The technology industry moves incredibly fast — according to Moore's Law, the processing power of chips doubles every two or so years, rendering all of our new tech toys obsolete in a matter of months. Leaving a lasting legacy is incredibly hard to do and yet, Apple founder Steve Jobs is remembered and revered as an icon by longtime admirers and even one-time corporate rivals.
Steve has delivered some incredibly memorable quotes over the years, but in never-before-seen video from 1994, the tech titan reflects on his legacy in a remarkably candid interview at NeXT, the company he founded after being forced out of Apple in 1985.
The short clip, released by the Silicon Valley Historical Association, is part of a longer, 60-minute documentary titled Steve Jobs: Visionary Entrepreneur, which features Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, Apple cofounders Steve Wozniak and Mike Markkula, and the founders of Oracle, Adobe, and Sun Microsystems, alongside Steve himself.
It's clear from the video that the Apple icon, in an uncharacteristic denim button-up, has a deep understanding of the fast-paced nature of the business, and the effect that has on his legacy. "All the work I have done in my life will be obsolete by the time I'm, you know, 50 . . . this is not a field where one paints a painting that one looks at for centuries," he said.
Steve saw himself as a smaller part of a greater whole and recognized that it is difficult to discern individuals' contributions to the field of technology: "It's sort of like a sediment of rocks. You're building up a mountain, and you get to contribute your little layer of sedimentary rock to make the mountain that much higher. But no one on the surface, unless they have x-ray vision, will see your sediment."
Watch the rare footage after the break.
Here ye, Apple devotees and Game of Thrones addicts, HBO GO is finally available on Apple TV . Previously, HBO subscribers could access the premium channel's programming via the apps for iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, Roku, Samsung Smart TVs, and Xbox Live.
Until now, customers of the Apple ecosystem had to use the app versions of the service, which gives unlimited access to HBO content (meaning, no DVR necessary to catch the season three finale of the Westeros drama), and use Airplay streaming to beam content from a mobile device to a television.
Also available on Apple TV today is WatchESPN (cable subscription required to access); live headline news for the US, UK, and Ireland from Sky News; Japanese anime videos on Crunchyroll; and Qello, an on demand concert and music documentaries channel.
Caffeine hounds can now get their fix in Starbucks stores while discovering new music on Google Play Music All Access, the just-launched streaming music service from the search giant turned social network turned, well, agent of everything on the Internet.
When logging into the WiFi of a Starbucks store, customers will see the option (pictured above) to "enjoy unlimited songs while sipping away," then sign up for a trial of Google Play Music All Access.
Announced at Google I/O in May, Play Music All Access is the company's take on monthly subscription music services like Spotify and Rdio. Google Play Music All Access already has a free 30-day limited trial for new users, so really this Starbucks promotion gives people who aren't yet familiar with the service the opportunity to give it a spin. Users who subscribe before June 30 will get a markdown on the monthly rate from $10 to $8.
Are you more likely to try Google's streaming music service if you're able to easily access it while getting work done at your local Starbucks?
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) updates its definitive record of the English language four times a year, and the latest batch of entries is full of tech-focused terms like tweet, big data, and crowdsourcing.
In a blog post, Chief Editor John Simpson said a special exception was made for the social networking verb and noun versions of tweet to be added. Typically, for OED consideration, a word needs to have been used for 10 years, but tweet "seems to be catching on."
Geekery, live blog, 3D printer, SEO, light pollution, e-reader, mouseover, redirect, and stream (in its tech sense) have also been legitimized by the premier British dictionary. It can't be too long now before college campuses begin offering Geekery Studies (which, might we suggest, should be the formal study and analysis of "obsessive interest in or enthusiasm for a subject, typically one of specialist or minority interest"). Yes, let us examine the influence of 2001: A Space Odyssey over the public image of human spaceflight. Pinkies up, geeks.
Other fun terms appended to the Oxford English Dictionary are flash mob (the parades of song and dance coordinated by social media) and wingsuit.
Adobe's head will be in the clouds from here on out. The maker of Photoshop, Illustrator, and other digital creation software pushed major updates today to Creative Cloud, a new controversial subscription-based model for its most popular products. At the Adobe MAX conference in May, the company announced that it was taking its entire suite to the cloud to prevent software piracy and provide updates over the air.
The new model also establishes a more stable revenue stream for the company because as it turns out, convincing users to pay for expensive upgrades every few years is difficult. Traditional desktop versions of Adobe programs, like Photoshop, can run upwards of $700 a piece. Will the digital artist community be willing to fork over $20 or $50 per month, instead of a one-time fee, for the same tools in a new web-ready format?
Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, After Effects, Audition, Premiere Pro, and a host of other Adobe Creative Suite tools are all getting the cloud treatment. Creative Cloud offers automatic software updates, along with additional perks like 20GB of cloud storage, workspace syncing between devices, the Adobe Kuler app, and integration with the design showcase network, Behance, which Adobe acquired in December.
But are all the bells and whistles included with Adobe CC worth it? Or is it time to switch to an alternative like Final Cut Pro or Acorn? We weigh the pros and cons after the break.
On this day 30 years ago — June 18, 1983 — Sally Ride became the first American women in space, as part of the space shuttle Challenger mission. She was one of six women selected to NASA's 1978 astronaut class of 35 total people, a hugely different female to male ratio than we saw this week with NASA's 2013 group of astronaut candidates, which was half women. After traveling to space during the Challenger mission in 1983 and again in 1984, Sally became the inspiration for a generation of girls to follow their science dreams, an area that had been long deemed "boys only."
Though she retired from NASA in 1987, Sally — who held a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford — continued to work in the sciences. She founded her own company, Sally Ride Science, whose purpose was to motivate young students to pursue science, technology, engineering, and math. She was an honoree in the National Women's Hall of Fame, the Astronaut Hall of Fame, and was given the National Space Grant Distinguished Service Award by President Obama before her death in 2012 at the age of 61.
The notoriously press-shy former astronaut chose to let her work speak for itself, rather than in publicity, but after reading a rare interview from 1999 with the Los Angeles Times, we can't help but be charmed by the following six excerpts from the interview, adding to the reasons she's one of our heroes.
Over a year after posting a call for astronaut applications, NASA introduced the 2013 astronaut candidate class on Monday, half of which are female, the highest percentage ever selected in one group by NASA. Over 6,300 people applied for the eight available positions, which begin training Aug.1 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, home of the astronaut corps and Mission Control.
This marks the 21st class of NASA astronaut candidates, all of whom had to undergo a rigorous interview process that included medical, language aptitude, and mobility tests. The eight individuals will join the current 49 active NASA astronauts in the organization's future pursuit of the first manned mission to an asteroid in the 2020 decade, with the goal of one day putting humans on Mars. Currently, the US astronauts' main mission is supporting the global efforts of the International Space Station.
As a NASA representative said during a Google+ Hangout to introduce the eight candidates, the four women chosen were not deliberately selected to represent an equal gender pool, rather they were the most qualified group of people, and a "tribute to women today." Here, an introduction to the impressive women of the 2013 astronaut class.
Christina M. Hammock
Nicole Aunapu Mann
Keep reading to meet the national women's rugby player and the Harvard medical professor that may one day man space missions.
Google's beloved RSS feed aggregator, Google Reader, is heading to the cyber graveyard on July 1. But there's no need to lament, since Digg, the up-vote, down-vote social news site that was forced to shutdown in 2010, is returning to the web with a reader of its own!
The Digg engineering team posted the first screenshots of its Google Reader replacement, which launches publicly on June 26.
When Digg announced their reader in March, they hoped to "identify and rebuild the best of Google Reader's features" and anticipated a late 2013 release date. Apparently, production was sped up to roll out Digg Reader ahead of Google Reader's July end date to make migration as seamless as possible.
What can you expect from the new RSS feed aggregator? A site that's simple, fast, optimized for any screen size, free (with premium paid options later in the year), and as socially conscious as Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook.
Sign up to be notified when the new Digg Reader has arrived, or if you need an alternative right this second, turn to one of these RSS aggregators fit for headline grazers.
Be sure to export your Google Reader data (subscriptions, bookmarked items, notes and all) before July 1 at dataliberation.org.
