Take part in a world first by trying out a completely new experience in the hotel room of the future. Created and brought to life
by Novotel and Microsoft, the room of the future packs the best
of new technologies into an outside-of-the-box architectural concept.
Last September, Denis Hennequin announced Accor's new strategic objective to become the global benchmark in hotels and revolutionize the customer experience. In line with this commitment to innovation, Novotel is offering a new type of room that makes a clean break with traditional hotel thinking by redefining the use of space and adding cutting edge technologies and amenities.
"We wanted to reinvent the hotel room experience by harmoniously melding design and new digital technologies," explains Grégoire Champetier Global Chief Marketing Officer. "It's crucial to take our customers' changing habits and expectations into account. In particular, this means re-thinking our rooms in digital terms.
Guests can try out this revolutionary, yet perfectly realistic experience in the pilot room for the next three months. All of the equipment is fully functional and could be deployed throughout the Novotel network in the near future. Microsoft was at the center of the room's design, notably with the integration of the Xbox 360 console and its revolutionary Kinect sensor, which uses body gesture and voice recognition to control games and entertainment. This partnership between Novotel and Microsoft is the logical next step in a relationship that began four years ago when Novotel started offering Xbox 360 consoles in the public areas of its hotels.
"In the era of technological convergence, Microsoft is as always front and center," says Eric Boustouller, CEO of Microsoft France. "In our partnership with Novotel, we are taking this innovative room concept to a higher level with our best tech- nologies. This new-generation room is an invitation to discover the latest advances in consumer technologies in a creative universe with a unique design.
Discover the unique ambiance of Room 3120 as you walk into the entrance, designed to serve as a decompression chamber between the outside world and a spacious sensorial environment filled with ingenious practical features and interactive technology that surrounds you without being overwhelming.
"We wanted to do something fresh, surprising and imaginative that would unleash people's energy," explains Marcelo Joulia, head of Nao, the architecture firm chosen by Novotel to design Room 3120. "We started by re-thinking the basic space, which meant leaving the stuffy old cube behind. We also worked with light and found ways to keep the furniture from being in the way. Multifunctional, flexible and unhindered, Room 3120 adapts to the guest's desires, not vice-versa.
Although the innovative nature of the experiences available in Room 3120 may be surprising, they are extremely intuitive and ergonomic. The features are also designed for families, so they can play, surf or be entertained simply and easily.
It will only take you a few seconds to get used to the Kinect interface and take command of the Xbox 360 console. You can also try out the brand new Sensorit mirror, also based on Kinect technology, where information tags seem to appear by magic, or turn on the fitness interface. Want to play with the kids? The Surface multimedia table offers numerous pos- sibilities for two more players.
There's plenty for the grown-ups too, with fingertip access to a wide range of multimedia content, as well as music and news. Radio station NOVA (Le Grand Mix) and BFM Business, France's leading business and financial news media, have chosen to partner the Room 3120 project, which makes a point of providing rapid access to world news.
2011年11月17日星期四
2011年10月25日星期二
What Does The Bonus Army Tell Us About Occupy Wall Street?
They called themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force, or the Bonus Army or Bonus Marchers for short, and in 1932 they set-up semi-permanent encampments in Washington D.C. Nearly 80 years later, people are occupying Wall Street, and many, many other places around the country. And as loud as the shouts of deliberate mass media ignorance were a month ago, the Occupy movement is not all over everything, and it’s as difficult to avoid coverage now as it was to find it then. It seems to be a unique construct, a product of now—nonviolent, persistent and inchoate in the sense of there's too much to say (rather than not being able to say it). But they're walking in someone else’s footprints, whether they know it or not.
Comparisons of Occupy Wall Street to the Bonus Army are not entirely new; mentions have been made in the past month (and more recently by Frank Rich in his piece looking at the new Class War), and rightfully so. In fact, efforts to parse Occupy Wall Street by historical comparison are a new cottage industry. Correlations with the Tea Party (both of them) are popular, based purely on the putative populist nature of each, and echoes of the war protests of the '60s do pop up as well.
No one is suggesting that a wormhole opened up and pulled a historical event straight into modern times, or that, say, a magic shoe was found and worn by an Occupy Wall Street organizer, filling him or her with the channeled knowledge of Eugene Debs manifesting itself in the form of a well-managed listserv. I just recommend that a comparison the Bonus Army is apt, because in 1932, what they did basically was Occupy D.C.
The arrival of the Bonus Army was quite dramatic. They came from all over the country. Some of them just picked up stakes and brought the family with them, figuring there was nothing left to come back to. They made their way, some in groups, some one by one. More fortunate America helped them along: road and bridge tolls were waived, and the travelers weren’t rousted like the everyday forgotten man. When they reached D.C., they set up camps, tents when they could, or shanties cobbled together from tarpaper and scrap wood and whatever they could scrounge.
Occupy Wall Street is somewhat more diffuse in its goals, and more in line with the 18th century events that Hogeland writes about. Though, to be fair, Occupy Wall Street has been very, very vague (and purposefully so) as to what they’re looking for. I asked Hogeland if that was in any way unique, from an historical perspective: “The absence of articulated demands on the part of OWS may be unique or at least highly unusual in American economic-related protest. The 19th-century Populists demanded specific, radical legislation to benefit ordinary people. The Whiskey Rebels wanted fair taxation. The Shaysites wanted fair taxation and debt relief. And they said so.”
Maybe it's spurious to compare the circumstances of the two: then, the occupiers were veterans, crushed by the circumstances of the Great Depression, moved to uproot their lives in hopes of a very real result, and now, a melange of the generally dispossessed, moved by frustration over a financial system suspected to be rigged. There are similarities, so maybe not as spurious as it is too tenuous to avoid refutation.
The two movements shared an analogous backdrop. Just as Occupy Wall Street unfolds in the shadow of the fiscal crisis of 2008 and the Great Recession that followed, the Bonus Army congregated in the full bloom of the Great Depression. Without the downturn, neither protest actually could have happened. There was even a specific federal program that inflamed each: instead of the TARP program that doled out free taxpayer money to financial institutions recently, Hoover had established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, an entity to save the large banks and railroads through government loans, just months before the Bonus Army declared their march. So both the Bonus Army and Occupy Wall Street were set into motion in response to almost deliberately provocative federal policy, and the economic horror show that necessitated it.
Try to imagine that speech given in small bites, repeated in waves throughout an Occupy Wall Street general assembly, and it wouldn’t be out of place at all, would it? (And some not-bad advice to boot.)
And there is one trait that, of the major American protests, is shared only by Occupy Wall Street and the Bonus Army, that of a population, moved by varying degrees of perceived unfairness, to make not just a statement but to erect a semi-permanent edifice, to occupy. Not a march, not a riot, not a long-term picketing effort, but people uprooting themselves and planting themselves in a temporary autonomous zone, in the interest of making a point. Occupy Wall Street has Zuccotti Park, and the Bonus Army set themselves up primarily Anacostia Flats, across the river to the southeast from the Capitol in a bit of land within the skewed cube of the D.C. city limits that would otherwise be Maryland.
To be fair, while they both share occupation as a tactic, Occupy Wall Street is using it to address the ineffability of its goal in a way that did not confront the Bonus Army—not just a squishiniess in targeting, but the conundrum of possible tangible results. Says Hogeland, “Sitting at a white's-only lunch counter deliberately breaks the precise law you want ended, and it calls the world's attention to the law's immorality; arrests dramatically underscore all that. Civil disobedience doesn't work when there's no law for protesters to deliberately break in hopes of getting it ended.” Setting up a camp, attracting attention, is a different creature than civil disobedience, and is more like the polite but insistent refusal to not be paid attention to. The Bonus Army was ready to leave once they got their bonuses. It's as if once Occupy Wall Street stops occupying Wall Street, they will lose cohesion and purpose, as Occupy Wall Street will be ready to leave when, well… I guess we don’t know when they’ll be ready to leave, or what the outcome will be (barring further drum circle controversies). That will be one for waiting.
Comparisons of Occupy Wall Street to the Bonus Army are not entirely new; mentions have been made in the past month (and more recently by Frank Rich in his piece looking at the new Class War), and rightfully so. In fact, efforts to parse Occupy Wall Street by historical comparison are a new cottage industry. Correlations with the Tea Party (both of them) are popular, based purely on the putative populist nature of each, and echoes of the war protests of the '60s do pop up as well.
No one is suggesting that a wormhole opened up and pulled a historical event straight into modern times, or that, say, a magic shoe was found and worn by an Occupy Wall Street organizer, filling him or her with the channeled knowledge of Eugene Debs manifesting itself in the form of a well-managed listserv. I just recommend that a comparison the Bonus Army is apt, because in 1932, what they did basically was Occupy D.C.
The arrival of the Bonus Army was quite dramatic. They came from all over the country. Some of them just picked up stakes and brought the family with them, figuring there was nothing left to come back to. They made their way, some in groups, some one by one. More fortunate America helped them along: road and bridge tolls were waived, and the travelers weren’t rousted like the everyday forgotten man. When they reached D.C., they set up camps, tents when they could, or shanties cobbled together from tarpaper and scrap wood and whatever they could scrounge.
Occupy Wall Street is somewhat more diffuse in its goals, and more in line with the 18th century events that Hogeland writes about. Though, to be fair, Occupy Wall Street has been very, very vague (and purposefully so) as to what they’re looking for. I asked Hogeland if that was in any way unique, from an historical perspective: “The absence of articulated demands on the part of OWS may be unique or at least highly unusual in American economic-related protest. The 19th-century Populists demanded specific, radical legislation to benefit ordinary people. The Whiskey Rebels wanted fair taxation. The Shaysites wanted fair taxation and debt relief. And they said so.”
Maybe it's spurious to compare the circumstances of the two: then, the occupiers were veterans, crushed by the circumstances of the Great Depression, moved to uproot their lives in hopes of a very real result, and now, a melange of the generally dispossessed, moved by frustration over a financial system suspected to be rigged. There are similarities, so maybe not as spurious as it is too tenuous to avoid refutation.
The two movements shared an analogous backdrop. Just as Occupy Wall Street unfolds in the shadow of the fiscal crisis of 2008 and the Great Recession that followed, the Bonus Army congregated in the full bloom of the Great Depression. Without the downturn, neither protest actually could have happened. There was even a specific federal program that inflamed each: instead of the TARP program that doled out free taxpayer money to financial institutions recently, Hoover had established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, an entity to save the large banks and railroads through government loans, just months before the Bonus Army declared their march. So both the Bonus Army and Occupy Wall Street were set into motion in response to almost deliberately provocative federal policy, and the economic horror show that necessitated it.
Try to imagine that speech given in small bites, repeated in waves throughout an Occupy Wall Street general assembly, and it wouldn’t be out of place at all, would it? (And some not-bad advice to boot.)
And there is one trait that, of the major American protests, is shared only by Occupy Wall Street and the Bonus Army, that of a population, moved by varying degrees of perceived unfairness, to make not just a statement but to erect a semi-permanent edifice, to occupy. Not a march, not a riot, not a long-term picketing effort, but people uprooting themselves and planting themselves in a temporary autonomous zone, in the interest of making a point. Occupy Wall Street has Zuccotti Park, and the Bonus Army set themselves up primarily Anacostia Flats, across the river to the southeast from the Capitol in a bit of land within the skewed cube of the D.C. city limits that would otherwise be Maryland.
To be fair, while they both share occupation as a tactic, Occupy Wall Street is using it to address the ineffability of its goal in a way that did not confront the Bonus Army—not just a squishiniess in targeting, but the conundrum of possible tangible results. Says Hogeland, “Sitting at a white's-only lunch counter deliberately breaks the precise law you want ended, and it calls the world's attention to the law's immorality; arrests dramatically underscore all that. Civil disobedience doesn't work when there's no law for protesters to deliberately break in hopes of getting it ended.” Setting up a camp, attracting attention, is a different creature than civil disobedience, and is more like the polite but insistent refusal to not be paid attention to. The Bonus Army was ready to leave once they got their bonuses. It's as if once Occupy Wall Street stops occupying Wall Street, they will lose cohesion and purpose, as Occupy Wall Street will be ready to leave when, well… I guess we don’t know when they’ll be ready to leave, or what the outcome will be (barring further drum circle controversies). That will be one for waiting.
2011年10月7日星期五
Steve Jobs told us what we needed before we knew
Steve Jobs saw the future and led the world to it. He moved technology from garages to pockets, took entertainment from discs to bytes and turned gadgets into extensions of the people who use them.
Jobs, who founded and ran Apple, told us what we needed before we wanted it.
"To some people, this is like Elvis Presley or John Lennon. It's a change in our times. It's the end of an era," said Scott Robbins, 34, a barber and an Apple fan. "It's like the end of the innovators."
Apple announced his death without giving a specific cause. He died peacefully on Wednesday, according to a statement from family members who were present. He was 56.
"Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives," Apple's board said in a statement. "The world is immeasurably better because of Steve."
President Barack Obama said in a statement that Jobs "exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity."
"Steve was among the greatest of American innovators -- brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world and talented enough to do it," he said.
Jobs had battled cancer in 2004 and underwent a liver transplant in 2009 after taking a leave of absence for unspecified health problems. He took another leave of absence in January -- his third since his health problems began -- and resigned in August. Jobs became Apple's chairman and handed the CEO job over to his hand-picked successor, Tim Cook.
Outside Apple's Cupertino headquarters, three flags -- an American flag, a California state flag and an Apple flag -- were flying at half-staff late Wednesday.
"Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor." Cook wrote in an email to Apple's employees. "Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple."
The news Apple fans and shareholders had been dreading came the day after Apple unveiled its latest iPhone, a device that got a lukewarm reception. Perhaps, there would have been more excitement had Jobs been well enough to show it off with his trademark theatrics.
Jobs started Apple with a high school friend in a Silicon Valley garage in 1976, was forced out a decade later and returned in 1997 to rescue the company. During his second stint, it grew into the most valuable technology company in the world with a market value of $351 billion. Almost all that wealth has been created since Jobs' return.
Cultivating Apple's countercultural sensibility and a minimalist design ethic, Jobs rolled out one sensational product after another, even in the face of the late-2000s recession and his own failing health.
He helped change computers from a geeky hobbyist's obsession to a necessity of modern life at work and home, and in the process he upended not just personal technology but the cellphone and music industries.
For transformation of American industry, he has few rivals. He has long been linked to his personal computer-age contemporary, Bill Gates, and has drawn comparisons to other creative geniuses such as Walt Disney. Jobs died as Walt Disney Co.'s largest shareholder, a by-product of his decision to sell computer animation studio Pixar in 2006.
Perhaps most influentially, Jobs in 2001 launched the iPod, which offered "1,000 songs in your pocket." Over the next 10 years, its white earphones and thumb-dial control seemed to become more ubiquitous than the wristwatch.
In 2007 came the touch-screen iPhone, joined a year later by Apple's App Store, where developers could sell iPhone "apps" which made the phone a device not just for making calls but also for managing money, editing photos, playing games and social networking. And in 2010, Jobs introduced the iPad, a tablet-sized, all-touch computer that took off even though market analysts said no one really needed one.
By 2011, Apple had become the second-largest company of any kind in the United States by market value. In August, it briefly surpassed Exxon Mobil as the most valuable company.
Under Jobs, the company cloaked itself in secrecy to build frenzied anticipation for each of its new products. Jobs himself had a wizardly sense of what his customers wanted, and where demand didn't exist, he leveraged a cult-like following to create it.
When he spoke at Apple presentations, almost always in faded blue jeans, sneakers and a black mock turtleneck, legions of Apple acolytes listened to every word. He often boasted about Apple successes, then coyly added a coda - "one more thing" -- before introducing its latest ambitious idea.
In later years, Apple investors also watched these appearances for clues about his health. Jobs revealed in 2004 that he had been diagnosed with a very rare form of pancreatic cancer -- an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. He underwent surgery and said he had been cured. In 2009, following weight loss he initially attributed to a hormonal imbalance, he abruptly took a six-month leave. During that time, he received a liver transplant that became public two months after it was performed.
He went on another medical leave in January 2011, this time for an unspecified duration. He never went back and resigned as CEO in August, though he stayed on as chairman. Consistent with his penchant for secrecy, he didn't reference his illness in his resignation letter.
Steven Paul Jobs was born Feb. 24, 1955, in San Francisco to Joanne Simpson, then an unmarried graduate student, and Abdulfattah Jandali, a student from Syria. Simpson gave Jobs up for adoption, though she married Jandali and a few years later had a second child with him, Mona Simpson, who became a novelist.
Steven was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs of Los Altos, California, a working-class couple who nurtured his early interest in electronics. He saw his first computer terminal at NASA's Ames Research Center when he was around 11 and landed a summer job at Hewlett-Packard before he had finished high school.
Jobs enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Ore., in 1972 but dropped out after six months.
"All of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it," he said at a Stanford University commencement address in 2005. "I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out."
When he returned to California in 1974, Jobs worked for video game maker Atari and attended meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club - a group of computer hobbyists - with Steve Wozniak, a high school friend who was a few years older.
Wozniak's homemade computer drew attention from other enthusiasts, but Jobs saw its potential far beyond the geeky hobbyists of the time. The pair started Apple Computer Inc. in Jobs' parents' garage in 1976. According to Wozniak, Jobs suggested the name after visiting an "apple orchard" that Wozniak said was actually a commune.
Their first creation was the Apple I -- essentially, the guts of a computer without a case, keyboard or monitor.
The Apple II, which hit the market in 1977, was their first machine for the masses. It became so popular that Jobs was worth $100 million by age 25.
During a 1979 visit to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Jobs again spotted mass potential in a niche invention: a computer that allowed people to control computers with the click of a mouse, not typed commands. He returned to Apple and ordered his engineering team to copy what he had seen.
It foreshadowed a propensity to take other people's concepts, improve on them and spin them into wildly successful products. Under Jobs, Apple didn't invent computers, digital music players or smartphones - it reinvented them for people who didn't want to learn computer programming or negotiate the technical hassles of keeping their gadgets working.
"We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas," Jobs said in an interview for the 1996 PBS series "Triumph of the Nerds."
The engineers responded with two computers. The pricier Lisa - the same name as his daughter - launched to a cool reception in 1983. The less-expensive Macintosh, named for an employee's favorite apple, exploded onto the scene in 1984.
The Mac was heralded by an epic Super Bowl commercial that referenced George Orwell's "1984" and captured Apple's iconoclastic style. In the ad, expressionless drones marched through dark halls to an auditorium where a Big Brother-like figure lectures on a big screen. A woman in a bright track uniform burst into the hall and launched a hammer into the screen, which exploded, stunning the drones, as a narrator announced the arrival of the Mac.
There were early stumbles at Apple. Jobs clashed with colleagues and even the CEO he had hired away from Pepsi, John Sculley. And after an initial spike, Mac sales slowed, in part because few programs had been written for it.
With Apple's stock price sinking, conflicts between Jobs and Sculley mounted. Sculley won over the board in 1985 and pushed Jobs out of his day-to-day role leading the Macintosh team. Jobs resigned his post as chairman of the board and left Apple within months.
"What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating," Jobs said in his Stanford speech. "I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."
He got into two other companies: Next, a computer maker, and Pixar, a computer-animation studio that he bought from George Lucas for $10 million.
Pixar, ultimately the more successful venture, seemed at first a bottomless money pit. Then in 1995 came "Toy Story," the first computer-animated full-length feature. Jobs used its success to negotiate a sweeter deal with Disney for Pixar's next two films, "A Bug's Life" and "Toy Story 2." Jobs sold Pixar to The Walt Disney Co. for $7.4 billion in stock in a deal that got him a seat on Disney's board and 138 million shares of stock that accounted for most of his fortune. Forbes magazine estimated Jobs was worth $7 billion in a survey last month.
With Next, Jobs came up with a cube-shaped computer. He was said to be obsessive about the tiniest details, insisting on design perfection even for the machine's guts. The machine cost a pricey $6,500 to $10,000, and he never managed to spark much demand for it.
Ultimately, he shifted the focus to software -- a move that paid off later when Apple bought Next for its operating system technology, the basis for the software still used in Mac computers.
By 1996, when Apple bought Next, Apple was in dire financial straits. It had lost more than $800 million in a year, dragged its heels in licensing Mac software for other computers and surrendered most of its market share to PCs that ran Windows.
Larry Ellison, Jobs' close friend and fellow Silicon Valley billionaire and the CEO of Oracle Corp., publicly contemplated buying Apple in early 1997 and ousting its leadership. The idea fizzled, but Jobs stepped in as interim chief later that year.
He slashed unprofitable projects, narrowed the company's focus and presided over a new marketing push to set the Mac apart from Windows, starting with a campaign encouraging computer users to "Think different."
Apple's first new product under his direction, the brightly colored, plastic iMac, launched in 1998 and sold about 2 million in its first year. Apple returned to profitability that year. Jobs dropped the "interim" from his title in 2000.
He changed his style, too, said Tim Bajarin, who met Jobs several times while covering the company for Creative Strategies.
"In the early days, he was in charge of every detail. The only way you could say it is, he was kind of a control freak," he said. In his second stint, "he clearly was much more mellow and more mature."
In the decade that followed, Jobs kept Apple profitable while pushing out an impressive roster of new products.
Apple's popularity exploded in the 2000s. The iPod, smaller and sleeker with each generation, introduced many lifelong Windows users to their first Apple gadget.
The arrival of the iTunes music store in 2003 gave people a convenient way to buy music legally online, song by song. For the music industry, it was a mixed blessing. The industry got a way to reach Internet-savvy people who, in the age of Napster, were growing accustomed to downloading music free. But online sales also hastened the demise of CDs and established Apple as a gatekeeper, resulting in battles between Jobs and music executives over pricing and other issues.
Jobs' command over gadget lovers and pop culture swelled to the point that, on the eve of the iPhone's launch in 2007, faithful followers slept on sidewalks outside posh Apple stores for the chance to buy one. Three years later, at the iPad's debut, the lines snaked around blocks and out through parking lots, even though people had the option to order one in advance.
The decade was not without its glitches. In the mid-2000s, Apple was swept up in a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry into stock options backdating, a practice that artificially raised the value of options grants. But Jobs and Apple emerged unscathed after two former executives took the fall and eventually settled with the SEC.
Jobs' personal ethos -- a natural food lover who embraced Buddhism and New Age philosophy -- was closely linked to the public persona he shaped for Apple. Apple itself became a statement against the commoditization of technology -- a cynical view, to be sure, from a company whose computers can cost three or more times as much as those of its rivals.
For technology lovers, buying Apple products has meant gaining entrance to an exclusive club. At the top was a complicated and contradictory figure who was endlessly fascinating -- even to his detractors, of which Jobs had many. Jobs was a hero to techno-geeks and a villain to partners he bullied and to workers whose projects he unceremoniously killed or claimed as his own.
Unauthorized biographer Alan Deutschman described him as "deeply moody and maddeningly erratic." In his personal life, Jobs denied for two years that he was the father of Lisa, the baby born to his longtime girlfriend Chrisann Brennan in 1978.
Few seemed immune to Jobs' charisma and will. He could adeptly convince those in his presence of just about anything - even if they disagreed again when he left the room and his magic wore off.
"He always has an aura around his persona," said Bajarin, who met Jobs several times while covering the company for more than 20 years as a Creative Strategies analyst. "When you talk to him, you know you're really talking to a brilliant mind."
But Bajarin also remembers Jobs lashing out with profanity at an employee who interrupted their meeting. Jobs, the perfectionist, demanded greatness from everyone at Apple.
Jobs valued his privacy, but some details of his romantic and family life have been uncovered. In the early 1980s, Jobs dated the folk singer Joan Baez, according to Deutschman.
In 1989, Jobs spoke at Stanford's graduate business school and met his wife, Laurene Powell, who was then a student. When she became pregnant, Jobs at first refused to marry her. It was a near-repeat of what had happened more than a decade earlier with then-girlfriend Brennan, Deutschman said, but eventually Jobs relented.
Jobs, who founded and ran Apple, told us what we needed before we wanted it.
"To some people, this is like Elvis Presley or John Lennon. It's a change in our times. It's the end of an era," said Scott Robbins, 34, a barber and an Apple fan. "It's like the end of the innovators."
Apple announced his death without giving a specific cause. He died peacefully on Wednesday, according to a statement from family members who were present. He was 56.
"Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives," Apple's board said in a statement. "The world is immeasurably better because of Steve."
President Barack Obama said in a statement that Jobs "exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity."
"Steve was among the greatest of American innovators -- brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world and talented enough to do it," he said.
Jobs had battled cancer in 2004 and underwent a liver transplant in 2009 after taking a leave of absence for unspecified health problems. He took another leave of absence in January -- his third since his health problems began -- and resigned in August. Jobs became Apple's chairman and handed the CEO job over to his hand-picked successor, Tim Cook.
Outside Apple's Cupertino headquarters, three flags -- an American flag, a California state flag and an Apple flag -- were flying at half-staff late Wednesday.
"Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor." Cook wrote in an email to Apple's employees. "Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple."
The news Apple fans and shareholders had been dreading came the day after Apple unveiled its latest iPhone, a device that got a lukewarm reception. Perhaps, there would have been more excitement had Jobs been well enough to show it off with his trademark theatrics.
Jobs started Apple with a high school friend in a Silicon Valley garage in 1976, was forced out a decade later and returned in 1997 to rescue the company. During his second stint, it grew into the most valuable technology company in the world with a market value of $351 billion. Almost all that wealth has been created since Jobs' return.
Cultivating Apple's countercultural sensibility and a minimalist design ethic, Jobs rolled out one sensational product after another, even in the face of the late-2000s recession and his own failing health.
He helped change computers from a geeky hobbyist's obsession to a necessity of modern life at work and home, and in the process he upended not just personal technology but the cellphone and music industries.
For transformation of American industry, he has few rivals. He has long been linked to his personal computer-age contemporary, Bill Gates, and has drawn comparisons to other creative geniuses such as Walt Disney. Jobs died as Walt Disney Co.'s largest shareholder, a by-product of his decision to sell computer animation studio Pixar in 2006.
Perhaps most influentially, Jobs in 2001 launched the iPod, which offered "1,000 songs in your pocket." Over the next 10 years, its white earphones and thumb-dial control seemed to become more ubiquitous than the wristwatch.
In 2007 came the touch-screen iPhone, joined a year later by Apple's App Store, where developers could sell iPhone "apps" which made the phone a device not just for making calls but also for managing money, editing photos, playing games and social networking. And in 2010, Jobs introduced the iPad, a tablet-sized, all-touch computer that took off even though market analysts said no one really needed one.
By 2011, Apple had become the second-largest company of any kind in the United States by market value. In August, it briefly surpassed Exxon Mobil as the most valuable company.
Under Jobs, the company cloaked itself in secrecy to build frenzied anticipation for each of its new products. Jobs himself had a wizardly sense of what his customers wanted, and where demand didn't exist, he leveraged a cult-like following to create it.
When he spoke at Apple presentations, almost always in faded blue jeans, sneakers and a black mock turtleneck, legions of Apple acolytes listened to every word. He often boasted about Apple successes, then coyly added a coda - "one more thing" -- before introducing its latest ambitious idea.
In later years, Apple investors also watched these appearances for clues about his health. Jobs revealed in 2004 that he had been diagnosed with a very rare form of pancreatic cancer -- an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. He underwent surgery and said he had been cured. In 2009, following weight loss he initially attributed to a hormonal imbalance, he abruptly took a six-month leave. During that time, he received a liver transplant that became public two months after it was performed.
He went on another medical leave in January 2011, this time for an unspecified duration. He never went back and resigned as CEO in August, though he stayed on as chairman. Consistent with his penchant for secrecy, he didn't reference his illness in his resignation letter.
Steven Paul Jobs was born Feb. 24, 1955, in San Francisco to Joanne Simpson, then an unmarried graduate student, and Abdulfattah Jandali, a student from Syria. Simpson gave Jobs up for adoption, though she married Jandali and a few years later had a second child with him, Mona Simpson, who became a novelist.
Steven was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs of Los Altos, California, a working-class couple who nurtured his early interest in electronics. He saw his first computer terminal at NASA's Ames Research Center when he was around 11 and landed a summer job at Hewlett-Packard before he had finished high school.
Jobs enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Ore., in 1972 but dropped out after six months.
"All of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it," he said at a Stanford University commencement address in 2005. "I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out."
When he returned to California in 1974, Jobs worked for video game maker Atari and attended meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club - a group of computer hobbyists - with Steve Wozniak, a high school friend who was a few years older.
Wozniak's homemade computer drew attention from other enthusiasts, but Jobs saw its potential far beyond the geeky hobbyists of the time. The pair started Apple Computer Inc. in Jobs' parents' garage in 1976. According to Wozniak, Jobs suggested the name after visiting an "apple orchard" that Wozniak said was actually a commune.
Their first creation was the Apple I -- essentially, the guts of a computer without a case, keyboard or monitor.
The Apple II, which hit the market in 1977, was their first machine for the masses. It became so popular that Jobs was worth $100 million by age 25.
During a 1979 visit to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Jobs again spotted mass potential in a niche invention: a computer that allowed people to control computers with the click of a mouse, not typed commands. He returned to Apple and ordered his engineering team to copy what he had seen.
It foreshadowed a propensity to take other people's concepts, improve on them and spin them into wildly successful products. Under Jobs, Apple didn't invent computers, digital music players or smartphones - it reinvented them for people who didn't want to learn computer programming or negotiate the technical hassles of keeping their gadgets working.
"We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas," Jobs said in an interview for the 1996 PBS series "Triumph of the Nerds."
The engineers responded with two computers. The pricier Lisa - the same name as his daughter - launched to a cool reception in 1983. The less-expensive Macintosh, named for an employee's favorite apple, exploded onto the scene in 1984.
The Mac was heralded by an epic Super Bowl commercial that referenced George Orwell's "1984" and captured Apple's iconoclastic style. In the ad, expressionless drones marched through dark halls to an auditorium where a Big Brother-like figure lectures on a big screen. A woman in a bright track uniform burst into the hall and launched a hammer into the screen, which exploded, stunning the drones, as a narrator announced the arrival of the Mac.
There were early stumbles at Apple. Jobs clashed with colleagues and even the CEO he had hired away from Pepsi, John Sculley. And after an initial spike, Mac sales slowed, in part because few programs had been written for it.
With Apple's stock price sinking, conflicts between Jobs and Sculley mounted. Sculley won over the board in 1985 and pushed Jobs out of his day-to-day role leading the Macintosh team. Jobs resigned his post as chairman of the board and left Apple within months.
"What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating," Jobs said in his Stanford speech. "I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."
He got into two other companies: Next, a computer maker, and Pixar, a computer-animation studio that he bought from George Lucas for $10 million.
Pixar, ultimately the more successful venture, seemed at first a bottomless money pit. Then in 1995 came "Toy Story," the first computer-animated full-length feature. Jobs used its success to negotiate a sweeter deal with Disney for Pixar's next two films, "A Bug's Life" and "Toy Story 2." Jobs sold Pixar to The Walt Disney Co. for $7.4 billion in stock in a deal that got him a seat on Disney's board and 138 million shares of stock that accounted for most of his fortune. Forbes magazine estimated Jobs was worth $7 billion in a survey last month.
With Next, Jobs came up with a cube-shaped computer. He was said to be obsessive about the tiniest details, insisting on design perfection even for the machine's guts. The machine cost a pricey $6,500 to $10,000, and he never managed to spark much demand for it.
Ultimately, he shifted the focus to software -- a move that paid off later when Apple bought Next for its operating system technology, the basis for the software still used in Mac computers.
By 1996, when Apple bought Next, Apple was in dire financial straits. It had lost more than $800 million in a year, dragged its heels in licensing Mac software for other computers and surrendered most of its market share to PCs that ran Windows.
Larry Ellison, Jobs' close friend and fellow Silicon Valley billionaire and the CEO of Oracle Corp., publicly contemplated buying Apple in early 1997 and ousting its leadership. The idea fizzled, but Jobs stepped in as interim chief later that year.
He slashed unprofitable projects, narrowed the company's focus and presided over a new marketing push to set the Mac apart from Windows, starting with a campaign encouraging computer users to "Think different."
Apple's first new product under his direction, the brightly colored, plastic iMac, launched in 1998 and sold about 2 million in its first year. Apple returned to profitability that year. Jobs dropped the "interim" from his title in 2000.
He changed his style, too, said Tim Bajarin, who met Jobs several times while covering the company for Creative Strategies.
"In the early days, he was in charge of every detail. The only way you could say it is, he was kind of a control freak," he said. In his second stint, "he clearly was much more mellow and more mature."
In the decade that followed, Jobs kept Apple profitable while pushing out an impressive roster of new products.
Apple's popularity exploded in the 2000s. The iPod, smaller and sleeker with each generation, introduced many lifelong Windows users to their first Apple gadget.
The arrival of the iTunes music store in 2003 gave people a convenient way to buy music legally online, song by song. For the music industry, it was a mixed blessing. The industry got a way to reach Internet-savvy people who, in the age of Napster, were growing accustomed to downloading music free. But online sales also hastened the demise of CDs and established Apple as a gatekeeper, resulting in battles between Jobs and music executives over pricing and other issues.
Jobs' command over gadget lovers and pop culture swelled to the point that, on the eve of the iPhone's launch in 2007, faithful followers slept on sidewalks outside posh Apple stores for the chance to buy one. Three years later, at the iPad's debut, the lines snaked around blocks and out through parking lots, even though people had the option to order one in advance.
The decade was not without its glitches. In the mid-2000s, Apple was swept up in a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry into stock options backdating, a practice that artificially raised the value of options grants. But Jobs and Apple emerged unscathed after two former executives took the fall and eventually settled with the SEC.
Jobs' personal ethos -- a natural food lover who embraced Buddhism and New Age philosophy -- was closely linked to the public persona he shaped for Apple. Apple itself became a statement against the commoditization of technology -- a cynical view, to be sure, from a company whose computers can cost three or more times as much as those of its rivals.
For technology lovers, buying Apple products has meant gaining entrance to an exclusive club. At the top was a complicated and contradictory figure who was endlessly fascinating -- even to his detractors, of which Jobs had many. Jobs was a hero to techno-geeks and a villain to partners he bullied and to workers whose projects he unceremoniously killed or claimed as his own.
Unauthorized biographer Alan Deutschman described him as "deeply moody and maddeningly erratic." In his personal life, Jobs denied for two years that he was the father of Lisa, the baby born to his longtime girlfriend Chrisann Brennan in 1978.
Few seemed immune to Jobs' charisma and will. He could adeptly convince those in his presence of just about anything - even if they disagreed again when he left the room and his magic wore off.
"He always has an aura around his persona," said Bajarin, who met Jobs several times while covering the company for more than 20 years as a Creative Strategies analyst. "When you talk to him, you know you're really talking to a brilliant mind."
But Bajarin also remembers Jobs lashing out with profanity at an employee who interrupted their meeting. Jobs, the perfectionist, demanded greatness from everyone at Apple.
Jobs valued his privacy, but some details of his romantic and family life have been uncovered. In the early 1980s, Jobs dated the folk singer Joan Baez, according to Deutschman.
In 1989, Jobs spoke at Stanford's graduate business school and met his wife, Laurene Powell, who was then a student. When she became pregnant, Jobs at first refused to marry her. It was a near-repeat of what had happened more than a decade earlier with then-girlfriend Brennan, Deutschman said, but eventually Jobs relented.
2011年6月22日星期三
From YouTube to White Cube, Ryan Trecartin Logs on at MOCA
Ryan Trecartin has been called the first YouTube art star. Rather than simply go online to see his hallucinatory flicks, it's a lot more fun to view the movies spooled together at the Museum of Contemporary Art , where videos, sets, and props for Trecartin's opus will be on display for "Any Ever." His four-hour-long, seven-movie epic video he produced in the Big Mango between 2009 and 2010 along with collaborator Lizzie Fitch opens at MOCA tomorrow.
Trecartin, who was in Miami for a Moore Space artist's residency program while helming his hallucinatory movies, was also assisted by scores of others including friends and artists with a handful of professional child actors tossed into his celluloid salad as well.
In fact, Trecartin's comet has flamed so bright recently, that after opening the same version of his upcoming Miami show last week at the Big Apple's P.S.1., The New Yorker's critic Peter Schjeldhal wrote the artist was being "hailed as the magus of the Internet century."
"Ryan's work is energetic and innovative. Working primarily with video, he creates humorous and intense narratives that push boundaries in regards to representation; people, places, and products blur and subjective voices are mixed with that of advertising and pop culture," explains Ruba Katrib, MOCA's associate curator who helped organize the Magic City exhibit.
A digital age progeny, Trecartin is known for strip-mining our media-saturated, over-merchandized culture to create garish imagery that not only assaults the peepers, but also distills the virtual cacophony of the Internet, reality TV and Twitter feeds with a schizzy, cheese ball squalor at times insalubrious and mesmerizing to behold.
He blurs and redefines signifiers of race, gender and sexuality, and the very notion of fixed identity, twisting language and images of consumer and popular culture to their breaking points.
But trust us it's a lot more fun to see the movies spooled together at MOCA where the sets and props for Trecartin's opus will also be on display rather than at home on your laptop.
"The entire exhibition space at MOCA has transformed into a quasi domestic and outdoor environment that are reminiscent of suburban lifestyles," Katrib says. "The key is that people can spend time watching the videos in the immersive environments created for the works. I think this is a great show for summer, beat the heat and really get to know Ryan's work," she adds.
This marks the first time "Any After" has been exhibited in its entirety in the Magic City which plays a big role in Trecartin's sensational, can't miss multi-narrative stories.
Trecartin, who was in Miami for a Moore Space artist's residency program while helming his hallucinatory movies, was also assisted by scores of others including friends and artists with a handful of professional child actors tossed into his celluloid salad as well.
In fact, Trecartin's comet has flamed so bright recently, that after opening the same version of his upcoming Miami show last week at the Big Apple's P.S.1., The New Yorker's critic Peter Schjeldhal wrote the artist was being "hailed as the magus of the Internet century."
"Ryan's work is energetic and innovative. Working primarily with video, he creates humorous and intense narratives that push boundaries in regards to representation; people, places, and products blur and subjective voices are mixed with that of advertising and pop culture," explains Ruba Katrib, MOCA's associate curator who helped organize the Magic City exhibit.
A digital age progeny, Trecartin is known for strip-mining our media-saturated, over-merchandized culture to create garish imagery that not only assaults the peepers, but also distills the virtual cacophony of the Internet, reality TV and Twitter feeds with a schizzy, cheese ball squalor at times insalubrious and mesmerizing to behold.
He blurs and redefines signifiers of race, gender and sexuality, and the very notion of fixed identity, twisting language and images of consumer and popular culture to their breaking points.
But trust us it's a lot more fun to see the movies spooled together at MOCA where the sets and props for Trecartin's opus will also be on display rather than at home on your laptop.
"The entire exhibition space at MOCA has transformed into a quasi domestic and outdoor environment that are reminiscent of suburban lifestyles," Katrib says. "The key is that people can spend time watching the videos in the immersive environments created for the works. I think this is a great show for summer, beat the heat and really get to know Ryan's work," she adds.
This marks the first time "Any After" has been exhibited in its entirety in the Magic City which plays a big role in Trecartin's sensational, can't miss multi-narrative stories.
2011年5月15日星期日
Cops to learn collaring white-collar criminals
MUMBAI: In a city with a big craze for fast cash, every day is fraught with the risk of people becoming victim to fraudulent investment schemes. Remember Aryarup Travel and Club Resort ? Aurum Realty? Yes Cube Infrastructure? The owners of all three are under investigation for soliciting investors with promises of astronomical returns, paying off old investors with money from new ones, and ultimately reneging on their deals.
Such schemes seem to recur with regularity. To prevent this, the economic offences wing (EOW) of the police will educate cops from the city's 90 police stations to investigate white-collar crime. "Police personnel are taught to detect crime during their training (at the time of joining the force). But the trend in crime is changing, with new strategies emerging everyday. To prevent fraud and scam, we need to educate police personnel about the modus operandi of such crime and investigating them," said a police officer who will be part of the EOW's training programme on May 25 and 26.
While the programme will focus on investment fraud, it will also touch upon bank, credit card and online transaction fraud, medical and jewellery scams, and education , housing and job rackets. The EOW has sought nominations from zonal deputy commissioners for the programme, which is expected to be attended by around 100 police officers.
"Most policemen don't know what an invoice , a bill or a hundi is. These are common terms, but they become a problem when complicated fraud is reported at police stations," the officer said. "Cops are used to cases like murder, dacoity and robbery . But when they are transferred from police stations to the EOW, they take three or four months to learn to investigate economic offences . If they are trained in advance , it will help save time, and help in the fast detection of crime and the filing of chargesheets."
The programme—to be organized by additional commissioner of police Sanjay Saxena—will also benefit cops not slated for an EOW posting. While the EOW investigates frauds where the amount is above Rs 50 lakh, police stations handle frauds up to that limit. But to deal with the cases , cops at the police stations often approach the EOW since they do not know how to investigate white-collar crime.
The economic offences wing (EOW) of the police has been provided with additional personnel to nab the directors of Aryarup Travel and Club Resort, suspected to have launched various fraudulent investment schemes. The EOW is on the lookout for Ravindra Deshmukh and his wife Vasuda. The fresh impetus in the case has been provided by the recent suicide of an Aryarup agent who had collected over Rs 5 crore in Goa and was under pressure from investors to pay up. The fraud came to light when a Mumbaibased businessman lodged a complaint with the EOW stating that Aryarup duped him of Rs 81 lakh with promises of fast money and handsome profits. "Senior officers have provided additional manpower to the investigating team to nab the suspects. More victims who lost money in the investment scheme are coming forward to lodge complaints," said a police officer. "The agent who committed suicide belonged to Latur. He ended his life when he realized he couldn't pay the investors back. A case has been registered with the Goa police."
The Deshmukhs floated several schemes in Gujarat, Haryana, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Maharashtra . Through Aryarup, they would lure people with a promise of 86% return on investment and commission if others were brought in. For a while, they kept their promise, but all of a sudden stopped making payments.
An EOW officer said Aryarup could have more than one lakh investors in the country, 15,000 being in Maharashtra, where the Deshmukhs started schemes in Mumbai , Navi Mumbai, Thane, Buldana, Nashik, Nanded, Parbhani, Jalgaon , Bhusawal, Pune and Latur.
In February, the EOW, acting on a court order, attached two Deshmukh-owned plots totalling 75 acres and worth Rs 12 crore. One, measuring 50 acres, was near the Jaipur airport and the other in Murbad.
Such schemes seem to recur with regularity. To prevent this, the economic offences wing (EOW) of the police will educate cops from the city's 90 police stations to investigate white-collar crime. "Police personnel are taught to detect crime during their training (at the time of joining the force). But the trend in crime is changing, with new strategies emerging everyday. To prevent fraud and scam, we need to educate police personnel about the modus operandi of such crime and investigating them," said a police officer who will be part of the EOW's training programme on May 25 and 26.
While the programme will focus on investment fraud, it will also touch upon bank, credit card and online transaction fraud, medical and jewellery scams, and education , housing and job rackets. The EOW has sought nominations from zonal deputy commissioners for the programme, which is expected to be attended by around 100 police officers.
"Most policemen don't know what an invoice , a bill or a hundi is. These are common terms, but they become a problem when complicated fraud is reported at police stations," the officer said. "Cops are used to cases like murder, dacoity and robbery . But when they are transferred from police stations to the EOW, they take three or four months to learn to investigate economic offences . If they are trained in advance , it will help save time, and help in the fast detection of crime and the filing of chargesheets."
The programme—to be organized by additional commissioner of police Sanjay Saxena—will also benefit cops not slated for an EOW posting. While the EOW investigates frauds where the amount is above Rs 50 lakh, police stations handle frauds up to that limit. But to deal with the cases , cops at the police stations often approach the EOW since they do not know how to investigate white-collar crime.
The economic offences wing (EOW) of the police has been provided with additional personnel to nab the directors of Aryarup Travel and Club Resort, suspected to have launched various fraudulent investment schemes. The EOW is on the lookout for Ravindra Deshmukh and his wife Vasuda. The fresh impetus in the case has been provided by the recent suicide of an Aryarup agent who had collected over Rs 5 crore in Goa and was under pressure from investors to pay up. The fraud came to light when a Mumbaibased businessman lodged a complaint with the EOW stating that Aryarup duped him of Rs 81 lakh with promises of fast money and handsome profits. "Senior officers have provided additional manpower to the investigating team to nab the suspects. More victims who lost money in the investment scheme are coming forward to lodge complaints," said a police officer. "The agent who committed suicide belonged to Latur. He ended his life when he realized he couldn't pay the investors back. A case has been registered with the Goa police."
The Deshmukhs floated several schemes in Gujarat, Haryana, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Maharashtra . Through Aryarup, they would lure people with a promise of 86% return on investment and commission if others were brought in. For a while, they kept their promise, but all of a sudden stopped making payments.
An EOW officer said Aryarup could have more than one lakh investors in the country, 15,000 being in Maharashtra, where the Deshmukhs started schemes in Mumbai , Navi Mumbai, Thane, Buldana, Nashik, Nanded, Parbhani, Jalgaon , Bhusawal, Pune and Latur.
In February, the EOW, acting on a court order, attached two Deshmukh-owned plots totalling 75 acres and worth Rs 12 crore. One, measuring 50 acres, was near the Jaipur airport and the other in Murbad.
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