Linked List: April 27, 2010

Tuesday, 27 April 2010

Mozilla Fennec ‘Pre-Alpha’ for Android ★

It’ll be interesting to see if Gecko can be turned into a worthy mobile competitor to WebKit. (They realize alpha is the first letter of the alphabet?)

The Bygone Bureau’s New Design ★

Remember jQuery Masonry, a web page layout toolkit I linked to yesterday? The Bygone Bureau are using it to achieve a lovely and previously impossible layout.

App Store Rejection of the Week: Michael Wolff ★

Michael Wolff:

The stated reason for the rejection of my free app is that Apple requires “sufficient amounts of content to appeal to a broad audience.” Putting aside the fact that this pretty much makes specialty content ineligible for iPhone or iPad apps, it’s also a pretty fudgy standard. For instance, I get a bigger readership for my online columns than I do for my Vanity Fair columns — so Vanity Fair shouldn’t make the cut?

Where we are is that Apple is now creating a distribution system for books and periodicals — in a sense, no different from a newsstand or bookstore — which it proposes to regulate as it sees fit, without explanation, recourse, or standards.

I don’t get it. I looked at the Android version of his app, and it’s effectively a dedicated RSS reader for Wolff’s columns, with ads from AdMob. There are dozens of apps like this in Apple’s App Store.

Five Reasons iPhone vs. Android Isn’t Like Mac vs. Windows ★

Astute analysis from Mark Sigal. Android may well grow to overwhelm the iPhone OS in terms of market share, but if so, it won’t be for the same reasons Windows did on the desktop.

Investigators Have Found the Finder ★

Mary Duan, San Jose Business Journal:

Investigators said they have identified and interviewed the person who took the phone from the Gourmet Haus Staudt on March 18 after it was left there by Apple engineer Gray Powell following a birthday celebration. Officials were unable to tell the Business Journal whether that person, whose name has not been released, was the same person who eventually sold the phone to tech Web site Gizmodo.com. […]

Wagstaffe said that an outside counsel for Apple, along with Apple engineer Powell, called the District Attorney’s office on Wednesday or Thursday of last week to report a theft had occurred and they wanted it investigated.

Chip Maker Intrinsity Moving to North Korea ★

Ashlee Vance and Brad Stone:

Apple has bought the company that many analysts say helped make the brain in the iPad tablet, people familiar with the deal said Tuesday.

Apple has finalized a deal to acquire a small chip company called Intrinsity, Apple confirmed. Intrinsity, of Austin, Tex., made a name for itself by creating a fast chip for mobile devices in cooperation with Samsung, both a partner and competitor to Apple.

Google’s Andy Rubin Compares iPhone to North Korea ★

Brad Stone of the NYT interviewed Andy Rubin last week:

Mr. Rubin also addressed many other topics—like whether consumers actually care if their mobile phone software is “open” or not. He insisted that they will, comparing closed computing platforms to totalitarian governments that deprive their citizens of choice. “When they can’t have something, people do care. Look at the way politics work. I just don’t want to live in North Korea,” he said.

Paul Ohm: ‘Searching Journalists in the Terabyte Age’ ★

Great piece by Paul Ohm on the breadth of material taken by authorities when they confiscate modern computers:

In other words, all of the rules that govern police searches of news offices were created in the age of typewriters, desks, filing cabinets, and stacks of paper.

Now, flash forward thirty years. The police who searched Jason Chen’s home seized the following: A MacBook, HP server, two Dell desktop computers, iPad, ThinkPad, two MacBook Pros, Iomega NAS, three external hard drives, and three flash drives. They also seized other storage-containing devices, including two digital cameras and two smart phones. If Jason Chen’s computing habits are anything like mine, the police likely seized many terabytes of disk space, storing hundreds of thousands (millions?) of files, containing information stretching back years. […]

At the very least, the courts should forbid the police from looking at any file timestamped before March 18, 2010, and in addition, they should force the police to comply with the Comprehensive Drug Testing rules.

The Comprehensive Drug Testing rules (which Ohm describes in his piece) are very fair, and ought to be applied here. But the timestamp idea, however well-intentioned, isn’t practical — timestamps are trivial to change.

CNet: Journalist Shield Law May Not Halt iPhone Probe ★

Declan McCullagh and Greg Sandoval:

Eugene Volokh, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles who teaches First Amendment law, says that court decision — the case is called Rosato v. Superior Court (PDF) — means that California’s state shield law “wouldn’t apply to subpoenas or searches for evidence of such criminal activity.”

Translated: If Gizmodo editors are, in fact, a target of a criminal probe into the possession or purchase of stolen property, the search warrant served on editor Jason Chen on Friday appears valid.

Adobe Flash Player Installer Requires You to Force Quit the Finder? ★

Another great Adobe installer.

RIM Releases BlackBerry OS 6 Video ★

Jay Yarow:

It’s obvious what RIM wants you to think when you watch this video: “Wow, this is kind of like an iPhone.” That’s because the whole video is showing people dancing around, pretending to zoom around a big BlackBerry with a touch user interface.

The big problem with that line of logic is that RIM does NOT have a good, popular touchscreen phone, and is hardly a touch-focused company. The only touchscreen BlackBerry, the Storm, is garbage compared to an iPhone.

And I thought RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis just told us that people are abandoning touchscreen phones and going back to hardware keyboard QWERTY phones?

Playing Coy ★

BBC News, talking to Jennifer Granick, the EFF’s civil liberties director:

The second issue the EFF is concerned about is if police officers are doing the investigative work of a private company. “If there was some offence here it is not apparent what it is”, she said.

Actually, it’s very apparent, and quite simple. They’re looking at Jason Chen and Gizmodo on felony charges for buying stolen property. This police raid was not about what Gizmodo published.

BBEdit 9.5 ★

Another major update to an eminent Mac app. Major new features include an in-window live search bar, and an impressive new system for attaching scripts to application and document events. Amazingly, it’s a free update for existing BBEdit 9.0 users.

(No one does release notes like Bare Bones does release notes.)

Amy Hoy: ‘The iPad, and the Staggering Work of Obviousness’ ★

Amy Hoy:

Nevertheless, the shortsightedness of punditry is evergreen. Instead of praising the iPad, critics express their disappointment, because they expected more. They expected a genre buster. They expected something they’d never seen before, something beyond their imagination. Something revolutionary.

They’re disappointed that the iPad is so… well… unsurprising.

Therein, of course, lies the genius.

Spotify 0.4.3 ★

I occasionally link to things — e.g. Hulu videos — that, due to the byzantine ways major media corporations manage copyright, are only available to people in the U.S. Here’s something cool that’s only available outside the U.S.: a major new version of Spotify. (Of course, it’s not available everywhere outside the U.S.)

Transmit 4.0 ★

Been beta testing this for a while. It’s very nice. My favorite feature:

With the new Transmit Disk feature, you can now mount any of your favorites in the Finder itself, even if Transmit’s not running. These volumes are real: drag files to your SFTP server, save a small graphic to your Amazon S3 bucket directly from Photoshop, or roll your own iDisk-like backup volume.

And, finally, hierarchical list views. The interactive product web page is itself a thing of beauty.

NYT Story on Computers Seized From Jason Chen ★

Brian Stelter and Nick Bilton:

Legal experts said there was little doubt that bloggers qualified. “Of all places, California is probably the most clear that what Gizmodo does and what Jason Chen does is journalism,” said Sam Bayard, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

He said the case could hinge on whether there is an exception in the law involving a journalist committing a crime, “in this case receipt of stolen property. He said “this seems unlikely based on the plain language of the statute.”

In other words, if the only target of the criminal investigation is the kid who found the unit and sold it to Gizmodo, then yes, Jason Chen should be considered protected by California’s shield law. They should have issued a subpoena (which means asking Chen to talk to them), and not used a warrant to break into, search, and confiscate items from his home.

But if Chen (and, presumably, his employer, Gawker Media) is himself the target of a felony investigation, the shield laws aren’t relevant. The shield laws are about allowing journalists to protect sources.

Joe, Joe, Joe ★

Joe Wilcox, not being sarcastic:

Surely Gawker’s legal department vetted everything before allowing one word, photo or video to be posted about the iPhone prototype.

You must be new to this story, Joe.

President Obama Praises the World Champion New York Yankees ★

Bryan Hoch, MLB.com:

Monday brought the ultimate acknowledgment of their six-game Fall Classic victory over the Phillies, as President Barack Obama welcomed the Yankees into a jam-packed East Room of the White House to celebrate their triumph one final time.

“It’s been nine years since your last title, which must have felt like an eternity for Yankees fans,” Obama said. “I think other teams would be just fine with a spell like that — the Cubs, for example.

I love that Obama, a White Sox fan, worked in a dig at the Cubs.

Boy Genius Report Acquired by MMC; Boy Genius Reveals Himself ★

Rebranding as BGR. Congratulations to Jonathan Geller, a.k.a. “Boy Genius”, both on the acquisition and on successfully maintaining his anonymity until he chose to reveal it.

Nick Denton on Whether Gawker Writers Are Journalists ★

My personal take is that Gawker writers and editors, including those at Gizmodo, are clearly journalists. Journalists are those who commit journalism, regardless of medium. Gawker chief Nick Denton, however, in an interview with Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz last year, doesn’t seem to see it that way:

“We don’t seek to do good,” says Denton, wearing a purplish shirt, jeans and a beard that resembles a three-day growth. “We may inadvertently do good. We may inadvertently commit journalism. That is not the institutional intention.”

(Bonus: Note the caption under the picture of Gawker staff writers.)