What do you think of this early iPhone prototype? We have an exclusive peek of it.

What did the iPhone look like before it looked like an iPhone?

Google loses money on every Android phone activated in the world. But that’s ok – they make up for it in volume. I recognize they have a specific strategy of giving away the platform so they can make it up with search revenue. And I recognize they are doing very well at giving it away. But it is yet to be seen if the strategy is working when it comes to driving revenue.

For example, the vast majority of Internet traffic on mobile devices is not Android, it’s Apple. In fact, the best selling Android device of all time accounts for only 1% of all mobile web traffic – not ALL traffic, just mobile.

Seems to me that Google is giving the platform away to carriers that sell it (or give it away) to people that don’t use it.

Of course, while Android controls the lion’s share of the smartphone market, its dominant position has not translated into dollar share — a measure where Apple is the clear winner. Google gives away the open-source Android operating system to its hardware partners, in hopes that a market dominated by Android will drive demand for Google’s services supported by mobile advertising.

via AppleInsider

Next year, the computer mouse will celebrate its 50th anniversary. Heavily evolved since then, can you imagine how you would have learned to use a computer without one? The Internet as we know it probably couldn’t even exist.

The anniversary makes me think of a time around 1997 when I was taking one of those certification exams that used to be necessary for computer geeks to get any work. I was in the testing room, taking a test to get certified in Microsoft SQL or Exchange or something like that. It was a general testing center, so occasionally, there were non-computer related tests taking place.

On this one particular day, a lady came in to take a test to become a veterinary assistant, or something and didn’t know what to expect. We weren’t allowed to talk to each other during the tests so I was unable to offer advice when, not knowing how to use a mouse, lifted it and started touching the screen with it.

I have know idea how she finished the test, or if she passed…

The first computer mouse was invented in 1963 by Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute. (He is also one of the inventors of hypertext.) The first mouse used two wheels positioned at a 90-degree angle to each other to keep track of the movement (see picture below). The ball mouse wasn’t invented until 1972, and the optical mouse was invented circa 1980 although it didn’t come to popular use until much later.

via The history of PC hardware, in pictures.

Google announced that their social platform has reached 500 million active users. That might mean it is time to consider adding Google to your social strategy. After all, Google Search gives a lot of extra points to activity on Google .

The bigger news, however, is that Google now has 500 million members, 135 million of whom are active users of Google itself, while 235 million are considered “active” by virtue of interacting with Google from other Google sites. That total number of 500 million is up from 400 million only three months ago.Sure, Google is still smaller than Facebook, which has more than 1 billion active members. But it is certainly not a “ghost town,” and it certainly is not dead. In the early days Google was mostly popular with Silicon Valley techies, but little by little, “normals” seem to be migrating onto Google .

Read the original article.

For years, Apple products have been “Designed in California” but Made in China. Tim Cook is working on a plan that will begin to change all of that. Beginning in 2013, Apple will begin producing Macs in America.

I think that Apple may be in a relatively unique position to “on-shore” manufacturing. Apple sells millions of expensive products at very wide profit margins. Apple never competes on price, so the margins have stayed the largest in the industry.

Now it seems that Apple is willing to forsake a few percentage points of margin in order to bring manufacturing here. If successful on the Mac, expect more investment to move manufacturing here for iPhone, iPad and iPod, too.

Cook revealed the information in a wide-ranging interview published Thursday by Bloomberg Businessweek. In it, he noted that Apple’s ARM processors that power the iPhone and iPad are already made in the U.S., along with the Corning Gorilla Glass covers — but he also revealed that next year, at least some Mac production will come to America. “We’ve been working on this for a long time, and we were getting closer to it. It will happen in 2013,” Cook said.

Read the original article.

Bloomberg posted an Interview with Tim Cook yesterday. Its full of fascinating stuff. But my favorite statistic is that 80% of Apple’s revenue comes from products that didn’t exist 60 days ago. That’s an amazing thing to say, but I guess its true. All new iPhones, iPads, iPods, desktop and laptop Macs.

How many other companies have the courage to make such sweeping updates to their entire product line?Not many, I suspect. Too risky. And then you get stale.

I mean, no company would have done what we did this year. Think about it. We changed the vast majority of our iPhone in a day. We didn’t kind of — you know, change a little bit here or there. IPad, we changed the entire lineup in a day. The most successful product in consumer electronics history, and we change it all in a day and go with an iPad mini and a fourth- generation iPad. Who else is doing this? Eighty percent of our revenues are from products that didn’t exist 60 days ago. Is there any other company that would do that?

Read the original article.

I think this is true for doc practices, but hospitals and "big health" are going to have issues because of HIPAA and other policy concerns. IT departments are still slow to allow employees to bring their own device to the network.

Friday’s launch of the iPad mini has been eagerly awaited by physicians who are particularly excited that the device easily can fit inside a lab coat.

Integrating a one-way post from G+ to WordPress…this test: is it automatic or do I have to click the button?

A really long time ago, I wrote about a methodology for managing your email called Inbox Zero. The premise is that after you check your email, you should have no messages in your inbox. An empty Inbox is a big stress reliever for many people, including me.

The idea is that for every email you receive, there are only 4 possible things you can do with them, and you can do them all immediately. They are:

1. Delete the message.
2. Reply to the message.
3. File the message.
4. Add the message to your to-do list.

Unfortunately, I got away from this methodology; mostly, because of the iPhone. On the original iPhone you could easily delete and reply to a message. I don't recall if you could file a message. But one thing that was a pain to do was put a message on your to-do list.

But with iOS 6, finally, there is a work around to handling number 4. While you still can't add the message directly to your task list from the Mail app on the iPhone or iPad, what you can do is Flag the message. This puts the message in a special folder. When you get back to your Mac (or have both iPad and iPhone handy) then you can go through your flagged messages and add them to your task list.

I was able to clear out my inbox of the almost 10,000 messages, and I'm back to Inbox Zero.

How many messages are in your inbox right now?

There are 300 million iOS devices in use in the world. Another 200 million Android devices. One thing all of these have in common: they don't run Flash.

Here's another statistic to consider: 20% of all web traffic is mobile; i.e. running on a device without Flash.

Why in the Wide World of the Web would you use Flash on your website now? I don't mean you've had Flash content for a few years now and don't have the budget or time to replace it. I mean why would you build something new that relied on a visitor having Flash to consume your message.

Doesn't make sense, does yet? Yes there are plenty of sites coming online or getting updated with new Flash requirements. And not just from amateur web site makers. Professional services are still advising clients or even baking the Flash requirement right into new sites.

The most common offender is embedded video. Most online video used to be played with a Flash-based video player. But there are now plenty of other ways to deliver online video without Flash, so why use Flash?

I can only think of 2 reasons: ignorance or laziness. Maybe I'm missing a compelling reason to exclude 20% of potential visitors or 500 million devices. As a famous comedian used to say: “That's just my opinion. I could be wrong.”