Linked List: April 9, 2013

Tuesday, 9 April 2013

Microsoft, Nokia, and Oracle File Complaint With European Commission About Google Android Dominance ★

Madeline Bennett:

“Google achieved its dominance in the smartphone operating system market by giving Android to device-makers for ‘free’. But in reality, Android phone makers who want to include must-have Google apps such as Maps, YouTube or Play are required to pre-load an entire suite of Google mobile services and to give them prominent default placement on the phone,” the group argued.

There’s nothing “must-have” about these apps. They’re want-to-have. The ease of producing and existence of un-Googled Android forks (Kindle Fire, all those phones in China) refutes the premise. These companies are just whining because they’re getting their asses kicked.

Google Fiber in Austin ★

Milo Medin, vice president of Google Fiber:

Also, as in Kansas City, we’re going to offer customers a free Internet connection at 5 mbps for 7 years, provided they pay a one-time construction fee. We’re also planning to connect many public institutions as we build in Austin — schools, hospitals, community centers, etc. — at a gigabit for no charge. If you live in Austin and want to sign up for more information, please visit our website.

Google at its best.

What’s Really Great About Fantastical ★

Dr. Drang on Fantastical’s as-you-type animations:

This is not just eye candy. The animations are providing instant feedback on how Fantastical is parsing your words and, more important, they’re teaching you Fantastical’s syntax. This is tremendously useful because, despite the wonderful flexibility of NLP, there’s always a syntax and you need to learn it if you’re going to use the product. This lack of instant, incremental feedback is what makes Siri impenetrable to some people; you have to give Siri an entire command and wait to see how she interprets it.

Lukas Mathis follows up:

Seeing interpretation errors immediately allows you to fix them in your current context. You don’t want to enter an appointment in a natural language user interface, switch to a different mode with a different user interface, and then check your appointment and fix mistakes in that mode’s UI.