March 2011
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Click Here If You Want To Live →
Good piece by Tim Bray. Not surprisingly, he favors the mobile ad model (Google’s strength) to the app sale model (Apple’s strength). But he’s most bullish on the “upgrades and in-app sales” — which I totally agree with.
One thing he says:
I know for a fact from talking to developers that ads are starting to work pretty well for some of them.
More and more,...
February 2011
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One Throw-Away Line That Pretty Much Sums Up My... →
Business Insider referencing Bernstein’s Toni Sacconaghi:
He says Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said Apple would not let carriers dictate terms.
That’s exactly what Google and everyone else continue to let the carriers do. And it’s exactly why the mobile situation in the U.S. had been shit for so long.
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Snowpocalypse! →
Time:
High elevations in San Francisco saw dusting of snow late Friday, marking the first time flakes have fallen since 1976.
A 10 Billion Trillion Trillion Carat Diamond... →
Coolest thing I’ve read this week.
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Consumer Reports Report Has No One Reading... →
With 30+ million iPhones sold since the last report, all these reports really seem to show is that no one cares about Consumer Reports anymore.
They probably know that. So it’s time for more link-bait!
Time for another recall!
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They're Not Saying "Boo", They're Saying "Xoom"
So I’ve read over almost all of the reviews of the Xoom now (on my iPad, naturally). The consensus is very clear: promising but extremely buggy.
You have to wonder why Motorola and Google would allow a product with so many bugs/quirks to not only go out to reviewers, but to go out to the public starting tomorrow. Actually, no you don’t have to wonder at all. You only have to think of...
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iPad 1.5 or 2? →
Sounds a lot like what I said two weeks ago:
So, aside from the camera and it being slimmer (which are a nice additions, but not a game-changing), it sounds like the iPad 2 will be to the iPad 1 what the iPhone 3GS was to the iPhone 3G. That is, a faster, more polished offering.
…
But Apple has a history of not resting on their laurels. That’s perhaps the key reason why they’ve been so...
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MBP Gets Thunderstruck! →
So it looks like the MacBook Pros will be keeping the optical drives. And they’ll weigh in at 2.04 kg, which is 4.5 lbs — the same weight of the current 13” MBP. In fact, by these specs, they’ll be the exact same size.
They are getting spec bumps and this new “Thunderbolt” high-speed input (the artist formerly known as “Light Peak”). But it has a...
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PayPal Of The Publishers →
PayPal:
As we’ve been saying since last October, Publishers need an easy way to monetize their content while also retaining information about their readers across multiple platforms.
Okay, but what about what customers need? Do we want or need publishers having access to our information? Isn’t it enough that we’re paying them for their content?
Setting aside the larger Apple...
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Charlie Sheen Pitches Another ‘Major League’ →
Wild Thing!… 20+ years later…
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Tagging Makes A Comeback →
I started out very good at tagging every post. Then I got very, very bad at it. But this is smart. It gives you an incentive to tag.
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Again, Why Does Anyone Listen To Anything Analysts... →
Here are reasons 4,500,001 and 4,500,002 not to — and they’re both big ones — for those keeping count at home.
In-App Subscription Rules: Yes, No, Maybe So? →
So now MacRumors has an email supposedly from Steve Jobs saying that SaaS apps won’t be affected by the new subscription rules.
Here’s the thing: I’ve heard of at least a few that have already been rejected on the grounds that they aren’t using Apple’s new in-app subscriptions.
Why is that the case of what Jobs says is true? And why on Earth doesn’t Apple just...
Blockbuster Up For Auction, Opening Bid Set At A... →
I have no idea why, but Blockbuster’s fall from grace used to get me all riled up. Perhaps because I’ve been watching it happen and writing about it for at least five years now. It has truly been comedy of errors.
Of course now it’s just beyond pathetic. $290 million? Netflix now has a market cap of $12.43 billion. Coinstar, which owns Redbox, has a market cap of $1.45 billion.
...
Free Beer Thanks To Hotspot, Or Hot Potato, or... →
I’m still not really clear what Hotpot is (beyond a bad name), but you simply cannot argue with free beer.
Blogs Wane Except For The Stats We Include That... →
I’m all for the “_____ is dead” articles, but this one is a bit odd since their two examples of it dying are Blogger fading in the U.S. and LiveJournal.
It just looks like a case of “we have a story, let’s find some stats to match it”.
First of all, as NYT notes, Blogger is actually growing quite quickly globally — which is actually pretty surprising. But the...
iPad Margin Jumps From Nothing To Infinity In One... →
I’m reading this and thinking how funny it is that Hiner thinks Apple is only making $20 in profit from each third-party retail sale of the iPad. There’s just no way they’d agree to sell it in any other store (besides their’s) if that were the case. Sure enough, at the bottom:
Since first publishing this article, I’ve received multiple reports from people in the retail...
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Light Peak (But With Copper For Now) →
CNET:
Light Peak is significantly faster than even USB 3.0, carrying data at 10 gigabits per second in both directions simultaneously
Wow. Imagine syncing an iPad with this? (Though I’d still prefer doing it over the air.)
Should Employers Be Allowed to Ask for Your... →
Should you have to give up your email password too? How about your ATM pin? What about the keys to your house?
This is ridiculous. Of course not.
"I was here in the Valley for the original Bubble" →
Paul Graham responds to the “bubble” talk. His thoughts? It’s nowhere near the doomsday bubble stage because everything now is so localized. This echoes some of my thoughts from December.
Is Apple subscription plan evil? →
Take 400 on the Apple subscription plan stuff. This one I wrote special to CNN (since they asked so nicely).
A Qrious Name →
Seriously, is Qriocity the worst name ever in the history of bad technology names?
Just imagine a band saying “find us on Qriocity”. If they say it they way (at least I think) you should say it, no one will be able to find Qriocity itself.
It would almost better if they were to say, “find us on Q Rio City”. At least that’s easier.
Apple's iPhone 4 Wins Best Mobile Device Award At... →
But but but… Antennagate!!! Ahhhhh!!! #neverforget
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On Defending Apple And Common Sense
Rather than keep the back and forth going on TechCrunch, or leaving a comment that will be one of probably 500, I figured I’d do a quick response to Jason’s response to my Apple subscription posts here.
Jason brings up some good points, but his post is ultimately flawed for two very important reasons above all else: competition and change.
First of all, the post is written as if...
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Apple. Subscriptions. Antitrust. →
You knew this was coming. I just didn’t expect the first calls for it to come hours after the announcement. I thought we’d get a day or two.
The conclusion from most experts in the WSJ post? There’s probably not enough here to warrant an antitrust investigation.
The Sunsetting Of The Zune →
Wait, the Zune isn’t dead already? Serious question. I’ve never seen one in public.
My iPad Life On The Brooks Review →
Including a picture of my current home screen!
Om Back In iLove →
Om rejoins team iPhone. FWIW, in the few days it has been out, I’ve heard the same basic story a handful of times already about the Verizon iPhone.
The moral? The iPhone is hands down the best device when it’s on a network that actually works.
The "5" In HTML5 Apparently Stands For How Much... →
Is there anyone that doesn’t find this timeframe ridiculous? I mean, that’s over three years from right now. What the hell could possibly take that long to finalize?
And if the “last call” is in May of this year, does that mean the companies at the leading edge (Google, Apple, Facebook, etc) will begin thinking about “HTML6” before 5 is anywhere near final?
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‘Blue Horshoe’ Loves the Activity Streams →
Great title. And totally agree.
We're Familiar With This TweetDeck Deal Report →
I’m confused, are the “people familiar with the negotiations” here, TechCrunch? I swear we reported this on Friday, yet our name is missing so we must be the anonymous “people”.
It’s okay to use our name in this context, FT.com. Asshats.
Elop's "I'm A Real Boy!" Statement →
Just to follow up on this one, Elop has now directly responded to the thought that he’s simply doing Microsoft’s bidding inside of Nokia.
The answer is exactly what you’d expect him to say. But the outstanding share aspect is certainly interesting.
The Google Doodle Archive →
Most of these are now shown outside the U.S. — all of them are great.
While Google gets a lot of flak for lack of focus on design and being too analytical with changes, this is pretty much the opposite. It’s all creativity.
They also show Google caring about what is ultimately a small detail. The majority of these doodles are seen by only a percentage of users and usually only for...
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Introducing The Microsoft Puppet →
Totally agree with this take by Matt Drance. No one seems to be talking about this (though I alluded to it in a title last night), but it sure looks like what Microsoft just did was install a puppet government within Nokia.
Step 1: Install Elop.
Step 2: Get him to make a crazy bold bet to move Nokia phones over to the struggling Windows Phone platform even though embracing Android would seem to...
Sony Considering Playing Russian Roulette With A... →
I mean, they can’t actually be this stupid, can they?
Operation Microsoft Behind Nokia Lines Is A... →
Yep.
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