Yearly Archives: 2012

Samsung caught trying to trick the jury

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Bryan Bishop for The Verge:

During cross-examination, Samsung attorney Kevin Johnson attempted to discredit Balakrishnan, first by trying to insinuate that two slides presented by Apple were incorrect. In fact, the images Johnson showed featured representative stills from a video the slides actually contained; the video itself was consistent with the labeling and testimony. Johnson then challenged Balakrishnan by giving a live demonstration of a 7-inch Galaxy Tab that didn’t incorporate the bounce-back feature — while neglecting to mention what operating system or skin it was running. He followed it up with a video that he said proved the Galaxy Tab 10.1 didn’t use the feature either. Unfortunately for Johnson, Balakrishnan had to point out that in the video the user wasn’t actually scrolling to the end of the web page in question — a requirement to trigger the feature in the first place.

The only reason you would do this is if you’re guilty.

2012 Perseid Meteor Shower Aug. 11th through 13th

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NASA:

On the nights of Aug. 11th through 13th, the best meteor shower of the year will fill pre-dawn skies with hundreds of shooting stars. And that’s just for starters. The brightest planets in the solar system are lining up right in the middle of the display. The Perseid meteor shower peaks on the nights around August 12th as Earth passes through a stream of debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle.“We expect to see meteor rates as high as a hundred per hour,” says Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “The Perseids always put on a good show.”

NASA even has a free app you can use to count meteors and upload the data to researchers.

LogMyRun 1.2

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LogMyRun now supports kilometers for distance and Celsius for temperature in addition to miles and Fahrenheit. You can convert the distance or temperature units for your entire log in Settings. You can also log individual runs in either kilometers or miles when adding a new run or editing an existing run.

CSS style guide

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Ordering properties is just one choice you have to make that makes up a complete styling strategy. Naming is a part of it. Sectioning is a part of it. Commenting, indentation, overall file structure… it all makes up a complete CSS style guide.

Noise in the conversation

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Michael Mulvey brought up another great point to Marcelo Somers “Linkblog Cancer” post that I linked to yesterday:

If I don’t have a unique perspective to the link in question, I usually won’t link to it. I don’t want to be the noise in the conversation.

That’s a great point. I believe readers are looking for a writers perspective. There are lots of places to get the news, but each writer has their own perspective.

Samsung’s basis of competition

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Horace Dediu:

What is surprising is that the overall sales volume is not growing. At least for the products catalogued (which exclude the Note) growth for the last four quarters has been: 5%, 34%, 31%, -53%. These are in stark contrast to the iPhone pattern shown in the outline bars behind Samsung’s.

Interesting article from Horace.

Harvest

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Many thanks to Harvest for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. We’re more than halfway through 2012. You can’t buy that time back, but you can start tracking it wisely. Use Harvest to log your billable hours, and see … Continued

Samsung could face court penalty because of lawyer

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Samsung could face penalties from the U.S. District Court in Northern California after one of its lawyers involved in the patent battle against Apple admitted that she hadn’t file the paperwork necessary to practice law in front of the court.

Samsung’s lawyers haven’t been impressive so far.

Pink Floyd: The Story of Wish You Were Here

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Wish You Were Here, released in September 1975, was the follow up album to the globally successful The Dark Side Of The Moon and is cited by many fans, as well as band members Richard Wright and David Gilmour, as their favorite Pink Floyd album.

Gilmour and Roger Waters are incredible.

Samsung sold 21.25 million phones, 1.4 million tablets in two years in the U.S.

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Documents filed by Samsung lawyers on Thursday reveal that from June 2010 through June 2012 Samsung sold 21.25 million phones, generating $7.5 billion in revenue. On the tablet side, the company sold 1.4 million Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Tab 10.1 devices, producing $644 million in revenue.

That doesn’t seem like a lot of sales to me. Maybe most of their sales are international.

Blizzard’s Battle.net gets hacked

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The unauthorized access included email addresses associated with Battle.net accounts in all regions, outside of China. Additional information from accounts associated with the North American servers (which generally includes players from North America, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia) was also accessed, including cryptographically scrambled versions of passwords (not actual passwords), the answer to a personal security question, and information relating to Mobile and Dial-In Authenticators. It’s important to note that at this time, Blizzard does not believe this information alone is enough to gain access to Battle.net accounts.

At least it wasn’t clear text passwords.

[Via Mac Rumors]

Linkblog cancer

Written by

Marcelo Somers:

Our job as independent writers isn’t to be first or even to get the most pageviews. It’s to answer the question of “so what?”. Taken as a whole, our sites should tell a unique story that no one else can, with storylines that develop over time that help bring order to the chaos of what we cover.

Marcelo has a lot of good points in his article. To me blogging is about honesty and personality. I hate reading something that is just bland words with no feeling or conviction. I want to know how the writer feels about the subject they are writing about.

That’s what I try to do. It doesn’t mean everyone agrees with what I write, and that’s okay, but I am giving you my honest opinion.

Apple is now price matching iPhone discounts

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Eric Slivka:

But a source has now revealed to MacRumors that Apple’s retail stores have been given authorization to match these discounted prices from approved major retailers and carriers.

I never thought Apple would do that, but good for the consumer that wants to purchase from an Apple retail store.

The Designbuss

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We’ve seen some pretty spectacular thesis projects by up and coming designers over the years, but never before have any of those projects involved a 6+ month-long road trip through small towns all across Sweden.

Very cool. No money changes hands for his design work, only goods and services that allow him to continue the journey.

A Samsung iPhone

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Ilya Birman sent this to me today. It’s a sign in Russian, but translated. Clearly people aren’t confused about things. Definitely not.

Definitions

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Mike Beauchamp defines “Benchmarking” and “copying” for Samsung.

Samsung not interested in RIM

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South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co said on Thursday it has not considered acquiring Research In Motion or licensing the embattled BlackBerry phone maker’s new mobile operating system.

I don’t know, buying RIM and using the software in its devices might be a good idea for Samsung, especially if it loses the lawsuit that Apple brought against it.

TV viewers confused Samsung Galaxy with iPad

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Daniel Eran Dilger, AppleInsider:

Only 16 percent of viewers observing Samsung’s TV commercials realized it was a Samsung product, according to an internal report the company commissioned, and which has been submitted as evidence in its trial with Apple.

MacProVideo acquires AskVideo

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According to macProVideo.com’s Founder and CEO, Martin Sitter, “Until now, macProVideo.com has been the place ‘Where Mac Users Learn.’ With the acquisition of AskVideo.com, we have purchased a great brand with over 8 years of experience in online training. AskVideo will become our primary portal for bringing our trademarked NonLinear Educating System™ to the larger world of Windows PC users.”

Huge news in the video training market. I’ve been a user of MacProVideo for years. Good luck to Martin and the gang.

Benchmarking your peers

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My latest Techpinions column:

Samsung contends that Apple doesn’t own the right to putting a receiver on an icon to indicate that it’s used for making a phone call. Samsung fans also argue that Apple can’t patent a rectangle. These arguments don’t get to the heart of the matter, which is the blatant copying of everything Apple is doing.

Microsoft standing up for what’s right

Written by

Ed Bott:

When Microsoft shipped its Release Preview of Windows 8 in June, it announced that the default browser, Internet Explorer 10, would have the Do Not Track (DNT) signal enabled by default. That action unleashed a heated debate in the Tracking Protection Working Group of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).To the advertising and analytics companies that make up the tracking industry, this issue is an existential one. If the default browser in the world’s most popular operating system is set to disallow tracking, the effect would be profoundly disruptive to companies that live and die by their ability to follow users around the web.

Kudos to Microsoft for doing the right thing.

Samsung issues statement on copying Apple

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After Apple introduced evidence that clearly shows how Samsung purposely copied its iPhone, Samsung released the following statement:

“Samsung benchmarks many peer companies,” she said. “In fact, these are typical competitive analyses routinely undertaken by many companies in many industries – including Apple. Samsung stands by its culture of continuous improvement and innovation. We are very proud of the product innovations driven by our more than 50,000 designers and engineers around the world who have made Samsung’s products the products of choice.”

It’s doesn’t say, but I’m guessing the Samsung rep didn’t say that with a straight face.

Pixelmator 2.1 available on Mac App Store

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Another great release from the Pixelmator Team.

Pixelmator 2.1 is a major update introducing several new features and improvements, including the following:* Retina-Ready: Both Pixelmator’s friendly user interface and its powerful image editing engine are now optimized for the Retina display. * iCloud: Built right into the app and keeps your Pixelmator work up to date across all your Macs. * Effects Browser: The best and the most fun way to browse: instantly preview and quickly apply special effects or add color adjustments to images. * New Effects: Use the new Vintage, Miniaturize, Black and White, Rain, and Snow effects. * Alignment Guides: Quickly position, align, and evenly distribute objects in your Pixelmator compositions with pinpoint accuracy. * OS X Mountain Lion Support: Pixelmator takes full advantage of all the latest and greatest technologies.

Google’s iOS search app to gain “enhanced voice search”

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Ars Technica:

Google’s search app for iOS is about to become more Siri-like. The app, which already allows users to enter search terms via voice, will soon gain the ability to better understand your intent—that is, what you actually mean with all those extraneous words coming out of your mouth. Google announced on Wednesday that the feature will be available “soon” for iPhone and iPad.

Big advantage of this Google “version” is that it will be available on the iPhone 4.