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Linked List: October 5, 2010
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
- Tennessee County’s Subscription-Based Firefighters Watch as Family Home Burns Down ★
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Not from The Onion:
In this rural section of Tennessee, Gene Cranick’s home caught on fire. As the Cranicks fled their home, their neighbors alerted the county’s firefighters, who soon arrived at the scene. Yet when the firefighters arrived, they refused to put out the fire, saying that the family failed to pay the annual subscription fee to the fire department. Because the county’s fire services for rural residences is based on household subscription fees, the firefighters, fully equipped to help the Cranicks, stood by and watched as the home burned to the ground.
(Via JWZ.)
- Xmarks Premium Pledge Campaign ★
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Not dead yet?
But first, the punch line: we’re revisiting the idea of Xmarks as a premium service. We’ve set up a Pledgebank page where you can sign up if you’re willing to pay at least $10 a year for Xmarks. No credit card is required, but please only pledge if you are genuinely willing and able to pay.
- Google Responds to Oracle’s Android Patent Lawsuit ★
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Nilay Patel:
Google says Android doesn’t infringe any of Oracle’s patents, and even if it does, those patents are invalid and / or unenforceable for a variety of reasons anyway, so, you know, shove it. That’s basically all Google — or any patent defendant — needs to say in the answer, and if that was it, we’d just note it and move on with our lives. But we were struck by the factual background section, which reads to us like Google’s geared up for war: it basically accuses Sun and Oracle of not playing fair when it comes to Java’s open-source license situation and directly implies that parts of Android are based on code that might require a patent license.
- Sony’s Google TV Remote Control ★
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Seems like a lot of buttons.
- George Kokkinidis Redesigns The Guardian’s ‘Who’s Suing Who?’ Graphic ★
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Nice. (His whole site is good.)
- Google Mobile App for iPhone Now Has Goggles ★
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Requires auto-focusing camera, so it’s only available for iPhone 3GS and 4. (Via MG Siegler.)
- 360 MacDev Conference ★
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New Mac developer conference in Denver, December 10-11, with a good lineup of speakers. Save 20 percent on registration using this coupon code they sent me: “DFReadersRock”.
- Who’s Suing Who in Mobile? ★
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Not the best-looking graphic, but interesting.
- Why Apple Doesn’t Talk ★
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Matt Drance:
If you just shut your mouth and let the product speak for itself — once you actually have a product — then there’s a much better chance for people to be pleasantly surprised.
- Claim Chowder: ‘10 Reasons the iPad Could Fail Catastrophically’ ★
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Speaking of Kontra, his Twitter stream is chock full of delicious iPad claim chowder today, including this gem by Mikel Reparaz at GamesRadar back in January.
- How Not to Fight Colds ★
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Jennifer Ackerman:
It seems counterintuitive, but there it is: People with more active immune systems may be especially prone to cold symptoms.
(Via Kontra.)
- Nielsen: Android Takes Top Spot in U.S. Smartphone Sales ★
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Ryan Kim:
Nielsen said among recent acquirers of smartphones in the last six months through August, Android was the top platform in the U.S. with 32 percent of new purchases, followed by the iPhone and Research In Motion’s Blackberry platform, tied at about 25 percent.
When looking at overall market share, RIM remains on top with 31 percent, trailed by the iPhone at 28 percent and Android at 19 percent. But the race continues to tighten with RIM maintaining a slide from 37 percent in February. The iPhone has remained largely stable during that period, while Android market share is up from 8 percent in February.
The only thing that could change this trend is getting the iPhone on other carriers in the U.S. The numbers are very different in Europe, where the iPhone is available on multiple carriers in most countries.
- A Terrible Tablet From a Company With a Bizarrely Coincidental Name ★
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Charles Arthur on the £180 10-inch “Next 10” Android tablet:
But choosing or touching any of the screens did nothing. A few more prods and it gave up - nothing would get it to react. Seriously, if that’s Android on a tablet, there’s trouble ahead.
My recommendation: do not buy this item unless you have tried it out thoroughly in a shop, and found out whether you can crash it (as I did in 30 seconds).
- Apple Loses ‘Cover Flow’ Patent Lawsuit to Mirror Worlds ★
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Bloomberg:
The federal jury in Tyler, Texas, awarded $208.5 million in damages for each of the patents infringed. The verdict form was unclear as to whether the amount applies to the three patents collectively or would be charged individually. Lawyers for closely held Mirror Worlds declined to discuss the verdict.
Mirror Worlds, a software business started by a Yale University computer-science professor David Gelernter, claimed Apple’s iPod music device, iPhone and Mac computers infringed its patents. Apple challenged the validity of the patents and whether they were infringed, according to court records.
That’s the same David Gelernter who survived an attack from Ted “The Unabomber” Kaczynski.
From The New York Times’s report on the verdict:
If Mirror Worlds is granted the full amount by the court, it would be one of the largest patent awards in United States history. The case was heard before Federal District Judge Leonard E. Davis in the Eastern District of Texas, a locale favored by plaintiffs in patent cases because of the generosity of the jury awards.
- Skype for Android Phones Now Available ★
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No longer exclusive to Verizon, and now works as you’d expect. The small print notes:
Skype has been tested on HTC and Motorola devices with Android OS 2.1 and above. It may work on other Android phones, but we can’t guarantee full functionality or compatibility. We’re aware of some problems with the Samsung Galaxy S, and we’re looking to address these in the future.
Update: Apparently this new app is just plain “Skype”. The “Skype for Mobile” app was and remains exclusive to Verizon.
- VP in charge of Nokia’s MeeGo Devices Resigns ★
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Are they going to abandon MeeGo?
- Sparrow — New Email Client for Mac OS X ★
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New desktop email client by Dinh Viêt Hoà and Dominique Leca. It’s a Gmail-only beta version at the moment, but they have plans to expand support to other IMAP servers. Rather than ape Apple Mail or even traditional three-pane email clients in general, Sparrow’s UI design borrows from Tweetie (for Mac), the iPad, and Gmail’s web app. I’m not sure how this design will scale to support a full list of mailboxes (or, in Gmail parlance, labels), but still, it’s very interesting, and an original take on email. Worth a look now, and worth keeping an eye on.