A Visit To The Capitol—the dome of the Texas State Capitol never ceases to impress.

Taken with an iPhone if you can believe it.

I was laid off about three weeks ago, the second time in my career.  I’m getting a little sick of the brainless actions of management.

By brainless I mean the short term vision most companies have when it comes to earnings, revenue and operating expenses.  Such lack of foresight ends in the easiest and least intelligent expense cutting tactic: lay offs.

Most layoffs occur at companies who’ve not given a thought to conducting a close cost analysis of expense leaks, or bad policies, or programs that could be cut and yield great savings.  I’ve heard of a couple of companies laying off AND cutting programs, but either Satan is on the Board of Directors or they are General Motors.

Lay offs mask the fact that poorly run programs and expense leaks are the manager’s fault due to their carelessness and lack of oversight. Admittedly, audits of expense hogging programs take time and planning and a fair level of intelligence.  Unfortunately in today’s business climate most managers have none of these qualities.

Instead they get a panicked call from the senior VPs that they must cut costs dramatically and in the next six hours.  And, instead of management saying “it’s my fault,” the axe falls on the line workers.

More later about brainless management.

Merlin Mann is funny, insightful, smart, and strange looking.  This is a slide show he developed.  I have to look at this about once a month to keep it tattooed on my brain.

Who Moved My Brain? Revaluing Time and Attention View more presentations from merlinmann.

Apple has a stringent policy for iPhone and iTouch applications. They restrict adult content and even profanity in the apps submitted. Now a photo-based search engine called Coolris has crossed the barrier by providing a Google Image type search with the “safe search” mode off.

According to their website Coolris is:
The plugin that transforms your browser into a lightning fast, cinematic way to enjoy photos and videos from the Web or your desktop

Fair enough, it sounds like an enjoyable way to look at the photos of your dog in the park.

Turn now to the Coolris iPhone/iTouch application.

This is how Webware described it:

CoolIris for iPhone has just received a hot update…and we do mean hot. New on the list of features is the capability to turn Google’s SafeSearch on or off, which according to the company was one of the most requested features. The app remembers your preferences between sessions, giving you a wider gamut of results that can be, well, NSFW.

The usage model for iPhones and iTouches is a controlled environment compared to the web. So, we’ve had to rely on Apple to be the arbiter of what’s appropriate and what’s not. And while imperfect, it is at least one barrier. Cooliris has helped users to cross that barrier.

Here’s my concern: the high percentage of kids who own iPhones and the even higher percentage who own iTouches now have the ability to access adult content. While the web can be easily monitored for kids’ safety, the closed model for Apple devices does not—at least for now.

I think we can all agree that kids should not be exposed to adult content. When they are exposed, bad things can happen. And I’m talking large clinical studies of bad things happening.

Cooliris and other apps like it are certainly not to blame. But as apps get more sophisticated, we (parents, teachers, app developers, etc.) need to be more vigilant.

via Webware