Linked List: June 19, 2009

Friday, 19 June 2009

Paul Krugman on The Washington Post’s Firing of Columnist Dan Froomkin 

Paul Krugman, theorizing why the Post would fire a popular columnist:

Thus we still live in an era in which you have to have been wrong to be respectable. You’re not considered serious about national security unless you were for invading Iraq; you’re not considered a serious political analyst unless you spent the last 3 years of the Bush administration predicting a Republican comeback; you’re not considered a serious economic analyst unless you dismissed the idea that the Bush Boom, such as it was, rested on a housing bubble.

The Post’s loss will be someone else’s gain. Froomkin is a great — and popular — columnist.

AnandTech’s 3GS and Palm Pre Web Page Rendering Benchmarks 

The 3GS renders web pages a little more than twice as fast as the 3G, but only slightly faster than the Pre.

Ze Frank: That Makes Me Think Of 

Very cool: Ze Frank is now doing The Show-style videos for Time magazine.

Benchmark: iPhone 3G vs. 3GS App Launching Times 

Here’s a quick video I shot comparing application launching times on the iPhone 3G and 3GS, using PCalc as the test app.

Important Update: PCalc’s launch time on my old 3G was misleadingly slow in the first version of this video I posted. I erroneously still had an ad hoc beta build installed on the 3G, not the release version from the App Store. This link now points to a new fair comparison. The 3GS still comes out ahead easily, but not so dramatically. My apologies for the error. Trust me, PCalc does not take 10 seconds to launch on any iPhone.

A few other side-by-side 3G vs. 3GS comparisons:

Mac OS X Process Memory Statistics 

Nice layman’s guide to memory statistics on Mac OS X from Mike Ash.

AT&T: $55 Tethering Rumors Are False 

AT&T statement:

There are a lot of reports out there, but wanted you guys to know that rumors of $55 tethering plan on top of an unlimited data plan are false. We’ll have more news to share when the iPhone tethering option is closer to launch.

My guess is they’re going to try to charge $60 total for a tethering data plan, or maybe $55. AT&T’s regular BlackBerry data plans are $30, but they charge $60 for data with tethering.

As I hear from more readers around the world, it’s clear that most carriers charge nothing extra for tethering. The only catch is that they enforce reasonable bandwidth limits, usually 3-5 GB per month. (According my AT&T account, I tend to use only 200-300 MB per month on my iPhone, pre-tethering, so a limit of a few GB seems very reasonable.)

Layer Tennis Playoffs Today 

No better way to spend the day while you wait for the FedEx guy to show up with your 3GS. Live, right now, as I type, Shaun Inman vs. Aaron Scamiharn; then at 3 pm EDT, Scott Hansen vs. Jason Koxvold.

Tiny Dancer (App Store Link) 

My thanks to Tiny Dancer for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. Tiny Dancer is a new $1 toy app for the iPhone that displays a 3D animated character on screen who dances to the beat of music or to your on-screen taps.

Pixar Grants Girl’s Dying Wish With Home Viewing of ‘Up’ 

Annie Burris, reporting for The Orange County Register:

Colby Curtin, a 10-year-old with a rare form of cancer, was staying alive for one thing — a movie. From the minute Colby saw the previews to the Disney-Pixar movie Up, she was desperate to see it. Colby had been diagnosed with vascular cancer about three years ago, said her mother, Lisa Curtin, and at the beginning of this month it became apparent that she would die soon and was too ill to be moved to a theater to see the film.

After a family friend made frantic calls to Pixar to help grant Colby her dying wish, Pixar came to the rescue.

This story choked me up more than Up itself did. Excuse me while I go give my boy a hug while he sleeps.