Review: Tasker
Tasker is an amazing application for the Android platform.
Basically, you’re able to se up automated tasks (called profiles) for different conditions. EX: for a particular location, say work or school, automatically switch to vibrate.There are some really cool instances of this tool at play.
Here’s what’s missing (other than a website that doesn’t suck – actually, the UI in general needs work):
- An ecosystem. What would be really, really cool would be the ability to build and share profiles in a totally seamless way. Created an automated way of reading your calendar and sending happy birthday emails? Great. Throw it in the so-called task-market (for dollars) or task-pool (for reputation). You earn either, and I get added functionality on my phone.
Executed correctly, this could fill in the gap for an Android innovation engine.
Review: Too Big To Fail
Just finished Andrew Sorkin’s Too Big to Fail. Sorkin does a pretty good job covering the event as it happened, with minimal commentary and analysis. On the one hand, that makes it easy and quick to read. It does mean you have to go elsewhere for smart analysis. (I’m headed over to ECONned and perhaps The Big Short
Anyway, you learn a couple things:
- A group of less than 100 guys (who all incestuously worked for one another) decided the fate of the world.
- They had no fucking clue what they were doing. Especially in regards to valuation and information management (the Fed didn’t know how big any of the holes were, Paulson had no idea how to handle strategic communications but was driven by it anyway). So they made it up as they went.
- We would have all been better off if Paulson and his merry band of banksters wasn’t running things. The emphasis wasn’t on keeping the financial system stable so you and I could go into work tomorrow, (The – currently misnamed – financial services industry should be like plumbing. Something in the background that facilitates you and I going about our business.), the team was instead focused on keeping the financial circlejerk-bubble booming.
Seaswarm: MIT’s Autonomous, Oil-Cleaning Swarm
Seaswarm. Unfortunately, this is priced at $20k a pop. I’d like to see the plans unleashed to the hacker community. (And watch the precipitous pricing drop thereafter.)
Economic Hitmen Inside the Gates Foundation Invest in Monsanto
Bizarre sense of morality. holdings from $360,000 to ~$23 million. Monsanto’s track record with the third world is classic evil.