December 2011
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Money Where Mouth Is →
Apple’s newest board member, Disney CEO Bob Iger, just bought $1 million worth of shares on the open market. Sure, perhaps not much for him in the grand scheme of things. But a million dollars is still a million dollars. And he’s clearly sending a message. Likely a smart one.
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Maybe It's The Mac/Windows Race That's Like The... →
New HP CEO Meg Whitman acknowledges the trend happening. Even if you don’t count the iPad (which you probably should), Apple’s share of the PC market continues to rise slow and steady and could eventually push Apple past HP as the top computer maker.
While everyone is busy debating if iOS/Android will be a repeat of the Mac/Windows war, they’re missing the flipside. The...
November 2011
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Meet The New Sony Store, Same As The Old Sony... →
Jordan Crook reports that Sony COO Phil Molyneux unveiled Sony’s new retail strategy at a press conference this morning. Wait for it… Sony Stores! As Crook notes, the strategy is basically “follow Apple’s lead”.
But I’m confused, wasn’t this also their old retail strategy? It sure sounds like they’re basically doing the same things they were doing...
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A "Holy Shit" Website →
Speaking of Path, hopefully you’ve visited their new website by now. If not, click the link above. It’s amazing.
It’s the kind of thing you used to need Flash for. And it was one of the few decent arguments for why it perhaps should stick around. With it, you could make a website that felt alive — more like art and less utilitarian. Path’s Danny Trinh replicated that using...
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Beautiful Poignant Elegant Slideshows →
Matt Rosoff responding to my post about his post on Business Insider.
Spoiler alert: at one point he compares Business Insider slideshows to New Yorker photo essays.
Seriously.
I’m not trying to pick on Rosoff. I actually think he’s very good. I’m just not sure how you can argue that a slideshow was a good format for that story — or really any story on Business Insider.
I...
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A New Path
Almost exactly a year ago, Path first launched. I remember the initial response being highly mixed. Some found its smaller network refreshing. Others thought it was just about the dumbest thing they’d ever seen. Something about it struck me. Not even the product itself as much as the core concept behind it. And I took to this blog to write as much.
A year later, Path was never able to...
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ANNOYING: The Article As A Slideshow
Matt Rosoff’s thoughts on Google becoming more like Microsoft should have been a provocative and effective article. Instead it’s a slideshow. Why? I have no clue.
Well okay, pageviews, clearly. But it’s still weird to see this type of story formatted this way.
Business Insider has taken a lot of shit over the past year or so for pageview pumping by way of slideshows (AND...
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The Death Of The Black Bar, The Rise Of Google Bar →
Well, that didn’t last long. Google is killing off their black navigation bar, which has been an eyesore since day one of Google+. In its place, Google is going with a more robust Google Bar (in Google Gray).
I don’t see it yet, but I imagine there will be some sort of controversy about Google shoving their other products in your face (though the reality is that they’ve done...
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Apple TV With Bluetooth 4.0 →
This is the most interesting bit about the rumored refresh of the Apple TV yet. Apple hasn’t talked a lot about the inclusion of Bluetooth 4.0 in both the iPhone 4S and the recent MacBooks, but it’s clearly there for a reason.
What if we do see some sort of new Apple peripherals as a result? Perhaps a large Magic Trackpad for iOS games running on the Apple TV? Or, as 9to5 Mac...
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4X Of... "Great"? →
Amazon issued a press release this morning to say that Black Friday was their best ever in terms of Kindle sales. In fact, they were up 4x over last year. Wow, right? But there’s still that one pesky little problem.
Amazon’s VP of Kindle, Dave Limp:
Even before the busy holiday shopping weekend, we’d already sold millions of the new Kindle family and Kindle Fire was the...
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The 15-Inch Air
There is a lot of talk out there right now about the supposed 15-inch MacBook Air. I haven’t heard anything specific besides the usual whispers of new product numbers floating around out there. It seems pretty likely that something is coming.
What’s a bit odd about this talk is Apple’s entire MacBook line. Namely, there is no actual MacBook anymore, just the Air and the Pro. If...
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Seven
When I read Om’s post today celebrating 10 years blogging, it made me think back to when I began. Oddly enough, in three days, it will be exactly 7 years since I started blogging as well.
I actually remember the timing and the thought process. I had recently graduated from college and had just left everything and everyone I knew back east and drove 2,000+ miles by myself out to...
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If You Had Invented Siri, You Would've Invented... →
Well, we all knew this was coming.
In a sit down with Forbes’ Eric Savitz, Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie talks about how Microsoft has actually been doing what Siri offers for the past year with Tellme technology on Windows Phone. He dismisses Siri’s buzz as basically just good marketing and people being “infatuated” with Apple.
Sadly, the...
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aakar asked: Thoughts on the Kindle Touch? I'm debating which model to purchase..
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Amazon Will Take Over Android App Distribution →
Marco Arment:
One of the biggest draws to the Android platform, the “open” Android Market, has just been sidestepped and made largely irrelevant for tablets. If the Fire sells anywhere near its target volumes, Amazon has hijacked the Android app retail channel for the long term: most sales of Android tablet software will be through the Amazon Appstore, and if your app isn’t there, it’s...
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“But of the three major smartphone operating systems, Android is still by far the...”
– Farhad Manjoo wrapping up his thoughts on Android Ice Cream Sandwich and the Galaxy Nexus for Slate.
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Pearl Jam Twenty Hits Netflix Streaming →
Watch away boys and girls. I just watched it last week, 20 years crammed into 2 hours by none other than Cameron Crowe. Great stuff.
[via Hacking Netflix]
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‘Sherlock Holmes 2’ Could Have ‘Dark Knight Rises’... →
The first Sherlock Holmes was very “meh” (as opposed to the Sherlock television show, which is excellent). But if this is true, I’ll buy a ticket just to see these two trailers back-to-back on the big screen.
Incidentally, the two stars of the Sherlock Holmes television series, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, also star in The Hobbit.
Also, don’t forget that a...
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iPhone 4S Becomes Second Most Popular Cameraphone... →
It took just 5 weeks. The only one ahead of it? The iPhone 4.
By the way, numbers three and four? The iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS.
One Android phone did manage to beat the original iPhone though — the HTC EVO 4G, places a distant fifth. Let’s remember that the original iPhone is over 4 years old.
Wait, actually, looking at the data, Flickr isn’t even counting the original iPhone...
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Facebook Not Building A Phone*
*No Facebook employee is actually on an assembly line building phone hardware.
There are two things I like about the AllThingsD (or as John Gruber likes to call them “some website”) report on the “Facebook Phone”.
1) The complete and utter lack of any link to or mention of TechCrunch even though we broke this story over a year ago.
Do they have new information? Yes,...
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Stamped →
I’ve written a number of times about my hatred of the 1-to-5 star rating system. It’s too arbitrary. What constitutes a 2-star rating? What about a 4-star rating? If you like something, it’s 5-stars. If you hate it, it’s 1-star. And maybe if it’s okay, it’s 3-stars. The love/like/meh/dislike that something like Oink uses is much better because at least it gives...
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Pushing The Envelope, Not The Share Button
Step 1: Facebook does something.
Step 2: Everybody freaks the fuck out.
It’s been just over 5 years since Facebook first unveiled the News Feed. The song remains the same.
This weekend’s Bitchmeme centered around Facebook’s new automatic or “frictionless” sharing. It already works with services like Spotify and Rdio and publications like The Washington Post and...
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Speaking Of Shoddy iOS Apps...
Can someone please explain to me why on Earth the Gmail iOS app only features Push Notification badging? It’s infuriating.
Given that the app is basically just a wrapper around UIWebView, the only reason to get it is for Push Notifications. But what I want in a Push Notification is not the silly little red badge, I want a preview of the message itself so I can know whether or not I need to...
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New 'Arrested Development' Episodes Coming... →
March 19, 2011, an article entitled: “Another Netflix Content Idea: Saving Cancelled Cult Hits”:
Would the economics ultimately work out? It’s hard to say for sure. Even the House of Cards bet is still very much a bet for Netflix as well. But I do think that a proven cult hit like Firefly would be much less of a gamble (and could likely be secured for cheaper than House of Cards...
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Tweaks And Geeks →
John Gruber argues against Malcolm Gladwell’s assertion (itself derived from Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography) that Jobs was more of a “tweaker” than a true inventor.
I’d still argue that Gladwell’s thoughts on this are interesting and worth thinking about. But Gruber is right to note that the issue is anything but black and white.
If you think about...
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“From Siri’s acceptance or rejection of our commands or requests, comes a...”
– lonelysandwich: Human-computer-human interaction
Fascinating thought and post by Adam Lisagor. If Siri (or other technologies like it) becomes hugely popular, might it change the way we speak to other humans?
That sounds ridiculous at first. But when I think about every time I use Siri, I’m...
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Marco Arment Rips The Kindle Fire →
Close your eyes. Imagine a world where a $200 tablet behaves like a piece of technology that costs… $200. Open your eyes. Say hello to the Kindle Fire.
Remember when everyone was sure that Apple’s tablet was going to cost around $1,000? That was 18 months ago. We’re spoiled. The fact of the matter is that the iPad behaves like a piece of technology that should cost more than...
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Insult To Injury →
So UltraViolet is a turd, this much we know. It’s the most surprising development of the year… to no one. Unless you run a Hollywood studio.
But what’s really great is that UltraViolet is such a massive turd that the studios are being forced to give customers copies of their films on the staying-the-hell-away-from-UltraViolet Apple platform.
Ouch.
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Flipboard Adds Tumblr Support →
Tumblr on Flipboard. This pleases me greatly. Though I’d still love to see support for reading only certain tags.
Also worth noting is the addition of “Flipboard Accounts” which means one thing: Flipboard for iPhone coming soon.
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The Shortmail iPhone App →
Back in July, I trumpeted my hatred of email in a very loud (and perhaps obnoxious) way. Naturally, I followed that up by switching careers from one that relies heavily on email to one that relies extremely heavily on email. Joy.
But hope remains.
One of my favorite finds during my time away from email was Shortmail. It’s email, but short — get it? The problem with it was that it’s...
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mlapida asked: Which browser do you use the most regularly these day? I've been a Chrome addict for a while but Google has me worried lately.
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Readability And Instapaper →
Classy response to an somewhat-odd-but-also-somewhat-straightforward situation by Marco Arment.
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“They got the name right.”
– John Gruber on the new HP’s new “Envy” notebooks.
I mean, just look at them for Chrissakes. I wonder if HP tried to license the Apple logo?
Pathetic and shameful.
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Gmail App, Take 2 →
I have no idea why it took them a couple weeks to fix a simple bug, but Gmail is back in the App Store. Can’t wait to see the response this time around.
Update: Okay, apparently they fixed more than just the Push Notification bug. Thankfully, that includes HTML image rendering. Read all about it here — if you can get their shitty new dynamic view Blogger blog to load (I can’t).
...
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Protect The Internet →
Spreading the word.
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Google's Musical Chairs
I kid, I kid. Google’s Music Store is interesting for a few reasons.
While the prices will apparently be between $0.99 and $1.29 — the same as iTunes — Google may discount tracks to entice buyers. Of course, Amazon has done this for years to little effect.
As Brian Womack and Andy Fixmer report for Bloomberg, only three of the four big labels are said to be on board: Sony, Universal, and...
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Talk About Not Burying The Lede →
Brian Womack and Andy Fixmer reporting for Bloomberg that Google’s Music Store is set to launch tomorrow. Their opening paragraph:
Google Inc. is entering the online music market almost a decade too late to pose a threat to Apple Inc., the largest seller of songs on the Web.
There you go. No need to read the remaining 18 paragraphs.
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"Greater Choice"
Late last night, I linked to a blog post Google put up and jotted down some initial thoughts. Given the response (thousands of views, 100+ notes, etc.), I thought it was only fair that I elaborate a bit.
Google’s post is entitled “Greater choice for wireless access point owners”. It outlines new opt-out functionality for Google’s location database. I ripped into the post —...
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Anonymous asked: You mentioned that you bought a Kindle Touch. Did you go with the 3G model? Just curious..
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Foursquare On The Big Screen →
Yesterday, Foursquare’s website was basically useless. Today, it’s not.
