Ouch

Rene Ritchie:

No one can look at Samsung’s mobile products over the last decade and not consider them anything other than a ruthless, relentless copy of everything popular that’s came before. It’s not that Samsung doesn’t continuously push the limits of hardware specifications and capabilities as much if not more than anyone else. They do. But they do so by systematically, institutionally copying what other vendors have already done first.

Rene just goes off on Samsung.

Om

A really nice message from Om Malik to John Gruber, congratulating him the 10 year anniversary of Daring Fireball.

iNeedHelp for iPhone

iNeedHelp sends your location via text message and email at the push of a button to your HelpList.

Seems ideal for children or senior citizens.

iPads in the classroom raise math scores 49%

We’ve all heard how using an iPad in the classroom improves a child’s literacy scores and now a new study is showing the same is true for math students as well. […]

Samsung phone ‘was the worst gadget I’d ever endured’

Davin O’Dwyer for the Irish Times talking about his experience with a Samsung phone:

All the time I had it, I kept wondering who at Samsung let this thing out the door? Did anybody actually use it before it was released? And if so, what kind of contempt for their user did they have?Five minutes with that phone would have the jury awarding full damages to Apple, no doubt about it.

I love the Irish.

Objective-Cologne Conference

Objective-Cologne is an Objective-C & Cocoa community-organized conference taking place next month in Cologne Germany. Speakers include Mike Lee, Jason Harris and Ken Aspeslagh.

A great looking line-up of speakers. I wish I was going to Germany.

Insane babbling

I love it when people are taken to task for avoiding questions they should answer.

Happy 10th anniversary Daring Fireball

I took a minute today to call John Gruber and congratulate him on his 10th anniversary of running Daring Fireball. John has had a tremendous influence on me as a writer and on my current business model. […]

Samsung’s at it again

Florian Mueller on Apple’s victory in excluding the President of Samsung Telecommunications America, Dale Sohn. Samsung said Sohn “may testify regarding Samsung’s innovative technology and products,” but that wasn’t their original position:

An even bigger issue is that Samsung allegedly “fought tooth-and-nail to prevent Apple from taking Mr. Sohn’s deposition”, and in doing so, Samsung argued that Apple failed to show that Mr. Sohn had any unique “first-hand material knowledge”. Samsung had even denied that he had any “personal knowledge that is relevant to this case” and any “relationship to the accused products or the patents-in-suit other than [his] place atop Samsung’s organizational hierarchy”. The court finally granted an Apple motion to compel Mr. Sohn’s testimony, but was granted only three hours, which Apple considered insufficient, and only so late in the game that Apple was deprived of the opportunity to “to conduct any follow-up discovery in connection with [Mr. Sohn’s testimony]”.

Apple encryption is so good, not even DOJ can crack it

Technologies the company has adopted protect Apple customers’ content so well that in many situations it’s impossible for law enforcement to perform forensic examinations of devices seized from criminals. Most significant is the increasing use of encryption, which is beginning to cause problems for law enforcement agencies when they encounter systems with encrypted drives.“I can tell you from the Department of Justice perspective, if that drive is encrypted, you’re done,” Ovie Carroll, director of the cyber-crime lab at the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section in the Department of Justice, said during his keynote address at the DFRWS computer forensics conference in Washington, D.C., last Monday. “When conducting criminal investigations, if you pull the power on a drive that is whole-disk encrypted you have lost any chance of recovering that data.”

Apple licensed iPhone, iPad patents to Microsoft

Matthew Panzarino:

The patents were apparently licensed to Microsoft with an “anti-cloning agreement” in place in order to stop Microsoft from turning out copies of the iPhone and iPad. Samsung and Apple have, notably, met several times to discuss licensing patents, but the design patents covering the ‘user experience’ of Apple’s tablets and phones were, according to Samsung, not on the table.

Nice, an anti-cloning agreement.

Stealing

There are some people that believe that Apple’s lawsuit against Samsung is all about rectangles and that Apple has no right to sue based on that criteria. That’s just false and I think I’ve found a way to explain it so everyone can understand. […]

Alfred Hitchcock

Maria Popova writing about how Hitchcock affected one child.

TextExpander [Sponsor]

The new <a href=”http://loopu.in/P7xRCA>TextExpander 4 from Smile dramatically increases the options for automating your work with advanced “fill-in” snippet types. They are great for creating form letter templates that can be personalized on the fly. Check out the video demo and see the new multi-line text fields, multiple choice popups, and optional text blocks in action.

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Still haven’t tried TextExpander? <a href=”http://loopu.in/P7xRCA>Download the free demo! There’s even a new Snippet Creation Snippet to get you started.

Twitter posts stats from Olympics

We saw more than 150 million Tweets about the Olympics over the past 16 days. Let’s take a look at some of the big trends within that massive conversation.

Truly some great moments at the Olympics.

Shaking my head at this one

Anil Dash:

If anyone questioned whether Microsoft could get back in the fight once the cuffs finally came off, Surface should put those doubts to rest. The gorgeous PC/tablet hybrid is the only example in recent memory of a company clearly and emphatically going toe to toe with Apple on the industrial design front. The iPad will have to improve. Android tablets will have to improve. Surface isn’t another me-too device—it moves the entire category forward.

Incredibly kind words for a product that nobody has even used yet. “Moves an entire category forward”? Bullshit.

18 free icon fonts

Six Revisions:

Icon fonts are font files that have symbols and glyphs (e.g. arrows, folders, magnifying glasses) instead of standard alphanumeric characters.

There are a few really good collections.

Google fights piracy in search results

Google is adding a new feature to its search algorithm that will make it harder to find pirated material, effectively making it extremely difficult for you to keep up with Game of Thrones next season.

Moving a site from WordPress to Pelican

Gabe Weatherhead from Macdrifter.com recently moved his Wordpress site to the static-file based Pelican system. He gives a wonderfully detailed look at why and how he did it.

Samsung caught trying to trick the jury

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.

LogMyRun 1.2

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.