company is poised to pickup the pieces of NASA’s decision to scrap constellation, ULA certainly is.

On Pad 40, there is the Falcon, by SpaceX Corp., while they have an ambitious launch plan, they don’t have any track record of successful launches.

There is the philosophy that we could reuse everything but the shuttle.  Make more tanks and reuse boosters, hence the DIRECT project and Jupiter. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_(rocket_family)

The NASA places forward request for proposal to companies to create the next great thing, but no company is incentivized to expend great money without any possible return on investment.

The fact is that not a single one of these programs is Man Rated, and to add that would create additional expense to any of these rocket programs.  Only NASA has a Man Rated requirement for their payloads, unless we deregulate space.

Right now we must rely on a single rocket program in Russia to service the International Space Station.

The United States has put the most amount of money into the ISS and space exploration.  The director today stated that he is looking to Internationalize the space program.  America needs to be the lead in space.  If we are putting our cash there, then we shouldn’t have to compromise on the direction of the research.

As the director said, only Russian and China will have Human Space Flight programs for an unknown time after Shuttle retires.  It’s unbelievable.  What’s worse is that we have no idea when we will bring one back online.

What is really at risk is Jobs, Science, Leadership and Pride.  When J.F. Kennedy boldly asked us to go to the Moon, we did it as a nation.  It put industry at work providing the tooling and know-how.  40 Years after we put a man on the moon, we have squandered all of it, and no one has a good reason as to why.
———
SailorJ is a pseudonym for a former technician on one of the Unmanned Rocket programs at Cape Canaveral, FL.

Like what I write?  Follow Me on Twitter: @SailorJ and tell me what you think!

There are two dominate platforms emerging in the Smart Phone market, the iPhone (Apple) and Android based (Google).  But unlike the Palm and RIM based machines, these two companies have an ecosystem that stands behind their product.  Let me talk to Apple and Google separately and you’ll quickly see what I mean.

Apple

• Integration using iTunes


• Available on both Mac and Windows based PCs.


• Runs Mobile Safari based on WebKit.


• Has a total developer program to bring applications to the device based upon Mac OS X.


• iPhone operating system based on Mac OS X.

Google

• Integration using existing Google Services (Gmail, Google Voice, Documents, etc.)


• Available on any platform.


• Runs Google Chrome Browser based on WebKit.


• Has an SDK program to bring applications to the device.


• Android OS is unique to the hand held device based on the Linux kernel.

So what is the game plan going forward?  Google believes that Chrome is the future of the desktop.  (That) We will get rid of lots of overhead and push the on button and be online.  Apple on the other hand may have developers that can develop for one and develop for all by keeping some consistency between the way you develop for both the Mac OS and Mobile Mac OS.  90,000 applications is a lot of applications and if that translates to developers for the Mac, it can only be a good thing for Apple.

Because Google mostly sees the Application relying on the browser and on the Internet, that would lend one to believe that people who make web based Apps will have the most success, since they should run smooth on both an iPhone and an Android phone.

I’ve heard it said that business is about making money and yet it is also about getting your products in the hands of users.  It’s still too early to tell who is the David and who is the Goliath, but as we see more of Apple’s business plans come together towards the end of January, we can all be sure that the fun is just beginning.

Like what I write?  Follow Me on Twitter: @SailorJ and tell me what you think!

Well, the biggest hurdle that all SmartPhones have to really overcome is Price.  These are not devices that are going to get into the hands of cost conscious consumers in this economy.  While i’m not a bean counter for Google, and don’t know the big strategy there, but I’ll throw a real stab at what I believe could win the day.

• PRICE, PRICE, PRICE. $50 unlimited Service Plan on a Google phone, this would be the really killer phone.  Make the phone cost $99 or $199.  People will pay it and see value for that.  The key here is that Google needs people to not only be on their OS (android) but on their Hardware/Software.


• The Google Philosophy. The idea is that if you buy into something like this, then you also agree that Google can use lots of data (in an aggregated sense) to create marketing strategies for better future product placement.  This in itself is a revenue source and a vital way to understand the Google User Base.


• It’s a Platform. Second more units sold means more people are going to develop Applications for that App Store.  Apple is seeing a great revenue stream there, and Google could do the same thing if it wants to without stifling innovation.

I own an iPhone, and I love it.  But I’m also a fan of Google’s products and innovations.  Competition is good for everyone, especially dedicated iPhone owners. Without something dynamic and different, it could just become another homogenized Android phone and a blip on the Radar.