Pew Research Center: Young adults are the most avid texters by a wide margin. Cell owners between the ages of 18 and 24 exchange an average of 109.5 messages on a normal day—that works out to more than 3,200 texts … Continued
Monthly Archives: September 2011
∞ Seizing a copyright troll's bank account
Nate Anderson for Ars Technica: Wayne Hoehn beat Righthaven so badly that the Las Vegas-based copyright troll lost its copyright infringement case on fair use grounds—and had to pay Hoehn’s lawyers at the Randazza Legal Group $34,045.50 in attorney’s fees. … Continued
∞ Google Wallet and near field communication
In May we announced Google Wallet—an app that makes your phone your wallet—with Citi, MasterCard, Sprint and First Data. With Google Wallet, you can tap, pay and save using your phone and near field communication (NFC). I’m really looking forward … Continued
∞ [Sponsor] Pixelmator
Many thanks to Pixelmator for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed. Pixelmator is the beautifully designed, easy-to-use, fast and powerful image editing app for Mac OS X that has everything you need to create, edit and enhance your images. With tons … Continued
∞ Stealing vs borrowing
App Cubby founder, David Barnard: When you steal an idea and have the time and good taste to make it your own, it grows into something different, hopefully something greater. But as you borrow more and more from other products, … Continued
∞ Apple's Thunderbolt Display
Macworld’s Jim Galbraith takes a first look at Apple’s new displays.
∞ Samsung plans to block iPhone 5 in Korea
“Just after the arrival of the iPhone 5 here, Samsung plans to take Apple to court here for its violation of Samsung’s wireless technology related patents,” said an anonymous Samsung senior executive. “For as long as Apple does not drop … Continued
∞ A few more changes to The Loop
On September 1 we relaunched The Loop with one of the biggest design changes in the site’s two-year history. Overall, the reception to the new design has been great, but there have been a few small issues that needed to … Continued
∞ Netflix rebrands DVD service Qwikster
Netflix will soon call its DVD mailing service Qwikster and will branch out to video game rentals. The revelation comes from Reed Hastings, the service’s decidedly more contrite co-founder and CEO, who sent out an e-mail to subscribers entitled “An Explanation … Continued
∞ The Politics of Songwriting – Part Five
Trooper’s Ra McGuire: The three members of Green Day split songwriting royalties evenly despite the fact that, from what I can tell, Billy Joe Armstrong writes the lyrics and melodies for their songs. Kurt Cobain, on the other hand, received … Continued
∞ Stupid quotes from RIM
Balsillie on the iPhone in February 2007 from BusinessInsider: “It’s kind of one more entrant into an already very busy space with lots of choice for consumers … But in terms of a sort of a sea-change for BlackBerry, I … Continued
∞ AT&T dangles LTE as T-Mobile acquisition benefit
Associated Press (via Google): AT&T’s LTE plans have figured in the company’s bid to buy T-Mobile USA for $39 billion. AT&T says it originally planned to build out LTE to cover 80 percent of the U.S. population, but if regulators … Continued
∞ MG Siegler on the TechCrunch brouhaha
MG: That’s why Paul’s post is dangerous. He’s shining the spotlight on something, but he’s missing the mark. There is exactly one person to blame for all of this — and her name is not Erick.
∞ iPad gamers number 8 million +
IndustryGamers: Market research firm Interpret has issued a new report ”iPad Gamers: A Look at the Users of Gaming’s Shiny New Toy,” which Interpret says “demonstrates that Apple’s popular tablet computer is both drawing the attention of traditional console gamers and developing … Continued
∞ PlayStation Network terms updated to prevent lawsuits
Examiner.com: Sony is updating the user agreement for the Playstation Network starting on September 15 and one of the changes included in the update seeks to stop class action lawsuits against the company. Sony was the target of a hacker … Continued
∞ Pixelmator
I would like to thank Pixelmator for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed. Pixelmator is the beautifully designed, easy-to-use, fast and powerful image editing app for Mac OS X that has everything you need to create, edit and enhance your images. … Continued
∞ Seven states pile on AT&T/T-Mobile merger block
Washington Post: The attorney generals of California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington joined the suit filed in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia. They argued that the deal would violate antitrust laws by reducing … Continued
∞ BlackBerry Messenger outage hits Canada, Latin America
Electronista: BlackBerry owners on Friday were dealt more unfortunate news Friday after many reported losing access to Internet services. Both BlackBerry Messenger and e-mail faced outages, primarily in Canada and Latin American countries. RIM was “investigating” as of Friday afternoon but didn’t have a … Continued
∞ Obama signs patent overhaul bill into law
PC World: U.S. President Barack Obama has signed the America Invents Act, the first major overhaul of the U.S. patent system in about 50 years. The America Invents Act, passed 89-9 by the U.S. Senate last week, would allow new challenges to … Continued
∞ Valve's Portal game free until Sep. 20
Valve has released its seminal action puzzle game Portal for Mac and PC for free until September 20, 2011. The game is available for download through Valve’s Steam download service. Portal was the first game from Valve to be published … Continued
∞ PlayBook price cuts coming
BGR: During RIM’s second-quarter earnings call, Co-CEO Jim Balsillie noted that the company plans to offer price cuts on the not-so-popular BlackBerry PlayBook in the form of rebates, and an incentive program for enterprise sales. He also said there’s a … Continued
∞ Medal of Honor recipients
Heroes from Afghanistan and Iraq.
∞ Symbol usage in Illustrator CS5
Smashing Magazine: Illustrator makes it easy to use symbols multiple times within a document as well. With the Symbols tools, you can add and alter several symbols at once. And in CS5, you can now change the settings for a … Continued
∞ Public speaking tips from Matt Gemmell
Some great tips from Matt. Definitely worth a read.
∞ ARM-based Windows 8 tablets will not run Windows apps
Paul McDougall, InformationWeek We’ve been very clear since the very first CES demos and forward that the ARM product won’t run any x86 applications,” said Stephen Sinofsky, president of Microsoft Windows unit, during a meeting with financial analysts Wednesday. Windows … Continued
∞ Godsmack's Sully Erna speaks out against feds in Gibson raid
The feds raided Gibson’s factory in late August confiscating several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. The feds executed search warrants for ebony and rosewood that were imported from India — the government says Gibson violated the Lacey Act, … Continued
∞ Apple settles lawsuit over trademark products with Queens stores
Reuters: Two stores in Queens, New York, accused of peddling unauthorized Apple Inc accessories have agreed to hand over all products in their inventories bearing the word “Apple” or any of the company’s ubiquitous trademarks.
∞ The Apple TV circa 1996
@RandallB This is Apple’s original AppleTV, from circa 1996. Rob Gould, who works on the AOL HD project with my company, Castfire, sent me these awesome pics from his time back at Bell Atlantic (now Verizon) when they had access … Continued
∞ The decline of BlackBerry ASP
Note: This is a guest post by Matt Richman. You can learn more about Matt on his Web site. RIM just reported earnings (PDF) for its second fiscal quarter of 2012. Seventy-three percent of its $4.2 billion in revenue came … Continued
∞ Hate Windows 8 already? Grow up, loser
Mat Honan, for Gizmodo: If you’re not intrigued by Windows 8 and Metro, if you can’t recognize that it’s a big leap forward, if you’re not excited about what it means for you, personally then you don’t really care about … Continued