Linked List: March 1, 2012

Thursday, 1 March 2012

Fewer Than One Million Google TV Devices in Use? 

Janko Roettgers, GigaOM:

Google TV comes with a number of pre-installed apps, which are also listed on the Android Market. One example of this is the TV and Movies app, which is basically Google TV’s programming guide — an essential part of the Google TV experience that most users wouldn’t dare to delete from their machines. The active install base for this app, according to Google’s Android Market, currently is 500,000 to 1 million. The same is true for all the other apps that come pre-installed with Google TV, which suggests that the number of Google TV devices that are currently being used by consumers is less than 1 million.

Clock’s ticking on this prediction from Eric Schmidt.

More on Apple’s Rejection of Seth Godin’s Book for Linking to Amazon 

Brian Ford:

Clearly, a hypothetical customer who purchases Stop Stealing Dreams from the iBookstore 1) prefers (or at least enjoys) ebooks and 2) has chosen Apple’s offering over utilizing the freely available Kindle app. Common sense, then, says you cater to that customer’s established preference, right?

Opinions on this (and regarding my take on it) are all over the map. Some agree, but a bunch of others see Apple’s decision as blatant censorship. Glenn Fleishman tweets:

@gruber I don’t buy the iBookstore/B&N equivalency. Apple is asking for books to be changed b/c content doesn’t accord w/commercial policy.

There are other problems with my analogy yesterday to a brick-and-mortar bookstore not wanting to carry a book that contained coupons for buying books in a competitor’s store. Links to Amazon from an iBooks book are more like teleporting you into the competing store. And e-book stores are stores you never really leave — so long as you have a network connection, you’re never more than a tap or two away from the store. I don’t think Apple needs to sweat over links to Amazon.

Also, for those criticizing my take yesterday: I didn’t say I agreed with Apple’s decision. I simply pointed out the ways how I could see where they were coming from. I still don’t see this as over-the-line censorship, but I don’t think Apple should concern itself with links to Amazon. My recommendation would have been for Apple to suggest to Godin that he change the links to point to iBookstore versions of the books, but if Godin didn’t want to, to let it slide.

Photoshop Touch for the iPad 

Talk about the ways the iPad is revolutionizing computing — we now have a version of Photoshop that costs $10 and is no hassle to install. This app’s been out for Android tablets for a few months. I’d love to see the sales difference.

(And to be fair to Adobe, Lightroom has a very good installer.)

Coffee and Trucker Pills 

This week’s episode of The Talk Show, and it’s a good one. Topics include clicky keyboards (including the new made-for-Mac Das Keyboard) and next week’s iPad event in San Francisco.

Brought to you by two fine sponsors: TinyLetter and Shopify.

Give It Five Minutes 

Jason Fried:

Dismissing an idea is so easy because it doesn’t involve any work. You can scoff at it. You can ignore it. You can puff some smoke at it. That’s easy. The hard thing to do is protect it, think about it, let it marinate, explore it, riff on it, and try it. The right idea could start out life as the wrong idea.

Update: Good follow-up rule of thumb from Dustin Curtis.

Olloclip vs. iPro Lens Review 

Speaking of Abdel Ibrahim, I’ve been meaning to link to his detailed comparison of the Olloclip and iPro Lens camera attachments for the iPhone 4 and 4S:

There’s no question that the iPro Lens takes better pictures, and its handle gives it a leg up on videos, too. The Olloclip, on the other hand, comes in a much smaller, more convenient package that outshined the iPro when I was on the go.

New Instapaper Bookmarklet With Multi-Page Article Saving 

Marco Arment:

The previous little “Saved!” frame had a great run, but its time has passed. Readers are now saving more pages than ever on tablets and phones, and the old bookmarklet wasn’t visible enough there. Instapaper’s customers would often complain that they didn’t even see the old bookmarklet working.

So the bookmarklet now sports a completely new design that’s highly visible at every screen size, and works in more browsers, too.

Nice. And this is a clever bit of foresight:

You don’t need to reinstall your Read Later bookmarklet to get this update. It applies automatically to the one you already have.

New Tablets From Samsung and Sony 

Abdel Ibrahim and Jon Dick, writing for The Tech Block:

When Samsung made its latest Galaxy Tab pitch, for instance, instead of giving consumers reason to overlook the rest of the Tab family’s disappointing performance, the company overshadowed the tablet’s 7.7-inch, LTE credentials with this fuckup: The Galaxy tab 7.7 will set you back a minimum $499, and that’s with a 2-year contract. If you say to hell with carriers, the price of the puny tablet swells to an eye-watering, deal-breaking $699.

And Sony, already bleeding money, is similarly stupid. Its Tablet P, a 5.5-inch tablet with a Nintendo DS-like ability to fold in half, will price itself off the market with a 399-dollar contract tag, and that price skyrockets to $549 without a contract.

Perhaps Sony and Samsung aren’t stupid, though. Perhaps they simply can’t afford to sell these tablets for less. Don’t underestimate Apple’s supply chain and economy-of-scale advantages. (But if that’s the case, one could argue they’re stupid for even trying. If you can’t make something at a competitive price, why make it?)

But these guys are right that these prices seem like non-starters. The iPad is better, bigger, has more apps and better apps, and is cheaper. The fact that these tablets are only price competitive with the iPad when they’re bought with a two-year contract is a killer. People aren’t stupid. People hate contracts.

Windows 8 Consumer Preview 

Good demo movies showing how the new Metro UI in Windows 8 works, both for touch and with a mouse and keyboard.

David Pierce Reviews the Lytro 

Light field technology may be the future of photography, but the future isn’t here yet.

The Loop Joins The Deck 

Jim Dalrymple:

I’m very happy to announce that as of March 1, 2012, The Loop has joined the exclusive ad network, The Deck.