Chilean Earthquake Likely Shifted Earth's Axis∞
NASA geophysicist Richard Gross has some alarming facts about the recent Chilean earthquake.
- The quake moved the Earth’s axis about 2.7 milliarcseconds (or 8 centimeters, or 3 inches)
- Due to the quake, each day from now on will be about 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second) shorter
- Santa Maria Island (an island in Chile) may have been raised as much as 2 meters (6 feet) because of the quake
As I like to say, “snap crackle pop!”
The Guardian Decodes Palm's Memo∞
Reeeaaaal professional journalism. This is the kind of thing I do on Facebook.
Palm Pre Plus Named The Most Important Tech Product of the Year - So Far∞
I am glad to see Palm finally get some positive press. Although, I have higher expectations for the “Pre 2” which hopefully is released in the first half of 2010.
Click the article title to read the full post from CNN.
Behold “The Amazon Effect”∞
Last time on “Rupert Murdoch Is A Greedy Motherfucker,” our titular antagonist was trying to get Microsoft to pay him to remove his News Corp sites from Google’s search index. Now he’s trying to get his e-books for the Kindle listed at more than Amazon’s price of $10.
So he sees that Amazon caved to Macmillan when they tried to get Amazon to sell their books for more than $14.99, and he wants to get in on it. Why? He doesn’t have to worry about (or pay for) manufacturing or distributing the books, and he gets 70% of the revenue on each book sold—which is pretty much 100% profit, for anyone doing the math.
I’m going to put this on the record: Rupert Murdoch is the antithesis of the progressive digital movement. His sole aim seems to be to hinder advances in technology and culture in order to preserve the dying old models of business that no longer apply in the Internet age.
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Thank you Mario! But our multitasking is in another device!
Not sure how much I agree with the whole the iPad is just a big iPod touch
sentiment, but there have been some pretty clever ways of expressing it.
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— Jason Snell, via Twitter (via nikf)When iPhone was announced, the big question was when or if it would support Flash. With the iPad the debate is if Flash is irrelevant.
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— Jeffrey Zeldman, Flash, iPad, StandardsLack of Flash in the iPad (and before that, in the iPhone) is a win for accessible, standards-based design.
Apple, Adobe, and Flash∞
John Gruber gives good account of why Apple won’t allow Flash on the iPhone or their rumored tablet. I also share Gruber’s distaste for Flash—I don’t see its exclusion from iPhone OS as a bad thing, and I’m not super excited to see it on webOS.
My webOS Wishlist#
I love webOS. I think it is the best mobile operating system ever made, and I would not even think about switching from my Pre to any other phone currently on the market.
There are, however, many things I wish Palm would either do differently, or even just do in the first place.
- Make webOS more attractive: Whenever I get the chance to play around with an iPhone or an iPod touch, I marvel at how sleek the operating system looks. webOS lacks that same level of spit and polish. Honestly, the webOS interface is pretty bland, and I wish Palm would go in and spruce it up.
- Contextual gestures: Palm already started down this road with their implementation of cut, copy and paste: hold one finger on the gesture bar and press x, c or v. Why not go further, though? [Gesture bar] + z for undo, [Gesture bar] + n to open up a new card (in say, Browser). Remember, pseudo-modal interactions (like these) are better than modal interactions, like opening up the application’s menu to access these.
- No bloatware!: The preinstalled NFL and NASCAR apps have to go, along with 2/3 of the Sprint apps. Palm, I don’t care if they pay you to put it on my phone—I don’t want them, and I bought the phone, so could you please not prevent me from uninstalling them? Apple would never do this, and this is another place you need to take a page out of their book.
- Trials in the App Catalog: way way WAY too many apps in the App Catalog are just free “lite” versions of paid apps. There should be a way to try out paid apps for a certain amount of time and then buy the full version. Not only would this get rid of a lot of clutter in the App Catalog, but people would buy more apps because it wouldn’t cost anything to try out paid ones.
- More control over Synergy: Some features of Synergy are great, like merging text messages and instant messages into the same stream. And some are horrible, like the fact that any Synergy-enabled app digs as deep into your phone as it possibly can. I haven’t added any instant messaging accounts to my Messaging app, or even installed the Facebook app in the first place. Why? All my friends instantly get imported to my contacts, whether I want them or not. Would it be so hard to have an option to only import data for people already in my contacts list?
There you go: my list of things Palm should do with webOS. It’s a great platform now, for sure, but there’s definitely tons of room to improve.
George Hotz looking to 'hack' PS3∞
Always fun to see commercial hardware being unlocked by consumers.
Especially when it’s George Hotz. BCA, represent!
Conversations About the Internet #5: Anonymous Facebook Employee∞
Pretty scary article from The Rumpus about how they do things at Facebook. Apparently they log every page you visit, every message you have—whether deleted or not—and that data never gets deleted, ever. Definitely worth a read.
So Is PC World Run By Morons, Or What?∞
I guess PC World knows something I don’t about the Apple tablet. Somehow they’ve found out not only the price (“too expensive”), but also what it does (“things you don’t need it to do”).
The entire article is just a bunch of bullshit claims about why the not-yet-announced tablet is bad for you (It uses an on-screen keyboard! It runs “iPhone 4.0 [sic]”! It’s insecure! It’s twice as much as a netbook!)
What I really love here is that PC World isn’t just making these outlandish claims about a product that they’re never used, or even a product that they’ve never seen. No, they’re saying all this about a product they don’t even know EXISTS.
Thanks to John Gruber for pointing out this beautiful piece of journalistic garbage.
Apple Confirms Mystery Jan. 27 "Creative" Event∞
On Wednesday, January 27th at 10am Pacific (1pm Eastern) Apple is holding an event. Most rumors point to the tablet being announced then.
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The TextEdit icon contains the words to the “Think Different” television commercials that Apple ran in the late 1990s.
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I always did wonder what was written on that TextEdit icon. I think it’s beautiful :)
