Linked List: October 12, 2010

Tuesday, 12 October 2010

Alternate Take on Microsoft’s First Windows Phone 7 Ad, From a Commenter at Business Insider 

These ads reveal Microsoft’s deepest fear: the PC is no longer the center of the software universe. Phones are.

In other words, “Stop spending all day looking at your phones and go back to spending all day looking at a Windows PC”.

Samsung Has Sold 5 Million Galaxy S Phones 

That’s over a million per month. Impressive.

LG Quantum Windows Phone 7 

Sascha Segan:

Windows Phone 7 also just doesn’t seem to be designed for phones with landscape-format, sliding keyboards yet. Too many of the Windows Phone 7 screens don’t rotate, leaving you craning your neck to try to operate the phone at a 90-degree angle.

Then why release a landscape slider now? Wishful thinking?

H&FJ: ‘Finishing Touches’ 

If the devil is in the details, Hoefler & Frere-Jones are the go-to foundry for satanists.

OkTrends on Gay Sex vs. Straight Sex 

Fascinating data research from dating site OkCupid. Stereotypes vs. data. (Via Andy Baio.)

From the Department of Not Practicing What They Preach 

Funny find from Dan Wineman.

Footage of Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly in ‘Back to the Future’ 

It’s like a clip from an alternative universe. And it seems impossibly apt that it’d be this movie — a movie about going back in time and changing the future — that would have such footage.

Amazon Link for ‘The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back’ 

Looks like a fantastic book. Order a copy through this link and I’ll get a few kickback dollars from Amazon.

‘The Simpsons’ Executive Producer Al Jean on Banksy’s Opening Credit Sequence 

Good interview with Al Jean by Dave Itzkoff:

Q: One of the things Banksy is known for is disguising his identity. How can you be sure that you were dealing with the real him?

A: The original boards that we got from him were in his style and were certainly by an extremely proficient artist. We were dealing with the person that represented him making the movie. I haven’t met him, I don’t even know what he looks like, except what the Internet suggests. And he’s taken credit for it now so I’m pretty sure it’s him.

DeNA to Buy Ngmoco 

Hiroko Tabuchi, reporting for the NYT:

DeNA, the Japanese social game giant, said Tuesday that it would acquire Ngmoco, a Silicon Valley iPhone game developer, for $400 million — one of the largest deals ever involving an iPhone application developer and another sign that the iPhone is fast becoming the hottest game device on the market.

A little birdie tells me that Ngmoco employees didn’t hear about the deal until last night. [Update: I originally wrote that Ngmoco employees didn’t hear about the deal until the NYT story hit. My mistake, not the birdie’s. We regret the error.]

‘Impressive. Most Impressive.’ 

Vanity Fair has excerpts from J.W. Rinzler’s new book, The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. And don’t miss Mike Ryan’s interview with Jeremy Bulloch.