1491 - Thought provoking history book

I'm a history buff. I recently finished reading Charles Mann's excellent history of the Americas prior to Columbus' arrival, 1491. This book lays out the information we've currently got about precolumbian civilizations, and it's both eye opening and very well-written. Like most Americans, I got my assumptions about this period when I was seven years old in elementary school around Thanksgiving. Those assumptions are almost certainly wrong. Some random facts I picked up in this book:

• a great anaysis of the political realities around the Indians that met the Pilgrims.
• a striking understanding that there were two waves of impressions of the Indians. The first, much less undestood, were when Europeans first arrived. The second, later wave of impressions were of a civilization that had been devastated by diseases brought by the first group of europeans.
• I had no idea just how dominated my impressions of early americas were dominated by the second wave. The disorganized, hunter-gatherer cultures were the scattered remnants of destroyed civilizations that lost up to 90% of their populations to Smallpox and other diseases.
• I didn't really know much about the Incas and other South American cultures; this filled me in.

Just a sampling; every page was fascinating. Very well written - worth the read if you're at all interested in history.

Unusually thoughtful review of the iPhone

from Cool Hunting. Insightful, too.

http://www.coolhunting.com/archives/2007/07/iphone_review_a.php

iPhone thoughts

Several folks have asked/written about my thoughts on the iPhone. Most of what I could say would be redundant with the zillions of gallons of digital ink already spilled. But here are a few thoughts, entirely my own and not my employer's....

• At this price, and with the service contract requirement, it's hard to see the iPhone itself impacting Zune this year. It's a completely different class of device, for a different set of use cases. Had Apple build a $149 iPod phone - an ipod that makes phone calls - things might have been different. Zune in 07 will still largely stand against the iPod line, and you won't see either of those until late summer.
• I loved the blather in the press and web - Blah blah no keyboard, blah blah too expensive, blah blah. Discussion about this iPod misses the important point that Apple is a smart company that will ship, learn, then ship again. If they keyboard really hurts them, they'll add one in v2. I'm especially amused by the press/blogger attention paid to software problems and UI glitches that Apple can update in the next 6 months. Apple's playing a long game here and the longer term is what matters.
• I was struck by how effectively Apple created the illusion of scarcity around the iPhone. The lines and the frenzy were in part driven by fear there wouldn't be enough supply - and in fact there was plenty (which was an accomplishment, given the doubts I'd heard about their ability to deliver even one by June 30). I sauntered into an Apple store here in Seattle and they had plenty on the second day. Pretty much every Cingular store here was out of stock, though, making me wonder how Cingular felt about the equity of unit distribution.
• I largely agree with Paul Thurrott that the iPhone is a great convergence device, but there are compromises with that convergence. I don't agree it's the greatest iPod ever (that's still the 2g Nano imo), nor is it the greatest Phone I've ever used (the HTC Smartflip), nor is it the greatest mobile email/text device I've ever used (the Dash). Apple has to live by the laws of physics, so they had to make compromises. But the iPhone clearly brings them all together with a great balance of compromises.
• I hope AT&T feels like they got a good deal out of this phone (they may given the buzz and sales numbers), because they gave up a huge amount. Apple pretty thoroughly owns the customer in this case - it's almost an MVNO - and all the services, branding, UI, etc.... Nobody is buying an iPhone because of the carrier (most press was negative about AT&T), and Apple gets to control the user to an unprecidented extent.
• The touch screen is, if nothing else, a great toy. The keyboard is...ok. Just ok, which is pretty good for a touchscreen keyboard, but if I were a big text user, I'd be unhappy.
• The iPhone is a really fun little gadget, and a nice piece of industrial design. Duh.

Posting with a soft keyboard

This (ahem) thing takes some getting used to, bit its not terrible.

Am struggling with editing though. Need select, copy, delete, etc.

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