Embedded above and on YouTube here: “Space Oddity,” by Chris Hadfield.
Category: Tech
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Tweet of the Day
Warren is in the house.
— Warren Buffett (@WarrenBuffett) May 2, 2013
Bloomberg has the story.
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My 2 Favorite NYC Public Transport Apps
Navigating New York City’s massive subway system, seen above, can be difficult. Especially for those, like me, who are new — or newish — to the city.
I use two helpful iPhone apps to streamline my various journeys.
Embark
The first is called Embark.
Opening this free app reveals a touch-responsive map of the city’s subway system:
The stations are clickable. You simply 1) choose your starting point, then 2) choose your destination, as I’ve done in the screen shot above.
Then, when you click on the arrows at the top right of the screen, Embark will tell you which trains to take, when they’re arriving, and how long your journey will last:
When beginning, if you know which station is closest, you can simply click that stop.
Or, if you need guidance, you can click a button and Embark will use your device’s GPS functionality to find the nearest station. Then the app will direct you, step by step, to that stop.
The maps are all built into the app, so you can use it underground, where there’s no mobile service. (GPS functionatliy, however, only works above ground.)
The maps showing your routes are simple and clean:
One especially useful feature is that Embark will re-route you in the event of subway service interruptions.
So if, for example, a train stops running before you make your return trip, the app will automatically suggest an alternative route.
You can read more about Embark’s design and functionality here.
Exit Strategy
The second app I like is called Exit Strategy. It costs $3.99 and is available in iOS, Android, and Blackberry versions.
The app contains detailed street-level maps of the city. But I primarily use Exit Strategy for what may seem like a trivial task: figuring out which subway car to ride in so that I’m closest to the exit when I reach my final station.
Some of the city’s stations are quite expansive, and have multiple exits. Knowing how to beat the crowds out of the station can save substantial time.
(Indeed, from a design perspective, I find it fitting that the icon, above, features a stick figure in mid-run. This feels like an apt graphical representation of NYC transport from a commuter’s perspective.)
Exit Strategy’s station maps look like this:
And here’s what the street-level maps look like:
Readers who navigate NYC’s public transportation system: What are your favorite apps? Am I missing any gems?
(NYC subway image: Wikipedia.)
UPDATE: March 13: Judge Cote ruled today that Cook must testify, Reuters reports.
I have just reviewed some public court documents that provide more details on Apple CEO Tim Cook and the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against the company.
As you may have read in the news, the Department of Justice alleged in a suit filed in April 2012 that Apple and several book publishers illegally worked together to raise e-book prices in an effort to combat Amazon.com, which had gained dominance over the e-book market. All of the publishers have settled. The Cupertino, California-based company is the sole remaining defendant.
As Bloomberg reported on March 8 (Friday), recent court filings show that the government wants Apple CEO Tim Cook to testify in the case.
The newest court filings, posted today, provide additional insight into the case the DOJ is making to depose Cook, and the reasons that Apple’s lawyers are using to try to shield him from testifying.
In a March 6 letter to U.S. District Judge Denise L. Cote, filed today, the DOJ argued that “While subsequent discovery only has confirmed the need for Mr. Cook’s deposition, Apple continues to refuse to make Mr. Cook available.”
The government says it has offered various “accommodations in order to minimize any burden on Mr. Cook,” such as “limiting the length of the deposition and providing him a list of examination topics in advance — all of which have been rejected.”
The DOJ letter says that as an “executive team member and confidant” of the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Cook “is likely to have highly relevant information regarding Apple’s decision to enter the e-books market and its related strategies that are at issue in this case.”
The government says Cook received updates on Apple’s “efforts to move the entire e-books industry to an agency model, and even received boastful e-mails from Mr. Jobs that Apple had ‘helped stir things up in the publishing world.” The government adds that Cook and Jobs would likely have had private discussions about e-books that “cannot be discovered other than through Mr. Cook’s deposition.”
The DOJ says that Apple has countered that any discussions the two might have had would not be relevant because Jobs’s “statements themselves are not relevant to this action.”
Next, In an emailed letter dated March 11 (yesterday) to Judge Cote, a New York-based attorney writing “on behalf of Apple” opposed the DOJ’s request to depose Cook, cross-moving for a protective order.
The attorney cites a legal standard from past cases that “disfavor[s] apex executive depositions” where “the executive has no unique personal knowledge of relevant facts…lower-level executives can provide the same information…” and “the party seeking discovery has not exhausted alternative information sources…”
The letter references a declaration from Cook stating that he “has no unique knowledge about Apple’s decision to enter the e-books market and recalls no relevant ‘private conversations’ with Mr. Jobs.”
The letter continues: “The complaint does not reference Mr. Cook. None of the 29 witnesses deposed to date testified that Mr. Cook played any role in relevant events. And no publisher witness even mentioned Mr. Cook at his or her deposition.”
The letter goes on to argue that Cook had only a “tangental role as an outsider to the issues in dispute in this case.” The letter also notes that in all, 11 Apple executives will be deposed, and that “on March 12 and 13, the government will depose Eddy Cue, the senior Apple executive who reported directly to and communicated regularly with Mr. Jobs about the day-to-day development of the iBookstore.”
It continues, “Two days later, it will depose a member of Mr. Jobs’ executive team, former mobile software SVP Scott Forstall. And, as the court will recall, the government deposed Apple’s chief marketing offer Phil Schiller (over Apple’s objection) last December…”
“The government should not be permitted to depose Apple’s current CEO on a fishing expedition for what would be, at best, cumulative testimony.”
Note: I have bolded the names above for easier reading.
(Image: “Apple CEO Tim Cook,” via Wikimedia Commons.)
The New York Times reports today:
Several journalists who cover Myanmar said Sunday that they had received warnings from Google that their e-mail accounts might have been hacked by “state-sponsored attackers.”
The warnings began appearing last week, said the journalists, who included employees of Eleven Media, one Myanmar’s leading news organizations; Bertil Lintner, a Thailand-based author and expert on Myanmar’s ethnic groups; and a Burmese correspondent for The Associated Press.
Worth a read.
A big snowstorm, Nemo*, is now making landfall in the Northeast.
I just Tweeted some NYC-specific Twitter accounts worth following, and thought I’d share them here as well:
1. #FF NYC #NEMO storm resources: @mtainsider @notifynyc @nycgov @nycarecs @nwsnewyorkny @conedison @nycmayorsoffice @nyc_dot @ny_njairports
— Newley Purnell (@newley) February 8, 2013
2. #FF NYC #NEMO storm resources (continued): @nycmayorsoffice @wsjny @ericholthaus @cbsnewyork
— Newley Purnell (@newley) February 8, 2013
*Storm nomenclature details are here.
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Quote of the day…
…computing/search/news edition:
The space-based web we currently have will gradually be replaced by a time-based worldstream.
— From “The End of the Web, Search, and Computer as We Know It,” by David Gelernter in Wired.
Worth a read.
The New York Times has the story.
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Some of My Favorite Email Newsletters
Last fall I began using email newsletters* to keep abreast of the day’s biggest business and economics stories.
Since I’ve been spending a lot of time in class, mostly away from news sites, I’ve come to appreciate these daily email compilations. Here are a few I like:
- Reuters Counterparties. This “curated snapshot of the best finance news and commentary” is a stand-alone Reuters Web site edited by Felix Salmon and Ryan McCarthy. You can sign up for the daily newsletter by selecting Counterparties here.
- Quartz, the new-ish business news site, has a good roundup called the Quartz Daily Brief. (The site hasn’t been loading properly for me for a few days, but you should be able to find the newsletter via the home page.)
- The Marketplace Newsletter includes links to the well known radio show‘s most most-viewed articles, provides a mid-day update on the markets, and has links to its various episodes.
- The Bloomberg Most Popular daily email contains just that — the site’s most popular stories of the day. You can sign up here.
In addition, I like two newsletters that don’t focus exclusively on business journalism, but that are generally informative:
- The Muck Rack Daily lists the stories many journalists are Tweeting about. Some pieces tend to be business-focused, but most aren’t. (Visiting the site again, I’m reminded that the Muck Rack folks posted a brief interview with me a few months back.)
- And finally, Dave Pell’s NextDraft contains reliably entertaining, interesting, and off-beat links. For example, a recent edition linked to a BuzzFeed piece on how teenagers used the Web, an AP piece on Major League Baseball teams ditching their landlines, Rend Smith’s IHT column called “Diary of a Creep,” an Atlantic piece on the “trillion dollar coin,” and a New York Magazine story on Jack Lew’s signature.
*Yes, email newsletters! Remember those? Good ol’ email: Still the Web’s killer app?
(Image via Wikipedia.)
More later on this topic, perhaps, but I wanted to post this for now.
Is there truly no e-book version of Nicholas Negroponte’s 1995 book Being Digital?
What’s wrong with this picture?
The text I’ve circled in the image above is Amazon’s standard “Tell the Publisher! I’d like to read this book on Kindle.”*
Is this situation ironic? (It would seem so. It depends on your perspective on technology and traditional media, I suppose.)
Is it telling? (Perhaps.)
*My initial searching reveals there isn’t an e-book version available elsewhere, via any other retailers.
UPDATE: Here’s a new post — there’s an ebook available now!