Linked List: April 4, 2013

Thursday, 4 April 2013

Who’s Going to Buy the Facebook Phone? ★

Smart theory from Dan Frommer.

Apple’s iMessage Encryption Trips Up Feds’ Surveillance ★

Declan McCullagh and Jennifer Van Grove, reporting for CNet:

Encryption used in Apple’s iMessage chat service has stymied attempts by federal drug enforcement agents to eavesdrop on suspects’ conversations, an internal government document reveals.

An internal Drug Enforcement Administration document seen by CNET discusses a February 2013 criminal investigation and warns that because of the use of encryption, “it is impossible to intercept iMessages between two Apple devices” even with a court order approved by a federal judge.

A win on the privacy front.

Why Facebook Home Bothers Om Malik ★

Om Malik:

And most importantly it is Facebook, a company that is known to have played loose-and-easy with consumer privacy and data since its very inception, asking for forgiveness whenever we caught them with its hand in the cookie jar. I don’t think we can be that forgiving or reactive with Facebook on mobile.

Hands-On Demo of Facebook Home on HTC First ★

Clean, beautiful design, and what looks to be the smoothest and most organic animation and playfulness on Android ever.

Put a Burger in Your Shell ★

Best Unix tip ever.

13 Things Roger Ebert Said Better Than Anybody Else ★

“What I believe is that all clear-minded people should remain two things throughout their lifetimes: curious and teachable.”

Deconstruction in the Dark ★

I was there for this. So great.

Roger Ebert Dies at 70 After Battle With Cancer ★

So it goes.

ComScore: Apple Widens Its Lead on Samsung in the U.S. ★

Looking forward to the WSJ’s take on this report.

Facebook Home: Replacement Home Screen for Android ★

Nicely-designed phone interface that I would personally never want to use.

(They’re embedding Helvetica rather than using Google’s crummy Roboto. And, looking at their messaging app, I suddenly wonder why the iPhone Messages app doesn’t use avatars. Or, perhaps the better question: why don’t iMessage accounts have avatars?)

Chromium-WebKit History ★

Maciej Stachowiak, one of the leaders of Apple’s Safari/WebKit team, in an interesting Hacker News thread on the announcement of Blink:

As long as we are recapitulating history — the main reason we built a new multiprocess architecture is that Chromium’s multiprocess support was never contributed to the WebKit project. It has always lived in the separate Chromium tree, making it pretty hard to use for non-Chrome purposes. Before we wrote a single line of what would become WebKit2 we directly asked Google folks if they would be willing to contribute their multiprocess support back to WebKit, so that we could build on it. They said no.

They’ve been on separate paths for a while.

Úll 2013 ★

Just over a week away in Dublin Ireland:

Úll is a conference for designers and developers who want to learn about the cutting edge of mobile and desktop, native and web alike. But it’s more than that. Úll is an attempt to create a shared experience that will leave you with the will to build amazing products, knowing the tools to build them and the people to share them with.

It’s an A-list speaker lineup, including Horace Dediu, Michael Lopp, Jennifer Brook, Michael B. “Dr. Wave” Johnson, and a keynote address from yours truly. And if memory serves from last year, Dublin is warm and sunny in April. They’ve only got a handful of tickets remaining.

Apple Has to Think Different About China ★

Erica Ogg, writing for GigaOM:

Apple apologies are rare. Especially ones that come from the CEO.