I haven't tested it much honestly, but it seems sweet. Something for you to
look forward to. =)

I do think it could happen with trust more easily; with the most extreme cases being a bank that skimps on some software and ends up constantly giving all their customers' money away to someone else. Although car companies kill hundreds of people a year due to shotty design and they are still in business — so who knows?

tonchidot: No, I definitely don't think it's really real. I mean, the video isn't fake, but yeah, I agree that it's a hacked demo in that their application isn't really ready at all. They seeded it with perfect data in a perfect scenario, so the video wasn't realistic at all. But it's coming soon, I hope.

swype: Yeah, I skipped them–I never paid attention to them at the event because I have an app on my iphone already as of a couple weeks ago that does what they're doing, called writingpad (http://www.shapewriter.com/iphone.html). So swype's technology didn't look that unique or defensible to me. I like writingpad a lot, though right now it's confined to its own little notepad application rather than subbing in for the default iphone keyboard. That's what swype is trying to change, I guess. Seems like apple and the other phone makers will just do it themselves, and hopefully have it as another option for the way the keyboard works.

The summary:

-Agree with you about goodguide. Just waiting for a mobile, barcode-reading app to frontend it.
-You get a feel for whether Tonchidot is for real? Everything I've seen has a very hacked-together-to-make-a-demo look. Plus I'm skeptical about how well this would work. In any case, I think we'd all like to see this technology improve– the different applications are pretty exciting.
-No mention of Swype, which I think could be a game-changer for touchscreen devices. Just like T9 was for texting

Your comments are all spot on. In retrospect, I can see that the excerpt I chose doesn’t do much more to talk about what ideas Obama has about what will change. It more just describes at a high level, via references to the last few presidents, where Obama sees himself on the political spectrum economically.

As you supposed, there are lots of more specific details in the article itself, and to that point, that’s really the challenge someone like Obama faces. He’s really got a good handle on the economics issues in my opinion, and I think this article shows that, but how can he communicate that to Americans? Not more than 1 in 20 Americans is actually going to read anything as long as that whole article, and it’s a lot less than that probably. So how does he convince the country that he’s the best person to put in charge of it? He’s got to break it down into terms people can understand, and that’s the goal I think he’s trying to work towards mentally in that excerpt.

One of the specific ideas/plans mentioned in the article, something I’ve been hearing about in the last couple of months as a possibility, is decreasing the payroll tax. The way it’s structured, it essentially discourages businesses from investing in people. I agree that decreasing or phasing out the payroll tax, and picking up the slack with the changes he proposes to income and capital gains taxes, would likely be great for the country.

I am as a big an Obama fan as the next intelligent American, but it bothers me when they talk about their views without saying anything and just using words that everyone agrees with.

“drove it over a cliff”, “So what we need to bring about is the end of the era of unresponsive and inefficient government and short-term thinking in government,” “the foundation for the market to operate effectively and for every single individual to be able to be connected with that market and to succeed in that market”

It seems to me that every politician and president would agree that we want an ‘efficient’ and ‘responsive’ goverment and one that thinks in the ‘long-term’. It also seems like every president would want the market to ‘operate effectively’ and for people to be able to ’succeed’

The trick is when using language like that for people to think “Oh yeah, I guess I am for an efficient government…go Barack!” — This is a common thing people do in the businessplace as well.

The real question and the real difference comes in when they begin discussing HOW the government could be more efficient or HOW to make people more able to succeed in the market place — which I’m sure the paper that I won’t read talks about =)

i expect a lot more growth in this kind of understanding, and a lot of it is going to come from the advertising world, simply because effectiveness is proving to be a very difficult measurement problem. there really is little to measure! there are other forces at work.

and since you like umair, he is talking towards some of this. that energy follows intention, the good vs. evil meme, are not quantifiable, they are qualitative. the realm of quality is the realm of the subject(ive)…. and this is not the ego we think is so important.

look for subtlety to increase, and a huge necessity for creating more refined measuring tools. we almost are going to need to be inside 6 billion minds, seeing through 6 billion sets of eyes and concepts.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with keeping things to the point :)

The story in general also really isn’t all that surprising to me–I don’t blame Bush for pursuing, as strongly but quietly as he can, retroactive immunity for all the gray area (some would say it’s not very gray) he’s trudged into with all the cia interrogation issues since 9/11.

Check out some of the comments on Digg for more info: http://digg.com/politics/President_BUSH_PARDON_s_HIMSELF_against_POTENTIAL_WARCRIMES_5