Linked List: March 16, 2010

Tuesday, 16 March 2010

Canon Announces ‘.canon’ Top-Level Domain Name 

I wonder how many other companies are going to do this.

The Interarchy Fire Sale 

Speaking of Nolobe, they’re holding a “fire sale” on their excellent file transfer app Interarchy — through Monday it’s on sale for just $20, including a free upgrade to the upcoming Interarchy 10. And a slew of other indie Mac developers — Flying Meat, Red Sweater, Atebits, Stairways, and The Little App Factory — are participating with a 20 percent discount code (“FIRESALE10”).

Iris Is Dead; Long Live Acorn 

Matthew Drayton of Nolobe:

Back in 2007 when we started on work on Iris there were no easy-to-use, reasonably priced image editors available for the Mac. If you wanted to edit images you had to get Photoshop, an expensive and confusing proposition for the average user.

Fast forward to today and there are 4 reasonably priced image editors available. They are all pretty good. One in particular, Acorn by Flying Meat Software, is excellent. Simply put if Acorn had existed back in 2007 we would never have started work on Iris.

The bad news: Nolobe is suspending development of Iris. The good news: existing Nolobe users get a free upgrade to Acorn. Very cool.

The Truth About Karl Rove’s ‘Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight’ 

Pitch-perfect parody of the political attack ad, from 37signals and Steve Delahoyde at Coudal Partners.

AT&T’s Success at SXSW This Year 

I said I’d believe when I saw it, and I’m delighted to report that AT&T’s 3G network was simply stellar at SXSW all weekend long — this, in contrast to last year, when it was pretty much worthless all weekend long. It’s worth noting, too, that SXSW Interactive attendance was way up once again this year, and, as far as I could tell, just about every single attendee was using an iPhone 3G or 3GS. Kudos to AT&T.

Apple Delays Ship Dates for Some iPad Accessories 

The keyboard dock is now slated to ship in May, and the case is shipping in “mid-April”. I think this is for new orders, though — when I checked my account just now at Apple’s web site, the case I ordered on Friday is still slated to be delivered on April 3.

Day 74 Sales: Apple iPhone vs. Google Nexus One vs. Motorola Droid 

Flurry — a mobile app analytics company — has published a comparison showing estimated sales over the first 74 days they were on sale:

Inspecting the graph, it’s immediately clear that Nexus One sales continue to pale in comparison to iPhone 1G and Motorola Droid, with each besting Nexus One sales by roughly 8 times over the same time period.

At the same time, an interesting side-story is that the Motorola Droid edged out iPhone 1G over the first 74 days, coming in at just over one million sold through, by our calculations. This was surprising enough that we re-ran our estimates several times and still came up with the same results.

I don’t think Google ever intended the Nexus One to be a high-selling device; it’s pretty clear from Apple’s experiments with iPhone pricing that subsidized pricing drives sales. But still: if they’ve only sold 135K to date, that means they’ve sold fewer over 74 days than Apple has sold iPad pre-orders over the weekend.

As for the surprise of the Droid outselling the original iPhone over their first 74 days, keep in mind that the iPhone was effectively unavailable for 21 of its first 74 days on sale. Still, though, it goes to show how important Verizon is.

Estimated iPad Pre-Orders Over the Weekend: 150,000 

Daniel Tello, a.k.a. “Deagol”, built a model to estimate iPad pre-orders based on order numbers submitted by volunteers throughout the weekend. It’s inexact, of course, but my money says these numbers are solid. And it’s worth emphasizing that these numbers do not include iPads that have been reserved for pickup at a retail Apple Store.

Keep in mind too, that this is for a machine that almost no one has seen, let alone used, in person.

WSJ: Ten Percent of Microsoft Employees Use an iPhone 

Nick Wingfield, reporting for the WSJ:

Nearly 10,000 iPhone users were accessing the Microsoft employee email system last year, say two people who heard the estimates from senior Microsoft executives. That figure equals about 10% of the company’s global work force.

Employees at Apple, in contrast, appear to be more devoted to the company’s own mobile phone. Several people who work at the company or deal regularly with employees there say they can’t recall seeing Apple workers with mobile phones other than the iPhone in recent memory. […]

One Microsoft worker said he knows several colleagues who try to disguise their iPhones with cases that make them look more like generic handsets. “Maybe once a year I’m in a meeting with Steve Ballmer,” said this employee. “It doesn’t matter who’s calling, I’m not answering my phone.”

It’s a schadenfreude-alicious nugget of information, sure. But it’s a telling indication of just how strong the iPhone is versus Windows Mobile. (Via Eric Slivka.)

Google Announces Nexus One With AT&T-Flavored 3G 

Google:

Starting today, an additional version of the Nexus One is available from the Google web store that is compatible with AT&T’s 3G network. This new model can be purchased as an unlocked device without a service plan. In addition to AT&T’s 3G network, this device will also run on Rogers Wireless in Canada. And like the first version of the Nexus One, it can be used with most GSM operators globally.

Jeffrey Zeldman on IE9 and Microsoft’s ‘Enforced Bragging’ 

Astute as always, especially with regard to the what-if scenario of Microsoft switching to WebKit.