Linked List: January 8, 2009

Thursday, 8 January 2009

Macworld Expo Best of Show 2009 ★

Good list of new product highlights from the editors of Macworld magazine.

Speaking Tomorrow at Macworld Pulse ★

So there’s a new full-day session at Macworld this year called Pulse, with a great list of speakers including Merlin Mann, Andy Ihnatko, Craig Hockenberry, Adam Engst, and me. Each talk is just 20 minutes long — short and punchy, one right after another. I go on at 11 am.

(Wish I could link directly to a Macworld Conference page specifically about the Pulse sessions, but I can’t seem to find one.)

Regarding Pre Pricing ★

Peter Kafka on the Pre:

The biggest unknown is price, which went unmentioned during the demo. My assumption is that Palm would try to take market share by coming in significantly lower than the $200 or so Apple wants for its iPhone. But when I ran that theory by Palm CEO Ed Colligan, he looked at me liked I’d peed on his rug. “Why would we do that when we have a significantly better product,” he asked, then walked away.

Translation: Bargain hunters are going to be disappointed.

If they’re going to charge a higher price than the iPhone’s, users are going to expect a better phone than the iPhone.

Palm Pre ★

Palm unveiled their next-generation mobile device today at CES: a phone called the Pre running a new WebKit-based software platform they’re calling “WebOS”. The gist, from a software standpoint, is that all the apps are written as client-side web apps using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Hardware-wise, it’s an iPhone-style touch screen with a hardware keyboard that slides out underneath — but in portrait, not landscape.

No word yet on price, and they don’t expect to ship it until later this year. The biggest technical challenge, I think, is going to be performance. If it’s fast enough, though, this could be good.

‘All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy’ ★

Phil Buehler has published Jack Torrance’s novel from The Shining. It’s a funny idea, but I wish the cover played it straight.

Update: Ah, there is in fact an alternate cover design. Much better.

CES: New SD Standard Will Allow for 2TB Cards ★

From CES:

The SD Association announced the SDXC (extended capacity) memory card specification, which could drive up the size of Secure Digital Memory cards to 2TB. Initial SD cards released by manufacturers based on the specification will provide storage capacity of 64GB, said Rex Sabio, co-chairman of SDA.