Vis a vi Monetary Policy:

The major mistake of the “Monetarists” like Krugman is that they believe Monetary stimulation stimulates growth. It doesn’t. All that it stimulates is stagflation. I’m a Paulista, but the one thing I would disagree with him is that there is a way to know how much liquidity the economy needs: The Price of Gold. The price of Gold is the most accurate barometer of supply/demand of money, ie allowing enough liquidity for growth, but not too much for inflation.

So what is needed both to insure that there is enough liquidity for growth but not too much for inflation is neither a “Hard” Gold standard, nor the current “fiat” target interest rate policy. What is needed is a “target the price of Gold” standard. So you don’t have a dollar backed by Gold: (This could lead to a dearth of liquidity during economic growth, and an actually run on the physical gold supply which is the reason Nixon took us off the Gold standard in 1971) What you have is a Fed that targets gold, uses it as a barometer. When the price of Gold rises, that is a clear indicator that the economy has too much liquidity. When the price of Gold dips too low (like it did in the late ’90s, remember $10/barrel oil? This was also a major factor contributing to the demise of Web 1.0 because there was massive growth, but no liquidity.) that is a clear signal that there is not enough liquidity.

So what we need is not to End the Fed, but rather a new mandate: Keep the Price of Gold in a tight trading range by printing money when it dips below the range and in reverse, selling bonds to mop up excess liquidity when the price of Gold rises above the tight trading range.

There are many reasons why Instagram worked: timing, mobile centric, the ‘limitations’ (iOS only), the design and logo were/are retro, warm, and appealing.

But I think the primary reason Instagram worked were the filters. For the first time the masses like me, who’s only knowledge about photography is how to press the button, were able to see, without opening up some complicated program, what professional and creative effects could do to their photos.  And it was one click. When you snapped a photo with Instagram you could either post it as is, or there were a row of 9 or so “filters” at the bottom, “pre-sets” if you will, that you simply selected and it would automatically apply them. These filters were imitations of what the pros spend hours doing in Photoshop. And suddenly the masses had them at the click of the button. This is the same appeal that photo editing apps for the iPhone like Camera+, Best Camera, and Camera Awesome have: Simple, easy, and fun photo editing that is merely the click of a button to get a unique effect.

Limitations are Freeing

I was thinking about this as I’ve begun using Garageband for the iPad. It’s much more limiting than Logic Pro or even Garageband on OSX, but I’m being a lot more productive on it and having a lot more fun. The nature of mobile is intimacy and ease, which equals in a lot of cases increased productivity.

In Instagram’s case, it didn’t have as many filters or options as Camera+, but that limitation made it much more easy to use and much faster to use. To be fair, Camera+ wasn’t trying to be a Social Network, and the app was very successful in its own right simply selling on the App store. But in Camera+’s case and Camera Awesome, after you take a photo, the damn thing disappears! Then you have to go find the little thumb nail of it, re-open it, and then when you go choose the effects, and this is key, what you see are the pages of effects and not the photo. So then you have to apply the effect, wait while it generates, and then finally see if you like it. Whereas with Instagram the original photo is up on the screen at all times and the selections are at the bottom. You can breeze through sampling all the selections and see them immediately. It makes the whole process easy and fun. To be fair I love Camera+ and Camera Awesome and couldn’t recommend them more, but I’m just simply pointing out a couple frustrations with them, and why Instagram out paced them in use and adoption. (To be fair though, like I said, Camera+ wasn’t intending to build a Social Network.)

Being Mobile Centric and only Mobile centric: You can’t look at photographs on the website. The only thing you can do on the website is sign up for an account, is another limitation. Some would say, frustrating, but actually that limitation, in the minds of many, was rather intriguing. If you wanted to see an old photograph, you had to search like an easter egg hunt for the link on Twitter or wherever you posted it. While the developers probably didn’t intend it, they merely were trying to save resources for their primary target, that limitation as well as the limitation of being iPhone only, created a sort of caché in the mind, especially in those of the hipsters, a lot of whom happen to be the biggest influencers on Twitter.

To be fair timing was a key too. At the time, Twitter didn’t have it’s own photo sharing service, and the third party ones that existed just really looked awful and contrived. They were so ugly they conditioned you almost to not want to click on a photo link. So when Instagram launched with it’s beautiful design and hipster appeal, Twitter adopted it as its de-facto photo sharing service, and Instagram rode that wave to mass adoption.

Ever had this happen? It’s quite a shock and a lot of dismay. Today when I went to sites I visit often I noticed the Username and Password field weren’t automatically filled out like normal. So I went to the password manager in Chrome and everything had disappeared! Well I found a solution HERE on a Google Groups discussion board. It seems to have worked.

This is for a Mac. What you do is first quit Chrome. Then you go to Applications>Utilities>Keychain Open up your Keychain Access program and all of your passwords should be in there. Mine were. Then you re-open Chrome and all the passwords and sites are re-populated in the Password Manager in Chrome. At least it worked for me. Whew! The Passwords in Chrome are in Preferences>Personal Stuff>Manage Saved Passwords.

Hope that helps. Let me know.

Hey, I really love working with Garageband on the iPad. I think it’s a revolution. It’s so intuitive, unintimidating, and most importantly fun! Of course, it still has a way to go to be a “professional” production device, but I feel that is coming in years to come, and as you can hear this production sounds pretty good! And this was done on an iPad1 along with merely singing into that little pinhole mic. Other than that all the instruments were just “smart” instruments played entirely on the iPad. Hope you enjoy. This song is called “Kuzbass” by Josh Rouse that I covered.

If you haven’t installed the new code, it’s here: https://twitter.com/about/resources/buttons#follow

Even if you have already done that, you may still get that error message instead of the button. What you need to do is clear your browser cache, and it will show up fine.

On Chrome on Mac you click the Chrome menu button and select “Clear Browsing Data”, another menus will pop up, “Empty the Cache” should already be checked, but if not check that one.

This is so cool, funny, and almost surreal. You think, “It must be a trick, prosthetic limb they are using!” But actually it’s real! There’s raw footage somewhere showing in fact it’s all real!

In the market for a new Android phone and want to know which is the best? Or how about a new Wifi Router. This site, wirecutter.com is the perfect solution. It shows you the best product in every technology category. Great resource.

Why not just post this link in Twitter and or Facebook? Well I did, but one thing those services are is ephemeral, after some time goes by I can’t seem to find my posts or things I want to remember, which is another reason blogging, and especially having your own site is still very valuable. I think even quasi blogging services like Tumblr and Google+ still have this problem of ephemerality.

And dang it, blogging is just plain fun sometimes!

I’ll add this too my list of “Cool Sites and Apps.”

Did this today out on my back patio featuring three songs: “Your Love Chases After Me,” by Mindy Smith, “Another Bad Night’s Sleep” by The Silver Seas, and “Kuzbass” by Josh Rouse. I used the new iPad video Camera and I used the FiRe field recording app on my iPhone for vocals and on my iPad 1 for the guitar. Then I brought those wave files into Logic for some mixing and used iMovie on the iMac to edit and add titles as well as the Logic mixed audio track. I think it sounds and looks good!

Well, except I cut my head off, but I guess you can see the guitar clearly! If you have enough bandwidth you can select the HD option for viewing, although Youtube apparently just supports 720p? I thought it went up to 1080p. Did I really shot this in 1080 or is that something you have to select on the new iPad? I’m performing “Kuzbass” by Josh Rouse. I guess I should print the lyrics because I couldn’t find them anywhere on the internet.

Kuzbass – Josh Rouse – Lyrics

I got so tired
didn’t have the heart to say
Woke up side my skin and
Couldn’t find the cap to slap back in
Couldn’t see past
Pretending that I’m ok
Cuz I got so tired

I could walk a thousand miles
Never see your soul and aim for north
I could walk a thousand miles
All that remains is on that track
Like the cold
Cold from the Kuzbass…

I’ve killed memories of people we know
Got a lot of things I
Things I would like to show
But I know that it’s wrong and
Cuz things seem very cold
Out here where it’s older

I could walk a thousand miles
Never see your soul and aim for north
I could walk a thousand miles
Disappear into the black
I could walk a thousand miles
Never see a soul and aim for north
I could walk a thousand miles
All that remains is on that track
Like the cold
Cold from the Kuzbass…
Cold from the Kuzbass…

Man, I haven’t blogged in forever. I think about it too much. One shouldn’t think, one should just blog. Blog’s aren’t formal.

Do you like the title? I was trying to think of something funny or cute since while everyone was debating whether this iteration would be called “iPad 3″ or “iPad HD” Apple decided not to call it anything!
Apparently this represents symbolically that the iPad has entered into the “Post PC” era. Regular computers such as MacBooks aren’t given special names with each new generation, they simply “just are” and simply have upgrades or “refreshes”
every so often. This symbolizes that the iPad, and more generally, the paradigm it represents: Mobile, Intimacy, has reached a point in the amount of power that it has, to do most of the tasks that we “ordinary” people do in our normal “everyday” world:
Edit photos, word process, browse the net, even some simple video editing.

This new iPad certainly is a horse: double the screen resolution, double the processing and graphics. Apparently the screen is so beautiful that it looks better than a photo print. One for a second just imagines a day when reality just sort of leaps out of such a screen.
Every nerds dream. And if John Wheeler’s “It from Bit” physical paradigm turns out to be true, such a wild fantasy may not be as “far out” as one would expect.

The beauty of the piece, everything Apple makes is not only more functional, intimate, and ‘warm” than others, but also an “object of beauty” will sell itself. Everyone who is into technology drools when they walk into an Apple store. Which begs the question, is Apple a Pornographer?
Maybe. True art, according to Aquinas, isn’t supposed to move you to desire, nor fear. But rather put you into a state of Aesthetic Arrest. Which you know, Apple does that too. So maybe it is true art and not Pornography.

I still can’t believe that the amount of disk space hasn’t changed in two years. No component of computing has more price elasticity in ration to time as disk space. Technologically, disk space increases exponentially faster than even computing power itself, at least double every 12 months, yet this very iPad that came out
today has the same disk space options: 16gb, 32gb, 64gb as the original. That’s insane. Where am I supposed to keep all my downloaded movies, especially if they’re in HD? And all that HD video I’m shooting from the iPad itself.

But you’d be hard pressed to find one tech journalist pointing out this glaring omission. Someone on Google+ pointed out to me that maybe iCloud will take up the slack. Perhaps, but I still don’t know what iCloud is, how it works, or even what it’s supposed to do.

Meanwhile, the Google+ app on my iPhone simply uploads all my photos to the cloud without me every having to think about it.

Having said that, for all it’s minuses, the iPad is light years ahead of the competition on software, apps, interface and the X Factor of it making you feel safe and comforting. Apple’s whole eco system may be a prison, but it’s a safe “Country Club” prison.
Android may make you more free, but you feel less safe, as if you are risking having to live your life ‘out on the streets.’

The emotional factor, which seems like a dichotomy when applied to ‘computing’ cannot be over estimated. It’s leading Apple, currently as we speak, to be the most valuable company in the World, with about a billion dollars in after tax profits per week!
That’s utterly mind boggling. And with this release, they are only going to keep growing.

At the end of the day, even with all the things that annoy me about them, at least Apple, unlike say government contractors, are making their money the old fashioned way: They’re earning it.