Linked List: May 7, 2009

Thursday, 7 May 2009

Murdoch: News Corp Web Sites to Charge for Content ★

CNN:

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch expects News Corporation-owned newspaper Web sites to start charging users for access within a year in a move which analysts say could radically shake-up the culture of freely available content.

Good luck with that.

Age-Based App Store Restrictions in iPhone OS 3.0 ★

No word yet on who will assign the ratings.

BBEdit 9.2 ★

Tons of new stuff, all copiously documented in the release notes, as usual. My favorite new feature is the Sleep command, which lets you quit the app while saving state. When next you launch BBEdit after sleeping, all open windows and documents are restored, including untitled documents.

I wish every app had this feature.

Update: Michael Tsai calls out a few other new features.

Duke Nukem Developer 3D Realms Goes Bust ★

This will only add to Duke Nukem Forever’s vaporware legend.

Correlation Between Web Browsers and Political Leanings? ★

Remember Sean Tevis, the information architect who decided to run for the state legislature in Kansas with an xkcd-style web comic promoting his campaign? He lost, but it was close, and he’s raising money in a similar fashion again. He is not accepting any money from industry or corporate lobbyists, only direct contributions from voters.

Also interesting: a poll commissioned by his campaign just before the election last year showed an incredibly strong correlation based on browser usage. IE 6, AOL, and non-Internet users were more likely to prefer Tevis’s opponent, Republican Arlen Siegfreid. Firefox, Safari, and Chrome users were more likely to prefer Tevis.

MPAA Shows How to Videorecord a TV Set ★

Timothy Vollmer:

At the DMCA 1201 hearings at the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress, representatives from the MPAA showed a video demonstrating how users can videorecord a TV set. They argue this is an acceptable analog alternative to breaking copy protection on a DVD.

I.e. if you want to make fair use of a clip from a copy-protected DVD, the MPAA recommends that you point a camcorder at your TV set in a dark room. (Via John Siracusa.)

Some Intel Chips Don’t Support Windows 7 ‘XP Mode’ ★

Shouldn’t be a big deal if XP Mode really is only of interest to the enterprise, but still sounds like a hassle to me.

MiFi ★

David Pogue on the Novatel MiFi, an intriguing new product and service from Verizon:

But imagine if you could get online anywhere you liked — in a taxi, on the beach, in a hotel with disgustingly overpriced Wi-Fi — without messing around with cellular modems. What if you had a personal Wi-Fi bubble, a private hot spot, that followed you everywhere you go?

Konami Code Sites ★

And, of course, you have to enter the code first.

The Kindle Lets Amazon Make a Lot From the Few ★

Saul Hansell on the Kindle’s market penetration among frequent book buyers:

Look at this rather astounding statistic from Amazon’s news conference on Wednesday introducing a larger Kindle: On Amazon.com, 35 percent of sales of books that have a Kindle edition are sold in that format. That’s up, by the way, from 13 percent in February, according to a slide put up by Amazon.com’s chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos.

Think of what that means. Amazon has tens of millions of customers. It sold 500,000 Kindles last year, Mark Mahaney of Citigroup estimates. So even if it has twice that many in distribution, that is a lot of e-book buying by a small number of people.