I appreciate Amazon’s ability to create application quality web services, but I think Amazon missed an opportunity with Kindle Cloud Reader. If Amazon’s Cloud Music Drive can upload content via your PC and allow you to stream it globally, all personal literary content should be afforded the same opportunity.

The Kindle way is great for linking notes and bookmarks between devices, but the extent of reading isn’t devoted solely to purchased content. While I keep a number of books in queue on my Kindle, my daily amount of reading is dedicated between services like Instapaper and Dave Pell’s Delivereads.

To be kinder, Kindle should utilize my already prevalent storage space via Amazon’s Cloud Drive and retain my non-purchased literary content. Capped at an already finite amount of space- notes, bookmarks and items can remain synced across all Kindle services.

Truly utilize the open nature of the web to surprise and delight customers.

Apple released the iPhone in 2007 with 16 original applications. The default application list has grown since to include applications like Voice Memo and Compass. My question is will it be strange for Apple to remove retroactive applications?

For example will we always need a Stock or Weather application now that it can be included in the notification bar? Or are people using the Compass application enough to really justify it taking up a permanent position on our device?

More importantly, can we completely replace the phone application and rely solely on FaceTime and iMessage? Sure we can rely on third party applications like Skype and Google Voice, but is it weird to think we can completely forgo voice calling completely, and instead rely on real-time video chat as default?

Can we get used to a world where you’re constantly face to face with those you communicate with globally, even when they’re strangers? It’s less a question about the technology, and more the social insecurities involved. But I’m certainly curious.

In followup to my previous article, Replacing Ethernet I made it clear how quickly we can expect a single I/O port to change the way we interact with routers, and share between devices. Maybe the future of AirPort Extreme’s, though with WWDC behind us, it seems Apple may have more in mind with network peripherals in the sans PC world.

While iCloud offers a great number of storage features including purchased music, applications, and backups, but when it comes to digital meda libraries, we quickly see the system breaking down.

Don’t get me wrong, Photo Stream seems like a great service to share photos across devices, but looking closer we again see the cloud as a temporary solution. Unlike iOS devices which retain 30 days of photos unless saved, PCs will retain all of them.

This is what the availability of space will offer.

That’s the only inherent purpose of a PC in this post PC world, added space. Space which in fact can just as easily be replaced by a network storage device a-la Time Capsule.

Simply put, why have a PC when iCloud can have the ability to sync full libraries of photos and videos to a network storage device, and remain accessible wirelessly at your choosing from your iOS devices?

iCloud API

Seeing as iCloud’s API may pertain more to applications on iOS, I’m curious about its future adoption as a hardware API. Is it possible that the iCloud API may later be extended to 3rd party peripherals?

Imagine post photo shoot, where you return home, and your SLR automatically syncs with your Time Capsule, to then have your photos accessible via iCloud across all your iOS devices for touchup, and album management?

Apple is execution and polish.
Devoted to the exercise of functionality, practicality, and innovative design.

Google is open.
The idea of open, freedom, and access prevails all else, including control.

Microsoft is complacency.
Change and growth are not necessary when success is already at hand.

Breakdown of speeds by device:

• Gigabit router - 1 Gbps over Ethernet
• Cat 5 - 100 Mbps
• Cat 6 - 1 Gbps [Capped 330ft] source
• Wireless N - 300 Mbps
• Thunderbolt - 10 Gbps bidirectional [copper capped 3 meters/~9ft]

1 GBps = 8 Gbps source

Even in its infancy, copper based Thunderbolt is extremely quick. Once it switches to fiber, we can only anticipate a multiple times increase in speed and limitless length.

The only attributes still current with Ethernet seem 1 Gbps and 330ft of cable, meaning great for businesses, and convenient for home users that still rely on wired networks. Though WiFi is the dominant choice of internet access, being capped at 300 Mbps means data locally transferred is often deferred to a wired connection for speed.

Switching a wired connection to Thunderbolt offers a bidirectional increase in speed effectively by 8 times. Yes over a much shorter distance, but for those that require the 330ft of extra space, Sonnet Presto offers a unique adapter.

Search engines are like the Hubble telescope trying to quantify the entire universe. It’s pointless if we know what we’re looking for.

It’s a novel idea for a single company to want to quantify and store the web, but less and less is archive what we need. Just as students can rely on Wikipedia, teenagers can on Facebook. It’s about finding a core service around relevant content and resources. Find what’s applicable to you now, and utilizing it.

Search today works best with only a niche, or subset of content. Preferably my own personal content, be it Delicious, Evernote, or Gmail. Outside of these segments, search queries often serve specific purposes, e.g. finding a particular URL. So why are searches still providing an aggregate view of the web?

I’m Feeling Lucky

Specific searches need specific results. We should finally be at the age of dynamic search, or what Isaac Asimov suggested in The Last Question, a true decision engine.

Google should be playing the role of middleman and say based on each query, what the best result provided on the web currently is, predicted and scaled by the web as its backend knowledge.

+1

Maybe this is the upcoming role of +1, a better way to moderate the web and resources we’re actually using. Not necessarily a social means of communicating resources across the web, but instead one to articulate the precise resources relevant to you.