Linked List: May 17, 2012

Thursday, 17 May 2012

Twitter Is Tracking You on the Web 

Dustin Curtis:

Basically, every time you visit a site that has a follow button or a hovercard, Twitter is recording your behavior. It is transparently watching your movements and storing them somewhere for later use. Right now, that data will make better suggestions for accounts you might want to follow. But what other things can it be used for? The privacy implications of such behavior by a company so large are sweeping and absolute.

The other implication is that every website you visit that includes “tweet this” buttons or <iframe>-embedded tweets is enabling Twitter to track you on the web.

How Yahoo Botched Its Acquisition of Flickr 

Lengthy, detailed treatise by Mat Honan for Gizmodo:

There’s a difference between a missed opportunity and a complete fuck-up. When Yahoo failed to capitalize on Flickr’s social potential, that was a missed opportunity. But if you want to see where it completely fucked up, where it just butchered Flickr with dull knives and duller wit, turn on your phone and launch the Flickr app. Oh, what’s that, you don’t have one? Exactly.

Flickr could have — should have — been to mobile photography what Instagram has become.

Baidu Cloud Smartphone 

Kaiser Kuo, writing for Baidu Beat:

Chief among the Cloud-based services that Baidu Cloud offers, Baidu will provide every purchaser of the handset with 100 gigs of free personal storage through Baidu Netdrive. This will allow users to capture multimedia content and upload it instantly to the Cloud. In addition, the handset will include Baidu Music, Baidu Map, Baidu Mobile IME (input method editor) and other mainstream applications. It will also include the Baidu Cloud Store, with access to a huge range of applications. Additionally, the Baidu Cloud Smart Terminal platform provides mobile data monitoring, pre-pay credit recharge, and many other convenient services.

So it’s an Android-based phone, with every Google app replaced with an equivalent “Baidu” app. Plus 100 GB of cloud storage. I don’t know if it’s any good, but it’s interesting.

Lenovo Drops Classic Keyboard on New ThinkPad Laptops 

The end of an era.

Bullish Cross Initiates Rare Buy Rating on Apple 

Andy Zaky:

Now here are the reasons why we believe its time to buy Apple and why we feel the valuation is incredibly attractive today. At $533.52 a share, Apple trades at 13× last year’s earnings and at only 10.56× our expect October earnings. Those are incredibly low valuations even for Apple. At the November 25, 2011 lows, Apple traded at a 13.13 P/E ratio. So today, Apple is trading at a lower valuation than it was at the November lows. At the June 2011 lows, Apple was trading near a 15 P/E trailing P/E ratio.

This is only the fifth time Zaky has issued a buy on Apple. He’s four-for-four.

Rene Ritchie on the Ramifications of a 4-Inch iPhone Display 

There are numerous ways Apple could change the physical size of the iPhone, but none of them are painless or easy fragmentation-wise. Rene Ritchie does a good job here analyzing Apple’s options.

My money remains on changing the aspect ratio and keeping the pixel density the same. Going from the current 3:2 aspect ratio 960 × 640 display to something like a 9:5 1152 × 640 display. Yes, this would introduce a new headache for developers, but iPhone apps are already supposed to be somewhat flexible vertically, to account for the double-height status bar when there’s an active phone call or audio recording.

And don’t forget the operations angle. My understanding is that these displays aren’t manufactured at their finished sizes — they’re manufactured in big sheets that are then cut to size. So instead of ramping up manufacturing of an entirely new display, Apple would simply be cutting slightly larger displays out of the same “iPhone retina display” sheets they’ve been producing ever since the iPhone 4 hit production.

Lastly, the above is only my conjecture if Apple were to switch to a larger iPhone display. If Apple changes the iPhone display size, this is how I think they’ll do it. I still think that’s a big if, though, and wouldn’t be surprised in the least if this year’s iPhone ships with a good old-fashioned 3.5-inch 960 × 640 display.

Nielsen on U.S. Smartphone and Mobile App Growth 

Nielsen:

Roughly a year ago when we summarized the state of smartphones at the Appnation conference, less than 40 percent of mobile subscribers in the U.S. had smartphones. Today, one in two mobile subscribers has a smartphone and that figure is moving steadily upwards.

In other words, there is a lot of headroom remaining. It’s a growth market.

By most measures, it has been the year of the App once again, driven mostly by the rise of Android and iOS users who have more than doubled in a year and account for 88 percent of those who have downloaded an app in the past 30 days. In just a year, the average number of apps per smartphone has jumped 28 percent, from 32 apps to 41. Not only is the 2012 smartphone owner downloading more apps, they are increasingly spending more time using them vs. using the mobile web — about 10 percent more than last year.

Hence the agitation of web-centric companies like Facebook and Google.

JustNotes 

Back in 2009 I wrote about a then-new iPhone notes app called Simplenote. It’s still my favorite today, with a spot on my first home screen. Simplenote uses its own cloud-based syncing service, and offers an API for other developers, and there are a bunch of notes app for the Mac that offer Simplenote syncing.

A new one, JustNotes, is now my favorite for syncing with Simplenote from Mac OS X. Simple and obvious. Ben Brooks wrote a full review of JustNotes, and I pretty much agree with every word of it.

Update: Cody Fink at MacStories has a review of it, too.

The Worst Phones You Can Buy 

Sam Biddle surveys the bottom end of the cell phone market.