Linked List: January 14, 2014

Tuesday, 14 January 2014

Rethinking the Airline Boarding Pass ★

Peter Smart redesigns the boarding pass. Great work, especially the emphasis on hierarchy.

I think paper boarding passes are going the way of the dodo, but even so, his design would work pretty well for a pass on a mobile phone, too.

Update: Fireballed. Cached here, albeit without much of the styling.

Hardware Keyboards for the iPhone ★

Joanna Stern reviews two hardware keyboard cases for the iPhone.

Great reviews.

(I watched the video with my 10-year-old son; he thinks the entire notion is ludicrous.)

‘Why Is Everyone Disappointed by Google Buying Nest?’ ★

Nilay Patel, The Verge:

It’s a strange set of affairs: an innovative young company led by some of the best engineers and executives in the business being acquired and validated by one of the great American businesses of the past 20 years should be a slam dunk of good PR. Instead, there’s a chorus of concern — some sincere, some contrived, but all of it grounded in fear of an unchecked Google.

Another Amazing Coincidence ★

SamMobile:

First, let’s get the most mysterious thing about the Galaxy S5 out of the way: Yes, it will come in both metal and plastic versions as has been rumored, with the metal version costing around 800 Euros and the plastic model coming in at around 650 Euros. It’s pretty much similar to what Apple has done, offering both a plastic iPhone (iPhone 5c) and a metallic one (iPhone 5s).

Winning and Losing in the Net Neutrality Decision ★

Stuart Benjamin, writing for The Volokh Conspiracy:

But right now I will take a longer view. I am reasonably confident that if I were a member of Verizon’s board of directors and someone could have accurately predicted the content of today’s opinion before Verizon filed its lawsuit, as a director I would have said, “Then let’s not file the suit and let’s hope no one else does, either.”

What? You say. Didn’t Verizon win? Yes, but there are three caveats.

Glassboard 3.0 for iOS Now Available ★

Justin Williams:

Recently we announced that we had acquired Glassboard from our friends at NewsGator. Since then we have been hard at work on an update to Glassboard for iPhone to bring it to iOS 7. I’m happy to announce that Glassboard 3.0 is now available on the App Store!

Happy to see an app/service I rely upon daily in good hands.

Court Strikes Down FCC’s Net Neutrality Rules ★

Jeff John Roberts, writing for Gigaom:

The upshot of Tuesday’s ruling is that it could open the door for internet giants like Verizon and Time Warner to cut deals with large content providers — say Disney or Netflix — to ensure that their web content was delivered faster and more reliably than other sites. This could not only restrict consumer choice but also provide a threat to smaller websites that do not have the resources to pay for any “express lanes” that the broadband providers choose to create.

Depressing news.

Dan Hon on Google Acquiring Nest ★

A sort of essay in the form of a string of tweets (collected by Paul Mison):

It’s quite simple. People invited Nest into their houses. Not Google.

It might in reality be an acquisition, but to some people it will feel instead like an annexation.

I think Google should be concerned about the number of people who are unhappy about this acquisition. Google used to be a company most people trusted; what I’m seeing as I read reactions to this Nest acquisition is that that’s no longer true.

On Google and Consumer Hardware ★

Ian Betteridge:

In fact, Google has independently designed two pieces of hardware: The Chromebook Pixel and Nexus Q. But that, I think, makes John’s point stronger. Both the Pixel and Q were expensive, high-end pieces of hardware which could never have scaled to selling tens of millions of units. The Pixel was (and is) effectively a flagship demonstrator the potential for Chromebooks; and the Nexus Q was a unique media device which, because of its design, cost about four times as much as its competition.

The Q was a joke — it never even shipped. The Pixel is a good example, though. It’s meant to be nice, a genuinely high-quality Chromebook. But it had no chance of mass market success, if only because of its price.

This Nest acquisition makes me think Google didn’t want these things to be jokes. That they want to make devices that tens of millions of people will buy and use in the way that they buy and use Apple devices. It will be interesting to see whether all of Google’s consumer electronics efforts go under the Nest/Fadell umbrella, or, if “Google” will keep introducing devices on its own, outside of Nest.

Which in turn brings us back to the notion that “Google is getting better at design faster than Apple is getting better at web services.” Perhaps a better way to put that is that Google is getting better at what Apple is best at faster than Apple is getting better at what Google is best at. I don’t necessarily believe that, but acquiring Nest and Tony Fadell certainly makes for a stronger case.

Florida Man Is Shot to Death for Texting During Movie Previews ★

Frances Robles, reporting for the NYT:

An argument over texting at the movies ended in a cellphone user’s death, when a retired police officer in the audience shot him at a theater near Tampa, Fla., on Monday afternoon, the authorities said. […]

The killing underscored the increased debate about when to use smartphones in public.

On Twitter, Billmon writes:

When someone is shot in cold blood over texting, and NYT thinks the issue is smart phones, safe to say we’ve gone completely nuts as a country.

Update, 2:20a EST: The “underscored” sentence has been removed from the story. It got a lot of attention while it was there, though.