May 2012
89 posts
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John's Tumblr: Computers = Trucks →
lilly:
I picked up a phrase some time ago that I think applies: “The next big thing is always beneath contempt.” Implication being that it is, of course, until it isn’t. Until it’s too big to ignore. This has happened over and over again in our society. In the middle ages, people assumed that no serious discussion could happen in anything but Latin — the so-called “vulgar” languages had no...
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Facebook Camera →
It’s about time. I know this seems a bit crazy given the recent (but not yet completed) Instagram purchase. But I had heard a few weeks ago that the app was really close to being done.
Remember, the Instagram deal was done very quickly by Zuckerberg himself. I imagine they figured there was no point scrapping all the work this team was doing — at first glance, the app looks great —...
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Motorola Will Be Google’s Most Interesting Project... →
Dan Frommer on the Google/Motorola deal:
One opportunity would be to formally split Android devices into three tracks: Plain-old-Android, do what you want with it; the Nexus program (significant Google control, available to select partners); and a third line (complete Google control, exclusive to Motorola, ideally the highest-quality line). We’ll see if that happens — and if it does, whether it...
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The 4-Inch Display →
John Gruber, elaborating on the previously linked 9to5Mac report:
First, at 1136 × 640, you get a diagonal of 1,303.877 pixels after applying the Pythagorean theorem. There are no such thing as fractional pixels, but what I’m talking about here are pixels as a unit of length, equal to 1/326 inch. Divide 1,303.877 by 326 and you get 3.9996 inches. Boom, a “4-inch” display.
If Apple does indeed...
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Watchfastcompany:
Scientists at MIT have developed this freaky non-stick coating that keeps ketchup flowing. Amazing solution to an old problem. Also one of the weirdest videos you will see this week.
Read more->
Both awesome and gross at the same time.
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As For The Past 16 Years... →
It would be one thing to point out StarTAC once as a fun homage to Motorola’s history, but Google goes out of its way to point out the device in both their official blog post about the Motorola deal and the propaganda facts onesheet.
The money line:
Its many industry milestones include the introduction of the world’s first portable cell phone nearly 30 years ago, and the StarTAC–the...
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Stolen iPhone Adventures →
A guy named Nelson stole Katy McCaffrey’s iPhone. Little did he realize his photos would end up in her Photo Stream. Or that she would post them all to Facebook…
Gotta love technology.
At least it looks like Nelson had a wild night on the USS Dumbass.
(via Ryan Vance)
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“Why was upside down from the user’s perspective an issue? Because the...”
– Joe Moreno, formerly of Apple, talking about why the company made the call to go with a logo that was upside down (from an onlooker’s perspective) on older Apple laptops.
Of course, Apple eventually corrected this problem. As Moreno notes:
Opening a laptop from the wrong end is a...
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Google Speech Tech Head Mike Cohen Gone From... →
If true, it’s really interesting. When I started hearing that Apple was working with Nuance last year on the Siri stuff, digging in, I learned that one of the reasons why Google was one of the few companies with their own voice technology was thanks to Cohen. Nuance is known to be very aggressive with pursuing lawsuits over their IP, which leads to a lot of partnerships — like Apple. Google...
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Google Chrome Leapfrogs Internet Explorer as the... →
The writing has been on the wall for this for some time. Chrome is great and IE hasn’t done anything interesting in years — the recipe for disruption. I suspect Google themselves will announce this milestone soon.
Next up: the battle for mobile browsing dominance. Safari clearly has the lead here right now, but Google is pushing hard with Chrome for Android. Next up: Chrome for iOS?
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Kerry Wood Strikes Out One Final Batter And Walks... →
I distinctly remember talking about Kerry Wood’s 20K game right after it happened during high school baseball practice. That was his rookie year. 1998.
This stat is crazy:
Among pitchers with at least 1,000 innings, Kerry Wood is one of three in MLB history whose strikeouts per nine innings was 10.0 or higher.
He’s just ahead of Pedro Martinez and just behind Randy Johnson.
...
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Crowdtilt, a Group Funding Service, Raises Funds... →
Given my love of Kickstarter, it should be no surprise that I’m also extremely excited about a company like Crowdtilt, which is aiming to push the crowd-funding model into real world events. And it should be even less of a surprise that CrunchFund has invested.
When I first met with co-founder James Beshara to chat about the service, we talked about the episode of Friday Night Lights where...
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“You know, Apple has 10 products. The living room they’re dealing with at...”
– J.Crew CEO Mickey Drexler
Normally you’d think, “oh boy, someone else going off about Apple’s plans for a television”. But Drexler is in fact in a position to speak — he’s also on Apple Board.
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Aaron Sorkin Will Adapt Walter Isaacson Steve Jobs... →
Insanely great news — but expectations will be through the roof post-The Social Network.
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Anonymous asked: All the talk about Apple taking over mapping on iOS sounds great. Can't wait. However, I haven't heard much on the turn by turn front. This is the one area, the only area, where I'm jealous of Android users. Without turn by turn, I'll continue to have to use a 3rd party app for 90 percent of my mapping usage. So, my obvious question: Have you heard if Apples new map app will...
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ESPN On The Apple TV →
Sounds great, ESPN on the Apple TV (and possibly the forthcoming iTV)! Until you see this quote:
“We’re a platform-agnostic content company,” Bratches, the network’s executive vice president of affiliate and advertising sales, said today in an interview. “To the extent that in the future there’s an opportunity with Apple to authenticate through the pay-TV food chain as we’re doing with...
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No Map, Indeed →
Remember last November when, out of the kindness of their hearts, Google started allowing people to opt-out of wireless access point collection? All you had to do was append “_nomap” to the end of your SSID.
It was such a seamless and elegant solution. Surely, everyone started doing it, right?
I’m with Jason Irwin — I haven’t seen a single “_nomap” SSID in all...
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Big, Small, Optimal →
A subtle, but potentially important detail from Mark Gurman’s report on the Retina MacBook Pro:
Unlike Mac display settings of today, these Retina Display settings will not be marked with numbers/resolution sizes, but with descriptions such as big, small, or optimal, according to these software-based findings. The long-awaited “resolution independence” is upon us.
The death of the spec...
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The Thin, Retina MacBook Pro →
Mark Gurman of 9to5 Mac first reported this morning that a forthcoming 15-inch MacBook Pro refresh would feature a new, thinner design (though not quite MacBook Air-thin), USB 3.0, and, most importantly, a “Retina” display. Bloomberg has since corroborated the news.
I’ve got nothing specifically on this, but it sounds about right to me. As I wrote back in November of last...
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“I’m not sure I know what AirPlay is.”
– Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn A. Britt
I have a feeling that this quote will be a fun one to look back on in a few years. Disruption often blindsides.
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Front-lit Kindle Due In July →
While Amazon clearly controls the e-reader space, Barnes & Noble continues to beat them to the punch on key technologies. First, it was an Android-based color tablet. Then it was the front-lit e-ink reader.
Amazon has to react, probably faster than they’d like — they’re pushing out a new Kindle not even a year after the last one was released.
Update: As Soroush Khanlou points...
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THE iTV MAY BE COMING; EVERYONE WRITE BULLSHIT AS... →
Whoops.
Nice takedown of nonsense by Philip Elmer-DeWitt.
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Small App Developer, Welcome To Your Hell →
Kim-Mai Cutler caught up with Hong Kong mobile app developer Animoca and notes that they test against 400 different Android devices. And they’d do even more — but many are no longer for sale.
Just look at the picture.
Cutler:
But imagine the long-tail of developers! Imagine the people who make the roughly 500,000 apps in the Google Play store. Total nightmare.
Right, for a big app...
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The iPhone Bleeds Lumia Cyan, According To Siri....
Well, Jim Dalrymple beat me to making fun of this, but what the hell, it’s Friday.
Earlier today, a thread starting passing around the Internet pointing out something worth a chuckle: when you ask Siri what the best smartphone is, it responds with the Nokia Lumia 900. The cyan version from AT&T, to be exact.
That’s it — end of debate! Shut Apple down and pay the money back to the...