Linked List: April 17, 2012

Tuesday, 17 April 2012

Mobile Carriers Unconvinced by Nokia’s Revival Bid ★

Leila Abboud and Georgina Prodhan, reporting for Reuters:

Four major telecom operators in Europe, where the phones have been on sale since before Christmas, told Reuters the new Nokia Lumia smartphones were not good enough to compete with Apple’s iPhone or Samsung’s Galaxy phones.

Ouch.

Twitter: Innovator’s Patent Agreement ★

Adam Messinger, VP of engineering for Twitter:

However, we also think a lot about how those patents may be used in the future; we sometimes worry that they may be used to impede the innovation of others. For that reason, we are publishing a draft of the Innovator’s Patent Agreement, which we informally call the “IPA”.

The IPA is a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers. It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes. We will not use the patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What’s more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended.

Bravo.

David Carr on Amazon and E-Book Pricing ★

David Carr, writing for the NYT:

The Justice Department finally took aim at the monopolistic monolith that threatened to dominate the book industry. So imagine the shock when the bullet aimed at threats to competition went whizzing by Amazon — which not long ago had a 90 percent stranglehold on e-books — and instead, struck five of the six biggest publishers and Apple, a minor player in the realm of books.

That’s the modern equivalent of taking on Standard Oil but breaking up Ed’s Gas ’N’ Groceries on Route 19 instead.

He makes a good point regarding competition:

Remember that it was only after agency pricing went into effect that Barnes & Noble was able to gain an impressive 27 percent of the e-book market. Now Amazon has the Justice Department as an ally to rebuild its monopoly and wipe out other players. If the decision to charge the publishers was good for competition, why had the stock price of Barnes & Noble dropped more than 10 percent since Wednesday?

Microsoft Announces Windows 8 Editions ★

Much simpler than it used to be, and it looks like I was right about Windows on ARM: it’s Metro-only.

Update: In the product matrix, Windows RT (the version for ARM-based notebooks and tablets) has the “Desktop”, but it does not have “Installation of x86/64 and desktop software”. So maybe it’s fairer to say I was half right. You’ve got “the desktop”, and built-in desktop apps like Windows Explorer and the Office suite, but you can’t install any third-party desktop apps.

Oracle Pondered Buying RIM, Palm in Phone Move ★

Reuters:

Oracle Corp Chief Executive Larry Ellison said the software maker had considered building its own smartphone to compete with Apple Inc and Google Inc, but decided it was a “bad idea” after a weeks-long cost and market analysis.

Probably the right decision, but it sure would have been fun to watch.

‘Design Is a Job’ ★

Running a design service is hard. Most fail, be they agencies or individual freelancers. They fail to consistently satisfy clients, and they fail to function financially. (Trust me, I know.)

When someone actually gets one off the ground and finds a way to keep it up in the air, they know that they’ve got something rare and valuable, and so they keep their strategies and practices secret. What makes this new book by my friend Mike Monteiro unique is that it plainly and honestly describes how a successful design shop actually works. I’d have killed for this book when I was doing freelance design.

iTextEditors ★

Comprehensive comparison, to say the least. If you thought there were a lot of iOS text-editing apps out there, you’re right. (Via Merlin Mann.)