Yahoo currently provides the data that powers the built-in iOS weather app. That is about to change.

> The situation Yahoo finds itself in is due to a very crafty deal engineered by former Yahoo board member and Weather Channel CEO David Kenny, who has essentially shoved Yahoo off the key smartphone to be replaced by a new offering that he has been developing since he took over the weather news and information service last year. With it, he has unseated Yahoo from its important perch. > > The irony? Yahoo’s weather app and services have long been powered by the Weather Channel, part of a longtime partnership it has had with the Silicon Valley Internet giant. In simple terms, Yahoo had slapped a pretty chrome cover on it and Weather Channel provided the more substantive back end and critical weather data.

This is a blow to Yahoo and to CEO Marissa Mayer. A real misstep.

My favorite part of the linked story, this quote:

> “Yahoo had been renting ocean-front property for years and did not realize the lease was up, and the Weather Channel slipped right in and took it,” said a Yahoo exec, who said the company acted too late to save the deal. “It’s a high-profile loss.” If you’re also looking for a property on Koh Samui, consider finding a reliable place like Your Koh Samui Villas to help you with the options available.

Perfect analogy.

Build a 16×16 facade, including a door. The Lego Fusion app (iOS and Android compatible) scans the facade and imports it into a virtual world. Build on your facade inside the world and defend it from attack.

Lego Fusion games offer a fair amount of depth, the possibility of extended playtime and a rich strategy that may attract adult players. “Battle Towers,” for example, lets you select the type of defender Lego character you want to use. Choosing an archer may mean you build a wall with more windows from which the defender can shoot. The more attacks you repel, the more intense future ones become. However, in keeping with the ages-7-and-up rating, there’s no blood or real violence. Each game also lets you collect coins (Lego stud pieces), as you build and accomplish new tasks; they then allow you to buy new objects to use in your virtual world.

I think this sounds like tremendous fun. In my view, you are never too old to play with Legos.

There’s been a lot of talk over the past few days about Amazon trying to buy developers by giving them $5,000 to build an app for the Fire Phone, up to a max of $15,000 for three apps. When I first heard this story, I thought Amazon’s plan was misguided, that they’d lay out a ton of money to buy their way into undisciplined relevancy, with an indiscriminate copy of apps that are available on Google Play and other Android app stores. Sort of a “me too” strategy.

But that’s not quite right.

First off, Amazon is not offering cash to developers. They are offering 500,000 Amazon Coins, which Amazon values at $5,000, that developers can give away for promotion:

Amazon will offer 500,000 Amazon Coins ($5,000 value) for each of your qualifying paid apps or apps with in-app purchasing that meet the additional program requirements for Fire phone (up to 3 apps per developer). You can create campaigns via the Promotions Console to give these Coins away to consumers purchasing any of your paid apps or in-app items.

This is very different and, I think, a smart play. Rather than a cash bounty, which will draw short term thinking developers, Amazon is giving away something that will help developers build their business. I think this will bring in more long term thinkers, more apps with a story to tell.

Amazon has also laid out a specific set of requirements that will ensure that these apps are unique to the Fire Phone, taking advantage of Amazon’s various APIs, where they apply and, in addition:

Games must use the Dynamic Perspective SDK to create an in-game experience that responds to a user’s motion relative to the device. Note that games that merely replace swipe-based controls or gyro functionality with head tracking will not qualify. The game must use head tracking to implement an in-game experience. Examples include the ability for a user to pan and zoom the field of view in a game by moving the device back or forward or the ability to rotate the device about any axis to change the viewing angle of the surroundings.

Here’s a link to the requirements page.

And what does this mean for Apple? If the Fire Phone does get some traction, I think this success will further splinter the Android software universe and raise competition with other Android phones, as well as with Samsung and their new OS, Tizen, a Linux-based open-source Android competitor.

I don’t see Fire Phone eating into the iOS market share. The Fire Phone might have a few compelling features, but it does not offer enough of a critical difference from other Android phones to pull iOS users out of the iOS ecosystem. In other words, though there will always be drift from iOS to Android and back, the Fire Phone does not critically change that balance.

And this kind of feedback does not help.

Will Fire Phone succeed? Everything I’ve read about Amazon’s development program tells me they will achieve some level of critical mass. Amazon has the cash to ride this out, if developer adoption takes time. The key, I think, is that they are aiming to compete, quality-wise, with Android, and not with iOS. A smart decision.

New York Times:

Nest Labs, a maker of digital thermostats, announced Friday evening that it planned to buy another fast-growing producer of home devices, Dropcam, for $555 million in cash.

The deal is another sign of the industry optimism that the emerging market for Internet-connected smart devices in the home is poised for rapid growth. The most striking sign of such enthusiasm is Nest itself, which Google bought this year for $3.2 billion.

In a brief interview, Matt Rogers, co-founder of Nest, said, “This is a Nest Labs deal, not a Google deal.”

It will be interesting to see how these two companies/devices will fit together going forward.

Computerworld:

On June 23, we will publish the last print issue of Computerworld.

It was 47 years ago, almost to the day, that Computerworld’s very first issue rolled off the presses: June 21, 1967. The newspaper’s first publisher was the late Patrick J. McGovern, who was the founder and chairman of International Data Group (IDG), Computerworld’s parent company.

It’s sad to lose anything that has endured so long. But we are merely taking part in the natural evolution of the media industry, like so many great publications before us. Trains, after all, were once powered by coal and steam; Computerworld is moving from paper to electrons.

I think Macworld magazine is IDG’s last that still appears in print form. Anyone think the print edition of Macworld will be around in five years? I don’t.

New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced police data revealing a that iPhone robberies in San Francisco dropped by more than a third (38 percent), while New York City has seen robberies and ‘grand larcenies from a person’ involving an iPhone drop by 19 and 29 percent. In London, Apple-targeted thefts were down by 24 percent.

Those are significant numbers.

A Surface Pro 3 user manual that can be downloaded directly from Microsoft’s site lists the Surface Mini four times, proving the mention of the smaller tablet isn’t just an accident. The mentions also make it clear that the Surface Mini will come with a Surface Pen, just like its bigger brother.

It won’t help.

Anorak:

The way things are going, every kid is going to go to school wearing bubble wrap and a helmet. Back in the 1970s (and earlier), parents didn’t stress about our health and safety as much as they do today. It’s not that they cared less – they just didn’t worry compulsively about it.

Parents of 2014 need to be reminded of how less restricted, less supervised, less obsessively safety-conscious things were… and it was just fine.

Tthese stories are always kind of amusing to those of us old enough to remember these dangers. And to be clear, a lot of the things this article is nostalgic about were actually bad for us.

A leading scientist was ejected by fellow audience members during a performance of Handel’s Messiah after he took the director’s invitation to “clap and whoop” to the music a step too far by attempting to crowd-surf.

Love it.

The Supreme Court yesterday handed down a decision in a landmark case, known as Alice Corp v CLS Bank. Here’s a link to the decision.

In a nutshell, Alice Corp was issued a patent for a computer implemented payment system. CLS Bank argued that the patent was invalid because it took an existing system and simply implemented “well known” steps on a computer.

The Supreme Court agreed with CLS and said that patents are not valid if they generically implement an existing abstract idea on a computer.

This could have the effect of invalidating a number of existing “method” type patents.

Software makers had watched the case closely amid concern that a broad high-court ruling against Alice could have rendered even highly inventive software patents vulnerable to attack.

BSA, a trade association representing Microsoft Corp. and other software makers, said the opinion “will help everyone distinguish abstract ideas that are not patentable from real software inventions that are.”

The decision avoided broad new pronouncements and stuck closely to precedent, but observers said it could strike a blow against a proliferation of weaker software patents.

It will likely be a while until the effects of this decision shake out.

What took you guys so long?

Airbnb and Uber are two darlings of disruption, adored by one segment of the population (their users) and despised by the people they disrupt.

If something goes wrong—a party breaks out, somebody gets robbed, the cops show up, someone slips and falls—it’s not the tenant, or some sharing-economy guru in Silicon Valley, who’s going to be held responsible. It will be the owner’s problem. That’s why at the first hint of Airbnb usage, Podziba explains, “I tell them to do what I did: Get surveillance cameras. Hire a private investigator. And do the necessary steps to get them out.”

Disruption frequently involves a short cut, finding a way to avoid paying the price that comes with the territory. Since the disrupted businesses are all bound to following the rules, the disrupting force has a clear advantage. Sometimes this can be good news, as an inefficient business model is turned on its head, forced to reinvent itself to be more efficient. Good for consumers, good for the economy.

But sometimes disruption creates a false economy. A disruptive force uses a short cut to dramatically improve service or cut costs, a short cut that is not viable in the long term. But in the short term, the disruptive force races through an industry, wreaking all sorts of havoc.

What sort of disruptive force does Uber and Airbnb bring to the table? The jury is still out.

AnandTech:

iOS 8 will expose just about every manual camera control possible. This means that ISO, shutter speed, focus, white balance, and exposure bias can be manually set within a custom camera application.

For “serious” iPhone photographers, iOS 8 will open up a whole new range of possibilities.

Grantland:

There are two things that make Diplomacy so unique and challenging. The first is that, unlike in most board games, players don’t take turns moving. Everyone writes down their moves and puts them in a box. The moves are then read aloud, every piece on the board moving simultaneously.

The second is that prior to each move the players are given time to negotiate with each other, as a group or privately. The result is something like a cross between Risk, poker, and Survivor.

I played this game in college and loved it. The key is you can’t win the game without cooperating with at least one other player but you also can’t win without screwing over at least one other player. The “when do I screw over my friend?” is the most fraught part of the game.

TUAW:

Everyone knows they are supposed to back up, but maybe you aren’t sure what you should do or how you should do it. I’m here to help.

A good read of the various backup methods and procedures.

Esquire:

The very mention of that word—the single-most offensive name one could ever call a Native American—has always made my blood boil.

Non-Natives may never quite understand how deep the term “redskins” cuts into ancient wounds that have never quite healed, and maybe it’s not reasonable to expect them to. But every time Dan Snyder refuses to change his NFL team’s name, even with tribes paying for powerful ads in opposition like the one that recently aired during the NBA Finals, Snyder plunges a long, twisted blade into our hearts.

For any numbers of reasons enumerated here and elsewhere, it’s time to change the name of the team.

The Center for Reading Research:

Some words are better known to men than to women and the other way around. But which are they? On the basis of our vocabulary test, we can start to answer this question. These 24 words should suffice to find out whether a person you are interacting with in digital space is male or female.

I knew all twelve of the “men’s words” and all but two of the “women’s words”. If you have the time, be sure to take their vocabulary test, too.

In a strongly worded statement issued to international media yesterday, the Department of Finance said that Ireland was “confident that there is no state aid rule breach in this case and we will defend all aspects vigorously.” It signalled its intent to fight the ruling in the European Court of Justice should the commission find against the State.

Good for Ireland.

Farad Manjoo spent some time with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

Nieh and Viennot discovered all kinds of new information about the content in Google Play, including a critical security problem: developers often store their secret keys in their apps software, similar to usernames/passwords info, and these can be then used by anyone to maliciously steal user data or resources from service providers such as Amazon and Facebook. These vulnerabilities can affect users even if they are not actively running the Android apps. Nieh notes that even “Top Developers,” designated by the Google Play team as the best developers on Google Play, included these vulnerabilities in their apps.

Android isn’t secure? I’m shocked.

Traditional television is static. Here’s your list of channels, watch what you like. If you have a DVR, you can time shift your shows, record them to watch later. On-demand offers another level of time shifting and access to a library of content, some of which you have to pay for. DVR and On-demand extend the traditional TV model, making it a bit more dynamic.

Apple TV and its WatchESPN app take this one step further.

I found some hidden features of the WatchESPN app on Apple TV that make it the best overall tool for U.S. cable and satellite TV subscribers who want to absorb as much of the sites and sounds of World Cup without actually being there.

Apple TV offers flexibility that your traditional set top box does not offer. This is a bridge from the static world of traditional television to the dynamic world of the net. Subtle, perhaps, but I think this is just a taste of things to come. Good writeup.

Microsoft has overhauled their master Microsoft Services Agreement (MSA) that covers Bing, MSN, Outlook.com/Hotmail, etc., and sent out a mass emailing to let folks know how serious they are. There’s good mixed with bad here.

The agreement itself is not necessarily user friendly, but it is definitely written to be much easier to follow. As an example, one of the first things you’ll see, in big bold letters, is this:

IF YOU LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES, SECTION 10 CONTAINS A BINDING ARBITRATION CLAUSE AND CLASS ACTION WAIVER. IT AFFECTS YOUR RIGHTS ABOUT HOW TO RESOLVE ANY DISPUTE WITH MICROSOFT. PLEASE READ IT.

The agreement then offers an FAQ that lays out some important questions and answers. Most service agreements do not do this, counting on you to read all the small print and read between the lines. Kudos to Microsoft on this. But, read on.

Here’s what Microsoft says about privacy:

As part of our ongoing commitment to respecting your privacy, we have updated the Microsoft Services Agreement to state that we do not use what you say in email, chat, video calls, or voice mail to target advertising to you. Nor do we use your documents, photos, or other personal files to target advertising to you.

Not clear if this is a shot across Google’s bow, but it sure reads that way to me. The one inconsistency for me here is that the MFA does not actually contain this privacy language. Instead, it points you to various privacy agreements. When I go to the Windows Services Agreement, for example, I see this language:

We use demographic information – gender, country, age and postal code but not your name or contact information – from your Microsoft account to provide personalized ads to you. You may opt out of receiving targeted ads from Microsoft Advertising by visiting our opt-out page.

Though the two privacy statements to not strictly clash, they certainly paint different pictures as to how Microsoft will use your info to create targeted advertising. Far less transparent, in my opinion.

CNBC did a short interview with Elon Musk that I found interesting. Though the questions asked were simplistic, Musk’s responses were telling, gave a sense of his seriousness of purpose. There are plenty of critics out there, but there’s no denying his talent. If he says he’s going to put a human on Mars by 2026, I believe him.

Stanford Magazine:

Lipreading, which makes one sense do the work of another, is a skill daunting to describe. Rachel Kolb, deaf since birth, shares its mysteries.

Interesting article from the point of view of a deaf person. I’m sure I’ve made the same mistake – assuming if a deaf person can read lips, it’s easy for them.

Jim returns from his well earned vacation to talk to Dan about the potential for an Amazon phone, WWDC two weeks later, the new iMac’s importance as a serious production machine, operating systems as a product, Apple’s veil of secrecy, and more.

Sponsored by HostGator (use code DANSENTME for 50% off VPS) and Squarespace (use code DANSENTME for 10% off).

Moom is Many Tricks’ window moving and zooming app. If you find the behavior of the green zoom button mysterious and thus avoid using it, you’ll love Moom—hover over the green button, and a pop-up palette appears, letting you quickly choose from five built-in size/location options. But you can also create custom commands that will move windows to other displays, size and position them exactly as you wish, or perform many other actions, including centering. Finally, if you use one display at one location, but multiple displays elsewhere, Moom can memorize your open windows for both setups, and automatically switch to the saved layout when the display setup changes. Check it out at Many Tricks.

Macworld:

Mix looks to be yet another example of Adobe pushing to expand the technologies it developed for Photoshop into non-desktop areas like the cloud and, by extension, mobile devices like the iPad. I suspect that artists, designers, and hobbyists who like creating compositions or who want an image editor that ties directly into some of Photoshop’s editing tools and Creative Cloud are going to like Mix. A lot.

I like that Mix doesn’t require a paid Creative Cloud subscription (although it does require an Adobe ID). Makes it more likely I’ll try it out.

New York Times:

Amazon on Wednesday introduced its own smartphone — a device optimized to allow customers to consume great amounts of video, books and music, preferably from Amazon.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, announced the new phone, Fire, here in Seattle, the company’s headquarters.

Amazon executives asked themselves, Mr. Bezos said, only one question: “Can we build a better phone for our most engaged customers?”

“Our most engaged customers” seems to be the key here. What do you think? Is there anything compelling in the “AmaFone” for you?

Paleofuture:

From the 1950s until the 1970s Bell Labs spent over $500 million developing the videophone. But the technology failed to achieve mainstream success. Why?

The story of the Bell Labs videophone — from the experiments of the mid-50s, to the expensive and ultimately failed consumer trials of the 1970s.

This always seemed like one of those technologies forever searching for a problem for it to solve – a problem average consumers really didn’t have or want solved. The irony is now most of us carry around this technology in our pockets every day. But how many of us use it on a regular basis?