We will all miss his influence on the world. This strikes particularly close to me, having known him, and worked in close proximity at NeXT Computer. His innovation, drive for excellence, and uncompromising belief in building something better than “good enough” will, I hope, continue to be the inspiration for Apple, and others.

A complete report is available from The Wall Street Journal.

The stock market has as much to do with the real economy as the weather has to do with geology. Day by day there’s no relationship at all. Over time, weather and geology interact but the results aren’t evident for many years. The biggest impact of the weather is on peoples’ moods, as are the daily ups and downs of the market.

Please, follow Robert’s advice and pay no attention to the short-term fluctuations. It’s the long-term we should be keeping our eyes on — something the U.S. has never been good at.

If we embrace the fact that no one can or should ever care about the health of our passions as much as we do, the practical decisions that help ensure Our Good Thing stays alive can become as “simple” as a handful of proven patterns—work hard, stay awake, fail well, hang with smart people, shed bullshit, say “maybe,” focus on action, and always always commit yourself to a bracing daily mixture of all the courage, honesty, and information you need to do something awesome—discover whatever it’ll take to keep your nose on the side of the ocean where the fresh air lives. This is huge.

Thankfully, there’s the Interphone study, launched 10 years ago and studying 10,000 participants spread across 13 different countries. Those concerned with The Answer have been waiting for the results with increased anticipation. And, here it is, summed up by Dr. Elisabeth Cardis, leader of the Interphone study:

Until stronger conclusions can be drawn one way or another, it may be reasonable to reduce one’s exposure [to cellular radiation]. It can’t hurt. — Dr. Elisabeth Cardis

“It can’t hurt?” So, it turns out that the long awaited report, published in the Internal Journal of Epidemiology on May 17, according to Time Magazine’s May 31 issue, “is by far the most comprehensive look at the issue to date and was meant to provide a possible conclusion to the debate.” Unfortunately, the real facts of the matter: 10 years isn’t that long to study something as subtly insidious as cancer poisoning from a radiation source such as cell phones. Even so, the study does give us interesting new data to ponder, discuss and argue over while another 10 or 20 year study is pulled together:

1. The study did not find any obvious connection between cell phone use and cancer, but it did find some seemingly conflicting data that muddies the discussion even further.
2. Of the study’s subjects, the 10% that used their cell phones most often did exhibit a 40% higher risk of developing some form of brain cancer, as compared to those who don’t use cell phones.
3. On the other hand, participants in the study that used their cell phones infrequently demonstrated a lower likelihood of developing brain cancer over people who use corded phones exclusively.

Unfortunately, even some of the data the defined the study is already out of date. 15 years ago (when the study was originally designed), using a cell phone for 30 minutes a day was considered “heavy” use. By today’s standards, 30 minutes a day might be considered moderate, particularly as people are starting to forego land-lines in favor of simply having a cell phone.

So what’s our take-away? Probably that the Interphone study is too dated and flawed. When you hear the mobile phone industry trumpeting it’s positive findings, or when you hear consumer advocates talking about it’s negative discoveries, keep in mind: They’re both quoting from the same study, a study which seems to equally support either position.

We need a new study. Unfortunately, that means we’ll be waiting another 15 or 20 years before “significant” evidence has a chance to answer this question once and for all.

1. It’s cross platform, working seamlessly on my iPhone. Any information I capture appears both on my laptop and my iPhone and is fully searchable in either place.
2. Evernote’s search and retrieval capabilities are phenomenal. In part, this is because it uploads everything to a central server where character recognition is run on everything non-text, turning images, scans, faxes and PDF files into fully, content-searchable documents.

As my library of Evernote content has grown it has become more and more indispensable. This took a while. At first I had my typical quandary when facing a new tool. “Where do I put this? How will I find it again?” Eventually I discovered the answer to both questions is actually quite simple: Put everything in Evernote, and don’t worry about finding it again — it’s just going to work. And it does.

This doesn’t mean it’s entirely effortless, but it’s close. I still love Apple Mail and it’s powerful search capabilities, and I still have gigabytes of documents tucked away in my file system. I don’t dump all of my mail into Evernote. Evernote gets most of my documents, faxes, PDFs, images I snap on my iPhone. But it also gets email that I think falls into the “ooh, I’m going to want to reference that again later” category, and it works nicely — especially when there’s a document or image attachment.

Give it a try, but do be religious about it for a while. Until you have enough information in Evernote, you’ll feel like you’re doing double-duty. Eventually, a transition happens and you find it has become central to your workflow. Now, I use it every day — categorizing materials I want to research, as an “idea board” for rough drafts and notes that I’m working on, and as a way to tuck away anything I’ll want to find again.

Unemployment figures are largely calculated from claims against unemployment insurance, for example, when you file a claim with the EDD. But this is a narrow view, avoiding the overall “employment health” of the country. Even so, we must recognize that unemployment figures have been calculated in this way for a very long time. This means it is a sound relative measure — that is, since we are calculating it essentially the same way we did in years past, we can measure overall health as a comparison to other years. We know that 10% is horrible. The last time we saw unemployment this high was entering into the great depression, when it rose to 23.6% in 1933. So while it may not be accurate, it does give us a solid indication that our economy is in very, very bad shape.

This, according to 52 Weeks of UX. Stated another way, “This is the first rule of UX. Everything a designer does affects the user experience,” a message that can’t be emphasized enough.

Here’s a really great, well presented pro- and con- on climate change (or try this image on white, it’s more legible).

For some really in-depth analysis on climate change (not to mention a bit of exposé on some disappointing and underhanded misinformation from the skeptics) take a look at The Temperature of Science by James Hansen (PDF). James cites a few examples where corrections to data were argued to be “cooking the books.” And yet, critics could only argue about the fact a correction was made — they couldn’t find any flaw in the corrections themselves (let alone, apply their faculties to discover the original flaws in the first place).

The next day, when I walk into the market, my phone pings and reminds me to pick up some cream cheese. It knows this because the last time I was near the market, I tagged the location. My phone also knows what I need to do when I get to work on Monday, such as “remember to meet with Chris regarding the widget, first thing on Monday.”

Sure enough, my calendar has a meeting scheduled for 9:00am, Monday morning: “meet with Chris regarding the widget.”

It’s not scifi though. Take a look at reQall and see what it can do with Evernote and your smartphone.