Linked List: August 10, 2009

Monday, 10 August 2009

Andre Torrez Is Using an Android G1 for a Month 

Interesting perspective on what it’s like to go full-time Android after two years of using an iPhone. He’s got two follow-ups so far, here and here. This bit from his second entry, on what is widely regarded as the best Android Twitter client, captures the sort of “Eh, good enough” attitude that would drive me nuts:

Twidroid is a little chunky when scrolling, offers lengthy menus you have to scroll through when the phone is turned sideways, and generally feels rough to me. There is a “delete” option for every tweet, not just my own, but every tweet. When you push that option you are told, “You may not delete another users (sic) status”. They shipped that.

The best thing that could happen for iPhone users would be for the Android and/or WebOS communities to start shipping apps that make iPhone owners jealous. Google Voice for Android is the best example so far.

Update: And he’s given up after just seven days. Cripes.

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up, Part Two 

Anti-health-care-reform activist, reportedly injured in a fight at a town hall meeting last week, is collecting donations to pay his medical bills because he was recently laid off and lost his health insurance.

Update: The man’s lawyer says he’s just unemployed, but has health insurance through his wife, and that he’s collecting donations to profit from the alleged attack.

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up, Part One 

From an Investor’s Business Daily editorial arguing against the current U.S. health care reform proposals:

The U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) basically figures out who deserves treatment by using a cost-utility analysis based on the “quality adjusted life year.” One year in perfect health gets you one point. Deductions are taken for blindness, for being in a wheelchair and so on. The more points you have, the more your life is considered worth saving, and the likelier you are to get care.

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

Stephen Hawking was born and has lived his entire life in the U.K.

(Via Josh Marshall.)

Facebook Acquires FriendFeed 

Facebook is a good match for FriendFeed, insofar as I’ve never understood why I’d want to use either of them.

Pre-Order Snow Leopard From Amazon 

Those of you reading this on the DF web site (as opposed to the RSS feed) may notice I’ve added a promotional reminder up in the top-right corner, shamelessly pimping Amazon pre-orders for Snow Leopard and the Snow Leopard family pack. I know I linked to these a week ago, but it really is a big deal — I make more from Amazon kickbacks for these biennial major Mac OS X updates than I do from all other Amazon products combined. For obvious reasons, DF’s audience is pretty much square in the middle of the market for selling Mac OS X updates.

If you buy from Amazon, you get a good price and Amazon’s price guarantee — if the price goes down before Snow Leopard actually ships, you’ll get that price. Also, after clicking these links, any other purchases you make from Amazon throw referral lucre my way.

Snow Leopard doesn’t seem to yet be available for pre-order from Canada or the U.K., but readers in those countries can set a preference to get Amazon.ca and Amazon.co.uk links on the DF preferences page.

Shorten This 

Zeldman:

Rolling your own mini-URLs lessens the chance that your carefully cultivated links will rot if the third-party URL shortening site goes down or goes out of business, as is happening to tr.im, a URL shortener that is pulling the plug because it could neither monetize nor sell its service.

He’s using the Short URL Plugin for WordPress.

MG Siegler on the Case for Apple 

Long, personal response to Calacanis’s rant. I think Calacanis’s heart is in the right place, but his arguments just don’t add up.

URL Shortener tr.im to Discontinue Service 

They plan to keep redirecting existing tr.im URLs through the end of the year, but after that, they’re all dead. And people ask me why I wrote my own URL shortener for DF’s Twitter account.

Planet Calacanis  

Marco Arment on Jason Calacanis’s “five-part” criticism of Apple:

This, unfortunately, is the fate of Calacanis’s piece: he has some good points, but they’re buried in so much off-base ranting and misplaced frustration that it’s difficult to take any of it seriously.