Linked List: September 14, 2009

Monday, 14 September 2009

Intuit Acquires Mint.com for $170 Million ★

Intuit — the company so inept at shipping Mac software that they were apparently caught unaware that the Java bridge had been deprecated years ago and removed from Snow Leopard, rendering QuickBooks unable to be activated — has acquired the personal finance management web site Mint.com.

If you’re a Mint.com user, you can delete your account at the bottom of the Profile → About You page. (Thanks to Blake Seely.) Good luck, you may need it.

Acorn 2.0 ★

Great update to Flying Meat’s $50 image editor. Adds 64-bit support, JSTalk scripting (so you can write Acorn plugins using either JavaScript or Python now), layer groups, and a way cool feature for screenshots:

It’s a new preference, and it’s turned off by default since it’ll make some pretty big images — but you can now take screenshots where every window gets its own layer, and the layers are organized by applications in layer groups.

Full release notes here. And even if you don’t buy the full version, you can use it for free in a very useful light mode after the 14-day demo period.

Book Titles, If They Were Written Today ★

Scott Simpson:

Then: The Gospel of Matthew
Now: 40 Days and a Mule: How One Man Quit His Job and Became the Boss

(Kottke’s got a comment thread where you can post your own.)

First and 20 ★

Fun idea for a web site: “a collection of iPhone home screens”, including mine.

Shawn Blanc on Yojimbo 2.0 ★

A splendid review of one of my very favorite apps. I found myself nodding my head in complete agreement.

Apple Drops Price of 160 GB Apple TV to $229 ★

$100 price drop, and they eliminated the 40 GB model.

Philadelphia Set to Close Its Public Libraries ★

Not a proud day here. Heartbreaking.

Speaking of Michael Jordan ★

Here’s Jordan’s acceptance speech as he entered the Hall of Fame this past weekend. And here’s ESPN’s video list of the 23 top moments from Jordan’s career.

Sprint CEO Calls the iPhone the ‘Michael Jordan’ of Phones ★

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse, in an interview with Charlie Rose:

Rose: Is the Palm Pre making a dent into the iPhone market?

Hesse: Aaah… It’s doing well, but you can almost put the iPhone, to be fair, in a separate category. The Apple brand and that device have done so well, it’s almost not… it’s like comparing someone to Michael Jordan.

This is one of the worst answers he could have given. Even just plain “No” would have been better than comparing the iPhone to Jordan, which suggests that Hesse doesn’t believe they can compete. He could have simply said that the iPhone has a two-year head start, and Sprint is happy with how the Pre is doing three months in.