Outsiders Archive

  • China has every right to be upset with Google right now

    China has every right to be upset with Google right now

    Posted on March 23, 2010 | No Comments
    Here's a story I simply do not understand. Yes, we all know that Google has pulled out of mainland China, choosing to redirect all Chinese traffic through its uncensored Hong Kong hub. What I don't understand is, what gives Google the right to flout a country's laws, no matter how "bad" they may seem? China doesn't want its citizens to read up on Tienanmen Square—and? I really don't think it's the place outsiders to tell China how to run itself. You wouldn't want Big China Corporation to build a factory in the middle of Texas, then demand that the state of Texas bend to its whims, would you?

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  • The End Of The CrunchPad

    The End Of The CrunchPad

    Posted on November 30, 2009 | No Comments
    It was so close I could taste it. Two weeks ago we were ready to publicly launch the CrunchPad. The device was stable enough for a demo. It went hours without crashing. We could even let people play with the device themselves – the user interface was intuitive enough that people “got it” without any instructions. And the look of pure joy on the handful of outsiders who had used it made the nearly 1.5 year effort completely worth it. Our plan was to debut the CrunchPad on stage at the Real-Time Crunchup event on November 20, a little over a week ago. We even hoped to have devices hacked together with Google Chrome OS and Windows 7 to show people that you could hack this thing to run just about anything you want. We’d put 1,000 of the devices on pre-sale and take orders immediately. Larger scale production would begin early in 2010. And then the entire project self destructed over nothing more than greed, jealousy and miscommunication.

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