10 thoughts for November 13, 2013

I have a lot of thoughts going through my head, all the time.  Here's some of the minor ones.

1. The Tea Party's leaders have been trying to crash the federal government.  Meanwhile an Occupy offshoot has been using donations to buy out Americans' medical debt and cancel them.  One group seems to me to be taking America to the brink of destruction while the other is helping those who aren't "winners" by capitalistic standards.  I like the second group a lot more.
2. Creative destruction: Prepaid wireless companies offering all-you-can-use plans for half the price of post-paid wireless.
3. Are you right or left brain dominant or balanced (balanced means no one side is greater than 30%)?  Take this test and then this one, to see.  (Left brain = analytical / language, right brain = creative.) The second test has more meaningful analysis involved.
4. We now produce more oil than we import.  Prices are falling.  The two are not fully correlated.  Firstly, demand matters.  North American demand for petroleum is now about what it was in 1998.  Secondly, oil is global, thus despite that petroleum production boom, we now export thrice as much petroleum as we did in 2008.  Rather than directly lowering prices, excess product goes to highest bidder. (Yes, those links go to my charts from publicly available data (EIA).)
5. Funny how a lot of sites and apps have popped up, replicating the background noise of a coffee shop.  Here's one, two, three, four, five means of getting your coffee shop backgrounds.  Such noise is supposed to increase your concentration.  Oddly enough, when I'm at the cafe, I put my headphones on to drown out the noise.  There's more to the ambiance than background sound, IMO.
6. I increased the longevity of my battery's charge in my Nexus 5, by switching out the Java machine from Dalvik (standard) to ART (Android Run Time).  You can only do this with Kit Kat, and you need to enable developer options on your device.  Big difference, believe me.  I went from my battery lasting 3/4 of a day, to lasting at least 24 hours (it reached about 59% after 24 hours, and I decided to throw it on the charger, anyway).
7. Moto X customization is now available to all major US carriers.  But here comes Moto G, and it costs just $180 off contract (full price)!  The down side is that it ships with Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean), but it is guaranteed to be upgraded to 4.4 Kit Kat.  I'd consider this a sideways upgrade from my GS-II, were I to have waited.  But my Nexus 5 is a bigger, higher resolution screen, packed with Qi Wireless charging ability, and Kit Kat already built in.
8. 3D printers are awesome.  Here come the 3D scanners.  You know you want one, too.  It'll probably make 3D modeling a lot easier, by scanning in objects you already own.
9. comScore data shows that Google's US search market share has been steady for the last three months at 66.9%.  While Google's market share is off its high of 67.5% from this past February, it'd be tough to view this as a negative for them, as getting too big might lead to market intervention by the DOJ.  Nonetheless, it's obvious that Bing just ain't cutting it, despite the ad campaigns against Google.
10. Speaking of Google, Android is absolutely the de facto operating system of mobile.  People love to point to profits of Apple, but I'll bet anyone that Apple would wish that Android wasn't the dominant system, and that Apple's ecosystem was.  On a side note: When people exclaim that Windows Phone is witnessing phenomenal growth of 156%, try to remember that this is about WP going from 2% to 3.6% -- we're talking small potatoes here.   With the move to make Nokia a division of Microsoft, this number is inevitably going to flat line in the next year or two as outside partners will stop building WP phones.