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What version is this?
I randomly stumbled onto the version history in the footer of The Verge. Pretty cool.
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I guess that works
One of the more interesting things to come out of the Blackberry 10 Jam keynote is that Rim says they’re prepared to guarantee a $10k first year for apps submitted to the BB App World. As you would guess, there are conditions to this deal and I’ll let Crackberry and The Verge expound. Even Android struggled with luring developers to their ecosystem for the first few years. I can only imagine the battle Rim and Microsoft will face to bring them to their respective platforms.
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Saying goodbye to the internet
Paul Miller from The Verge is trying to leave the internet for a year. At midnight tonight I will leave the internet. I’m abandoning one of my “top 5” technological innovations of all time for a little peace and quiet. If I can survive the separation, I’m going to do this for a year. Yeah, I’m serious. I’m not leaving The Verge, and I’m not becoming a hermit, I just won’t use the internet in my personal or work life, and won’t ask anyone to use it for me.
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Sudden friendships
According to The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft is investing $300 Million in Barnes & Noble’s Nook platform. The alliance comes after the companies openly feuded over the Nook. Microsoft last year sued Barnes & Noble and the manufacturers of the Nook, charging the device infringed on its patents. Barnes & Noble said Microsoft was trying to “bully” smaller companies that used versions of Google Inc.’s Android operating system, as Barnes & Noble does for the Nook.
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Android adoption in chart form
Android Police has a fantastic article about the adoption of Android through the years complete with a really good chart. Make sure you click The Big Android Chart graphic for a good view. This confirms something I think we all suspected, Ice Cream Sandwich adoption is moving really really slow. On the other hand Jean-Baptiste Queru seems to think this is normal. With the Jelly Bean announcement most likely coming at Google I/O this year, I’d like to see this chart updated in 6 months, I bet it will still be depressing.
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The descriptive camera
I thought this was kind of cool. A camera that uses human power to spit out descriptive text of a picture. I forgot that Amazon had this Mechanical Turk thingy. I almost want to try being a worker just reading the description. Oh yeah, forgot I’m suppose to be talking about this camera thing. So he snaps a pic, it’s sent off to the mechanical turk, someone types out a description and sends it back, and boom.
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Hey Samsung, try harder
Androidandme.com found an interesting story about Samsung hiring a marketing firm to stir up some buzz about the Galaxy S III. While it’s not clear if Samsung is specifically directing the marketing firm, someone thought it would be a good idea to crash an Apple store with signs reading “Wake up”. I don’t get their marketing strategy at all. Samsung seems hell-bent on convincing iPhone users to switch phones by insulting them.
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The definition of disappointment
According to Ina Fried, the second quarter iPad sales were disappointing. For any other company, 11.8 million tablets would be a lot to sell in a year, never mind a quarter. I just like that quote. If Asus had sold 11.8 million tablets in a year, they would throw a 2 week celebration on a huge yacht in the middle of the ocean. Here, we have an article bemoaning the poor sales of 11.
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The attack of the revenue model
Ars Technica is reporting that Tumblr will begin showing ads in May. On Wednesday, Tumblr announced in an apparent about-face that it would be allowing paid advertisement on the popular blogging platform. David Kamp, Tumblr CEO and founder, made the announcement at Ad Age’s Digital Conference today in New York. I wonder how much money they make from premium theme sales. I dug around but couldn’t find any information on the revenue split with theme developers.
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Draw Something adds some things
Zynga updated Draw Something yesterday and introduced a few options that should have existed from the beginning. I wish they’d redesign the app as it’s quite ugly but with Zynga, it can only get worse. Anyway, let’s look at the differences in this update. Hmmm, still OMGPOP branded. The only mention of Zynga that I found was in the Appstore description. Finally a way to refresh the current game page. I can’t tell you how many times it would notify me I had a game to play but show that none were ready.
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