Computing-History | AkitaOnRails.com

Computing History and Retro Dev on YouTube

Mon, 19 May 2025 15:19:00 -0300

I watch a LOT of YouTube, and I’m always sharing cool stuff I watch on my X and Instagram (follow me there). There are several videos I keep coming back to.

I finally decided to compile a list with the channels I watch the most, along with a list of the main playlists and example videos from each channel that I recommend watching.

I’ll probably keep coming back to this page to update it from time to time. If anyone remembers one I forgot, send it in the comments. There are channels like GameSack, Sega Lord X, Retro Game Corp, Wullfden, Macho Nacho Productions, and several others I didn’t list, because they lean more toward “reviews” and don’t overlap as much with “dev”. I tried to focus on things I think a “dev” should know.

List (2025-05-19)

[Off-Topic] A View from the Past About the Internet

Sun, 26 May 2013 20:56:00 -0300

Sales on the Internet

Forewords

The real Cold War in the 60s wasn’t being fought in the field, with soldiers and planes, but in research laboratories, funded by the government, and universities were already equipped with the best computing resources available. It was thought that the ability to create and maintain technological advantages over the adversary would determine the winner of the conflict.

The idea of connecting these centers, aiming at the exchange of information, began to be developed. However, a determining factor was attributed to the choice of network technology that would enable the connection of the strategic centers: the information should continue to flow even under the worst conditions, such as a nuclear attack.

ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) and DoD (Department of Defense) were delegated the responsibility of developing the best alternative for integrating information centers.

A few years later, ARPA would change its name to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), starting a plan called the Internetting Project to investigate the possible forms of connection between packet-switched networks. As a result of this project and the studies of the INWG (InterNetwork Working Group), the two basic protocols of the Internet were developed and presented. In 1974, Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn presented IP (Internet Protocol) and TCP (Transmission Control Protocol). These two protocols specified how messages (files or commands) would be transferred between computers on the Internet.

Numbers

To understand the importance of the Internet in every sense — social, political, and financial — it’s necessary to see who surfs the Internet. We’ll base ourselves on the research of John Quarterman, an access provider, consultant, and publisher from Austin, Texas, who researches the composition of the Internet population in his Internet Demographic Survey.

One of the things Quarterman has been doing is defining several Internets according to the types of applications running on the servers and the activities of the users. The “core of the Internet” is made up of computers that offer interactive services like FTP, Telnet, or WWW applications. The “consumer Internet” includes people who use the interactive services offered by the core — for example, users browsing the World Wide Web. The total cyberspace, which he labels as the “matrix,” includes all users who exchange email with other users. These categories fit into one another: the matrix includes the consumer Internet, which includes the Core Internet.

One of the problems Quarterman has to face involves virtual hosts. An Internet access provider has to register domain names for users, but the addresses actually reside on the provider’s machines. This can lead to misunderstandings, making it seem that people have machines connected to the Internet. This group belongs to the consumer Internet category, and all the mail Quarterman sends to postmasters at various addresses is ultimately handled by one host.

“The problem of virtual hosts has grown enormously in the last year (1995),” said Quarterman. “You can access a Web site, there really is information there, and it really corresponds to the organization. It’s actually on a computer on the Internet, but it may be the same computer as other domains.”

The most recent survey, for 1995, was published in January 1996. Out of the universe of 45,091 domains, 2.9% (1,293) responded. In the world of statistics, more than 1,000 responses is a large number of data, and these responses represent entire organizations, not just users. In this survey, Quarterman estimates that there were 16.9 million users of the core Internet (more than double the previous year) and 26.4 million users of the consumer Internet (again double); 39 million users (a 50% increase) already had email. Quarterman attributes the increase to Internet users on consumer networks (America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy, and others).

In the 1995 survey, Quarterman counted 45,000 machines connected to the Internet. The actual number of registered domains exceeded this number because not all registered domains are used, and some are domains on other networks, such as UUCP, where you can send mail, but you can’t use interactive Internet services.

The Web is hot, but FTP still beats browsing. Quarterman also notes that the use of the Windows operating system is declining, and that Macintoshes (despite using the Internet Protocol and not MacOS) and Unix machines are increasing their share of domain control.

The results are announced and posted on the MIDS Web site (which publishes the monthly magazines Matrix News and Matrix Maps Quarterly, both on paper and online, and sells maps and other information about Internet hosts, users, and other demographic data) at http://www.mids.org. “What we made available to survey respondents, and to the Internet as a whole almost a month ago, is a result of the responses for each question. We also manage to draw detail levels between individual responses (which are never revealed) and the summaries. That’s how we get some income.”

Speaking of Brazil, the Secretary of Informatics and Automation Policy of the Ministry of Science and Technology, Ivan Moura Campos, says that Brazil boasts one of the most astonishing growth rates toward cyberspace — we are growing 50% per month. With that, we reached a population of 260 thousand cybernauts at the beginning of May this year. To give an idea, if the adoption rate continued at this speed, by the end of the year the number of Brazilian cybernauts would be 16 million. But the Secretary’s predictions, more realistic, estimate one million users at the turn of the year.

Advertising

After the microcomputer revolution in the 80s and the spread of computing with “a micro on every desk and in every home,” we had one of the greatest evolutions ever seen in history, where humanity evolved in 10 years what it hadn’t managed to evolve since the Middle Ages, entering the Information Age.

With microcomputers and the Internet, physical borders have been erased, in a place where “countries” and “oceans” no longer have meaning and where physical distances no longer make sense. Virtualization has evolved to such a point that a person living in a country like Brazil can already get to know and make friends with people from anywhere in the world, such as Australia, for example. Tools like Netscape Inc.’s CoolTalk (http://www.netscape.com), which replaces the telephone, or TimedVideo Grabber (http://www.avernus.com/~allan), which enables the transmission of real-time images using a camera, makes it possible for people to meet without ever actually having to meet in the “flesh and bone.”

And speaking of evolution, after 500 years of absolute reign of print media as a disseminator of information, it’s being rapidly replaced by digital publications on the World Wide Web, the part of the Internet that most catches attention today.

With pioneering works like Encyclopedia Britannica (http://www.eb.com), which was absolutely shaken after printed encyclopedias fell into total disuse after the emergence of digital encyclopedias like Microsoft’s Encarta (http://www.microsoft.com), and also of “yellow pages”-type search services like those offered by sites like Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com) or Lycos (http://www.lycos.com), they made the Internet also the largest data repository ever built, the best place for research you can find.

World-famous magazines like PC Magazine (http://www.pcmag.com) from Ziff Davis Publishing (http://www.ziff.com) or Playboy (http://www.playboy.com) already have their publications displayed and updated periodically on the WWW.

The World Wide Web or WWW was conceived to give a “face” to the Internet, enabling the editing of graphical sites as opposed to the hitherto text-based interface (something similar to the transition from DOS to Windows, for example). A new scripting language was created, HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), and a specific protocol, HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol). And for navigation through these pages, browsers were created, programs made to interpret HTML. Right from the start, two stood out: Netscape with its Netscape Navigator and SpyGlass with its Mosaic. Netscape became more widespread, and SpyGlass sold the Mosaic rights to Microsoft, which today distributes Netscape’s biggest competitor, Internet Explorer, in one of the largest software distribution campaigns ever seen.

The possibility of editing virtually everything that exists in print media quickly caught the world’s attention to the Internet. New concepts began to emerge such as online publishing. One of the most recent examples is about the Atlanta Olympics, where the computing work was in charge of IBM (http://www.ibm.com), which set up a grandiose scheme of machines and networks and information distribution via the Internet that can be checked on the Olympics homepage (http://www.atlanta.olympic.org), where the data are updated as soon as they are obtained. Thus, at the end of each game, the homepage can be updated and the whole world has access to it, not having to wait until the next day to read it in the newspapers.

Speaking of newspapers, they are not far behind, putting on the WWW much of their daily publications such as The Gate (http://sfgate.com), an Internet-based product of two newspapers from the West Coast of the United States, the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner with a right to conference areas with discussion forums such as Community, Media, Sports, Movies, etc.

Agência Estado, which publishes famous newspapers like Estado de São Paulo, also already distributes its newspaper via internet (http://www.agestado.com.br) with the main headlines of the day and various information, including its classifieds and, in an Olympics period, with special areas for the sports in Atlanta.

Another concept that became famous with the Internet is online services such as the giants CompuServe and America Online, which serve people around the world and have allies like Netscape and Microsoft. This type of organization is based on “services” that include discussion forums; libraries with updated information; magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals; virtual stores that sell everything from CDs to clothes; leisure and business tips; and also services common to the Internet like email and the WWW.

In Brazil, such types of service have also started to spread, with emphasis on Folha de São Paulo and Grupo Abril, which launched, respectively, Universo Online and Brasil Online. Such Brazilian services are still experimental and free, with no projections regarding costs. For illustration, The New York Times charges USD 30.00 per month and America Online charges USD 9.95 for 5 hours or USD 19.95 for 20 hours.

Such services have very high billing mainly because of the current excitement of the world around the virtualization of services and the rental of digital space for companies interested in placing “virtual billboards” or even adding other services like digital stores on the main pages, since the number of people who travel through the digital lines every day is very large. To see this, just go to the Brasil Online page, for example, and come across advertising calls from companies like Sun or Credicard. These calls are links that lead to the homepages of the respective companies.

And speaking of advertising, someone must be making such pages and ads. These companies are specializing in designing specific and creative pages for a type of media that goes beyond the limitations of paper and enables things like Hypertext (words within a text that lead to other pages), Marquees (phrases that move on the line), music (through WAVE files or the new Real Audio technology), animations (via animated GIF images or using features of the Java language), or even totally three-dimensional environments (using VRML - Virtual Reality Markup Language technology) and much more. In this marketing niche are companies like Vivid Studio (http://www.vivid.com), which has clients like the giants Silicon Graphics and Microsoft, or Razorfish (http://www.razorfish.com), which designs for Time-Warner and Pepsi.

Commerce

The main point of friction when talking about digital commerce is security. The TCP/IP protocol is the starting point for the Internet, conceived as a universal protocol but that falls short on the security aspect, where, unlike its siblings IPX/SPX or NetBIOS, for example, it doesn’t have encrypted data transmission. Since it’s the standard data transmission protocol, it would have been convenient to stipulate a standard data security protocol as well. Since this doesn’t exist, the impasse is around companies fighting to develop the standard that would cause the initial surge toward the end of printed money and the development of digital credit.

One of the oldest is CyberCash (http://www.cybercash.com), about a year old. For now, the company only works with credit card services, but soon promises to offer monetary payment services. Currently, with a browser connected to the network, you can shop safely in virtual shopping malls. Through the SIPS (Secure Internet Payment Service) protocol, according to the company, it’s as easy as point and click. In this type of transaction, you buy as many cybercashes as desired and it’s debited from the credit card.

The CyberCash standard supports all types of credit cards. It uses the 768-bit RSA and 56-bit DES encryption standards. All transactions are authenticated with MDS and 768-bit RSA signatures. The first step for those interested is to download the free program the company offers. The CyberCash server is connected to the private networks of several banks. The company’s initial services include credit and debit cards and an electronic payment system. For the services, users pay a modest amount, comparable to the value of a stamp. For suppliers, the system represents savings on fees charged for credit card transactions, due to the risk that still exists in transactions by telephone and email.

In this type of development, there are also companies like DigiCash (http://www.digicash.com), with services centered on the First Digital Bank site (http://bank.digicash.com), using an e-cash system (real money converted into virtual money in virtual accounts). Visa (http://www.visa.com) (which is also a partner of Sony — http://www.sony.com — in developing a multifaceted environment of entertainment, information, and commercial transactions) and Microsoft own STT (Secure Transaction Technology), the standard that these two powerhouses want to become an electronic version of the credit card. Mastercard (http://www.mastercard.com) is partnered with IBM, Netscape, GTE, and CyberCash, with the SEPP (Secure Electronic Payment Protocol) standard. It’s an open protocol for secure online transactions.

Netscape develops the open security protocol SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and contributes to the development of the SSL interface of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), a European consortium dedicated to creating a standard for the European Common Market — http://www.w3.org). About 50 companies from around the world are part of this consortium. The company will license the SSL technology to its partners for commercial use. The list of partners includes MCI (http://www.mci.com), Bank of America (http://www.bankamerica.com), Mastercard, First Data Corporation, Novell (http://www.novell.com), Digital (http://www.dec.com), and Silicon Graphics.

Practically all companies in the financial sector have been investing heavily in developing a platform that is secure and reliable enough for financial transactions of all levels of importance. Hackers aside, business via the Internet doesn’t differ much from those conducted outside it. That is, the best way to be free from problems is to trust the credibility of serious companies. It’s unlikely that anyone will want to compromise their good name by failing to deliver the merchandise on time or “negotiating” the credit card number.

In Brazil, Mappin (http://www.mappin.com.br) was the first large company to enter the computer-sales business. It’s also possible to choose sweets and pies at Confeitaria Brunella (http://www.ams.com/brunella) in São Paulo or make reservations at Marcellu’s Bar (http://www.marcellus-bar.com.br) in Rio de Janeiro. The consumer chooses the sweet or pie they want to buy through the photos and descriptions on Brunella’s homepage, then the shop calls to confirm the order and sends the merchandise. In the case of Marcellu’s Bar, the reservation is made by email.

If anyone is moving to the United States or simply needs to compare prices, they can consult For Sail By Owner Connection. It’s a site specialized in house sales, with photos and specifications. If you actually need to sell your house, you can also advertise on this page: http://www.cracker.com/byowner.

Thinking about travel, Cruisin (http://www.cracker.com/cruisin) is the first tourism agency specialized in cruises that serves exclusively via the Internet. But there are already many hotels and agencies on the network. Really, there are alternatives for all bank limits: from Ceará cashews for less than R$ 3.00 up to a house in Florida for USD 329,000. Today it’s virtually possible to buy anything on the Internet.

Afterwords

Created for military purposes, then expanded to academic circles, and finally reaching the general public, the Internet is walking in accelerated evolution, covering practically all sectors of society, where the foundations of what can be considered a virtual world are being built.

When the Internet evolves enough, new technologies will build the expected Information Super Highway, where, then, a truly worldwide network will be constituted, using not only computers in the way we know them but also any electronic equipment, such as set-top boxes (the replacements for VCRs and video-lasers).

In this next generation, “walking” will be wearing a virtual reality suit and visiting virtual locations with friends from other continents in a digital meeting. And this isn’t science fiction delusions: we are so close to it that such technologies are real and already exist — all that’s left is time to make them accessible and operational at the level of mass distribution.

[Off-Topic] A View from the Past About the Internet

Sun, 26 May 2013 19:56:00 -0300

I’m opening some really old backups, work I’ve kept from 1995 to 2001, half a decade of history. On my Facebook page there are some examples I just posted. When I was in college, I started writing a book (which I never finished or published) about computing in general and about the early days of the Internet.

The text below is exactly as I left it in a Word file, on August 3, 1996, at 9:52 in the morning, named “CAP12.DOC”. See how I saw the Internet 17 years ago.

Sales on the Internet

Forewords

The real Cold War, in the 60s, wasn’t being fought in the field, with soldiers and planes, but in research laboratories funded by the government, and universities were already equipped with the best computing resources available. It was thought that the ability to create and maintain technological advantages over the adversary would determine the winner of the conflict.

The idea of connecting these centers, aiming at the exchange of information, began to be developed. However, a determining factor was assigned to the choice of the network technology that would make the connection of the strategic centers viable: the information had to keep flowing, even under the worst conditions, such as a nuclear attack.

ARPA ( Advanced Research Projects Agency ) and the DoD ( Department of Defense ) were delegated the responsibility of developing the best alternative for integrating the information centers.

A few years later, ARPA would change its name to DARPA ( Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ), starting a plan called the Internetting Project to investigate the possible forms of connection between packet-switched networks. As a result of this project and the studies of the INWG ( InterNetwork Working Group ), the two basic protocols of the Internet were developed and presented. In 1974, Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn presented IP ( Internet Protocol ) and TCP ( Transmission Control Protocol ). These two protocols specified the way in which messages ( files or commands ) would be transferred between computers on the Internet.

Numbers

To understand the importance of the Internet in every sense: social, political, and financial, one needs to see who navigates the Internet. We’ll base ourselves on the research of John Quarterman, an access provider, consultant, and publisher from Austin, Texas, who researches the composition of the Internet population in his Internet Demographic Survey.

One of the things Quarterman has done is define several Internets according to the types of applications running on the servers and the activities of the users. The “core of the Internet” is made up of computers that offer interactive services like FTP, Telnet, or WWW applications. The “consumer Internet” includes people who use the interactive services offered by the core - for example, users who navigate the World Wide Web. The whole of cyberspace, which he labels the “matrix,” is all the users who exchange email with other users. These categories nest inside one another: the matrix includes the consumer Internet, which includes the Core Internet.

One of the problems Quarterman has to face involves virtual hosts. An Internet access provider has to register the domain names for the users, but the addresses actually reside on the provider’s machines. This can lead to misunderstandings, making it seem that people have machines connected to the Internet. This group belongs to the consumer Internet category, and all the mail Quarterman sends to the postmasters at various addresses is in the end grouped under a single host.

“The problem of virtual hosts grew enormously last year ( 1995 ),” said Quarterman. “You can reach a Web site, there really is information there, and it really corresponds to the organization. It is in fact on a computer on the Internet, but it may be the same computer as other domains.”

The most recent survey, for 1995, was published in January 1996. Out of the universe of 45,091 domains, 2.9% ( 1,293 ) responded. In the world of statistics, more than 1,000 responses is a large amount of data, and these responses represent entire organizations, not just users. In this survey, Quarterman estimates that there were 16.9 million users of the core Internet ( more than double the previous year ) and 26.4 million users of the consumer Internet ( again double ); 39 million users ( an increase of 50% ) already had email. Quarterman attributes the increase to the Internet users on the consumer networks ( America Online, Compuserve, Prodigy, and others ).

In the 1995 survey, Quarterman counted 45 thousand machines connected to the Internet. The real number of registered domains exceeded this figure because not all registered domains are used, and some are domains on other networks, such as UUCP, where you can send mail but cannot use interactive Internet services.

The Web is hot, but FTP still outweighs browsing. Quarterman also notices that the use of the Windows operating system is falling, and that Macintoshes ( despite using the Internet Protocol and not the MacOS ) and Unix machines are increasing their share of domain control.

The results are announced and published on the Web site of MIDS ( which publishes the monthly magazines Matrix News and Matrix Maps Quarterly, both in print and online, and sells maps and other information about Internet hosts, users, and other demographic data ). “What we made available to those who answered the questionnaires, and to the Internet as a whole about a month ago, is a result of the answers to each question. We also managed to trace levels of detail between the individual responses ( which are never revealed ) and the summaries. That is how we get some income.”

Speaking of Brazil, the Secretary of Informatics and Automation Policy of the Ministry of Science and Technology, Ivan Moura Campos, says Brazil boasts one of the most astonishing growth rates toward cyberspace - we are growing 50% per month. With that we reached a population of 260 thousand cybernauts at the beginning of May this year. To give an idea, if the adoption rate kept up at that speed, by the end of the year the number of Brazilian cybernauts would be 16 million. But the Secretary’s more realistic predictions estimate one million users by the turn of the year.

Advertising

After the microcomputer revolution in the 80s and the spread of computing with “a micro on every desk and in every home,” we had one of the greatest evolutions ever seen in history, where humanity evolved in 10 years what it had not managed to evolve since the Middle Ages, entering the Information Age.

With microcomputers and the Internet, physical borders have been erased, in a place where “countries” and “oceans” no longer have meaning and where physical distances no longer make sense. Virtualization has evolved to such a point that a person living in a country like Brazil can already meet and make friends with people from anywhere in the world, like Australia, for example. Tools like Netscape Inc.’s CoolTalk, which replaces the telephone, or the TimedVideo Grabber, which enables real-time image transmission using a camera, make it possible for people to get to know each other without ever really having to meet in “flesh and blood.”

And speaking of evolution, after 500 years of the absolute reign of print media as a spreader of information, it is being rapidly replaced by digital publications on the World Wide Web, the part of the Internet that most catches attention today.

With pioneering works like the Encyclopedia Britannica, which was thoroughly shaken after print encyclopedias fell into total disuse following the appearance of digital encyclopedias like Microsoft’s Encarta, and also “yellow pages”-style search services like those offered by sites such as Yahoo! or Lycos, the Internet also became the largest data repository ever built, the best place for research one can find.

World-famous magazines like PC Magazine from Ziff Davis Publishing or Playboy already have their publications displayed and updated periodically on the WWW.

The World Wide Web, or WWW, was conceived to give a “face” to the Internet, enabling the editing of graphical sites, unlike the until-then text-based interface ( something similar to the transition from DOS to Windows, for example ). A new scripting language was created, HTML ( Hyper Text Mark-Up Language ), and a specific protocol, HTTP ( Hyper Text Transfer Protocol ). And for navigating these pages, browsers were created, programs made to interpret HTML. Right at the start, two stood out: Netscape with its Netscape Navigator and SpyGlass with its Mosaic. Netscape became more widespread, and SpyGlass sold the Mosaic rights to Microsoft, which today distributes Netscape’s biggest competitor, Internet Explorer, in one of the biggest software distribution campaigns ever seen.

The possibility of editing practically everything that exists in print media quickly drew the world’s attention to the Internet. New concepts began to emerge, such as online publishing. One of the most recent examples is the Atlanta Olympics, where the computing work was handled by IBM, which set up a grand scheme of machines and networks and information distribution over the Internet that can be checked on the Olympics homepage, where the data is updated as soon as it is obtained, so that at the end of each match the homepage can be updated and the whole world has access to it, without having to wait until the next day to read it in the newspapers.

Speaking of newspapers, they are not far behind either, putting much of their daily publications on the WWW, like The Gate, an Internet-based product of two newspapers from the West Coast of the United States, the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner, complete with conference areas with discussion forums like Community, Media, Sports, Movies, etc.

The Agência Estado, which publishes famous newspapers like Estado de São Paulo, also already distributes its newspaper over the internet with the main headlines of the day and various information, including its classifieds and, during an Olympic period, with special areas for the sports in Atlanta.

Another concept that became famous with the Internet is that of online services like the giants Compuserve and America On-line, which serve people all over the world and have allies like Netscape and Microsoft. This type of organization is based on “services” that include discussion forums; libraries with up-to-date information; magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals; virtual stores that sell everything from CDs to clothes; leisure and business tips; and also services common to the Internet like email and WWW.

In Brazil, such types of service also began to spread, most notably the Folha de São Paulo and the Grupo Abril, which launched, respectively, Universo Online and Brasil Online. Such Brazilian services are still experimental and free, with no projections on costs. As an illustration, The New York Times charges US$ 30.00 per month, and America Online charges US$ 9.95 for 5 hours or US$ 19.95 for 20 hours.

Such services have very high revenues, mainly because of the world’s current excitement around the virtualization of services and the rental of digital space to companies interested in placing “virtual billboards” or even adding other services like digital stores on the main pages, given that the number of people traveling through the digital lines every day is very large. To see this, just go to the Brasil Online page, for example, and come across advertising calls from companies like Sun or Credicard. These calls are links that lead to the homepages of the respective companies.

And speaking of advertising, someone must be crafting these pages and ads. These companies are specializing in designing specific and creative pages for a kind of media that steps out of the limitations of paper and enables things like Hypertext ( words inside a text that lead to other pages ), Marquees ( phrases that move along the line ), music ( through WAVE files or the new Real Audio technology ), animations ( via animated GIF images or else using resources of the Java language ), or even fully three-dimensional environments ( using the VRML - Virtual Reality Markup Language technology ) and much more. In this market niche are companies like Vivid Studio, which has as clients the giants Silicon Graphics and Microsoft, or Razorfish, which designs for Time-Warner and Pepsi.

Commerce

The main point of friction when talking about digital commerce is security. The TCP/IP protocol is the starting point for the Internet, conceived as a universal protocol but one that falls short on the security aspect, where, unlike its siblings IPX/SPX or NetBIOS for example, it does not have encrypted data transmission. Since it is the standard protocol for data transmission, it would have been convenient to establish a standard protocol for data security as well. Since this does not exist, the impasse revolves around companies fighting to develop the standard that would cause the initial surge toward the end of printed money and the development of digital credit.

One of the oldest is cybercash, about a year old. For now, the company only works with credit card services, but it soon promises to offer monetary payment services. Currently, with a browser connected to the network, one can shop securely in virtual malls. Through the SIPS ( Secure Internet Payment Service ) protocol, according to the company, it is as easy as point and click. In this type of transaction, you buy as many cybercashes as you wish and it is charged to the credit card.

The Cybercash standard supports all types of credit card. It uses the 768-bit RSA and 56-bit DES encryption standards. All transactions are authenticated with MDS and 768-bit RSA signatures. The first step for anyone interested is to download the free program the company offers. The Cybercash server is connected to the private networks of several banks. The company’s initial services include credit and debit cards and an electronic payment system. For the services, users pay a modest amount, comparable to the value of a stamp. For the suppliers, the system represents savings on the fees charged for credit card transactions, due to the risk still present in transactions by telephone and email.

In this type of development one still finds companies like Digicash, with services centered on the First Digital Bank site, using an e-cash system ( real money converted into virtual money in virtual accounts ). Visa ( which is also already a partner of Sony - in developing a multifaceted environment of entertainment, information, and commercial transactions ) and Microsoft have STT ( Secure Transaction Technology ), the standard of these two powerhouses that wants to become an electronic version of the credit card. Mastercard is in partnership with IBM, Netscape, GTE, and Cybercash, with the SEPP ( Secure Eletronic Payment Protocol ) standard. It is an open protocol for secure online transactions.

Netscape develops the open security protocol SSL ( Secure Sockets Layer ) and contributes to the development of the SSL interface of the W3C ( World Wide Web Consortium ), a European consortium dedicated to creating a standard for the European Common Market. About 50 companies from all over the world are part of this consortium. The company will license the SSL technology to its partners for commercial use. The list of partners includes MCI, Bank of America, Mastercard, First Data Corporation, Novell, Digital, and Silicon Graphics.

Practically all the companies in the financial sector have been investing heavily in developing a platform secure and reliable enough for financial transactions of every level of importance. Hackers aside, business over the Internet does not differ much from that done outside it. That is, the best way to stay free of problems is to trust in the credibility of serious companies. It is unlikely that anyone will want to compromise their good name by failing to deliver the goods on time or by “trading” the credit card number.

In Brazil, Mappin was the first large company to enter the business of computer sales. It is also possible to choose sweets and pies at Confeitaria Brunella in São Paulo, or make reservations at Marcellu’s Bar in Rio de Janeiro. The consumer chooses the sweet or pie they want to buy through the photos and descriptions on Brunella’s homepage, then the store telephones to confirm the order and sends the goods. In the case of Marcellu’s Bar, the reservation is made by email.

If someone is moving to the United States, or simply needs to compare prices, they can consult the For Sail By Owner Connection. It is a site specialized in home sales, with photos and specifications. If you actually need to sell your house, you can also advertise on this page.

Thinking about travel, Cruisin is the first tourism agency specialized in cruises that serves exclusively over the Internet. But there are already many hotels and agencies on the network. There really are alternatives for every bank limit: from Ceará cashews for less than R$ 3.00 to a house in Florida for US$ 329 thousand. These days it is virtually possible to buy anything on the Internet.

Afterwords

Created for military purposes, then expanded to academic circles, and finally reaching the general public, the Internet marches on in accelerated evolution, covering practically all sectors of society, where the foundations of what can be considered a virtual world are being built.

When the Internet evolves enough, the new technologies will build the awaited Information Super Highway where, then yes, a truly worldwide network will take shape, using not only computers in the way we know them but also any electronic equipment, like set-top boxes ( the replacements for VCRs and video-lasers ).

In this next generation, “strolling around” will be putting on a virtual reality suit and visiting virtual places with friends from other continents in a digital meeting. And this is not science fiction delusions: we are so close to it that such technologies are real and already exist, all that remains is the time to make them accessible and operational at the level of mass distribution.

[Documentary] The iPod Revolution

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 12:23:00 -0200

From what I could research, on December 27, 2006, Discovery Channel aired the documentary “The iPod Revolution: Inside Story of the Apple iPod and Steve Jobs.”

This documentary is very well produced. In 40 minutes it sums up Apple’s history from 1997 to 2006, covering almost a decade that runs from Steve Jobs’ return to the launch of the iPod and the huge success of the iTunes Music Store. And that’s only half the story: the iPhone wouldn’t be revealed until January 2007, so the plot is even bigger.

I always recommend researching this story because it’s very interesting and engaging. For more details, read the books:

The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness – by Steven Levy.
The Cult of the iPod – by Leander Kahney, who also appears in the documentary.
iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business – by Jeffrey Young and William Simon.

Since I always show this video to friends who get curious, I decided it was past time to subtitle it. Not everyone I show it to works in tech, and go figure, English is a problem, but that’s another subject. If you want the subtitle file, I created a Gist with it. To subtitle it I used Miyu, to render the subtitle onto the video I used Submerge, and I finally uploaded the whole thing to my account on Blip.tv. Watch it below:

Of course, the video is the property of Discovery Channel, with all rights reserved. This material should not be used for commercial purposes. It’s already available on several other sites, but I’ll take it down if needed. If I do, there are still other sources, for example on YouTube:

But the story is much more interesting than that. I’ve read and watched all the available material on the subject since 1983. Searching around, I found some pieces of this story on YouTube too. Here are more video links:

1983 – In this keynote, a young Steve Jobs, who had just turned Apple into a superpower, talks about his plans for a new computer to launch in 1984. It’s an epic speech. At the end he unveils the most famous commercial in the world, 1984, directed by Ridley Scott and shown only once, during the following year’s Super Bowl.
Boston Macworld 1997 – Steve Jobs was pushed out of Apple in 1985 and returns more than 11 years later to a devastated Apple, losing $1 billion a year, with people like Michael Dell saying If I were Apple, I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders. He lays out the problems, points to Apple’s still-strong assets, and sketches a recovery strategy that runs flat against every “analyst.” I recommend it to anyone who cares about management: how to get back up after a fall.
Macworld 1998 – A year after his return, Steve had already reshaped all of Apple and launches the first product that marks the reboot: the colorful iMac. It was a machine aimed mainly at the nascent consumer internet market. Bear in mind, it’s still the early days of the first internet bubble.
iPod Introduction 2001 – Clip from the presentation where Steve shows the iPod for the first time. It was a closed event inside Apple’s campus, for invited journalists only. The first day of a revolution none of those present could have imagined.
iTunes Store Introduction 2003 – With software like Napster and Limewire letting people download music for free, how do you sell a system where you have to pay for music? This video shows how Steve pulled it off. The most important part was bending the Big 5 of the music industry into accepting a single flat price for individual tracks and albums, and getting artists to break albums apart and sell individual songs.
“iPhone Introduction 2007” – This one is genius. After two and a half years working in secret, amid all the growing rumors about an iPod-phone, watch how Steve redefined the smartphone market. One fundamental point: control of the handset had always belonged to the carriers, but Steve negotiated an unprecedented contract with Cingular (today AT&T) where the phone stayed under Apple’s control. That meant no pre-installed marketing apps and nothing of the sort. This year the exclusivity contract with AT&T ended, and Apple just announced the CDMA iPhone for Verizon’s potential 93 million customers.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
“iPad Introduction 2010” – Here he reveals the iPad, which everyone said would be bad, would never catch on, would be no fun. Today it’s a sales record and was voted product of the year.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
“The Fall and Rise of Apple” – A summary of the fall and how Apple got back up, in the broader context of the market and its products:
Article 1
Article 2
Article 3
Article 4
Article 5
Article 6

To close: in the documentary, Apple starts 1996 in terrible shape, losing $1 billion a year, with shares falling to $17 each. Now, at the close of the last quarter of 2010, it sold 16.24 million iPhones in that quarter alone, plus 7.33 million iPads, 19.45 million iPods, and 4.13 million Macs. Again: in the quarter alone.

So far Apple has sold more than 14 million iPads since the launch, back in April of last year. And the share price is now $340. Whoever bought in 1996 and held saw their capital grow almost 80 times in 15 years, counting the splits Apple did in 2000 and 2005 (via @cassiozen’s comment below). An excellent investment.

AkitaOnRails, Retrospective 1985-2007

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 02:02:00 -0300

Some readers suggested I should do a “self-interview.” Talking about myself feels weird, but false modesty was never my strong suit. So instead of an interview, I went with a retrospective. Nowhere near a complete biography, of course, just a few key points from my last 22 years (before that I couldn’t read properly :-)

It’ll probably be nostalgic for some, which is always nice. For the younger crowd, maybe it shows that a résumé isn’t built from certificates alone. Experience takes time, a lot of time, but quantity of time is not the same as quality. It all comes down to merging what you really want with what you really love. It’s not for everyone, but if you have that instinct, you know what I’m talking about.

The road is long and endless, so never say “I already know everything I need.” You will never know everything you need. Learning is a daily process, hour by hour: a little during work, and a lot more outside of it.

People who know what they’re doing couldn’t care less about what others say or do. You just do what you know (not what you “think”) is the best path. Right and wrong is a coin flip: on average you’ll be right 50% of the time, like everyone else. The “right path” comes from analyzing the facts you have. Learned something new? Redo the analysis and revise the path.

Dogmas are useless. Stay rational and disciplined, and your odds improve. Never close your own doors: be selective about what you learn, but don’t discard options out of prejudice.

Do what you love. It’s a cliché, I know, but it’s the only thing that works. My résumé didn’t start at my first job: I’ve dedicated my whole life to this, for as long as I can remember, and I never had a plan B. You don’t have to be like that, and it doesn’t mean I know a lot. I know plenty of younger people who started later and already know way more than I do.

I told a friend the other day: “we’re all moving targets.” If you have an idol, it’s because they’re something you’d like to become. You run in that direction and, by the time you reach the level you wanted, your idol has already run a few leagues further. And off you go, chasing again.

Again: there’s no recipe, no step-by-step guide. Not everyone can be a painter, a fashion designer, or a journalist. I’m definitely not a good cook, I’ll hardly ever be a decent carpenter, and I’ll certainly never be a musician. Nobody should pick an occupation based solely on what pays best today. And tomorrow?

In 1985 I was inspired for the first time by a comic book: a special Disney edition called, if I recall correctly, The History of Computers. If anyone still has a copy, with the center pull-out and in good condition, I’m interested in buying it! Guided by Gyro Gearloose and Professor Ludwig Von Drake, I met Charles Babbage, Blaise Pascal, Konrad Zuse, and other names I never forgot. I’ve considered myself a “computing archaeologist” ever since, and I keep coming back to the subject through encyclopedias, books, and articles. My dream machine back then was a Unitron, the Brazilian clone of the original Macintosh, freshly released.

In 1987 my cousin had an MSX Hotbit and I wanted to play his games. I learned a bit of Basic to load the cassette games. My favorite reading was the magazine Micro Sistemas, and Assembly was still out of reach for me. My dream machine was a CP-500 that an acquaintance owned. I tried reading an electronics book, but it was too much for me: I was never good at that. I was only starting to grasp what “expanding RAM” meant.

There were lots of cool micros back then. Today everyone admires the new phones in store windows; in my day I’d stand in front of display cases staring at Apple II clones, Gradiente’s MSX, the Sinclair, the TK-90X, the CP-400. They were too expensive for me to own, so all I could do was imagine those machines while reading their spec sheets.

In 1988 I took a GW-Basic course. I had no computer, but I learned to program on paper. I also got my first taste of gems of the era like Wordstar and Lotus 1-2-3. I think that’s around when I started getting addicted to video games: I already had an Intellivision, and I finally got a Master System!

In 1989 I got my first PC-XT and learned dBase III and Clipper Summer 87. I had two uncles who had been programming since Autumn 86. That’s when I wrote my first booklet, which had nothing original about it: I copied text from books and encyclopedias simply because I enjoyed practicing typing. Thanks to that, today I hit 400 keystrokes per minute, plus a few strange hand pains :-) Before the XT, my hobby was copying text on a trusty old Olivetti; with a computer keyboard, much lighter, my fingers were grateful. Since the previous year, my favorite reading had been the beloved Micro Sistemas magazine, one of the few quality options at the time.

In 1990 I did odd jobs with my uncle, who was a systems analyst. I built several little systems in Clipper 5.0 and FoxPro, the good old days of Ashton-Tate and Nantucket. I created my own text editor in Clipper, but I was no match for the good old Norton Editor paired with Sidekick. There were few language options back then, and you could spend months on a single one. Unfortunately I never got very interested in low-level languages like Assembly and C: I read a few books but never practiced. Big mistake.

In 1991 I started messing around with BBSes with my neighbor. I was introduced to the power of Pascal, still just watching from afar. Good times of FidoNet, PCBoard, Remote Access, Warez, blue boxes, and the like. Long before the Orkut and MSN era, I was already burning hours on message boards. My dream was to get Windows 3.1 running on my XT with its green CGA monitor.

In 1993 I worked as a game presenter at Brasoft Games during school break. It was interesting because I got access to “MPCs,” the multimedia PCs with CD-ROM and sound card, optional and expensive extras at the time. I’ll never forget the LucasArts gems, like Day of the Tentacle. Nothing to do with programming, but it mattered for my sense of aesthetics and possibility. Masterpieces of the era? Wolfenstein and Doom, the originals, of course.

In 1993 (or was it 1992?) I liked to draw. I dabbled as an illustrator until around 1998, when I gave it up for good. That year I wanted to do illustrations for a games magazine (did I mention I was addicted?). I took my portfolio to the editor, and he suggested I learn to illustrate on a computer, since all I had was freehand drawings. I went home and that same day bought a book on CorelDraw! 3.0, a brick of a book from the Berkeley publishing house that I still remember. A few weeks later I came back with a brand-new portfolio, all done in CorelDraw!. I illustrated some six issues, wrote one article, contributed here and there, and quit: it wasn’t my calling. But the notions of Bezier curves and vectorization would come in handy when I later picked up Flash.

In 1994 I took my only break from hobbies and computers: entrance exam year. I studied at least 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. I set goals, planned, and passed. I never had a second option, so passing on the first try was all I had: USP and Unicamp, at minimum, were mandatory. That was the year’s big lesson: set goals, draw the plan, follow each step while correcting course along the way, but don’t stop.

In 1995 I entered USP. In the first semester I had to turn in work in Turbo Pascal, and I built my first framework, a graphics toolkit for Pascal, plus some fractal tricks. I finally understood the importance of the previous decades of computing and became a fan of Donald Knuth and Niklaus Wirth.

I got my first internet account, with one catch: terminal-only Unix access. I had to learn Unix to use the internet. Gopher, Lynx, Pine, good times. It was also the first time I confronted a major deficiency: my terrible English. When I saw some classmates were good at it, I decided I couldn’t fall behind (and that’s how the article Be Arrogant! came to be). It was a pre-Google era: I used the early versions of Yahoo!, WebCrawler, even Amazon (which was ugly back then).

This was also the year I waited most eagerly for a piece of software: Windows 95. I read everything I could find about it and never dissected an operating system that thoroughly; in fact, since DOS 3.1 I’d been exploring every corner and back alley. I was also excited about the brand-new OS/2 Warp, some 20 3.5" floppies, if I recall correctly! Running Windows 3.1 virtualized inside OS/2 was amazing, the same feeling I got years later running Windows XP virtualized on my OS X for the first time. Those topics are what finally got me interested in systems architecture and the evolution of operating systems.

In 1996 I did a side gig on a little system for Windows 3.1 (I know, I know). I learned Delphi 1.0, released a year earlier. I was already a Turbo Pascal fan, so Object Pascal came naturally: my first step toward the “fad” of the era, so-called Object-Oriented Programming. UML showed up around that time, but before it I was already poking around the original methodologies: Booch, Objectory, Fusion. I always found the subject kind of boring.

I also started learning Java 1.0, after downloading the betas from Unicamp’s FTP. But AWT didn’t seem good enough, so I stuck with Delphi. Strange to think about it today: back then Borland looked so big.

I built a few personal sites about my hobbies. Yep, I was once an anime and manga fanatic, and I made my first “successful” website, quotes very much intended, because I stirred controversy even in my hobbies. There was nothing in Portuguese on the subject, so I translated manga and subtitled anime. I’ve known Japanese since I was a kid, which helped, and translation is nothing new for me :-) Building personal sites, I dissected every trick of the era using only HTML, JavaScript, and lots of Photoshop. I also played around quite a bit with Windows for Workgroups networks and OS/2 1.3.

In 1997 I started working at a multimedia production house. I leveled up in web design, got to work with Macs (on the beloved System 8), and had to learn Director 5/Lingo and Flash 2/ActionScript. Building interactive applications in Director on a Pentium 200 MHz with 32 MB of RAM wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was fun. I lost count of how many times I slept on the office floor waiting for files to burn onto Zip drives, or CDs writing at 2x.

By then Linux was already quite famous. I made my first attempts to level up my Unix with a RedHat 4.2, whose little blue box with the red logo I’ll never forget. A few years earlier I’d tried Slackware 1.0, but gave up after frustrated installs, incompatible hardware, and driver problems.

In 1998 I had my first contact with server-side: Microsoft Index Server, SQL Server 6.5, and ASP. It wasn’t much fun, but at least I learned a lot of SQL. Newsgroups were always my safety net, and the DejaNews site was a real find: an indexed archive of Usenet, now known as Google Groups. My use of that kind of service dropped a lot since then. Did the quality drop with it?

In 1999 I had to build sites in PHP and a few Perl scripts for Apache. I learned regular expressions the hard way: I should have known Regex already, so I learned it once and for all, and it makes a huge difference to this day. I had to level up on Linux and the whole toolchain around it, and fortunately the era’s RedHat 7 was already quite good. I ran all sorts of experiments with protocols and understood why knowing them matters. I don’t remember how or why, but that’s when I became a devoted Slashdot reader, my daily reading, religiously, ever since.

In 2000 I had to build a site in Zope/Python. I always figured that system, with its ZODB, Products, and DTML concepts, had the potential to grow a lot. It grew, but not the way I imagined. Today I think Plone is nice, but with the feeling that it missed its market window. It was my first contact with Python and the first time I heard of a language called Ruby, which I paid no attention to at the time.

In 2001 I had to build several sites and systems with ASP and other Microsoft technologies, like VB and DCOM (you have to respect Don Box). Dealing with limitations is always a great way to grow: when you have a lot, you waste; when you have little, you learn to optimize. Generating DCOM components with VBScript was fun. I did a lot of “Ajax,” except back then it had no such name (MSXML and DHTML already existed), and lots of “Web Services,” which didn’t have that name yet either (HTTP and XML already existed, of course). Amazing how half a decade later these things come back with new names and everyone thinks they’re novelties.

.NET looked very promising in Beta 1, and I remember building a framework for ASP using ASP.NET concepts. It may seem odd to jump from the previous year’s Linux world back to Windows Server. I never understood why, to like one thing, you “have to” trash the other. My job has always been just one: solve problems within the constraints I’m given, regardless of technology or platform. Period.

In 2002 I had to integrate an ASP system with an SAP R/3 one, so I had to learn ABAP. The book “Learn ABAP/4 in 24 Hours” took, in fact, 48 hours. Knowing the concepts of DCOM and CORBA paid off: I already knew what RFC was and how to handle a distributed environment. This is where my “career” as a hired gun (also known as a “consultant”) begins: lots of work, little added value. My learning had ups and downs in the following years, and my pace slowed until 2006.

In 2003 I had to build systems on SAP Portal and Java, and learned things like Hibernate and Struts. With no access to SAP’s Java server source code, all I could do was decompile the classes and explore. I also had to make a cell phone talk to SAP systems, hand-coding the protocols. After that bit-scrubbing exercise, I never forgot the difference between Big Endian and Little Endian, nor how annoying the iDEN protocol is to deal with. I handled some cryptography and reinforced my notions of security, encryption, and authentication. You can never be too paranoid.

In 2004 I needed a version control system and learned Subversion. I never had a good feeling about CVS. Subversion was still beta, full of bugs, and I even had to patch TortoiseSVN to work with Visual Studio .NET, but I felt SVN would be big. Fortunately, I was right. I think it was the year I wrote the most Java: I hunted every kind of bug in the freshly launched SAP Portal, built a productive framework on top of the lousy one that shipped with the product, and did a lot of integration with R/3 systems.

In 2005 I had to integrate telecommunications systems and learned a bit of Tuxedo/C++. ESB, SOA, and similar acronyms proved to be vendor bullshit, as I always said. Communication and integration were never novelties: renaming things to sound new doesn’t help. EAI is one of the oldest things in the world; integration existed since the second computer was built. Around that time I was poking at the project management world, and someone convinced me to get PMP certified. Waste of time: I got certified but never liked the method. I spent some time studying CMMi and other methodologies and lost interest fast. I already know I have no calling for too much talk.

In 2006 I had to deal with more telecommunications systems, now with webMethods. More “SOA,” more “XML,” no problem. Why does everyone struggle to integrate hybrid systems? Whoever knows SAP doesn’t know webMethods, whoever knows webMethods knows little Java, whoever knows Java doesn’t know the other two. It’s all lack of will.

In parallel, Rails entered the picture, and off I went to write a book. Amazing how the thing exploded abroad while nobody here paid it proper attention. It’s the old chicken-and-egg problem: programmers won’t learn because there’s no market, the market isn’t interested because there are no programmers. One side has to move first. Americans are experts at first steps; we’re doctors at waiting for time to pass. But I never paid attention to the others. A month and a half of writing nearly drove me insane; sleeping 4 hours a night is not normal. The book came out, the blog is here and, most importantly, I learned a lot. Luckily more people are getting interested in the subject. Maybe soon we’ll cross the tipping point between the number of professionals and market interest.

Finally, in 2007 I was fed up with consulting and with clients. Turning a blind eye to idiotic things was never my style. I walked away from those who never truly supported me and decided to fly solo. If you ever hear the word “Balance,” run! I mean it! But good coincidences do happen: after almost a year and a half talking about Rails, I finally got to work with it full time.

And here’s the thing: what got me hired was the result of the previous 22 years. The Rails year weighed little.

I hope this tickled everyone’s curiosity. The biographies of the people I’ve interviewed far surpass mine, and I’ve met plenty of people with much better stories. Mine, for now, is reasonable.

As I said before, I’m a moving target too. Tomorrow I’ll be writing the 2007, 2008, 2009 retrospective. Next year I’ll know many things I don’t know today, and not by accident: everybody learns something new, unless they’re a vegetable. I’m talking about a conscious effort to learn.

I won’t stagnate in Ruby, as much as I like it. It doesn’t matter whether the novelty comes from the open source world, from Apple, from IBM, or from Microsoft: we have to watch everything. A cook with 10 years in the kitchen who only knows how to make the same half-dozen dishes is an automaton, not a master. Ten or twenty years make no difference. And automatons are easily replaced.

Off-topic: MacWorld 2007 - Steve Jobs Announces the Long-Awaited iPhone!

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 11:34:34 -0200

This keynote just went down in history. Period.

Every self-respecting Railer loves Apple, so I’m sure everyone already knows: Steve Jobs’s keynote at MacWorld 2007 in San Francisco just wrapped up (17:07). The rumors over the past few days were enormous, no keynote was ever this anticipated, and Jobs did not disappoint. Details, transcript, and photos in Engadget’s live coverage.

Apple TV aside (the prototype, still called iTV back then, was shown at a special event in September 2006), the star of the show was the iPhone: an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator, as Jobs put it, 3 in 1. The standards for cell phones and smartphones just went down the drain; Apple raised the bar to stratospheric levels. The list:

4GB or 8GB of flash memory
3.5" high-resolution screen at 160ppi

Just 1 button; everything else is the multitouch widescreen display with 3 sensors (proximity, ambient light, accelerometer). Want to zoom into a photo? Put two fingers on the screen and spread them apart!

Syncs with iTunes (music, videos, photos, contacts, calendars)

WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, quad-band GSM+EDGE (in the US, via Cingular/AT&T)
2 Megapixel digital camera

Runs OS X (!), and Safari was shown working as the browser. Integration with Google Maps, Yahoo Mail, POP3, IMAP. Goes well beyond BlackBerry

5 hours of battery life, 16 hours audio-only
Accessories: earphones with an inline microphone (a quick squeeze of the button answers a call) and the smallest, most elegant Bluetooth headset I’ve ever seen

The prices are steep, but they match an exceptional device: US$499 for the 4GB model and US$599 for the 8GB, with a two-year contract. And starting today Apple Computer, Inc. becomes Apple, Inc.. Makes perfect sense: Apple products are already in our bedrooms (iMac), our offices (MacBook, Mac Pro), our cars (BMW, Audi and others), our living rooms (Apple TV), and our pockets (iPod, iPhone). Impressive, to say the least.

Apple shares closed the day up more than 8%, and Leopard didn’t even get a mention! The goal is 1% of a market of nearly 1 billion cell phones sold a year: something like 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. The product launches in the US in June. I hope it gets here soon!

If anyone finds a download link for the keynote video (I’m hoping it hits BitTorrent soon), let me know!

Off-topic: MacWorld 2007 - Steve Jobs Keynote

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 08:18:13 -0200

In less than an hour, 3pm in Brasília, 9am Pacific time, Steve Jobs takes the stage at MacWorld Conference & Expo 2007 in San Francisco. The keynote can be followed live on several sites (see the updated list).

This keynote has spawned dozens of rumors and articles across the industry. Forbes published All Eyes On Apple and Jobs yesterday, and for good reason: nobody in the industry builds anticipation like Steve Jobs’s Apple.

The enigmatic image above showed up on Apple’s site a few days ago and fed a good share of that anticipation. What are they trying to say? A simple corporate “happy new year” message? From Apple? Probably not.

At WWDC 2006, Steve announced some of the headline features of the next operating system, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, expected to ship this quarter. On that occasion he showed the famous “Top Secret” slide: there were new features they weren’t going to reveal, so Microsoft couldn’t copy them ahead of time. Has the moment come for us to finally learn those secrets?

Meanwhile the rumors keep coming. Will Steve announce his retirement? A new Mac to celebrate Apple’s 30th anniversary? A subnotebook MacBook with solid-state storage? The long-rumored iPhone, the iPod plus phone combo? An immediate Leopard release?

Or will it be smaller stuff: the already-known iTV, new versions of iTunes and iLife, secondary Leopard details? Or the usual fare, a Mac Mini with a Core 2 Duo and a Mac Pro with the new Dual Quad Xeons?

Keep your eyes open. Steve Jobs’s MacWorld keynotes are always explosive. Just remember 1997.