DouglassDavidoff.com

Why 'Wired' Seems to Have It Wrong About Amazon and Apple

The December 2011 issue of Wired is out, with a photo of the left half of Jeff Bezos' face on the cover.  I was excited about this issue, because I wanted to read about the moves Amazon.com [and my Amazon WishList] is making to be a cloud content provider in addition to seller of books and anything else you can find in a supermarket or shopping mall.

Instead, I was disappointed.

The article by longtime tech writer Stephen Levy repeated some tiresome comparisons between Amazon and Apple. Amazon is content company, right? Because it makes most of its money selling more content things, both real (like books, shoes, and DVDs) and electronic (like ebooks and streaming movies). Yep, it's not a hardware company, though its big news right now is hardware in the form of the Kindle Fire.

And Apple isn't a content company, right?
Because it makes most of its money selling hardware things, like computers and mobile tablets and smartphones. Yes, it's not a content company, even though its current big news is user content management in the form of launching iCloud.

The article also disappointed because all too soon it descends into a Q&A dialog that doesn't grab me. It doesn't talk enough about the Amazon consumer experience and what might be coming down the pike. The most I learn about consumer experiences at Amazon is that Amazon really doesn't like to talk to me on the phone, really is not proud of being a profit-making enterprise, would offer single pricing for movie streaming if, gosh, only the movie content providers would agree, and seems more head-in-the-clouds than futuristic.

There's an ethereal quality to Bezos that bothers me, and I'm trying to put my finger on why.

Home Again, Home Again, After Surgery

I am back at home after surgery yesterday by my podiatrist, Barry Rosenblum DPM, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston to resect the second metatarsal bone in my left foot. I hope it does the trick to clean up a foot problem that has plagued me for 14 months and stopped me from being active.

Now I spend three weeks with my feet up. When we're done — and it's a team effort with Marta and my mother helping, plus a lot of support from other friends and family — I hope to be able to walk, ride a bicycle, and sail this spring and summer. In fact, I'm just looking forward to wearing regular shoes!

Stopping By An Entire Country on a Snowy Evening

Upon seeing this photo and a story from The Telegraph of London, courtesy of a friend, I was moved to write the ugly mash below, with apologies to Robert Frost (Stopping By a Woods on a Snowy Evening) and William Shakespeare (King Richard II, 2:1).

It's not every day — indeed, this has been Britain's heaviest snowfall in 50 years — that one can see a satellite photo of Great Britain covered with snow from end to end.

Whose sceptered isle this is I think I know
This royal throne of kings, though
Does not see NASA's satellite stopping here
To watch this other Eden filled up with snow

The demi-Paradise must think it queer
This fortress built by nature is where the snow did veer
Including all the woods and frozen lake
In the darkest evenings of the year

This little world must want to shake
And ask if there is some mistake
For this precious stone set in the silver sea
The seat of Mars covered with downy flake

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England is covered dark and deep
This happy breed of men has promises to keep
To shovel a country full of snow before they sleep
And shovels full of snow before they sleep

(A far larger and more detailed version of the same photo is here, from NASA, my friend points out. In it, you can practically see individual snowflakes!)

Belated Happy Palindrome Day

Posting this before midnight on January 3rd, to avoid being two days late.

Happy Palindrome Day, celebrated on January 2nd. Which was, numerically speaking, 01/02/2010.

The last Palindrome Day was on my parents' 45th anniversary, back in 2001: 10/02/2001.

And here's a message of congratulations...

Good News for University of Dayton, Where My Son Studies, in Acquiring NCR Corporate Campus

 The University of Dayton completed acquisition of the former headquarters campus of NCR, the New York Times reports. It will be a research park, alumni center, and more.

Good news for UD, where my son is a student. More is available from the UD website.