Linked List: April 9, 2010

Friday, 9 April 2010

Doxie 

My thanks to Doxie for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed to promote their brand-new document scanner for the Mac. It’s portable, USB-powered, and comes with elegant software that scans paper documents directly to Mac and web apps like iPhoto, Google Docs, Evernote, Acrobat, and Flickr. Looks great, costs just $129, and scans everything from photos to receipts to business cards.

Twitter Acquires Tweetie 

I had a feeling this was in the works when Tweetie wasn’t iPad-native on day one. Here’s Loren Brichter on the deal.

Here’s to hoping that Twitter doesn’t fuck Tweetie up like Brizzly did to Birdfeed. And there’s going to be some heavy drinking tonight from developers of other iPhone OS Twitter API clients.

Adobe Platform Evangelist Lee Brimelow on Apple’s Decision to Forbid iPhone Apps Compiled With Flash CS5  

“Go screw yourself Apple.”

RIM Buys QNX 

This article posits that the deal is about tying BlackBerries to car navigation systems. I think that might be selling it far short — QNX is a serious kernel. This might be about the future of the BlackBerry OS. I.e. that QNX might be to RIM what NeXT was to Apple.

‘Infographic’, by Phil Gyford 

Zing.

Adam Lisagor’s ‘Fingerspoo’ iPad Wallpaper 

Gross, but accurate.

Robert Love on iPhone OS and Android Multitasking 

Good overview of how multitasking works on Android, and, considering it was written a week ago, a spot-on prediction about how Apple would add support for it to iPhone OS.

Ted Landau on iPad File Sharing 

I linked to this in my iPad review earlier in the week, but it’s worth a standalone item. The workflow for editing iWork documents on both your Mac and iPad is just atrocious, and Landau has done the hard work of copiously describing just how bad it is.

John Paul Stevens to Retire From Supreme Court After 34 Years 

His letter of resignation to President Obama (PDF).

Adobe Ideas for iPad 

No fair slagging on Adobe all day without pointing to Adobe Ideas, their first iPad app:

This free app helps you sketch out ideas, annotate photographs, extract color themes from photographs, and more. Sketches created in Adobe Ideas can be emailed as a PDF for editing in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop or viewing with any PDF viewer.

It’s very good, and very fun. My six-year-old son likes it, too. This is the Adobe I love.

Cutting Edge Stuff 

Adobe, on the careers page John Dowdell suggested Apple employees take a look at:

Adobe has a new talent acquisition system. This system is optimized for performance on IE 6 or IE 7, running on Windows XP. Unfortunately it is not supported on Firefox, nor is it supported on a Mac at this time.

A new system optimized for a 10-year-old version of Windows.

‘He Can’t Win’ 

Cringely, quoting Bill Gates from 1998:

“What I can’t figure out is why he (Steve Jobs) is even trying (to be the CEO of Apple)? He knows he can’t win.”

Adobe Distances Itself From JooJoo 

Vladislav Savov at Engadget:

Adobe is drawing a thick line between itself and the JooJoo, and urges us to instead look at the alternatives from its partners like HP, Dell and Lenovo. Mind you, not one of those companies is (as yet) selling a competing tablet, and it’s not like there’s some magical formula that will make 720p Flash video run smoothly on a bare Atom CPU (remember, Ion GPU acceleration is not yet available for the Linux-based JooJoo), but who are we to stand in the way of a carefully worded damage limitation statement?

So the only Flash-capable tablets Adobe recommends aren’t available yet.

I’m Sure There Will Be a Line Wrapping Around the Block 

Adobe’s John Dowdell:

I know that a number of good people work at Apple. If you’re seeking a more ethical company, Adobe is hiring.

Unboxing the iPad Data 

Interesting infographic by John Kumahara and Johnathan Bonnel.

Adobe’s Initial Response to Section 3.3.1 

Nick Bilton:

When asked how this would affect the software introduction, Adobe released the following statement: “We are aware of Apple’s new SDK language and are looking into it. We continue to develop our Packager for iPhone OS technology, which we plan to debut in Flash CS5.”

Translation: “Fuck.”

Mark Wilson Has Apparently Never Used an Ad-Based iPhone App 

I mean, there are thousands of apps already in the App Store that present ads just as big or bigger than iAds. If you don’t like an app using iAds, don’t use it. Easy.