Linked List: May 18, 2010

Tuesday, 18 May 2010

Short story by John Cheever; pairs perfectly with yesterday’s Cannonball short film.

(Thanks to DF reader Gordon Anderson.)

Google on Microsoft’s Pitch Regarding Office ★

Kevin McLaughlin, reporting for CRN:

“It says a lot about Microsoft’s approach to customer lock-in that the company touts its proprietary document formats, which only Microsoft software can render with true fidelity, as the reason to avoid using other products,” a Google spokesperson said in an e-mail.

jQuery for Designers ★

Great site by Remy Sharp. (Via Cameron Moll.)

Google Buys VOIP Engine Behind Yahoo, AOL, WebEx, Lotus Conferencing ★

Larry Dignan, ZDNet:

Google on Tuesday said it will acquire Global IP Solutions Holding, which makes processing software for voice and video over IP, for $68.2 million. The deal means that Google will own the voice and video conferencing engine behind its competitors’ instant messaging systems.

Update: Good follow-up point from Karl Adam on Twitter:

Google’s purchases of GIPS drives home why Apple is so adamant about controlling its technology stack, so that competitors can’t just buy it.

Soulver 2.0 ★

Nice update to a great Mac app — sort of a cross between a calculator and a spreadsheet. Very convenient.

Update: It’d be even more convenient if they took this suggestion from Mike McCracken.

Who’s Trying to Control the Web? ★

Aaron Swartz:

If Adobe gets to define the Web as including Flash, then they get to control the Web — you can only claim you support the Web (as Apple’s TV ads got in trouble for claiming in the UK) if you follow Adobe’s rules. It’s not surprising Adobe’s cofounders don’t want to give that up.

Microsoft Announces New Version of ‘Windows Live Hotmail’ ★

Dick Craddock:

Today, we’re excited to give you a preview of the new Windows Live Hotmail, representing the next generation in personal email.

Why “Windows Live Hotmail”? Why not just “Hotmail”? Cf. my earlier piece today about whether Microsoft’s executives are confused about whether they’re in the software business or the Windows business.

‘Leading Is the Next Best Thing After Owning’ ★

Matt Drance, in the first post to his new weblog:

A much more interesting question is: why does Apple continue to promote HTML5? Doesn’t an open standard with a glacial committee process produce the same problems? Won’t web apps take Apple’s control away?

Should Adobe Ship a Jailbreak iPhone Version of Flash Player? ★

The idea being that Adobe could prove Apple wrong by shipping a version of Flash Player for jailbroken iPhones that exhibits none of the problems delineated by Steve Jobs. An interesting “what if?” scenario, but I don’t think it’s technically realistic.

‘The iPad, the Kindle, and the Future of Books’ ★

Terrific piece by Ken Auletta in The New Yorker from a few weeks ago on the state of the book publishing industry. Auletta covers the shift to e-books mostly from the publishers’ perspective, which is illuminating:

Tim O’Reilly, the founder and C.E.O. of O’Reilly Media, which publishes about two hundred e-books per year, thinks that the old publishers’ model is fundamentally flawed. “They think their customer is the bookstore,” he says. “Publishers never built the infrastructure to respond to customers.” Without bookstores, it would take years for publishers to learn how to sell books directly to consumers. They do no market research, have little data on their customers, and have no experience in direct retailing. With the possible exception of Harlequin Romance and Penguin paperbacks, readers have no particular association with any given publisher; in books, the author is the brand name.

That the publishers view bookstores — rather than readers — as their customers explains much of what ails the industry. And that Tim O’Reilly has always seen the reader as his customer explains why O’Reilly Media, which was once as print-centric as any other book publisher, is doing better than most publishers.

Another choice observation, from Amazon’s Russ Grandinetti:

In Grandinetti’s view, book publishers — like executives in other media — are making the same mistake the railroad companies made more than a century ago: thinking they were in the train business rather than the transportation business.

(Think about that observation as applied to Microsoft’s executive leadership: Do they think they’re in the software business, or the Windows business?)

RunRev’s Plans for HyperCard-Like IDE for iPhone Development Squashed by Section 3.3.1 ★

The absence of such a high-level IDE is an opportunity for competing platforms. And, given the lack of windowing, the iPhone OS seems like a far better platform for something HyperCard-esque than the Mac ever was.

Speed-Bump Update to MacBooks ★

Still starting at $999. The biggest improvement is battery life: up from 7 to 10 hours.

Adobe’s Mobile Showcase ★

Which of the sites from Adobe’s mobile showcase — the sites they’re promoting to Nexus One users with the imminent Flash Player 10.1 for Android installed — have HTML5 alternative content or iPhone/iPad apps in the App Store?

Kindle for Android ★

Unlike the iPhone Kindle app, it has a built-in store rather than kicking you out to the web browser to buy books. (Which limitation of the iPhone version, I believe, is a byproduct of Apple’s App Store rules.) Update: Kindle for Android isn’t available yet; it’s “coming soon”.