Kevin Hoctor takes a look at the “race to the bottom” and the future for developers.

Fred Wilson:

It is also in the consumer’s interest. Just yesterday my friend Kirk found some new music because he follows me on Rdio. But I can’t do the same thing with my friends who are on Spotify. Because all of these services are silos, by definition of their paid business model. If a roaming network existed, there would be more social music discovery, listening, and, I believe, uptake of the paid subscription model by consumers.

If Apple ever does a subscription service, I think most people would default to using what they offer. Considering Apple is the most popular music distributor in the world, and if most people used their service, it seems likely it would turn into just what Fred described — except all on one service.

Dermot Daly remembering some moments from the 2012 Úll conference. Why do people make me walk? The 2013 Úll conference is coming up next month.

It seems clear by the invite that they’re entering the mobile space in one way or another.

A new page on Apple’s site explaining to people why they’ll love the iPad. I do love mine.

“The Internet and digital media have produced this ‘Peter Pan effect’ where we never grow up, we’re perpetual children, we never have to be responsible for anything — we keep this juvenile mentality,” she says.

Indeed, the Web has a clique for every would-be adolescent — class clowns, bullies, drama queens and fanboys. (There’s plenty of room for geeks and nerds, too.) They all get to indulge in their petty squabbles, and few of them show signs of growing up.

Residents of Santa Clara, Calif. not only have a new smart meter program but free outdoor Wi-Fi to boot. The city’s non-profit electric municipal utility, Silicon Valley Power (SVP), is taking advantage of connected electric meters by integrating support for a second public unencrypted Wi-Fi channel, allowing the city to blanket the airwaves with free Wi-Fi.

It’s a pretty clever idea, and Santa Clara has the advantage of having a population density high enough to create nearly ubiquitous coverage. The connection won’t be fast – only about 1 megabit per second, according to the report, so don’t plan on streaming HD video from your iPad on free wifi as you walk down the street.

“Start reading Business Insider.”

From data loss and corruption to unexpected Apple ID use cases, developers have seen it all—but are stymied by the persistence of problems that prevent them from shipping products with working iCloud support.

Comments from prominent developers including Rich Siegel at Bare Bones Software and Black Pixel’s Daniel Pasco paint an ugly picture about how difficult it is to work with iCloud.

Lesson learned: Don’t fuck with the bison.

I bet Jim could have scared the bison off by waving his beard.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom implored gaming entrepreneurs to feature strong women in their games, rather than highly-sexualized figures, at today’s Game Developers Conference.

The wife of California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, Siebel Newsom explored this issue when producing and directing the documentary film Miss Representation, which is highly critical of the media and entertainment industry’s portrayal of women.

Women make up a small percentage of the gaming industry – 12 percent, according to a member of the panel. What’s more, they’re relegated to marketing and support roles more frequently than development and design positions.

Until there’s better gender parity in the video game business, chances are this isn’t going to change dramatically.

Shopster is a new kind of groceries list app that learns what you purchase and where, so it can remind you later on.

Cool.

As part of its fourth-quarter earnings announcement early this morning, the company said that co-founder Mike Lazaridis will retire as vice chairman and director on May 1.

Well then. That’s progress.

The beauty of this gorgeous black Les Paul Custom Lite is more than skin deep, and Gibson USA has also packed added versatility into the traditional formula. Two of Gibson’s most popular humbucking pickups from the Modern Classics series offer all the tone that made the Les Paul legendary in the first place, plus added single-coil sounds thanks to the coil-splitting mini-toggle switch added in place of the second tone control.

Jim and Dan talk about Apple’s broken promise (iCloud), Google Reader, Fever, NetNewsWire, Black Pixel, Newsfire, iTunes Purchase fraud, WifiSLAM, the value of Apple stock, guitars, and more.

Sponsored by Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME3 for 30% off), and Shopify, and Harvest (use code 5BY5 for 50% off).

Tim Holmes has some photos on Flickr. I remember that day well — I wrote a story about his return that night.

[Via DF]

This is a great conference with one of the best speaker line-ups I’ve seen. Don Melton, Matt Gemmell, Matthew Panzarino and many others, including me, will be there. Go sign-up and we’ll see you there.

Feedbin, a Google Reader alternative I mentioned last week, will be supported in Silvio Rizzi’s popular Reeder app. Great news!

Portuguese media companies, struggling through the worst recession since the 1970s, are pressing Google to pay for content on its news search engine, echoing similar demands elsewhere in Europe.

I’m not sure I understand the demands by these media companies. Google links to the articles which should bring in traffic to the sites, enabling them to make money. I don’t see any ads on Google News, so it doesn’t appear they are making money from it.

“I went into my local store to return my Astro pants and Invert crops, both purchased this month. I was asked to BEND OVER in order to determine sheerness. The sales associate then perused my butt in the dim lighting of the change room and deemed them “not sheer”.

Wow Lululemon.

Another interesting article from Horace Dediu.

I was a guest on the the latest MacVoices podcast, #1399. I joined host Chuck Joiner, author and developer Dori Smith and coder/writer/web developer Brett Terpstra to discuss Dropbox’s acquisition of Mailbox, Google Reader and the future of RSS, and Apple’s hiring of Kevin Lynch, former CTO of Adobe. It’s available both as an audio-only stream and video if you’d like to see our pretty faces.

The only country where Google+ is top of the social networking category is Albania.

What the hell is going on in Albania?

I am a huge fan of negative space in design.

Well, for one thing, it doesn’t help that it’s been opposed for years by the company behind the most popular consumer tax software — Intuit, maker of TurboTax. Conservative tax activist Grover Norquist and an influential computer industry group also have fought return-free filing.

Intuit has spent about $11.5 million on federal lobbying in the past five years — more than Apple or Amazon. Although the lobbying spans a range of issues, Intuit’s disclosures pointedly note that the company “opposes IRS government tax preparation.”

Well, of course they’re going to oppose anything that takes their customers away.