Linked List: May 12, 2011

Thursday, 12 May 2011

Fun With Charts: Making the Rich Look Collectively Poor ★

Same data, two different ways of presenting it, two different stories.

Update: To be clear, I don’t think either of these charts are an effective way to convey this information, although I do think the WSJ’s original version is particularly contorted, so as to make it seems as though the wealthy don’t earn that much collectively. Here’s another take on the same data, same basic chart format, from Gregg Hilferding. None of these charts are wrong or dishonest — they accurately show the data they claim to. What’s interesting here, to me, is thinking about how these different versions can make the same data look very different.

Netflix App Released for Android, Limited to Five Specific Handsets ★

Mike Isaac, Wired Epicenter:

As of today, four HTC model phones (the Incredible, EVO 4G, G2, Nexus One) and the Samsung Nexus S are the only devices capable of running the app.

Anyone have a reasonable estimate of what percentage of Android handsets in use those five models account for?

If You Bundle It, You Own It ★

Gregg Keizer, Computerworld:

Several Google security engineers have countered claims that a French security company found a vulnerability in Chrome that could let attackers hijack Windows PCs running the company’s browser.

Instead, those engineers said the bug Vupen exploited to hack Chrome was in Adobe’s Flash, which Google has bundled with the browser for over a year.

The bug may not be in Google’s code, but so long as Chrome includes Flash as a bundled (and enabled by default) component, Flash is a part of Chrome. (Via Slashdot, and headline quip from commenter “manonthemoon”.)

Frank Sinatra Slang ★

This list is a gas:

Rain — As in “I think it’s going to rain” indicating that it is time to leave a dull gathering or party.

Ring-a-ding — A term of approval for a beautiful girl, viz “What a ring-a-ding broad!”

(Via big-leaguer Paul Ford.)

How Google Controls Android: Digging Deep Into the Skyhook Filings ★

Extraordinary reporting by Nilay Patel on the contents of 750 pages of documentation and email unsealed by the court in Skyhook Wireless’s lawsuit against Google.

Here’s the biggie: in order for a specific device to get a license for the apps, it must pass the Android Compatibility Test Suite and meet the Android Compatibility Definition. How Google exactly determines what passes the test is really the core issue in this case — Skyhook claims Google uses the threat of incompatibility to act anti-competitively.

Interestingly, the license allows Google to change the applicable Compatibility Test Suite and Android Compatibility Definition at will up until the time a device is certified for launch… by passing the CTS. So basically there’s nothing keeping Google from changing the CTS or ACD any way it wants in order to keep a particular device off the market.

Grab a beverage, kick back, and read the whole thing. It’s worth it.

Blogging Worst Practices: Obscuring the Source Link ★

Jason Snell points to this Engadget post, which is entirely based on this source material from Consumer Reports, but which Engadget only links to at the very end, using black text with no underline, obscuring that it’s even a link unless you hover over the text. Dirtbag move.

Update:: They’ve changed the link color.

Facebook Busted in Clumsy Smear Attempt on Google ★

Dan Lyons:

For the past few days, a mystery has been unfolding in Silicon Valley. Somebody, it seems, hired Burson-Marsteller, a top public-relations firm, to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy. Burson even offered to help an influential blogger write a Google-bashing op-ed, which it promised it could place in outlets like The Washington Post, Politico, and The Huffington Post. [...]

But who was the mysterious unnamed client? While fingers pointed at Apple and Microsoft, The Daily Beast discovered that it’s a company nobody suspected — Facebook.

Not sure why no one would suspect Facebook. This seems utterly in character for Facebook.

(Side note: You may recall the blogger in question, Chris Soghoian, from when he was linked here at DF back in 2006 for his clever airport boarding pass security hack. And he’s the nephew of AppleScript godfather Sal Soghoian.)

37signals Interviews Newsvine’s Mike Davidson ★

Inside the news business:

It’s tough to tell what things would be like if we hadn’t sold. It’s really, really hard to make a living in the general online news business without massive scale. Even at 4 or 5 million users, that’s not massive scale. Msnbc.com is highly profitable at 40 or 50 million uniques, but if you cut that in half, they probably wouldn’t be profitable at all. So for a startup in a low margin business, you have to decide eventually whether you want to go it alone or have a partner.

How Bin Laden Emailed Without Being Detected ★

Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo, reporting for the AP:

Holed up in his walled compound in northeast Pakistan with no phone or Internet capabilities, bin Laden would type a message on his computer without an Internet connection, then save it using a thumb-sized flash drive. He then passed the flash drive to a trusted courier, who would head for a distant Internet cafe.

At that location, the courier would plug the memory drive into a computer, copy bin Laden’s message into an email and send it. Reversing the process, the courier would copy any incoming email to the flash drive and return to the compound, where bin Laden would read his messages offline.

The Talk Show, Episode 42 ★

This week on the only podcast dedicated to organic insect repellants, Dan Benjamin and I discuss the iOS e-book market (and those iFlow guys making a stink about it), Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype, the news from Google I/O, and the second-best James Bond movie released in 1983, Octopussy.

Brought to you by two excellent sponsors: OmniFocus and FreshBooks.

Apple Needs to Press Play on Game Center ★

Dan Moren on Game Center:

Online play is all about socializing, and that’s an area where Apple hasn’t exactly torn up the playing field. Adding friends on Game Center is easy enough, but what if some of my friends know other people I’d like to be friends with? Why can’t I browse their list of friends?

Agreed.

On this point, though:

Yet it’s frustrating to find that if I jump from playing The Incident on my iPad to playing it on my iPhone, I’m at a completely different place in the game. This is one place where Apple could jump ahead of its competition, by providing an API to allow games to sync their states wirelessly, tied to their Game Center login.

I’d argue (and have argued) that cloud storage and syncing for data ought to be something available to all iOS apps — not just games.