Linked List: September 16, 2010

Thursday, 16 September 2010

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz on Apple’s iAd: ‘That’s Going to Fall Apart for Them’ 

Maybe she’s right. Let’s check back in a year.

Screenshot of Angry Birds for BlackBerry 

Works on all BlackBerrys, including those without a touchscreen. (Via Josh Topolsky.)

September 16, Jobs Day 

Interesting fact: Jobs was forced out of Apple on 16 September 1985; he rejoined on 16 September 1997. So, he was there for seven years, gone for 12, and has now been back for 13.

Update: Chris Espinosa, who knows a little about Apple history, tweets:

Jobs was forced out of power 5/28/85, and resigned 9/12/85; Apple bought NeXT 12/20/96 and closed 2/4/97. 9/16 is not “Jobs day.”

‘Don’t Be Evil’ 

Dan Frommer:

All’s fair in business, we suppose. But Google is now basically acting like heyday-era Microsoft here, throwing its weight around and screwing over small companies for its own gain.

What’s particularly Microsoftian about this Skyhook lawsuit is the tying of an unrelated product or service — in this case location services — to the OS.

Skyhook Sues Google for Interference, Patent Infringement 

Clint Boulton, reporting for eWeek:

In the interference suit, filed in Massachusetts Superior Court, Skyhook claimed Google costs it tens of millions of dollars by trying to cut in on its contract with Motorola, which makes smartphones that leverage location services.

Motorola, which makes and sells smartphones based on Google’s Android operating system, agreed to use Skyhook’s XPS location technology in April.

When Google Vice President of Engineering Andy Rubin learned of this, according to the suit, he called Motorola Co-CEO Sanjay Jha to impose a “stop ship” order, preventing Motorola from shipping Android wireless devices featuring Skyhook’s XPS software.

Rubin claimed that using XPS in Android phones would make them incompatible. Motorola ended up shipping its Motorola Droid X smartphone in mid-July using Google’s location software instead of the Skyhook XPS technology.

Nice.

Acorn 2.5 

Nice update to Flying Meat’s “image editor for humans”. Among a slew of new features: layer masks.

Stephen Colbert Channels Dr. Strangelove 

Brilliant.

The Very Last Thing Alex Payne Will Write About Twitter 

Alex Payne:

A large part of the reason I left Twitter was a fundamental philosophical difference that I couldn’t reconcile, either for myself or the company. I believe that Twitter as a medium is and should be distinct from Twitter as a business. Put another way, there’s an important difference between lowercase “t” tweeting and uppercase “T” Twitter, just as with democrat and Democrat.

Nokia Is the McDonald’s of Phones 

Astute analysis on Nokia’s market position from Brian Barrett.