Linked List: April 20, 2011

Wednesday, 20 April 2011

Kickstarter Campaign for Matthew Modine’s ‘Full Metal Jacket Diary’ iPad App ★

I have the hardcover edition of Matthew Modine’s Full Metal Jacket Diary and it’s great. Now, producer Adam Rackoff is turning it into an e-book app for the iPad, and this Kickstarter campaign is raising the funds to make it happen. Count me in; hope you are too.

Reuters: Apple to Ship New iPhone in September ★

Kelvin Soh, reporting for Reuters:

Apple’s next-generation iPhone will have a faster processor and will begin shipping in September, three people with direct knowledge of the company’s supply chain said.

The production of the new iPhone will start in July/August and the smartphone will look largely similar to the iPhone 4, one of the people said on Wednesday.

Pretty much just common sense: if you think about it. Apple pretty much came right out (via off-the-record back channels) and told the press there would be no iPhone 5 announcement at WWDC this year. If the iPhone 5 were coming out in June or even July, surely they’d announce it at the WWDC keynote. So it’s not coming in June or July. And nothing ever gets released in August. And Apple always has a big September event for iPods where a new iPhone announcement would be perfect. So, September. I’d bet on it.

iTunes Store Posts Record $1.4 Billion Quarter ★

Nice catch from Apple’s quarterly results by Peter Kafka:

Still, since Apple spelled it out, let’s repeat it here: Its digital storefront did more than $1.4 billion in sales in the last quarter. That’s a new record for the company, up from $1.1 billion a year ago.

Apple doesn’t break out the mix of those sales, but my hunch is that most of the growth has been fueled by the app store, since digital music has been flat, at least in the U.S., for a while. And Apple’s TV and book sales are relatively tiny.

Apple Reports Second Quarter Results ★

Revenue up 83 percent, profits up 95 percent, year-over-year. So, they’re doing OK.

iPhoneTracker ★

Open source app by Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden that reads a file stored on iOS 4 devices which contains a history of location data for the device. It’s not GPS data — it’s location data triangulated by cell towers. It’s a Mac app that reads the file from your backups stored by iTunes (presuming you’re not using iTunes’s option to encrypt these backups). I ran it, and it pegged everywhere I remember going for the past 6 months or so.

Their FAQ explains how it works in detail, and, unlike much of the coverage of their tool, they don’t sensationalize the implications. Good work.