the inane repository
Postulates and ponderings on tech, gaming, pop culture, and other items of little consequence.
Postulates and ponderings on tech, gaming, pop culture, and other items of little consequence.
Ki Mae Heussner, with GigaOm:
When AdKeeper launched as a virtual ad-clipping service last February, the big question was: will people actually want to save online ads? More than one year later, the company still says the answer is “yes.” But they’re finding that consumer behavior isn’t changing as fast as they’d hoped. So while they wait for the industry to catch up with their vision (or scramble frantically to convince people the service is worth their time, depending on your point of view), they’ve decided to spread some of the $40 million they’ve raised on other ways of connecting consumers and brands.
Wow, I had no idea this service even existed.
Given the popularity of ad-stripping services like Instapaper, Pocket, or even Apple’s Reader function baked into Safari, I believe consumers are much more interested in connecting with content, not brands.
(Via The Brooks Review)
Wesley Fenlon covers the long and expensive path it took to bring bsnes, the only 100 percent SNES emulator, into fruition.
Of particular note was the challenge that software creator, byuu, ran into in regards to copyright laws and emulation:
byuu follows the law and believes strongly in the ethics of emulation. Emulators should be open source. Neglected products shouldn’t be entitled to lengthy copyrights. He can’t upload any of the scans or cartridge dump to the web, though he does plan to publish SHA256 cartridge hashes, which will allow others to verify their cartridge dumps, and XML memory maps, which document exactly how every SNES chip was laid out. byuu’s ethics statement references a study by Rufus Pollock, an economics professor at the University of Cambridge, which estimates the “optimal” copyright term at around 15 years.
In the United States, copyright lasts 70 years after the author’s death. That’s a bit of a gap.
I believe this is the most salient dilemma our society faces in the preservation of digital media. Not only are the original creators of such content often disinterested in sharing source code or resources with preservationists, but many are still interested in monetizing older projects (e.g. Nintendo’s Virtual Console or Sony’s PSone Classics).
Unless there’s major copyright law reform in the near future, we run the risk of losing classic works to data loss, which is a scary thought to enthusiasts like myself.
Jim Dalrymple:
The media is reporting that the company has already received 9 million pre-orders for the device. On the surface, that sounds impressive, but read this paragraph from the original Reuters report again.
Samsung Electronics Co has received some 9 million pre-orders for its third-generation Galaxy S smartphone from more than 100 global carriers, the Korea Economic Daily reported on Friday.
Those are orders from its global carriers, not customers. Come on people.
Yet many major tech sites are reporting these numbers as a massive success for Samsung, despite the fact these numbers don’t necessarily portend massive sales to end users.
I guess not only are we reviewing products on a curve, but we’re reporting on one, too.
Dalrymple:
Setting up a section of your Web site and giving it a different name does not make you hip and cool. You don’t all of a sudden become a blogger one day because you call something a blog.
What these organizations don’t seem to realize is that a blog is more about attitude than the real estate it takes up on your servers.
It’s not about the blog, but the blogger: the human being whose opinions, thoughts and passions are reflected by writing he or she publishes on their site. The sites I love reading the most, the ones I read first whenever I refresh my RSS reader, are the ones where the writer’s personality shines through their work. It’s the reason I prefer blogs like Daring Fireball, Marco.org and The Brooks Review over the larger tech sites like The Verge, despite the massive difference in daily updates.
Also, Dalrymple’s ability to say so much in less than 400 words never ceases to amaze.
Eric Zeman, with Informationweek:
Apple will finally increase the size of the iPhone’s display from 3.5 inches to “at least four inches diagonally,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Finally.
Competing smartphones that run Android and Windows Phone surpassed the 3.5-inch mark years ago. Many of today’s devices ship with displays measuring 4.3 inches or more. Today’s flagship Android phones seem to have settled on the 4.6-inch to 4.8-inch range for their displays, most often with 1280 x 720 pixels. Just look at the HTC One X or the Samsung Galaxy S III.
I love this notion that Apple must release an iPhone with a larger screen because competing handsets have them. Apple ceded the display size battle two plus years ago, yet iPhone continues to be the best selling smartphone in the U.S.
Will the next iPhone indeed have a larger display? It’s certainly possible. However, Apple’s reason for bumping the screen’s dimensions have less to do with what OEMS are doing and more with making the iPhone a better product.
Sam Byford, reporting on recent remarks made by Docomo President Ryuji Yamada:
At yesterday’s event announcing the company’s summer lineup, Yamada told a crowd of reporters that it would be ‘difficult’ for Docomo to provide the same experience to iPhone customers because of Apple’s strict regulations. The number two and three carriers in Japan, au / KDDI and SoftBank, both sell the iPhone in addition to Android devices.
Docomo announced 16 new smartphones yesterday, all running Android 4.0 and loaded with many of the carrier’s exclusive network services.
Open
adjective
1 Allowing access, passage, or a view through an empty space; not closed or blocked.
2 Exposed to the air or to view; not covered.
3 The ability for wireless carriers to dick around with a handset’s software, filling it with unremovable bloatware that provides zero value to the end user.
brentcas, posting in the Verge forums:
I’m a little crazy about user interface design. And while I am no professional, new ideas for how software could or should work can keep me up late into the night, sketching in my Moleskine. About a week ago a really simple idea hit me as I was falling asleep: the App Switcher in iOS should be taller.
And why not? When you double click the home button and the screen rises, the status bar also vanishes, and you only have visible access to four apps. If you want to change the volume, you have to swipe over twice. Meanwhile, the raised app is taking up a lot of real estate.
Simple adjustment, but it makes a world of difference. I’d like to see Apple do something like this in iOS 6, but I get the feeling they don’t really care about the app switcher interface at all, since so many users don’t even know it exists.
John Paczkowski:
We’ve independently confirmed that this is indeed the case. Sources describe the new Maps app as a forthcoming tent-pole feature of iOS that will, in the words of one, “blow your head off.” I’m not quite sure what that means, and the source in question declined to elaborate, but it’s likely a reference to the photorealistic 3-D mapping tech Apple acquired when it purchased C3 Technologies.
I hope this turns out to be true. One of Android’s greatest strengths is Google’s excellent Maps application, which puts iOS’s to shame.
Jason Pontin:
I never believed that apps would unwind my industry’s disruption; but I felt some readers would want a beautifully designed digital replica of Technology Review on their mobile devices, and I bet that our developers could create a better mobile experience within applications. So we created iOS and Android apps that were free for use; anyone could read our daily news and watch our videos, and people could pay to see digital replicas of the magazine. We launched the platforms in January of 2011. Complimenting myself on my conservative accounting, I budgeted less than $125,000 in revenue in the first year. That meant fewer than 5,000 subscriptions and a handful of single-issue sales. Easy, I thought.
Like almost all publishers, I was badly disappointed. What went wrong? Everything.
Maybe if most publishers optimized their content for tablets rather than simply exporting PDF’s with a few bells and whistles thrown in, more people would actually use their apps. The fact it takes forever and a day to download new issues isn’t helping, either.
G4’s Cassandra Khaw, quoting Street Fighter pro Arturo Sanchez:
“Though it can be hard to believe for people who think fighting games are all about mashing buttons and stringing together big combos, Street Fighter and poker have a lot in common. At high levels, both games come down to correctly reading your opponents and optimizing your resources.”
