Linked List: March 24, 2011

Thursday, 24 March 2011

RIM Co-CEO on PlayBook’s Support for Android Apps ★

Crystal clear.

Color: Breathlessly Overhyped Piece of Crap ★

Color is a new location-based social photo-sharing app for the iPhone and Android. Or something. I installed it and couldn’t make heads or tails out of it, and even if I could figure out the app, I can’t see why I’d ever want to use such a service. Yet it was somehow the biggest story in tech news circles today. E.g.: “Color Looks to Reinvent Social Interaction”? Really? This thing looks like a turd to me. Now, maybe I’m the idiot and the joke’s on me and Color is going to be a huge hit. But my figurative money says that the investors who funded these guys just flushed $41 million in literal money down the toilet.

Nice domain name, though.

BlackBerry PlayBook to Include Support for Android and Java Apps ★

RIM:

RIM will launch two optional “app players” that provide an application run-time environment for BlackBerry Java apps and Android v2.3 apps. These new app players will allow users to download BlackBerry Java apps and Android apps from BlackBerry App World and run them on their BlackBerry PlayBook.

In addition, RIM will shortly release the native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook enabling C/C++ application development on the BlackBerry® Tablet OS. For game-specific developers, RIM is also announcing that it has gained support from two leading game development tooling companies, allowing developers to use the cross-platform game engines from Ideaworks Labs and Unity Technologies to bring their games to the BlackBerry PlayBook.

These options are in addition to RIM’s previously announced Tablet OS SDKs for Adobe Air and HTML5 web apps. So here’s the question. Which one of these is the native SDK for the PlayBook. Which one’s best? What is RIM’s advice for how developers should write PlayBook apps?

Google Not Releasing Honeycomb Source Code ‘For the Foreseeable Future’ ★

Ashlee Vance and Brad Stone, reporting for Businessweek:

Google says it will delay the distribution of its newest Android source code, dubbed Honeycomb, at least for the foreseeable future. The search giant says the software, which is tailored specifically for tablet computers that compete against Apple’s iPad, is not yet ready to be altered by outside programmers and customized for other devices, such as phones.

Guess we need a new definition of “open”.

I’ll Show You a Fad ★

Once people see one in person, they want one.

‘Just a Fad’ ★

PCWorld’s Katherine Noyes says “tablets are just a fad”:

Yet strong sales are backing up the hype — at least for now — suggesting something about the devices has caught on with consumers. What is that mysterious “something”? Purely marketing, I believe. Apple is nothing if not master of the glitzy sales pitch, and there’s never been better proof of that than the iPad’s current success.

Mark my words: The device — and all the others of its ilk that have sprung up for a piece of the action — are nothing more than a passing fad, at least in the mainstream.

Words marked.

On Working for Bertrand Serlet ★

David Cásseres:

Pretty soon he was standing up in front of seasoned Apple software engineers and lecturing us on how not to make mistakes when cutting and pasting code. I said at that time that I had never felt so thoroughly disrespected as an engineer in my entire career. The NeXT/Apple culture wars were at their height.

Seems like ancient history now, but the NeXT/Apple engineering cultures did not mix well at first.

Oh, I Believe It ★

NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger, on circumventing their new pay wall:

“Can people go around the system?” Sulzberger asked during an appearance at The Paley Center for Media here. “The answer is yes. There are going to be ways. Just as if you run down Sixth Avenue right now and you pass a newsstand and grab the paper and keep running you can actually get the Times free,” he said.

“We have to accept that. Is it going to be easy? No. Is it going to be done by the kind of people who buy the quality news and opinion of the New York Times? We don’t think so,” he said.

“It’ll be mostly high school kids and people out of work,” Sulzberger said, before adding “I can’t believe I said that.”

Malick’s ‘Tree of Life’ Set for Cannes ★

Justin Chang, Variety:

A full year after it was initially floated as a hot fest prospect, Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” is set to make its world premiere in May at the Cannes Film Festival.

Who’s up for a trip to France?