FTC may bring antitrust case against Google

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The majority of top decision-makers at the Federal Trade Commission believe that an antitrust case should be brought against Google Inc, meaning the search giant could soon be headed into tough negotiations, three people familiar with the matter said.

World of Heineken

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Om Malik is in Amsterdam and stopped by Heineken. I’m so jealous.

Kindle sold ‘at cost’

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Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos confirmed on Thursday that the online retailer sells its Kindle e-reader “at cost”, with profit coming instead from sales of online content.

That’s one way to do it I suppose. Or you could just design great products and make money on all of it.

NextGuide updated with iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon

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NextGuide, my personal favorite TV Guide app (that I built at the company I run), is now updated to include Amazon Prime and Amazon Instant Video alongside live TV, Hulu Plus, iTunes, and Netflix. It’s really a great experience to browse all providers simultaneously and to search for shows and actually know where they are watchable.

Looks very interesting.

This stupid will make your head hurt

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I don’t think so, and the TechBargains.com survey strongly suggests iPad mini is a foolhardy endeavor.

Don’t blame me when your head hurts. Even his own readers make fun of him.

This week’s piece of shit article from Forbes

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Larry Magid:

…but let’s not get too excited about Apple once again catching up with its competitors.

Wait, Apple invented the modern tablet and yet they are catching up to the competition?

I’m predicting a snooze fest not because of lack of interest in the product or lack of theatrics during the announcement but because I’d be very surprised if we see anything incredibly revolutionary relative to what we’ve seen in other tablet announcements.

So let me get this straight. If Apple sells a gazillion new tablets and people are excited, it will be a snooze fest? But if they don’t sell any, it will probably be a failure, right?

The only snooze fest is that article.

Apple’s rumored Oct. 23 iPad mini event

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John Paczkowski:

People familiar with Apple’s plans tell us that the company will unveil the so-called “iPad mini” on Oct. 23 at an invitation-only event.

Yep.

Smartwatch concept

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I like this. Lennart Ziburski didn’t just do a shrunken iPhone, but a whole new concept.

Apple hires Samsung chip designer

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The gadget maker has hired Jim Mergard, a 16-year veteran of Advanced Micro Devices who was a vice president and chief engineer there before he left for Samsung. He is known for playing a leading role in the development of a high-profile AMD chip that carried the code name Brazos and was designed for low-end portable computers.

Put up or shut up Google

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John Kirk with a message for Eric Schmidt:

The proof is in the profits. If you don’t the have profits, you don’t have the proof. And if you don’t have the proof, then please, just stop talking.

Schmidt also said that the majority of TVs would have Google in them by now too. How’s that working out for you Schmidt?

Some people shouldn’t be allowed to write

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Farhad Manjoo in July, more than two months before the iPhone was announced:

And yet the iPhone sure has become boring, hasn’t it? I find it difficult to get worked up, anymore, about Apple’s signature mobile device. Last month, I yawned through the company’s announcements at its developer conference.

Farhad Manjoo in October after actually using the iPhone 5:

Hold Apple’s latest gadget for just a few minutes and you’ll marvel at the existence of such a remarkable object.

And writers wonder why readers lose trust in them. Here’s a thought — why not wait until you actually get to use a product before blasting it as boring. I know, it’s a crazy thought.

The Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini

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Wait, I thought Samsung thought bigger was better? Now it seems to be back to throw anything against the wall and see what sticks.

App Store trade-off

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And that’s the problem with the new search results on the App Store: If I’m trying to select just one app from a list, and that app isn’t the first one, then I have to go through an inefficient horizontal swipe until the one I want is selected.

The Magazine

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A magazine for people who love technology, especially the internet, mobile, truly great personal computers, and related fields influenced by technology such as photography, publishing, music, and even coffee.

A new iOS technology magazine from Marco Arment, the founder of Instapaper.

Review: iPod nano and iPod touch

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I’ve been using an iPod since October 2001 when Apple first introduced the product that “puts 1,000 songs in your pocket.” We’ve come a long way since then, but one thing that hasn’t changed is my love for the iPod.

Eric Schmidt is such a scumbag

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The Android-Apple platform fight is the defining contest. Here’s why: Apple has thousands of developers building for it. Google’s platform, Android, is even larger.

Schmidt steals whatever he can from Apple while sitting on the company’s board and then slithers like a slug.

Exclusive

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“Exclusive” is a way to dupe readers into taking you seriously, into believing that yours is the only page upon which they can devour the freshest and the latest. But that’s a lie. It always has been.

Jonathan Poritsky take a look at the history of the word exclusive.

iPod ad

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It’s called Bounce.

Apple hits new high in PC shipment market share

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Apple’s share of the U.S. market rose to 13.6% for the third quarter on the strength of the back-to-school market, which is typically drives Apple’s best performing quarter. The figure allowed Apple to maintain its comfortable hold on the third position in the U.S. market behind HP and Dell and marks Apple’s best performance in recent years in beating out the company’s 12.5% share in the third quarter of 2011.

iPhone, iPad and the Mac. Good news all around for Apple these days (By “these days”, I mean the last decade).

PDFpen to the rescue

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This afternoon my daughter came to me with a problem. She had a PDF file that she needed to search but it wouldn’t find any of the keywords. It looked to me like the file was actually an image that was converted to a PDF, so there were no recognized words in the document, just image data.

After confirming this on Twitter and listening to the many recommendations, I downloaded PDFpen and ran OCR on the document. In under a minute (it was a large document), I was able to search and select all text I wanted.

Thanks Smile Software.

TC Electronic Flashback X4 Delay

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Just picked this up. I’ll have a review later on, but if it’s all that it’s supposed to be, this could be the ultimate delay for guitar players.

Microsoft Office for iOS

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Microsoft product manager Petr Bobek has confirmed that the software maker is planning to release native iOS and Android versions of Office 2013 next year.

I’ll tell you this — if Office for iOS is anything like Office for the Surface tablet, it will suck balls. Microsoft has to release a touch-enabled and optimized version for it to be successful.

Consumer Reports: iPhone 5 not the only one with ‘purple haze’

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The Apple iPhone 5, which our Ratings reveal is a standout camera, is no more prone to purple hazing on photos shot into a bright light source than its predecessor or than several Android phones with fine cameras, according to special Consumer Reports tests.

No maybe all the dumbasses will shut up.