Jason Thibeault's Blog: From My Pen, page 60

Separation of Church and State: Google, Motorola, and the Android Community

In the wake of yesterday’s announcement about Google’s proposed acquisition of Motorola, I have been asked quite a bit about whether I think Google will keep the handset business.

It’s a very valid question. A good portion of the flak that has come as a result of the announcement has been from the Android community around a “conflict of interest.” If Google, the provider and developer of the Android OS, now makes handsets, will it try and lock out other manufacturers as a way to promote the su...

A Visual Timeline of Android

If nothing more, it’s interesting to see the progression of a mobile operating system that has helped to re-invent the smartphone:

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Originally posted 2011-07-26 20:47:42.

Sometimes the Best Ideas are the Old Ideas Just Repackaged

A new company, Ovia, hopes to leverage the internet to help recruiters find top talent:

http://gigaom.com/collaboration/ovia-asyncrhonous-video-interviews/

Using an asynchronous video approach, Ovia can enable candidates to submit video-based interviews to potential recruiters. Already with Fortune 500 customers, this young startup embodies what’s best about the internet technologies: applying them to age old problems. Finding and recruiting talent is a pain (and costly) especially when you hav...

Quote: Fighting Social Apathy

One person can make a difference and every person should try.

– John F. Kennedy

The Cultural Impact on Entrepreneurism

As a veteran startup guy (4 to date with over $15m raised in investment capital), I feel that I understand a lot of the issues associated with startups, especially tech. But when I read the article below about, I never realized how local cultures can positively or negatively impact tech startup success:

radar.oreilly.com/2011/07/tech-startups-idea-conditions.htmlhttp://radar.oreilly.com/2011/07/tech...

When you think about it, the U.S. affords us a significant number...

Is the Writing on the Wall?

When Netflix enabled streaming, people started whispering about the “death of cable.” And when Google launched GoogleTV with Logitech, those whispers got a little louder.

“Who,” people asked, “wants to pay exorbitant cable or satellite rates when all of the TV is on the Web for cheaper?”

Well, cable as fired back.

http://gigaom.com/video/cablevision-iphone-app/

Although many cable companies and content owners have jumped on the “watch anywhere” bandwagon and enabled their content across devices (...

Flash: The News of My Death is Greatly Exaggerated

For those pundits out there thinking that Adobe had put the fork in the Flash platform (feeling the pinch of HTML 5 and native mobile application platforms like iOS), better put the silverware down. Adobe has published itsroadmap(click on link for PDF roadmap document from Adobe) for its Flash browser plugin and its AIR desktop application counterpart. More releases, more features, and more performance, are all planned, but on fewer platforms.

According to a write-up on Ars Technica,

The compan...

Wetware 0.5

If you ever want to say, “I was there the day we started down the path of becoming the Borg,” you have no further than to look at Jawbone’s latest product, UP:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/13/hosain-rahman-on-up-jawbones-first-non-audio-product/

As the CEO says, this is a pretty big departure from their current audio-based product set (you may know them as the developers of the blue-tooth earpiece; they started out named Aliph and a lot of their tech was licensed from the military). With a ton...

Video: The Beauty of Being Busy Little Creatures

When you sit back and think about how many people there are on this planet and all the things we’ve built, you will quickly realize that there is a constant energy on this planet racing through our cities and in our office buildings and from sky to ground. The video below is really a beautifully-done time-lapse piece on Los Angeles, from dusk-til-dawn. Set to a moving soundtrack it truly puts into perspective our own lives in the constantly moving hustle of the human world (my favorite part,...

Watching TV is a Repetitive Behavior

There has been lots of talk in the media about people “cutting the cord” and turning to online forms of television rather than pay the exorbitant price of cable subscriptions. Unfortunately, as new research points out, that is not exactly the case:

http://gigaom.com/broadband/cord-cutters-not-replacing-cable/

From the article:

The common perception is that users who “cut the cord” or go without cable TV are largely relying on online video services like Netflix or Hulu Plus instead. But LRG repor...