Linked List: January 13, 2015

Tuesday, 13 January 2015

Amazon Signs Woody Allen to Write and Direct Original TV Series ★

Amazon PR:

Woody Allen added, “I don’t know how I got into this. I have no ideas and I’m not sure where to begin. My guess is that Roy Price will regret this.”

More honest words have never appeared in a press release. What a great scoop for Amazon.

Dark Sky Partners With Danny Hillis’s Applied Invention ★

Adam Grossman:

Now, normally when a little tech company such as ours announces an “equity event”, it’s one of two things: Either they’ve sold out to a larger company for a big ass check (i.e., “It’s been a great journey, and we couldn’t have done it without you. See yah, suckers.”), or they’ve raised money from one or more Venture Capital firms. This is different: Jay and I still retain majority ownership of Dark Sky, and we continue to be an independent company. At the same time, this isn’t simply a money injection, and Applied Invention isn’t a VC firm. They actually build stuff. And they’ll be involved in the day-to-day operations here at Dark Sky on a technical, operational, and business level.

Sounds like a great partnership. Dark Sky remains one of my very favorite apps.

GoPro Stock Tumbles on Apple Sports Camera Patent News ★

Sue Chang, reporting for MarketWatch:

Shares of GoPro Inc. skidded on Tuesday, at one point tripping a Nasdaq short sale circuit breaker. The selloff was sparked by news that Apple Inc. was granted a patent for a sports camera, according to Seeking Alpha. GoPro shares fell 8.5% to $51.98 in recent trading with the stock shedding 15% so far this week.

This says less about GoPro’s viability or Apple’s future plans and more about just how knee-jerk the stock market can be. That said, I’ve long been wondering if GoPro is just the next Flip. Remember them?

See Also: Patently Apple’s story on this patent filing. I seldom pay much attention to Apple patent filings — they file many times more patents than they could ever bring to market. But as I wrote the other day, Apple is a camera company.