Linked List: August 3, 2011

Wednesday, 3 August 2011

Interestinger 

Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith, on Twitter:

Google says we bought Novell patents to keep them from Google. Really? We asked them to bid jointly with us. They said no.

Instagram Hits 150 Million Photos 

7 million users. 150 million uploads. 9 months. iOS only.

Imagine how well they’d be doing if only they’d taken Fred Wilson’s advice.

Obama: Debt Ceiling Deal Required Tough Concessions by Both Democrats and Democrats Alike 

Maybe The Onion should get a Pulitzer.

Uh, I Don’t Think There’s Anything Suspicious About It 

Tom Warren:

Microsoft has been suspiciously quiet around Zune and Zune services over the past few months.

Android Mystery Numbers 

This is pretty much what I think, too.

Fireballed: Cached here.

Internet Explorer/IQ Story Was Bogus 

BBC News:

A story which suggested that users of Internet Explorer have a lower IQ than people who chose other browsers appears to have been an elaborate hoax.

A number of media organisations, including the BBC, reported on the research, put out by Canadian firm ApTiquant.

This story seemed fishy to me all along. But I’d wager that if someone did a proper study on this, that IE users would tend to have lower average IQs than users of other browsers. It’s just the nature of IE being the most-used browser, and the default on lower-priced and older PCs.

Update: To be clear, I’d expect the average IQ of IE users to be right around the average for the population as a whole, and that the average for other browsers to be slightly higher. What made this purported study seem so fishy is that results were so profound. They had IE users pegged as being borderline retarded.