Linked List: February 15, 2010

Monday, 15 February 2010

NYT: Steve Jobs Cooperating on Biography by Walter Isaacson ★

Brad Stone, reporting for the NYT:

Apple’s chief executive is set to collaborate on an authorized biography, to be written by Walter Isaacson, the former managing editor of Time magazine, according to two people briefed on the project.

Windows Phone 7 Series ★

What a great product name. Not a mouthful at all.

Homebrew App for the Palm Pre Reboots Your Phone on a Schedule ★

Steven Frank:

This is such a perfectly encapsulated nutshell of exactly why Apple does not allow third-party background processes on the iPhone.

Lessons From Hewlett-Packard’s Massive Job Cuts ★

Chris O’Brien:

This column began when I tried to find the answer to what I thought would be a simple question: How many job cuts has Hewlett-Packard had over the past decade?

The answer shocked me: 75,505.

That includes people who were fired or took early retirement. Despite the cuts, HP’s workforce has tripled in size as the company hired people in new areas and bought companies such as Compaq and EDS.

The Wholesale Applications Community ★

Jason Kincaid nails it: “write once, run everywhere” has never worked out. It’s a pipe dream. More laughably, this initiative comes from mobile carriers, not OS vendors. It’ll never pan out.

The Widening HTML5 Chasm ★

Simon St. Laurent on the process forging HTML5:

HTML5 will be damaged, its credibility weakened, but will still be important, one way or another.

Yeah, I sure wish HTML5 were going more like, say, the W3C’s XHTML 2.0 spec. That worked out great.

Update: Mark Pilgrim says to look at primary sources.

Ian Hickson on Adobe and HTML5 ★

Ian Hickson:

Since I was mistaken about the formal objection, should I prepare the drafts for FPWD publication now? What date should I use?

Either this was all a major mistake and misunderstanding, or Hickson is calling Adobe’s bluff.

Adobe Claims Not to Be Blocking Anything Related to HTML5 ★

Adobe’s Larry Masinter, in a comment on 9 to 5 Mac:

No part of HTML5 is, or was ever, “blocked” in the W3C HTML Working Group — not HTML5, not Canvas 2D Graphics, not Microdata, not Video — not by me, not by Adobe.

Neither Adobe nor I oppose, are fighting, are trying to stop, slow down, hinder, oppose, or harm HTML5, Canvas 2D Graphics, Microdata, video in HTML, or any of the other significant features in HTML5.

Claims otherwise are false. Any other disclaimers needed?

Great news.