Linked List: December 5, 2011

Monday, 5 December 2011

Kindle Fire Usability 

Jakob Nielsen:

The most striking observation from testing the Fire is that everything is much too small on the screen, leading to frequent tap errors and accidental activation. You haven’t seen the fat-finger problem in its full glory until you’ve watched users struggle to touch things on the Fire. One poor guy spent several minutes trying to log in to Facebook, but was repeatedly foiled by accidentally touching the wrong field or button — this on a page with only 2 text fields and 1 button.

Verizon Is Blocking Google Wallet on Galaxy Nexus 

But they’re blocking it in an open way, not a closed way.

Macworld/iWorld Early Bird Pricing Ends Today 

The new iFan Pass is a great idea. One low-cost ticket that grants you access to the Tech Talks (formerly known as the Users Conference), the exhibit show floor, and more. The price goes up from $75 to $100 after today. If you’re going to Macworld/iWorld, this is the pass you probably want, so why not save $25?

(Going to take a while to get used to calling it something other than “Macworld Expo”.)

Interesting piece by Bruce Tognazzini on managing the balance between browsing and searching in UI design. Totally agree with this bit on search in iOS Mail:

The Mail search for iOS is hopeless. You have to specify which folder the message is in. If I knew that, I probably could have just pawed through that particular folder and found it. Strangely, the Spotlight search at the Springboard level in the exact same iOS has no problem searching across all mail folders. Why should you have to know to avoid the built in search and, instead, leave Mail, go to the desktop, then to Spotlight, in order to look for an email? It makes no sense.

(Via MacSurfer.)

Glitch Allows Android Apps to Bug Phone Calls 

Dan Goodin:

Handsets sold by HTC, Samsung, Motorola, and Google contain code that exposes powerful capabilities to untrusted apps, scientists from North Carolina State University said. These “explicit capability leaks” bypass key security defenses built into Android that require users to clearly grant permission before an app gets access to personal information and functions such as text messaging. The code making the circumvention possible is contained in interfaces and services the device manufactures add to enhance the stock firmware supplied by Google.

This doesn’t seem to be getting much attention.

Microsoft Upgrades Xbox Live With 40 Entertainment Services, Live TV, and Kinect Voice Control 

Dean Takahashi, VentureBeat:

The update will be live on Tuesday for Xbox Live users, and it will greatly multiply the entertainment options that people have in their homes, providing access to on-demand TV, movies and user-generated videos. You can, for instance, get access to 26 TV channels from Verizon’s FiOS TV services, or the complete library of 10,000 On Demand movies from Comcast. You can download the new update in a matter of minutes.

“A lot of people have said they’re going to reinvent television,” Honey said. “I’m going to say it as well.”

Looks pretty cool.

I Wouldn’t Bet Against This 

Christopher Soghoian, on Twitter:

Prediction: within 2 weeks, all US carriers will ditch Carrier IQ. Within 2 months, Carrier IQ will change its name.

The Fed’s $7 Trillion Secret Loan Program 

Eliot Spitzer on the aforelinked scandal revealed by Bloomberg:

Imagine you walked into a bank, applied for a personal line of credit, and filled out all the paperwork claiming to have no debts and an income of $200,000 per year. The bank, based on these representations, extended you the line of credit. Then, three years later, after fighting disclosure all the way, you were forced by a court to tell the truth: At the time you made the statements to the bank, you actually were unemployed, you had a $1 million mortgage on your house on which you had failed to make payments for six months, and you hadn’t paid even the minimum on your credit-card bills for three months. Do you think the bank would just say: Never mind, don’t worry about it? Of course not. Whether or not you had paid back the personal line of credit, three FBI agents would be at your door within hours.

Yet this is exactly what the major American banks have done to the public.

Or, as Jon Stewart asked, “How the fuck is it that Martha Stewart went to jail?”

Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress 

Terrific investigative reporting by Bob Ivry, Bradley Keoun, and Phil Kuntz for Bloomberg:

The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.

The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.

Effectively, the Fed was selling dollar bills for 97 cents. Not to me, not to you, of course. Only to the big banks.

Linens ’n Things 

Jake Marsh on the inconsistency of Notification Center using the dark linen texture, even though it’s on top, not underneath. Bottom line: if Notification Center is on top, it shouldn’t use dark linen; if it uses dark linen, it should be at layer zero, underneath.

Siri Is Apple’s Broken Promise 

Mat Honan:

I’m sorry. Beta? Beta is for Google. When Apple does a public beta, it usually keeps it out of the hands of the, you know, public. It typically makes you go get betas. It doesn’t force them on you, much less advertise them. Not that it is an effective disclaimer for the vast buying public. For most people who see Apple’s ads, and buy iPhones, the word beta means nothing at all.

I like Siri, and use it, at least for text dictation, almost every day. But even for me — for whom Siri’s dictation accuracy is remarkably good — the whole thing still isn’t up to Apple’s usual level of fit and finish, not by a long shot.

But I’m still glad it’s there. I think the iPhone 4S is better off with Siri in its current state than it would be if Apple had waited until Siri was further along to release it. And I think part of why they released it as a beta is that it’ll be easier to improve voice recognition while it’s being widely used. But there’s no denying that it’s damn weird for the flagship new feature in Apple’s flagship new product to be so rough around the edges.

Shouldn’t Linen Be Underneath the Home Screen? 

Concept video by Max Rudberg illustrating a tweak to the iOS 5 Notification Center that I’ve seen many others suggest: pulling the regular screen down, revealing Notification Center underneath, as opposed to pulling Notification Center down over the regular screen. Just seems more consistent with the other ways that the dark linen texture is used.

(Via Shawn Blanc.)

Dell Streak 7 Is Discontinued 

Calob Horton, writing at StreakSmart:

Well, darn! Usually Fridays are great for everyone, but it looks like me and the rest of the StreakSmart crew are going to have a dreaded weekend, as the Dell Streak 7 was quietly discontinued. This comes not even four months after the Streak 5 was discontinued, as well.

I bet the guys at StreakSmart regret both halves of their website name.

Justin Williams: On Magazines and the iPad 

Scathing review of the GQ, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated iPad apps. And he hasn’t even gotten to the actual reading experience yet — only the dismal, frustrating, slow experience of procuring new issues.

Behind RIM’s $485M Write-Off 

Jean-Louis Gassée on the oddity of RIM’s $485M write-off for unsold PlayBooks:

Second, even if we accept a write-down to zero, 2.4 million tablets is a strange number. How could RIM have accumulated such large inventory?

How the iPad 2 Became Harry McCracken’s Favorite Computer 

Harry McCracken:

I think it’s possible to use an iPad as one’s primary device for professional-level content creation. Actually, scratch that. I’m positive it’s possible — because I’ve been doing it for the past three months, and I’ve been having a really good time.