10 thoughts for November 19, 2013

I have a lot of thoughts going through my head, all the time.  Here's my way of getting a bunch of them out of my head, without taking the whole day to write long form.

1. I use five cloud storage / file sync services -- they're all running in the background and reside in my notifications bar in Win7, and I have apps for all of them on my smart phone and tablet.  The highest amount of free storage I'm getting, is 51GB from Tresorit, followed by 50GB from Box.  That may seem like a lot, but I've got quite a few presentation and design files that are 50MB each.  I'm trying not to be a clutter bug, so I've tried deleting older files that have little value.  But then, the trail of design disappears.
2. When tornadoes hit in the late Fall and Winter, it's a rarity and they make reconstruction difficult.  You have to protect poured concrete above freezing, and you can't paint below 50°F.  But heck, if it's cold and wet, then you can't close up walls, else you trap moisture and create mold in homes.  You can't plant trees either, because the ground is frozen.
3. So I compared a Moto X and my Nexus 5 side by side.  I think the Nexus 5 looks far better.  It's thinner and it has exceptionally cleaner lines.  With the white back, it reminds me of thin mints.  I used to think that my GS-II was nice enough, but the Nexus 5 is drop dead gorgeous.
4. Apple fanbois could not believe that Android tablets have surged and vastly outsold the iPad.  So they're now pointing to a one of their own, who writes that Android TV stick sales in Asia, driven by pirated content, is responsible for this surge.  Here are a few problems with their hypothesis: The top tablets for sale at Amazon are all Androids, device sales tracking firms all say that Android tablets are surging, and we now know that Android tablet revenue exceeds iPads.  But you know, most people only accept explanations that conform to their bias.  The 2012 elections come to mind.
5. By the way, these Apple fanbois point to Chitika's data showing 84% usage of web traffic held by iPads, as proof that most of the devices showing up as Android tablet sales are TV sticks, because these sticks don't typically browse the internet.  Here's the logical fallacy (or a clear ignorance of the data): Chitika only tracks from a limited set of 300K websites in North America.  You can't create a narrative about explosive Android TV sticks from pirated web content posing as Android tablets in Asia, if the basis of your proof is ad traffic from North America.
6. Please, feel free to find one of those 300K websites using Chitika.  I tried.  I have zero stored cookies from them, and none of the dozen popular domains I visited used Chitika.  I tried searching for websites that used Chitika, but instead I found, somewhat humorously, this ZDNet post about why you shouldn't trust the data coming out of Chitika.
7. I have my suspicion that one reason why Chitika's data seems bad, is because it is an advertising company.  If you compare their data to pure research companies such as StatCounter, there is   Mobile / in-app ads served up from tablets and smart phones from the Android ecosystem, would probably result in undercounting from developers using Google's AdSense and DoubleClick, not Chitika.  Inherently, Chitika's data would therefore exclude much of the largest ecosystem.
8. Apparently even online dating sites practice unsafe password storage.
9. Looks like Ed Orgeron's recruiting job has gotten easier by his on the field success.
10. Former President Bush was very gracious on the Tonight Show, saying that he felt it was unfair to criticize his successor because it was detrimental to the country.  If you can find it, he's completely loose and very clear.  Which all seems to me to mean that he had really lousy speech writers when he was in the White House.  I like him a lot better now than when he was in the Oval Office, that's for sure.  It's an awful shame he didn't express this same level of clarity and humor while in office.  And he's a fairly good painter, too.  Really, you should watch his interview...he's not the same guy.