Linked List: June 26, 2008

Thursday, 26 June 2008

Verizon’s LG Dare 

I love the jaunty angles at which the icons are set. And dig that “Settings & Tools” icon. Sad. $250 with two-year contract, but you can send in for a $50 rebate from Verizon.

iPhone SDK Beta 8, Etc. 

As of a few hours ago, registered iPhone developers now have access to beta 8 of the iPhone SDK, and MacRumors is reporting that, uh, there are some other things available tonight as well.

There’s also a new video available: the Publishing on the App Store session from WWDC this month.

Expression Engine vs. Textpattern 

Jon Hicks:

Once people got wind that I’d been trying out Expression Engine, I’ve been badgered with the question “Which one should I use: Textpattern or Expression Engine?”. This post is to try and answer that […]

Wii’s Nintendo Channel Publishes Aggregate Game Usage Stats 

Stephen Totilo:

As of last Monday the Wii’s Nintendo Channel in the U.S. started spitting out usage stats for most Wii games. Anyone who opted in and let Nintendo snoop into their play history has been contributing to a public trove of great game usage data. And we can now use these numbers for speculation at cocktail parties and on our favorite forums. Nintendo may have just unleashed the best new tool for message board argument since the animated GIF.

Android’s Main Disadvantage 

Good overview of the problems facing devlopers hoping to treat “Android” as a unified platform:

Developers working on Android apps are put in a position where they need to guess and program for different physical UI scenarios (none of which actually exist in the wild, yet):

Does the target phone have physical buttons?
What is the button configuration?
Does it have a touch screen?
What about different resolutions?
What sensors do you code for? camera? accelerometer? proximity? touchpad?

Not to mention the performance of the CPU and GPU.

Ron Mueck: Hyper-Realist Sculptor 

Astonishingly realistic sculpture. (Thanks to my wife.)

iSuppli Again 

iSuppli, the “market intelligence” company I wrote about a year ago, has released another cost estimate for an Apple product they have never even touched, let alone opened to inspect the actual components. But somehow they know the iPhone 3G costs “about” $173 to make.

Open Questions for the App Store 

Many open questions, indeed.

Ken Case Responds to Matt Neuburg’s OmniFocus Review 

A very thoughtful, detailed response.

The Paper Version of the Web 

Sketches and paper prototypes from the designers of Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo, and more. I love looking at design work like this. (Via Andy Baio.)

T-Mobile Launches Motorola ROKR E8 

On sale in July for $199 with a two-year contract. Sad.