Re: Hello, 2006

I'm ending this year happier and more content than I started it. All in all, a success. I feel great about the relationships in my life and work, and I'm enthusiastic for the new year. Some of my ambitions for this blog haven't come to fruition, but I think they will in 2006.

In the spirit of holiday giving, here are all my open tabs with commentary. I'll start with what I think are my smartest comments, so when you get bored you can just stop reading.

Of all the "2006 predictions" I've read, none of them have much to do with the one laptop per child initiative. If it's even one quarter as successful as it is ambitious, it's going to change the face of the education forever. Counter-intuitively, it's going to make Google even more powerful than Yahoo and Microsoft, since Google is stronger in infrastructure and internationalization than it's competitors. It's also going to force a real business model to emerge around micropayments, since that's more in tune with the way third world economies already operate. Also, Google's Blogger is still the best completely free blogging option.

I'm reblogging at Eyebeam for the next couple of weeks. (Thanks for the kind words, Michael.) I love Eyebeam, and their projects. Part of my motivation for becoming a consultant was so that I could carve out more time to explore the more creative side of computer science, and Eyebeam's doing some of the best work out there right now. Reblogging makes reading and writing easier, which is the essence of blogging. And please submit links if there's anything you think I should see.

My buddy Charlie wonders if is Google behind T-mobile's Web 'n' Walk. My answer "it doesn't matter." Check out Christian Lindholm's remote (mobile???) contribution to Les Blogs 2.0:

The mobile industry is in a stalemate. The handset vendors are desperately trying to escape the “phone” legacy, a wonderful legacy in many ways, but the mobile phone we all love to talk on is perfected.

I've been playing around with the N70 and N90 a bit - and they are phenomenal phones. I didn't think the phone experience could get much better, but Nokia really nailed the details in a way they haven't done in a long time. But going forward, the real innovations are going to come from devices like the Nokia 770, which is one iteration away from challenging the low-end laptop market. I'm not sure if Lenovo, Nokia, Apple or wal-mart are going to get there first, but someone is. In two years we'll all be carrying around an iPod, a 770-like tablet, and a Nokia N-series style phone.

I was going to reblog unmediated's pointer to the flickr mobile API how-to. Then I realized they reblogged it out of MY delicious links. Talk about a closed loop

I'd buy the new ReadyMade book in a heartbeat, but there's a new order on our bookshelves - for us to buy a new book we have to read a book AND reduce another book. There are some low hanging fruit (Lego Mindstorms manual, old textbooks) but it's going to be a challenge. But hopefully Adriana and I can do some good book blogging this year.

Jason's lists of the best links of the year and the rest of the best more than justify my micropatron dollars, not that he had to justify anything. This is the kind of idea that crosses a lot of people's minds but no one finishes the job quite like Kottke.

In Steal from Google, a Businessweek columnist proposes that local newspapers should try and saturate the print market the same way google did the on-line space, by giving away ad space for virtually nothing to build eyeballs. The difference is, newspapers don't have built in search, the number of "eyeballs" in a few zip codes is limited, and the cost of paper is going up, while the cost of servers is going down.

Stale tabs I meant to spend more time with but probably won't: thoughts on Language Design, complete list of delicious tools, and yet another way to annotate images with CSS. (Now they're closed. Buh-bye!)

Fetching tags produces funny little tags for your dog. And people say our economy is hurting. The dooce claims Salma Hayek doesn't exercise, she just takes multi-vitamins. No way.

I was going to cut my hair, but now that Andy Samberg is hitting it big I'm going to let it grow out.