"Je ne cherche pas, je trouve." (Pablo Picasso)
Always surprised the keynote doesn't include the iView or stg... seeing the entire world thru his (Apple) eyes, must be his wet dream.
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In his new book, A Journey, Mr Blair writes that the former US president was confused by the presence of Guy Verhofstadt at the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa.
“He didn’t know or recognise Guy, whose advice he listened to with considerable astonishment,” Mr Blair writes. “He then turned to me and whispered, ‘Who is this guy?’ ‘He is the prime minister of Belgium,’ I said.
“Belgium? George said, clearly aghast at the possible full extent of his stupidity. ‘Belgium is not part of the G8’.”
Mr Blair explained to Mr Bush that Mr Verhofstadt was there as “president of Europe”. Belgium held the presidency of the EU council at the time.
Mr Bush responded: “You got the Belgians running Europe?” before shaking his head, “now aghast at our stupidity”, Mr Blair writes.
Elsewhere in the book Mr Blair claims that the president held an uncomplicated view of international affairs.
"George had immense simplicity in how he saw the world. Right or wrong it led to decisive leadership."
The former prime minister also suggests he was uneasy with Mr Bush’s 2002 State of the Union speech, in which he described Iran, Iraq, Syria and North Korea as an “axis of evil”.
“From my perspective there were two drawbacks with the way this thesis was expressed by its supporters,” Mr Blair writes.
He adds that such partisan language was unhelpful and claims that it ignored the importance of the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
However Mr Blair praises Mr Bush at several points in the book. He stresses how likeable he found him while the two were in office.
"You might not agree with him, but if you're a voter, you would never think you would be uncomfortable or feel inadequate if you met him socially,” Mr Blair writes.
“You would think he would be nice and easy with you. And you’d be right."
He also suggests Mr Bush is widely misunderstood by the British public who perceive his plain talking style as a sign of being "dumb".
"He was basically considered a right-wing Republican bastard for getting rid of hostile brutal dictatorships and insisting they be replaced not with friendly brutal dictatorships but with an attempt at liberal democracy," Mr Blair wrote.
"Of course, part of this feeling was an entirely natural dislike of war. Part was also the Republicans' fault for allowing this ridiculous notion of 'neoconservatives' to take hold. I often warned George of this"
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2010
There’s always something cool coming out of Y Combinator, but even so Greplin stands out from the crowd. It’s a personal search engine for all that data you keep locked away in the cloud. If you’ve used desktop search like spotlight, you’ll get Greplin right away. It’s like spotlight for your cloud data.
It’s dead simple to use. Sign up and authorize any number of social services for Greplin to index – I signed into Facebook, Twitter and Google Voice to start. After a few minutes of indexing time Greplin then presents you with a Google-like search box. Run a query and find the public and private data you’ve locked away on those sites. Tweets, including DMs, are shown, as well as Facebook messages and Google Voice voicemail transcriptions and SMS. You can also index Gmail, Dropbox, LinkedIn and a bunch of other services.
After you use it for the first time you’ll understand that you’ll never not use it again. And there are nice touches like showing real time results as you type. And Greplin only uses OAuth and other APIs for authorization, so they never see your third party site credentials.
Greplin will be free for most of what they do, and charge a fee for more features like searching inside of attachments.
And the story behind the company is just as compelling. It was founded by Daniel Gross when he was 18 (he’s all of 19 now). Daniel, a dual U.S./Israeli citizen, lived in Jerusalem his entire life until moving to California to go through the Y Combinator incubator period this last winter. The original inspiration for Greplin? Says Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham: “He was on his way to a party, and he didn’t remember where the address was stored. Was it a Facebook event, or in an email, or in his calendar? It was a pain to try searching all these things from his phone.” So he built the solution.
Joining Gross as cofounder is Robby Walker, founder of Y Combinator and Google-acquired company Zenter. This is Walker’s second trip through Y Combinator, and Gross is the youngest entrepreneur Y Combinator has funded to date.
Investors are salivating. The company has already raised over $700,000 in angel funding from SV Angel, Chris Dixon, Bret Taylor, Keith Rabois and Paul Buchheit. Bret Taylor’s experience with grabbing data from lots of third party services at FriendFeed is particularly valuable, says Gross.
Keep an eye on this one. They are going to be turning down acquisition offers left and right. They’ve just attacked the other half of web search.
NASA joins the Commons on Flickr today with three iconic sets spanning the US space agency’s 50+ year history. Their Commons account will feature photos from across the agency’s many locations and centers, chronicling the history of space and lunar missions, and the people and places of the organization.
My friend stumbled upon this image from graphjam.com – enjoy!
Jesus. Maybe literally.
Fox News has a long and illustrious history of saying some fairly outrageous things. A story today on FoxNews.com may be one of the best yet — certainly from a tech perspective.
The post entitled “For Apple Followers, It’s a Matter of Faith, Academics Say” argues that while people may joke about Apple being a religion (JesusPhone, etc), to some, it may actually be a religion. Better, they wonder if Apple shouldn’t pursue that path. Here’s Fox News’ keys as to why Apple is similar to a religion:
Yes, Apple’s start in a garage is very similar to Christ’s birth.
They also note that the Pope is scared of such a religion because he once rhetorically asked if a savior was needed in a modern wired world. Clearly, that means Apple.
The story goes on to wonder if Apple — not some crazed Apple fanboys, mind you — might apply for religious status in the future. “Indeed, it would be interesting if Apple were to apply for such a status in the future.“
Naturally, the main impetus behind this farce is that the author can’t understand why people continue to buy iPhones even though they don’t work. Therefore, Apple must be a religion. “It’s not a matter of rationality, it’s a matter of faith,” the author argues.
Meanwhile, back on the planet Earth, the story remains the same. The iPhone 4 does indeed have an antenna issue, but it’s not a major issue in real world use. If it were a major issue, the millions of people who have bought the device over the past month would be returning it en masse. If something doesn’t work, you return it — it’s that simple. That isn’t happening.
So which argument makes more sense? Are the returns not flowing in because it’s really not a big deal — and overall the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone out there? Or is it because Apple is a religion?
[photo: flickr/roblisameehan]
It’s now common for employers to research job applicants online - seeing what turns up on a Google search, perusing LinkedIn profiles and, if they can, checking out Facebook accounts. But the German parliament is not happy with this state of affairs, reports German news site Spiegel Online. The government has drafted a new law that would make it illegal for companies to check out the Facebook profiles of candidates.
Looking at business-oriented sites such as LinkedIn is fine and Googling the applicant would still be okay, although the employers are instructed to disregard any search results that are not under the person’s control.
It seems like an odd proposal to me. If the Facebook user has their privacy settings wide open, the information could well end up on Google anyway. However, if they have their profile set so it’s only viewable to friends, this should not be a problem. Perhaps this would provide some protection for people who have their profiles viewable to friends of friends and networks, as it would be an unknown factor whether the HR person could then obtain access through their friends or networks.
I also don’t really know how you would enforce this. How would you prove the employer had looked at Facebook? How would you force them to “disregard” information publicly available on Google? Good luck with that!
While I have selected strong privacy settings for my Facebook account, I also treat it as though it were public. I joined Facebook three or four years ago and I’ve always said that I don’t want anything on Facebook that I wouldn’t want my mother to see. This turned out to be a good move, since in fact I am now friends with my mother and many others of her generation on Facebook! But I was also in my late twenties by the time I joined Facebook and I shudder to think what my profile would be like if I’d used the network as an 18-year-old university student.
All too often, hiring managers are looking for a reason NOT to employ someone because of the personal risk of making a bad hire. Facebook just gives them one more excuse. Personally I look forward to a day when employers start looking for rounded human beings and Joe Blow’s exploits at the pub or Jane Blow’s desire to have children one day are not issues. I can see the hiring manager’s standpoint too though - I guess you’d want to avoid hiring someone with a fondness for racist jokes or someone whose Farmville updates come at regular intervals throughout the business day!
Mercedes with iPad infotainment, wouldn't refuse this one
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