Apple’s Soaring Pile Of Cash (AAPL)

“On December 27th, 1996, Apple had $1.8 billion in cash and securities. Today it has $34 billion.”

(Via Silicon Alley Insider.)

How to Read AdMob’s Mobile Metrics Reports: “makes it so much more important for free apps to be utilizing effective marketing strategies to help them garner their share of that traffic in an increasingly competitive market environment.”

AdMob was purchased by Google today for $750m.

(Via The Appency Press.)

Bob Tedeschi writes about the iPhone as the Model T of the mobile te4chnology realm

“Today’s smartphones can do almost anything a PC could do in 2007, but in a couple of years smartphones may have enough computing power to enable much more sophisticated applications that truly take advantage of the device’s portability.”

“This idea, labeled ‘the third cloud’ by David P. Reed of MIT, underscores the most profound change for smartphones currently coming to the market — namely, that they need not communicate with the carrier at all.

‘Carriers used to control everything, and now the tables have utterly turned,’ Dr. Lippman said. ‘That’s what’ll make the future so interesting.’”

(Via New York Times.)

1989 – Macintosh Portable
7,250g (16 pound)
10-inch (640 x 400) monochrome display
16 MHz Motorola CPU, 1MB RAM
40MB HDD, 3.5-inch floppy drive
2400 baud modem
$6,500 – $7,300 ($11-12,000 today)

2009 – iPod Touch
115g (4.05 oz)
3.5-inch (480 x 320) multi-touch display
600 MHz ARM CPU, 256MB RAM
32GB or 64GB flash drive
Wi-Fi (802.11b/g), Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
$299/$399 for 32/64GB

It arrived on Monday morning, just before I left on a trip to the WES 2009 conference in Orlando. I got back on Wednesday but I made myself tidy up my physical desk before I unboxed it on Friday.

Now that it’s here and I’ve been using it for 1 day, 21 hours and 43 minutes (thanks to iStat) I can’t understand why I didn’t order one earlier. I always though that my two processor G5 was pretty cool, until now.

I decided that rather than migrate my old profile to my new machine, I should see how far Cloud computing has really taken me, and where does my ‘critical data’ really live. Besides it’s always nice to start with a clean machine and only install applications that you need (and actually use) rather than migrating the cobwebs (and unused preferences) from an old machine.

So here’s a list of (my) essential applications:

• MobileMe – now I have my Bookmarks, Calendar appointments, Contacts and Keychains, and most importantly all of my work documents from my iDisk
• 1Password – because life is too shortto remember things you can ‘write’ down
• Firefox – for all of those Add-ons that you can’t live without – 1Password, Better Gmail, Blank Canvas Signatures, Delicious Bookmarks, Gmail Manager, Google Gears, Web Developer, Xmarks, Xoopit
• Xmarks for Safari – love these syncing applications
• VMware Fusion – surpisingly easy to copy over Windows XP image from MacBook Air, and configure it for extra cores, memory and increase the disk space (boy does it run quickly on this machine, I think I may use the Office 2007 apps and not install the Mac native Office 2008)
• Perian – for all things digital in Quicktime
• Flip4mac – for playing WMV in Safari
• Tweetie – of course
• OmniFocus – the only ToDo application that works for me
• MarsEdit – for my blogs
• PreziDesktop – that I want to like
• Cooliris – because it’s cool
• Evernote
• Skitch
• TypeIt4Me
• DeliciousSafari

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray’s edge—
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower
—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

– Robert Browning

On April 22nd each year, Earth Day, we get the chance to think about our relationship to the planet, and how we should be more mindful of our carbon footprint.

As the sixties came to an end, many Americans were driving around, using leaded gas in massive V8 sedans. Wasting precious resources was a sign of prosperity, and air pollution was the price of progress.

Mainframe computer systems were housed in strictly controlled environments, and large amounts of energy was used to condition the air to keep the machines crunching data.

Although the computing power of CPUs has grown by leaps and bounds and great strides have been made in reducing the heat they produce, modern data centers are still energy hogs.

There are many innovative ways to reduce the computing footprint:
- Use data centers that are built close to renewable energy sources
- Use the excess heat from the data center to warm the local swimming pool
- Use virtualization and cloud technologies to efficiently use the smallest number of machines
- Write smart code, and use the latest compilers and optimized virtual machines
- Get old inefficient code off your mainframe and run your business with modern software

Software developers can’t control all of these elements, but they can try.

On April 22nd each year, Earth Day, we get the chance to think about our relationship to the planet, and how we should be more mindful of our carbon footprint.

As the sixties came to an end, many Americans were driving around, using leaded gas in massive V8 sedans. Wasting precious resources was a sign of prosperity, and air pollution was the price of progress.

Mainframe computer systems were housed in strictly controlled environments, and large amounts of energy was used to condition the air to keep the machines crunching data.

Although the computing power of CPUs has grown by leaps and bounds and great strides have been made in reducing the heat they produce, modern data centers are still energy hogs.

There are many innovative ways to reduce the computing footprint:
- Use data centers that are built close to renewable energy sources
- Use the excess heat from the data center to warm the local swimming pool
- Use virtualization and cloud technologies to efficiently use the smallest number of machines
- Write smart code, and use the latest compilers and optimized virtual machines
- Get old inefficient code off your mainframe and run your business with modern software

Software developers can’t control all of these elements, but they can try.

More importantly, if you have a Mac desktop, and a Mac laptop, and if you use them side by side (so that you have lots of screen real estate, and when one is busy spinning colored circles waiting for a Microsoft Office application to open, you are scanning Facebook on the other) then you should check out Teleport.

It lets you use one keyboard and mouse for both machines (or more, if you’re really keen) and it lets you effortlessly cut and paste between them, and even drag files back and forth. It supports encryption and works on Leopard and Tiger, and an earlier version on Panther.

If you use it in combination with Screen Sharing on Leopard there is nothing that you cannot easily do when it comes to pasting between computers.

It’s donationware and since version 1.0 came out in November 2007 has been completely stable with my G5 desktop, Intel MacBook Pro, and G4 Powerbook. If you like it send Julien Robert some PayPal love.