Ashton Kutcher to play Steve Jobs in new US film

When I was still in a hesitate whether I should re-post this news.

I have chosen to do it, at the end.

This was a news which posted on 2nd April 2012, what makes me hesitate? Usually, I do post the very latest news, or, I wrote what I want to share thereupon.

At this time, I finally choose to re-post this “news” because I have aware that there are many people still missing Steve Jobs, like me, we do miss him, we love him, a still.

Ashton Kutcher to play Steve Jobs in new US film

Ashton Kutcher is to play Steve Jobs in a new independent film about the late Apple chief’s life, a spokeswoman for the “Two and a Half Men” actor said Monday.

“Jobs” will tell the story of his life from wayward hippie to co-founder of Apple and revered creative entrepreneur, according to industry daily Variety, whose report was confirmed as accurate by the spokeswoman.

Twitter trailblazer Kutcher, who recently split from actress Demi Moore, is attached to the project to be directed by Joshua Michael Stern based on a script by Matt Whiteley, it said.

Production is due to start in May while Kutcher is taking a break from “Two and a Half Men,” the hit TV series he joined last year after Charlie Sheen was sacked following a very public row with the producer.

Major studio Sony Pictures is also developing a movie about Jobs, based on the bestselling book by Walter Isaacson that was released after the Apple chief’s death last October.

Kutcher, 34, was best known for TV shows including “That 70s Show” and “Punk’d” before he replaced Sheen last May. He and Moore, both Twitter early adopters, announced their separation in November.

Refers: http://news.yahoo.com/ashton-kutcher-play-steve-jobs-us-film-182739887.html;_ylt=AlcNIThfhMdQ_EORktNznZQxVrIF;_ylu=X3oDMTQzMWt0Z285BG1pdANUb3BTdG9yeSBUZWNoU0YgQXBwbGVTU0YEcGtnA2U5NDcxYzRiLTE3OGUtMzc4Zi1hZjEwLTE5MmNjM2RjYjJlNQRwb3MDMjEEc2VjA3RvcF9zdG9yeQR2ZXIDYzc4ZmQ0MDAtN2NmMS0xMWUxLWE3ZmYtOTJmNjBkNGJkZTU3;_ylg=X3oDMTFrM25vcXFyBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdAMEcHQDc2VjdGlvbnMEdGVzdAM-;_ylv=3

Let's read a magazine

A touch to learn and discover with Timbuktu, first iPad magazine for kids

Learning, discovering… touching. There is a huge opportunity in the intersection between tablet computers and education: two young Italian entrepreneurs decided to explore it, launching Timbuktu, first News magazine for children on the iPad. Their mission is creating  editorial programs on touch screen for kids, for educators and parents too. Being next generation of educational publishing, using technologies as an instrument for imagination and discovery of the world.

“By 2015 we will have 40 titles plus the magazine in six languages, addressing also the Asian markets with a Chinese and a Japanese version” said Elena Favilli, journalist who studied at Bologna University and Uc Berkeley, Ceo of Timbuktu Labs and Editor in Chief of Timbuktu magazine, unveiling the opening of the iPad magazine on Japanese market in 2012.

Winner of the 2010 Working Capital Telecom Prize, start up competition sponsored by Telecom Italia,  Timbuktu Labs builds cross-platform reading experiences that bring the most advanced methods of education into the publishing market.

The today market of fifty millions tablets, 10 millions of which owned by people with kids, “Will become five times bigger in five years: this means a potential of 50 millions users”, said Francesca Cavallo, Creative Director and co-founder of Timbuktu, which has today users in more than 50 countries.

Timbuktu were among the finalists in the Start up competition at the Mind The Bridge Venture Camp last week in Milan. Where Favilli and Cavallo made an impressive pitch (some excerpts in the video above).

Ashton Kutcher's Tweet-Too-Soon and the Quality of Speed

The Penn State scandal left a lot of people blind sided, and no one more so than Ashton Kutcher. AsKashmir Hill describes in her ‘Google before you tweet’ post, Kutcher was tragically behind the news in a medium where, to quote a conversation I had with Forbes Chief Product Officer Lewis DVorkin, “Speed is Quality.”* Kutcher’s speed and immediacy has indeed been an important quality of his online success, since few genuine celebrities are willing to ride bareback as he has on Twitter.

The Penn State scandal left a lot of people blind sided, and no one more so than Ashton Kutcher. AsKashmir Hill describes in her ‘Google before you tweet’ post, Kutcher was tragically behind the news in a medium where, to quote a conversation I had with Forbes Chief Product Officer Lewis DVorkin, “Speed is Quality.”* Kutcher’s speed and immediacy has indeed been an important quality of his online success, since few genuine celebrities are willing to ride bareback as he has on Twitter.

But Kutcher’s quick retraction and promise to have his tweets vetted by his PR company didn’t salvage his reputation as much as slowing down a bit and reflecting (in public) on his need for speed would have. As online content producers, we’re all in this position of balancing our concern for propagation (now, now, now!) vs. persistance (and then, and then, and then…) Barring a takedown of the internet by Conficker, what you post or tweet will be with you forever. No question, the odds of something embarrassing surfacing in front of a potential employer, a curious electorate or future father-in-law can always be cut down by some prophylactic Googling. But slowing down is in itself a quality and one that can lead to better content, especially in its persistant form.

I’m a busy guy , and I don’t post as often or as immediately as I would like to. And though I sometimes feel like I’m letting the team down, many times I find that if I wait a beat something will emerge that gives me an original angle on something that I would have missed if I felt compelled to file immediately.

As a case in point, I write a blog for the City of Portland, Maine, calledLiveWork Portland that promotes the creative economy here to artists and entrepreneurs from away who might consider relocating to Portland. Last weekend I was covering a creative economy conference in Camden, Maine, called Juice 3.0. I wanted to write a post about what was distinctive about the creative entrepreneurs that I met at the conference and the kind of innovation culture that I see developing in Maine. Sure enough, a few days after the conference, The New Yorker shows up in my mailbox (yes, the physical magazine, not the app!) and Malcolm Gladwell has an article about Steve Jobsas a “tweaker.”

Gladwell’s point about Jobs is that his “sensibility was editorial, not inventive. His gift lay in taking what was in front of him … and ruthlessly refining it.” But even more important than his revisionist recasting of Jobs’ creative genius (still formidable) is his description of the origins of the Industrial Revolution in England:

One of the great puzzles of the industrial revolution is why it began in England. Why not France, or Germany? Many reasons have been offered. Britain had plentiful supplies of coal, for instance. It had a good patent system in place. It had relatively high labor costs, which encouraged the search for labor-saving innovations. In an article published earlier this year, however, the economists Ralf Meisenzahl and Joel Mokyr focus on a different explanation: the role of Britain’s human-capital advantage—in particular, on a group they call “tweakers.” They believe that Britain dominated the industrial revolution because it had a far larger population of skilled engineers and artisans than its competitors: resourceful and creative men who took the signature inventions of the industrial age and tweaked them—refined and perfected them, and made them work.

In 1779, Samuel Crompton, a retiring genius from Lancashire, invented the spinning mule, which made possible the mechanization of cotton manufacture. Yet England’s real advantage was that it had Henry Stones, of Horwich, who added metal rollers to the mule; and James Hargreaves, of Tottington, who figured out how to smooth the acceleration and deceleration of the spinning wheel; and William Kelly, of Glasgow, who worked out how to add water power to the draw stroke; and John Kennedy, of Manchester, who adapted the wheel to turn out fine counts; and, finally, Richard Roberts, also of Manchester, a master of precision machine tooling—and the tweaker’s tweaker. He created the “automatic” spinning mule: an exacting, high-speed, reliable rethinking of Crompton’s original creation. Such men, the economists argue, provided the “micro inventions necessary to make macro inventions highly productive and remunerative.”

And there I had it! That was my lead, that was my angle. What I had seen at the Juice conference was that the intersection of the creative economy and the innovation economy in Maine was being powered by a larger than average concentration of “tweakers.” What I have found in Portland and now in this network of innovation clusters spreading throughout the state is that kind of engineering of the possible that powered the Industrial Revolution and could well power the Post-Industrial one. And not only that. Just as I managed to get Ashton Kutcher into the headline and the lead of this post (quite organically, I think) I managed to get Steve Jobs into the LiveWork Portland post!

Paradoxically, learning to slow down can help you speed up when you need to. Years ago, I studied tai chi with the great William C.C. Chen, in New York. I was surprised to find out that many of Chen’s senior students were boxers and that the ultimate goal of this slow, peaceful, controlled movement was fighting. But sure enough, if you speed up those slow arm and leg movements you’ve got some dynamite punches and kicks at your disposal.

* See Lewis’s inaugural post at Forbes where he says , “In the ruckus of the online universe, quality is evolving. Right now, it’s more about timeliness.”

Stalked Steve Jobs - Christine Comaford

I Stalked Steve Jobs (And How To Get A Meeting With ANY VIP)

I was a young CEO and I needed answers. Steve Jobs had them. There was only one thing to do.
So I sent a FedEx letter.

Then I sent another.

Then I started calling.

Then I sent another FedEx, and called some more. Finally, after 7 FedExs and 12 phone calls, Steve’s assistant said he wanted to talk with me.

“You keep sending FedExs and calling. So let’s end it. What do you want?” Steve said, with his characteristic charm.

“Five minutes of your time. I really admire your accomplishments and as a young CEO I have a few questions no one else can answer.”

“Bring a timer.”

“I will. Oh—and thanks.”

He had already hung up.

My surface agenda was to get 5 minutes of advice, watch how Steve’s mind worked, bask in his brilliance, then have a breakthrough.

My subterranean agenda was to find hope again. It was the early 1990’s and I’d left my engineering post at Microsoft. I was depressed and wanted to know why we weren’t really changing the world as fast and as well as we could. Windows hadn’t deeply changed people, hadn’t deeply helped. Wasn’t technology supposed to do that? All I saw were the limitations of software, hardware, peripherals. I’d left feeling frustrated after years of 12-14 hour days pounding code that refused to become bug free.

Remember those chunky white metal kitchen timers from your childhood? The ones with the dial and the ticka ticka ticka sound and the “bing!” ringer? Two weeks later, timer in hand, I shaked Steve’s hand and set the dial for 5 minutes. We’re at a dark conference table at NeXT. He is slouching at the head of the table, to my right. Ticka ticka ticka.

I won’t bore you with the questions I asked, they were mere prompts to get Steve talking. What I do want you to know is that during this conversation, which was almost 18 years ago, Steve shared his vision of the future.

And it was glorious. He described a world where our computers were so seamlessly integrated into our lives that everything we needed was easily accessible. He described the iPod, iPad, iPhone nearly 2 decades before they hit the market. I watched how his brain moved—without limitation—from what might enhance a customer’s life, to what that would mean to them and how they would benefit, to how this would change the world.

He didn’t question that whatever he envisioned could, and would, be created. He didn’t agonize over whether current limitations would hold him back.

I could feel my brain expanding, it felt so big around Steve, so open and limitless. I was tracking him, following his twists, turns, expansions. I felt so smart around him, and it was glorious and freeing and…
Ticka ticka ticka ding! My five minutes was up. I rose to leave, bowing a little as I backed away.

“I’m not done with you yet. Sit down.”

And zoom! We were back in brain expansion mode immediately, flying into the future, the wind blowing our hair, everything possible, everything important. And we needed to create it. It was our destiny.

Forty five minutes later Steve released me. Sitting in my overheated car in the sunny Redwood City parking lot, my head bursting with the remarkable, complex, complete vision of Steve Jobs in my head, I made a commitment.

I would no longer see barricades. Stumbling blocks would now be seen as stepping stones to something better, or something to crawl over or walk around. Previous limitations would now be a mere triviality, at worst a slight inconvenience. There were insanely great things to create and we were here to create them and that’s all there was to it. All thoughts to the contrary were irrelevant.

advantages and disadvantages

NUTS: Apple Faces IPhone Glitches, Google Comforts Android Partners

Apple tried to fix its iPhone 4S problems but may have made them worse, while Google reassured handset makers it will keep fighting for Android.

News Under the Sun is a weekly column rounding up all the events on in the mobile industry. Want the news but don’t want it every day? Subscribe to our weekly Facebook or Twitter page.

Apple Addresses iPhone Problems

Apple released an iOS 5 update to address numerous complaints about iPhone 4S battery drainage and bugs in iCloud documents.

The upgrade is available for all iPad and iPhone models from 3GS onward. However, users said the update isn’t working, and may be making the problems worse.

A researcher also discovered a pivotal flaw in Apple’s iOS software that allows mobile apps to download new commands from a remote computer. There are no signs hackers have taken advantage of the flaw, but the company is working to fix the problem.

Another iPhone 4S glitch mutes outgoing calls, affecting all three major U.S. carriers and adding to the growing number of glitches Apple’s newest device is experiencing. IPhone 4S users complained of a yellow tinge on some screens and Siri outages as well.

Apple is working on a fix for its auto-correct feature in the iMessage app, which users have complained about since its 2007 release. The fix unveils a “suggestions bar” with several options for correcting text.

In spite of these problems, Consumer Reports Tuesday said it officially recommends the iPhone 4S, granting Apple’s device a highly coveted approval.

Apple said it has “no plans” to release Siri on older devices, preferring to keep the voice-activated assistant exclusive to the iPhone 4S. Apple fans who want the company’s latest gadget will have to buy the newest device in order to get it, keeping demand for the 4S high.

In addition, Apple is giving iPhone 4S shipment priority to its own retail stores. Device sales continue to surge, but Apple’s U.S. carrier partners are seeing less frequent shipments as the company wrestles with the logistics of meeting demand.

With the device’s popularity soaring, Apple is now selling unlocked versions of the iPhone 4S, which allow customers to jump between carriers without being tied to a contract.

Person of the Year

I believe that nobody will disagree with Steve Jobs is the “Person of the Year” in 2011. Since he was a great inventor, many great and convenience devices to turn up because of him.


He has managed and leading up the whole Apple ran out of the sinking business, therefore, we glad for Mr. Jobs’ willpower and hard working to hold on straight until the very last moment before he passed away, and even he has well prepared how does Apple going for the next couple of years.

Steve Jobs, he not only changed the world, but “gave us that spirit again that something was possible.”


If chosen, Jobs would be the first person to receive the award posthumously. Does he deserve it?To say that Jobs “‘changed the world’ isn’t hyperbole?”  I can say, “Certainly, he did it!!”  It’s nearly impossible to imagine [the world] without a personal computing!

According to Walter Isaacson’s bio, Jobs thought he would win in 1982 for his work on the Macintosh. Instead, the award went to “the computer” as “‘Machine’ of the Year,” and TIME wrote a negative profile of Jobs that left the tech titan in tears. Now, almost 30 years later, it’s time he finally won.

“Will Steve Jobs be TIME’s next Person of the Year?”

I wanna have one

Steve Jobs book jumps to top of bestseller lists

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Walter Isaacson's biography of Apple Inc co-founder Steve Jobs leapt to the top of bestseller lists in its first week in book stores, flying off shelves to the tune of 379,000 copies, according to Nielsen's BookScan.

"Steve Jobs," which came out on October 24 from publisher Simon & Schuster, sold three times more copies than the next-bestselling book, John Grisham's "The Litigators."

In its first week alone the book became one of the year's 20 bestsellers.

It has been a year since any book has sold more copies in its first week. Both former President George W. Bush's autobiography, "Decision Points," and Jeff Kinney's "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth," sold more than 400,000 copies in their first week last November.

Jobs died on October 5 of pancreatic cancer, age 56. The publication of Isaacson' book, which was written with Jobs' cooperation, was moved up from the original 2012 date.

The 571-page volume was released on Apple's iBooks online store and Amazon's Kindle the day before it hit stores. Amazon later said it expected the book to be its top seller of the year. Sony has already picked up film rights to the book.

http://news.yahoo.com/steve-jobs-book-jumps-top-bestseller-lists-215658892.html