October 2011
4 posts
3 tags
2 tags
The #1 Reason Non-Techies Should Upgrade to iOS 5
The latest version of the iPhone and iPad operating system, iOS 5, comes out today and is available for third and fourth generation iPod touches, all iPads, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S.
There are a ton of great features included in the update, but the feature that will have the most profound impact, especially for people who don’t plug their devices into their computers every day,...
1 tag
2 tags
The iPhone 4S Upgrade Conundrum
Ben Brooks has a post up describing the situation most of us are in: despite being loyal AT&T customers for at least the past four years (thirteen years in my case), we aren’t eligible for the full discount on the new iPhone 4S.
Instead, AT&T offers a smaller subsidy for those close to the full discount date, but not quite there yet. Ben, along with most people who bought their...
September 2011
2 posts
4 tags
It's not about what it is. It's about what it...
Amazon just announced the Kindle Fire, a 7” tablet priced at $199. In contrast to the existing Android tablets out there, Amazon doesn’t focus on specs. In fact, Amazon offers just as many specs on the main Kindle Fire page as Apple does on the iPad page – they tell us that the Fire has a dual-core processor (but no mention of clock speed, amount of cache, model number, etc) and that...
One Area Where Samsung Isn't Copying Apple
From Chris Ziegler’s review of the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch (yes, that’s the real name):
Sprint and Samsung appear to have shown a lot of restraint regarding third-party apps and crapware. Besides the typical TouchWiz apps, the phone throws in a shortcut to download a trial version of N.O.V.A. 2 HD ($4.99 for the full game), NASCAR, Sprint ID, Sprint Mobile, Sprint Music...
August 2011
4 posts
HP Kills webOS
It all makes sense now:
HP reported that it plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.
Given the current legal climate, “optimize the value of webOS” most likely means selling off the patents HP took ownership of in...
Another HP Launch Blunder
Not even a couple of hours pass since my post yesterday about HP’s launch problems that HP goes and fails at yet another launch. This time the victim is the white TouchPad. The new color is more than a cosmetic change, since the white version also features a faster processor than the black TouchPad and a doubling in storage to 64 GB. The new TouchPad was discovered by PreCentral last...
1 tag
HP's Two Problems
Matt Rosoff thinks the solution to HP’s mobile woes is for them to license webOS. This is the wrong way to go as is made evident by Google’s acquisition of Motorola. Unless HP wants to continue Palm’s decline in the mobile space, they need to fix two things: their devices and their delivery.
The big takeaways from my experience with the Pre 2 were that the OS was great to use...
June 2011
5 posts
Increasing iPhone "Liquidity"
The other day I was wondering why Apple would release an unlocked iPhone in the U.S. this late in the life of the iPhone 4. Horace Dediu of Asymco (who just started doing an awesome new show with Dan Benjamin) argues that it’s not meant for the U.S., but for tourists who can’t get iPhones in their home countries:
The way to think about it is that the iPhone has just become more...
Unlocked iPhones from Apple
Apple released carrier-unlocked GSM iPhones in their U.S. store today. Unlocked iPhones were previously available in other countries, but in the U.S., the only GSM iPhone you could get was locked to AT&T.
But why now? Why bother releasing this now when the next iPhone is supposedly only a few months away? The phone continues to not support T-Mobile’s 3G bands, so it’s not like...
Verizon iPhones and iMessage
The Verizon iPhone 4 doesn’t do simultaneous data and voice, so I’m wondering how it will work with iMessage, which uses the data network (as opposed to SMS which uses the control channel on the voice network), when a recipient is on a phone call. A phone with no service will deal with similar issues, but the Verizon example is especially complicated because a Verizon iPhone on a call...
WWDC 2011: The Musical by Jonathan Mann
Epic.
...
May 2011
3 posts
Developing for BlackBerry in 50 Easy Steps
Sign up for the RIM developer program.
Find the SDK download page.
Select “Download”.
Whoops, forgot to answer “No” to question about whether you want to receive spam from RIM (this happens on every download page).
Download and open SDK installer.
Installer is not built for Intel (you know, the processor that has been in all Macs for almost 5 years), so install Rosetta.
Installer requires...
webOS vs. iOS: Fluidity
HP has been giving out free Pre 2s to developers in an effort to attract more of them to webOS. I signed up for one in mid-February and it finally arrived in early May. I used the Pre 2 as my main phone for a little over a week, relegating my iPhone 4 to audio-playing and gaming duties. These are some of my thoughts from the experience.
After spending just a week with webOS, I am astounded at...
February 2011
2 posts
No Way We're Getting Two iPads In 2011
Gruber seems to think that Apple will release two new iPads this year, a small bump sometime in the spring (with perhaps a camera and better internal specs), and a more impressive bump during the yearly fall iPod announcement in September. My thought is that Apple is better off delaying an iPad 2 launch rather than launching two devices too close together.
First off, I don’t think Apple...
Remember AOL Discs? →
Reggie Fairchild, Product Manager for AOL 4.0:
When we launched AOL 4.0 in 1998, AOL used ALL of the world-wide CD production for several weeks. Think of that. Not a single music CD or Microsoft CD was produced during those weeks.
January 2011
8 posts
BGR: Over 100 Tablets Announced at CES →
Only thing missing is the “availability date” column.
PDFescape - Online PDF Editing →
OS X’s Preview.app is a great PDF reader but not a very good PDF editor. It doesn’t support pasting images into PDFs, so when I’ve had to add my signature to a PDF in the past, I would drop the PDF into Acorn (and previously Pixelmator) and paste away.
My main problem with this approach is that Acorn (and Pixelmator) rasterizes the text in the PDF, resulting in blurry text and...
WatchGlenn Beck: “Philadelphia is not a place you want to be.”
He probably thinks so because you can’t hear him on the radio here. I, for one, support him on this. Whatever it takes to keep the nutjobs away.
H.264 / WebM and iOS vs. Android
I’ve been thinking about Google’s recent decision to pull H.264 support from Chrome in favor of their own WebM codec. Since Apple is the #1 proponent of H.264, many are claiming that Google’s reasoning for doing this is that it gives them a competitive advantage against Apple in the mobile space.
In order for Google to realize that advantage, however, several things need to...
New Multi-Touch Gestures in iOS 4.3 →
Hope you weren’t too attached to the iOS home button.
“True, this is a very large number, but most numbers are larger.”
– Math StackExchange user Ross Millikan (who attributes it to Martin Gardner) on the number of monkeys it takes to produce Hamlet.
Slate on the Dave Matthews Band →
Annie Lowrey writes about how DMB makes money in what many believe to be a dying industry. The secret (at least to those who haven’t spent thousands on concert tickets over the last decade, like I have): the band makes most of it’s money from touring, rather than from selling records.
As Josh Klein puts it:
The gist is that unlike the traditional musician business model (get...
December 2010
3 posts
Joystiq Reviews Back to the Future: The Game →
Relieved that it’s actually a winner (I wasn’t skeptical, but BttF doesn’t have a good video game history). I’ll definitely be picking it up soon.
Cr-48 and Chrome OS Thoughts
I signed up for the Chrome OS Pilot Program on Wednesday (using the link from the QR code shown during the presentation) and I was surprised to see that one arrived the next day. I’ve been playing with it for a little bit; here are my thoughts:
The hardware is nice. It is plastic, but I don’t feel any creaking. It’s a much nicer version of the old 13” plastic MacBook....
WatchCool little music video of Jonathan Coulton’s Shop Vac using “kinetic typography”. Very well done.
Shop Vac (by Jarrett Heather)
November 2010
1 post
The Beatles on iTunes
I’m not a Beatles fan at all, but I was surprised to see how negative the response was to Apple’s announcement today. I thought Beatles fans were used to gobbling up the entire catalog in yet another format every few years, and happy to do it. Apparently I was wrong.
Keep in mind this isn’t a new release we’re talking about, where iTunes is probably the quickest and most...
October 2010
1 post
September 2010
1 post
Tuning Canabalt - Semi Secret →
Adam ‘Atomic’ Saltsman on the “curves, ratios and dimensions” of his fast-paced Flash (and iOS) sidescroller, Canabalt:
It’s all about making things “feel right”, and getting rid of those moments when the player says, “What!! I SO MADE THAT, what the f-“.
August 2010
1 post
Subterranean
I have a bit of a fascination with all things subterranean, most likely as a result of an obsession with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and from growing up in South Florida, where digging a few feet results in striking water. Having been car-ridden for most of my adult life, I’m also quite jealous of people who spend their commutes underground.
I have spent more time than I’d like...
July 2010
2 posts
New Apple Friend Bar Gives Customers Someone To...
(via clint)
June 2010
1 post
iPad Wallpaper Roundup
Here’s a list of some sites dedicated to iPad wallpapers. Tons of great wallpapers to be had.
1024 Square
iPad Wallpapers That Don’t Suck
iPad Walls
April 2010
1 post
2 tags
La Grande Roue
I was just looking through my friend Noam’s Flickr photos and saw a photo he took that looked very similar to mine:
Noam’s Carrousel
My Carrousel
The photos show opposite sides of the carrousel, taken a year apart. Mine was taken from the Champs-Elysées and his was taken from the Tuileries.
Pretty cool, huh?
March 2010
5 posts
“Beginning in Sydney, Australia three years ago, Earth Hour has grown into a...”
– Earth Hour 2010 - The Big Picture - Boston.com
Magical.
“The Bloomberg terminal is the perfect example of a lock-in effect reinforced by...”
– The Impossible Bloomberg Makeover | UX Magazine
So there you have it: I fake complexity for a living.
WatchSpeaking of Philly…
Sounds Like a Winner
AT&T’s first Android phone, the Motorola BACKFLIP, runs the year-old Android 1.5 OS, replaces Google search with Yahoo and includes “a ton of AT&T apps including AllSport GPS, AT&T Maps, AT&T Music (which takes the place of the standard Music app), AT&T Navigator, AT&T Wi-Fi Hotspots, Mobile Banking, MobiTV, MusicID, Where, and YPmobile.”
(from Android...
February 2010
1 post
January 2010
8 posts
“Let’s take away the fact that it’s lacking external features (HDMI? Seriously?)....”
– A Year Too Early · Avalonstar, the blog of Bryan Veloso
While I don’t think it’s a year until we see iPhone OS 4.0 and multitasking, I agree with the general premise. The real question I have is why Apple announced the iPad now, rather than waiting until this summer when OS 4.0 is...
3 tags
iPad
My biggest fear going into yesterday’s Apple event was that the tablet would just be a giant iPod touch. At first glance, that is exactly what the iPad seemed like – a large iPod touch with revised core apps, and a productivity suite and eBook reader/store to take advantage of the large screen (and no additional new features). Coupled with gimmicky iPhone app support, which allows...
“All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s...”
– Conan O’Brien
Locust Walk Street View →
The main pedestrian throughfare of my alma mater was visited by the Street View Trike and the results are now up on Google Maps.
Gestalt: Ruby and Python in HTML →
Gestalt is a JavaScript library, based on Microsoft’s work on their Dynamic Language Runtime, which allows Ruby and Python to access the elements on the page in the same way JavaScript is able to.