Linked List: August 8, 2008

Friday, 8 August 2008

An Interview With Armen Antranikian ★

Coudal Partners interviews Armen Antranikian, director of the three-minute short film Kubrick.

How an Apple Ad Sets the Wrong Expectations ★

Jason Fried calls bullshit on the web browsing and GPS performance in Apple’s “Unslow” iPhone 3G commercial.

‘$50 for Worse Brand Name Than Knol’ Winner Announced ★

Congratulations to Drew Thaler for a truly terrible idea.

California Supreme Court Rejects Non-Compete Clauses ★

Freedom prevails. Bob Egelko, reporting for the San Francisco Chronicle:

Californians have the right to move from one company to another or start their own business and can’t be prohibited by their employer from working for a competitor in their next job, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

Pennies ★

My thanks to Design by a Knife for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed, to promote their new iPhone budget-tracking app Pennies. Visually, Pennies looks great, and the interaction design is clever too. Entering new expenses is easy, obvious, and requires very few taps.

Check out the Pennies web site for screenshots and an animated demo. It’s available for $2.99 from the App Store.

‘iPhone Killer’ of the Week ★

Apparently even when the form factor looks like a BlackBerry — hardware keyboard and small 2.3-inch 320 × 240 display — it counts as an “iPhone Killer”.

Another One Yanked From App Store: Slasher ★

“Slasher displays a common kitchen knife on the screen and plays a ‘horror’ sound when you make a stabbing motion.”

Looks like PhoneSaber, the “swing your iPhone around and make lightsaber sounds” app, is gone too, but in the case of PhoneSaber, it was the developers’ decision to pull it, due to licensing issues:

As of now, PhoneSaber will no longer be available, I’ve had a chat with a guy from THQ Wireless (who own the rights for Star Wars apps on mobiles) and as we were always expecting, PhoneSaber is not allowed to be on there.

Author Claims Eight Copies of ‘I Am Rich’ Sold Before Apple Yanked It From App Store ★

The L.A. Times’s Mark Milian interviews I Am Rich creator Armin Heinrich, who claims eight copies were sold.

After initially approving it for distribution, the company has since removed it from the store. Heinrich, a German software developer, has yet to hear back from Apple concerning the removal. “I have no idea why they did it and am not aware of any violation of the rules to sell software on the App Store,” Heinrich said in an email with The Times today.

I don’t believe him, frankly. This quote from Heinrich doesn’t ring true to my ears:

“I’ve got e-mails from customers telling me that they really love the app,” adding that they had “no trouble spending the money,” he said.