Linked List: May 2, 2012

Wednesday, 2 May 2012

There’s something a little off about the typography, I agree, but I think Armin Vit is too harsh on the identity design for newly-moved-to-Brooklyn Nets. (And I think Paul Lukas at Uni Watch misses the mark completely.) The Nets’ previous identity exemplifies everything that’s wrong with modern sports logo design — every trendy effect you can find, glommed all together. This new design is simple, sturdy, and timeless. It makes it look like the Nets have always been in Brooklyn, and that they always will be.

Target Dropping the Kindle ★

Love this quip by Tom Reestman on Twitter:

How long before Amazon sicks the DOJ on Target?

The Next iPhone’s Name ★

Devir Kahan:

Every time I hear someone make some prediction about the upcoming iPhone 5 I cringe. You see, we don’t have to make any predictions about the iPhone 5 because we have it already. The iPhone 4S is the fifth iPhone Apple has produced.

Logically, yes. But let’s face it — if Apple decided that “iPhone 5” was a good name, they’d use it, whether it’s the sixth actual iPhone or not. (I’d argue the next iPhone will be the seventh: the CDMA iPhone 4 is a different device [including a better antenna design] than the GSM model.)

Regardless, I think logic dictates that the next iPhone will simply be called “iPhone” and be referred to by Apple as “the new iPhone” just as, at this point, none of Apple’s other products use numbers.

I agree, which, if we’re right, makes the whole “Will they call it iPhone 5 or 6?” question moot.

Matt Gemmell’s iPad Productivity Apps ★

The apps he uses.

Mr. Jobs and the Great Glass Elevator ★

Andy Ihnatko guest-hosted this week’s MacBreak Weekly, and I was lucky enough to be one of the panelists, alongside Jason Snell, Chris Breen, and Rich Siegel. Great show, I thought.

Congress Should Grill the FCC Over Redacted Google Wi-Fi Snooping Report ★

Chris Soghoian, writing for Wired:

However, even if the FCC lacked the legal authority punish Google, nothing prevented the agency from alerting the public, the media, and Congress to the full extent of Google’s sins. Instead, the agency opted to keep the public in the dark.

The FCC has yet to reveal the reasons why it opted to so heavily redact the most damning portions of the Google WiFi report. Congress should not wait for the FCC to volunteer an explanation. It should demand answers.

Charles Arthur on Google’s Street View Data Collection ★

Charles Arthur:

And if there’s one thing that the last few years have taught us, it’s that the suggestion of a “rogue” worker having acted alone to do something which led to an intrusion is never correct. There has to be a failure of management oversight as well.

And what did Google say? Initially, that the data collection happened “mistakenly”. No, it didn’t. Initially, that only “fragmentary” data was collected. No, it wasn’t: the first page of the FCC report says that: “On October 22 2010, Google acknowledged for the first time that ‘in some instances entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords’.” That it was the work of one engineer acting alone, and not in any way part of how Google rolls.

Arthur posits that the problem is arrogance — his headline reads, “Google’s Problem Is That It Now Believes Itself Above Others — Even Governments”. I’d say it’s more of a reckless sense of entitlement regarding privacy. Google sees itself as entitled to all information. If they can see it, they can collect it. I can see their thinking (though I don’t agree with it): they were just driving around on public roads, collecting data that was in the air.

Profit Share ★

Horace Dediu on the just-completed quarter:

Apple captured 73% of phone industry profits and Samsung captured 26%. HTC took 1%. Everybody else lost money.

Text-Only Instagram ★

A picture says 140 characters.

‘Apple Will Sell a Few to Its Fans’ ★

This fine bit of analysis by Matthew Lynn for Bloomberg from January 2007 is worth a revisit, in light of Nokia’s and Motorola’s recent quarterly results:

The big competitors in the mobile-phone industry such as Nokia Oyj and Motorola Inc. won’t be whispering nervously into their clamshells over a new threat to their business.

The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant.

Motorola just posted an $86 million loss. Nokia lost $1.2 billion (with a “b”).

ImageOptim ★

Helpful freeware tool for reducing image sizes:

ImageOptim optimizes images — so they take up less disk space and load faster — by finding best compression parameters and by removing unnecessary comments and color profiles. It handles PNG, JPEG and GIF animations.

(Via the aforelinked piece by Jeremy Keith.)

Jeremy Keith on Website Optimization ★

Jeremy Keith:

Well, here we are fifteen years later and thanks to the rise of mobile, bandwidth is once again at a premium and we can be pretty sure that plenty of people are accessing our sites on slow connections. Yet again, mobile is highlighting issues that were always there. When did we get so lazy and decide it was acceptable to send giant unoptimised images down the pipe to our long-suffering visitors?

Hear, hear.

Motorola Mobility Q1 2012 Financial Results ★

From the “Mobile Devices highlights” section of Motorola’s press release

Teamed up with Bubba Watson, four time PGA Tour winner, including the 2012 Masters [missing comma sic] to introduce MOTOACTV Golf Edition, a cutting-edge GPS golf tracker, virtual caddy and online clubhouse.

They shipped 8.9 million “mobile devices” (including 5.1 million smartphones), and lost $86 million doing it. But they shipped an “online clubhouse” so, hey, good quarter.

Apple and Pebble ★

John Battelle:

Is Pebble playing with fire here? Would Apple ever change its developer terms of services to cut the new company off?

I think Battelle has a good point here, that one reason Pebble may have had trouble raising money from VCs is the fear that Apple might cut Pebble off at the knees. But I think the way Apple could most hurt Pebble is not by changing the SDK, but by releasing its own linked-to-your-iPhone wristwatch gadget. (Imagine, say, an iPod Nano with Pebble-like features and a LunaTik-style strap.)

Pebble is already hindered by the limited amount of interaction a Bluetooth device can obtain from an iPhone. E.g., it can notify you of incoming phone calls, but not messages or emails.

Apple Rejecting Some Apps With Dropbox Integration ★

Federico Viticci:

Apple’s 11.13 rule isn’t new, and before we dabble in speculation about Apple wanting to “kill Dropbox”, I suggest we wait.

Where’s the fun in that?