Linked List: April 16, 2013

Tuesday, 16 April 2013

Google Glass Developers Prohibited From Charging for Apps or Displaying Ads ★

Declan McCullagh:

Google, which relies on advertising for some 95 percent of its revenue, doesn’t want ads on its hotly anticipated Google Glass eyewear.

The blanket prohibition came in the fine print of a policy made public this evening, which says “Glassware” developers may not “serve or include any advertisements” and they “may not charge” users to download apps for the device.

Sounds like a shit sandwich to me, but perhaps these restrictions are only for the here and now, while Glass is still a developer preview. (I’ll also point out that prohibiting third-party apps from showing ads is not the same thing as not displaying ads period. Could be that Google is reserving all Glass advertising for itself.)

MLB.com’s Bob Bowman on Apple, Android, Samsung, BlackBerry ★

Peter Kafka:

Some details from Bowman’s chat with Walt Mossberg at D: Dive into Mobile today:

His user base, which used to split 80/20 in favor of iOS over Android, has now moved to 70/30. “The Samsung phone is quite a good Android phone,” Bowman said.

But the uptick in Android users, he said, doesn’t track with revenue. That still splits 80/20 in favor of iOS users. “Maybe even 85/15.”

Not all customers are created equal.

Who’s Winning, iOS or Android? All the Numbers, All in One Place ★

Harry McCracken:

Really, though, it’s silly to obsess over any one data point. If what you’re after is a clear idea of how the world’s two dominant mobile operating systems are doing — rather than an excuse to make bold proclamations and/or cheer for your favorite — you want to consider lots of data points.

So that’s what I’m doing in this post. I’ve rustled up results from a bunch of studies, focusing on information that’s relatively fresh.

Great work, and his conclusion seems perfect:

Android if you’re talking about market share; iOS if you mean financial success. So far, this is a strikingly different market than the PC business back in the 1990s, when market share translated directly into financial success.

Black Annex ★

New “isometric corporate sabotage and infiltration game”. Written in QBASIC. Yes, QBASIC. (Via Paul Ford.)

Using Quartz Composer to Recreate Facebook Home ★

Useful video demonstrations (and corresponding Quora and Branch threads) by David O’Brien, showing how to recreate the Facebook Home lock screen using Quartz Composer.

Having Conversations ★

Jon Erlichman and Brian Womack, reporting for Bloomberg:

After debuting the software, called Home, for Google Inc.’s Android operating system earlier this month, the operator of the world’s biggest social-networking service is speaking to Apple and Microsoft Corp. about expanding to other platforms, Adam Mosseri, director of product at Menlo Park, California-based Facebook, said in an interview on Bloomberg West yesterday. The talks are in progress and nothing has been finalized, he said.

Where by “in progress and nothing has been finalized”, he meant “not going to happen”.

Netbooks Claim Chowder ★

Rik Myslewski, writing for The Register last week, “Netbooks Projected to Become Extinct by 2015”:

Proving yet again that fame and fortune are fleeting — even for computer hardware — the analysts at IHS are projecting that the netbook, the New Hotness just a few short years ago, will disappear completely by 2015. […] In a new report entitled “Compute Electronics Market Tracker”, IHS analyst Craig Stice puts the blame for the netbook’s demise squarely upon the shoulders of the tablet market — and specifically Apple’s iPad.

Rik Myslewski, writing for The Register back in 2009, “Apple Loses Students to Netbooks and Windows”:

And these days, customers - especially the proverbial starving students - are seeking low-cost computing devices that will allow them to take notes in class, check their email, write papers, and surf the web, all without straining their backpack bedecked backs as they tote them around campus.

Namely, netbooks.

It was just over a year ago when Apple edged out Dell as the laptop-of-choice among college students. The rise of the netbook may have made that victory a short-lived one.

New York Times on Ron Johnson’s Stint at JC Penney ★

Stephanie Clifford, reporting for the NYT:

By early fall 2011, Mr. Johnson was tackling Penney’s pricing, which he thought used too many discounts. He ignored a study Penney had just completed on customer preferences, and gave merchants a one-sheet grid explaining what prices they could use.

“Ron’s response at the time was, just like at Apple, customers don’t always know what they want,” said an executive who advocated testing. “We’re not going to test it — we’re going to roll it out.”

17 months was not long enough to turn around a brand as deep in the hole as JC Penney, but it sounds like slumping sales forced the board’s hand.

Hell of a Name to Drop ★

Mike Matas:

Really excited to have @lorenb helping my team out at Facebook.