I find this astonishing:

This is RedCross Rescue, or at least that was its title when MobileX Labs released it in November of 2012. But after a few months of poor sales, its name was changed to “Bike Race HD” in January 2013. It gained some traction, breaking the top 250 in the Adventure category, but it began to slip once more.

Then, just last month, its fortunes miraculously shifted, climbing almost 750 spots from its 1,000+ ranking in Adventure to the top 300. But this amazing change of fortune wasn’t due to a new update, cool level pack, or added functionality. No, it was achieved with nothing more than a simple name change. Overnight, Bike Race HD became “Bike Race Ninja Clumsy Run HD.”

Capitalizing on the absolutely scorching hot search term “Clumsy Ninja,” the app did quite well, but its transformation wasn’t complete. On February 14, a simple new app called “Le Pupppy” took the App Store by storm, becoming a top 10 game shortly after launch. And wouldn’t you know it, as soon as Le Pupppy began its climb to the top, the app formerly known as RedCross Rescue evolved once again, this time to “Le Puppy Clumsy Biker Pupppy Race Ninja 2 HD.”

The article goes on to follow this app through another renaming scheme. Not sure how to police this, but this just hurts everyone.

With more than 120 million smartphones sold in the U.S. in 2013, Apple’s iPhone accounted for nearly half of those, taking a 45 percent share in its home market last year, new data released by the NPD Group on Thursday reveals.

Samsung had 26%.

Om is a good friend and I’ll really miss his writing.

Benedict Evans has some interesting thoughts on Google. Of note: this is one of the only articles I’ve read on Google lately without using the word “creepy.”

Advertising isn’t just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought. At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends their day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect all your personal data, upgrading the servers that hold all the data and making sure it’s all being logged and collated and sliced and packaged and shipped out… And at the end of the day the result of it all is a slightly different advertising banner in your browser or on your mobile screen.

Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product.

Why do I think Facebook doesn’t share these views.

The new version now includes the Master EQ 432.

Screens is a screen sharing VNC client for the iPhone and iPad. I’ve been using it since it was first released and love it.

Two separate sources have told me that’s how much Google (GOOG) offered to purchase WhatsApp. The bid did not come with promise of a board seat, unlike the Facebook agreement.

I’m not surprised.

When Mark Zuckerberg says he wants to “connect the world’s people,” it’s not some gentle, humanist statement. Zuckerberg intends to own the communications layer of the world we live in — if today’s $16-plus billion acquisition of messaging service WhatsApp is any indication. Facebook grew up inventing the world’s leading social network for sharing with everyone you know, and it now owns what could be called the world’s largest private social network. Between the two companies, about 1 billion photos and 30 billion messages are sent per day.

While Facebook slaved away creating a utility used by 1.25 billion people, WhatsApp has replaced an essential utility for many, SMS. WhatsApp is used by over 450 million people every month, and often in places Facebook and its Messenger app had little success reaching, like Spain and Switzerland. By filling in the gaps with WhatsApp, Facebook’s communication pipes are thicker and spread far wider than ever before. The company commands an enormous portion of the world’s messages and photos sent per day. And don’t forget that WhatsApp users send a whopping 200 million voice messages per day. For many, WhatsApp has likely replaced voice calls as well.

Good read.

Liourdis, who writes on Greek Wikipedia as “Diu,” faces monetary and criminal penalties over the article he edited. The article mentions that Katsanevas was called a “family disgrace” in the will of his father-in-law, former Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou. In the will, Papandreou also accused Katsanevas of trying to exploit his name to further his political ambitions.

The Wikimedia Foundation is defending the case. If this case goes the wrong way, it will set a precedent that may have a long term chilling effect on Wikipedia and on publicly consumable writing, in general.

Brian Krzanich is the CEO of Intel. He did a very candid AMA (Ask Me Anything). To me, this was the highlight. A refreshingly candid answer.

Q: How did Intel miss out on the mobile/tablet market and what is it doing now to compensate?

A: We wanted the world of computing to stop at PC’s…and the world.. as it never does… didn’t stop innovating.. The new CEO of Microsoft Satya said it well the other day… our industry does not respect tradition, it respects innovation…. i think he was 100% right.. and it’s why we missed the mobile move.

Not sure what to make of this. Is the App Store being gamed, or are people being careless with their .99? Follow the links in the story to get the big picture. There are a lot of them.

I found this one in particular, a review page for the game on Touch Arcade, particularly enlightening. Not the review itself, but the comment thread below the review. From the comments:

There’s no way these downloads are legit. I think the app store is getting played right now. Not just by this game, but also Flappy Bird. The developer of that game was asked directly and didn’t deny it.

If download numbers are being manipulated in some way, that’s theft and Apple is the victim (assuming money is not really coming in and Apple is paying money out). And I can’t imagine Apple will allow that to continue. It’s a large ecosystem, and there are always scammers looking for edge cases they can exploit.

And as reader Brandon pointed out in the comments, if gamed download numbers are pulling money away from legitimate apps, then those app developers are being victimized as well.

Cool to see this progress. Can’t wait to visit. Maybe by WWDC 2015?

Tesla CEO Elon Musk today confirmed in an interview with Bloomberg that his company “had conversations” with Apple. Musk went on to say that he could not comment on whether the conversations had revolved around any kind of acquisition, but he did confirm that at the current time, an acquisition of Tesla seems “very unlikely.”

The fact the two companies talked means nothing—they could have been talking about iOS integration instead of an acquisition. However, if Apple were going to get into the car business, Tesla would be the perfect partner. They are cool, environmentally friendly, and they care about design and the user.

Facebook Inc will buy fast-growing mobile-messaging startup WhatsApp for $16 billion in cash and stock, as the world’s largest social network looks for ways to boost its popularity, especially among a younger crowd.

These prices are out of control.

The Atlantic:

A new study from the Transportation Research Initiative at the University of Michigan looks at global driving fatalities with up-to-date World Health Organization data. Around the world, deaths in fatal car crashes are 1/6th as likely as dying from a common health problem, like heart disease. In the U.S., where road crashes account for just 2 percent of deaths, individuals are 13 times more likely to die from cancer.

Here is the map of driving fatality rates per capita, with the most deadly countries (led by Namibia) in red and the safest countries (led by the Maldives) in green.

Of course Maldives is the safest – they’ve only got ten cars in the whole country. Good to see the countries I drive in most often are relatively safer for any number of reasons.

Even Google knows how creepy Google Glass is.

Civic groups and the production crew of the Korean film based on the death of a Samsung Electronics employee claimed Wednesday that Lotte Cinema abused its position as one of the nation’s leading cinema chains to block moviegoers from seeing the film.

“Another Family” is about a real-life father’s quest for truth about the leukemia death of his young daughter who had worked at one of Samsung’s semiconductor plants for four years.

The Vancouver Sun:

A new survey shows that four Canadian cities – led by Vancouver – are the highest ranking in North America for quality of life.Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal take the next three places respectively in the 2014 Mercer Quality of Living rankings.

I live here and it really is a spectacular city.

Yahoo News:

When the co-pilot on flight ET-702 from Addis Ababa to Rome locked himself in the cockpit while the pilot went to the bathroom and announced a hijacking, Italian and French fighter jets were scrambled to escort the plane through their respective airspaces.

But although the co-pilot-turned-hijacker quickly announced he wanted to land the plane in Switzerland, where he later said he aimed to seek asylum, Switzerland’s fleet of F-18s and F-5 Tigers remained on the ground, Swiss airforce spokesman Laurent Savary told AFP.

This, he explained, was because the Swiss airforce is only available during office hours. These are reported to be from 8am until noon, then 1:30 to 5pm.

If only the bad guys kept the same hours.

Sara Wachter-Boettcher:

Public speaking is tough. You’re trying not to say “um” too much or speak too fast or crash your presentation or poop your pants or do any of the million horrible things that, in those first few minutes you’re up on stage, feel way too possible.

Very funny, but so true.

“If you’re starting a company and thinking about where your value comes from, it’s increasingly design,” Ev Williams.

Great article.

I loved this. My favorite line:

Q: The Internet is always ready to pounce when you step out of line. Do you read any of that?
A: No. I also don’t tweet. I don’t tweet for a very simple reason, which is that I drink.

[Via Daring Fireball]

Follow the link to an infographic that compares Bluetooth Low Energy and NFC, side-by-side. Click on the image for a larger version. Pretty interesting.

The MacBook Pro on Jimmy Fallon’s Late Night desk was like a cast member, a regular. Apple was always a part of the show and was listed as a sponsor in the credits. Something has changed.

When Jimmy made the move to the Tonight Show from Late Night, he took his MacBook Pro with him, but not the Apple logo. NBC went out of their way to cover the logo with a skin. Apple is also no longer listed as a sponsor in the credits. What gives?

My guess (and totally a seat of the pants guess, at that) is that The Tonight Show asked Apple to back the cash truck up to the stage door if they wanted to keep the logo on Jimmy’s desk. If so, that’s too bad. Everyone knows it’s a Mac. It just looks a little goofy. Do something about this, willya Jimmy?