Linked List: December 13, 2010

Monday, 13 December 2010

Microsoft to Announce New ‘Slates’ Targeting iPad 

Nick Bilton:

Next month, at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft will give it another try, presenting a slew of new slates that it hopes will offer some competition to the Apple iPad, which has quickly become the leader in this market.

So it’s going to be an annual thing, then.

Horace Dediu on Verizon’s Smartphone Business 

Horace Dediu:

ITG Investment Research analyst Matthew Goodman is forecasting monthly sales record for all of Verizon’s devices “based largely on our proprietary daily point-of-sale data from thousands of independent wireless retailers across the US.” […]

So, if the data is accurate, here is what I conclude:

Verizon has three strikes against them:

  1. The iPhone has stolen their growth
  2. They are facing the prospect of a single OS platform supplier
  3. Android is not competitive vs. iOS

The whole thing hinges on the “if the data is accurate” clause, as Dediu emphasizes. But if the data is good, Dediu makes a strong case that Verizon needs the iPhone more than Apple needs Verizon.

Andy Ihnatko on the Chrome Cr-48 Notebook 

Andy Ihnatko:

All in all, it’s been an interesting and enlightening first day. Honestly, I was expecting a Chrome OS notebook to involve more sacrifice and annoyance than what I’m experiencing. I don’t think I’d call this an ideal way to get through an afternoon’s labors but facts are facts: whether writing a column, editing some photos, listening to streaming music, watching a YouTube video, or packaging everything together and sending it off to the Sun-Times, there was nothing I couldn’t do with the Cr-48 and Chrome OS. So far, I’ve been able to think of it as Just Another Notebook.

The Indie Mac Gift Pack 

Six great Mac apps, $272 at their regular prices, bundled together for just $60: Delicious Library, Acorn, MarsEdit, Radioshift, SousChef, and Sound Studio 4.

Update: Was fireballed; now back up.

Screens 1.0 — VNC Client for iPad and iPhone 

New $15 universal iOS VNC client from Edovia, with a free Mac component called Screens Connect to make it easy to connect to your Mac from remote networks. I’ve been using beta versions, and it’s just terrific — it looks better and works better than anything else I’ve tried, and I’ve paid for several VNC clients for iPad and iPhone (including iTeleport).

Access your Mac from anywhere using any iOS device. It’s that simple. Great, great software.

The Assassination of Yogi Bear by the Coward Boo-Boo 

Seems like the sort of YouTube clip that won’t be around for long; watch it while you can. (Via John August.)

Update: It’s all original footage, created by animator Edmund Earle. Here’s the backstory on the spoof.

Google Updates Android Market Client 

Improved layout, with an intended focus on improving the discoverability of apps in the market. They’ve also increased the maximum size of an app from 25 MB to 50 MB. Rolling out to Android users over the next two weeks. Android Central posted a video showing the new Android Market app in action.

Even 50 MB is not enough for many games, though. So what Android game developers need to do, for games bigger than 50 MB, is create the game as a smaller-than-50-MB shell that, once launched, downloads the rest of the game data from the developer’s own server. This is one of many things that makes game development better on iOS. See these comments from Id Software’s John Carmack last month in an interview with Ars Technica. (Id’s Rage HD is a 1.4 GB download.)

The Real Lessons of Gawker’s Security Mess 

Detailed analysis of the Gawker fiasco by Daniel Kennedy:

On November 11, Nick Denton received a notice that he had set up a new username and password at Gawker chat rooms. Because he knew he did not request this, and also had been told by someone else that he had been logged into Campfire (but also knew he had not), he asked members of his team to investigate. He did not however bother to change any of his other accounts that used the same password as his Campfire account.

iOS 4.2 Fonts 

Nice resource from Michael Critz: a listing of the installed fonts on the iPhone and iPad variants of iOS 4.2. (I wish Apple would just include the iPad’s extra fonts on the iPhone — particularly Gill Sans, Hoefler Text, and Didot.)

Amazon Has Sold ‘Millions’ of New Kindles This Quarter 

Amazon:

Thanks to you, in just the first 73 days of this holiday quarter, we’ve already sold millions of our all-new Kindles with the latest E Ink Pearl display. In fact, in the last 73 days, readers have purchased more Kindles than we sold during all of 2009. We’re grateful for and energized by the overwhelming customer response.

That’s at least two million, perhaps much higher. Pretty good, I’d say.

Gawker Hacked; Comment Account Database Compromised 

If you’ve ever created a commenting account on a Gawker Media website — Gawker, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, etc. — it’s probably compromised. That’s a real problem for anyone who uses the same password across multiple websites. There’s already evidence that people who use the same password for Twitter that they used for their Gawker account have had their Twitter accounts compromised.