Supposedly, this is a video of Google’s Android operating system for mobile devices:
it’s a pretty crappy video but I’m just happy to see it working. Hopefully more info like this will sneak out in the next few months. Android is open source so I’d hope information about development on it becomes more open and available.
So asks CNET’s Dan Farber regarding Google CEO Eric Schmidt telling Jim Cramer that Google wouldn’t put ads on its homepage even though they could bring billions of dollars. I say, way to go Google. Here’s Schmidt’s genius statement to Cramer:
We prioritize the end user over the advertiser
Yes. It’s fantastic to see this sort of action from a major company. Too often the end user (or the customer) gets screwed by the company’s pursuit of every dollar imaginable. More businesses need to follow Google’s mission to “focus on the user and all else will follow.”
…but finally I read comments and more comments similar to those that have been bouncing around in my head for a while regarding Jakob Neilson, the guru of web usability.
Unlike my peers, I’m largely un-schooled on Mr. Neilson’s impact in the field of web usability so I have no opinion on his work. Neilson’s website on the other hand is a total mystery to me. Content and Design are not foes. Minimalism does not equal usability. And to get slightly nitpicky, God, I hate it when content jumps from one column to another when clicking a link. Or in the case of Neilson’s site, when a two-column layout (his homepage) becomes a one-column layout with a different width when clicking on an article.
But beyond even that annoyance, here’s why I have a hard time paying attention to what Neilson says:
His site has no RSS feed.
It is, therefore, completely useless to me.
Hack A Day directed me to an Instructables post on building a Tube Screamer clone. The Tube Screamer is one of those classic old guitar pedals.
PS — Does anyone else find it amusing that Hack A Day is copyrighted?
I don’t know if it’s the crazy dance moves or the music or the ladies but I watch and re-watch it all the time.
Check this out:
Apple has apparently included a blacklisting mechanism in iPhone OS 2.x through which the device can phone home, check for unauthorized applications, and disable them. The OS includes a URL that points to a page containing a list of unauthorized applications, specifically those listed here.
According to Jonathan Zdziarski, author of the book iPhone Open Application Development and an iPhone forensics manual:
This suggests that the iPhone calls home once in a while to find out what applications it should turn off. At the moment, no apps have been blacklisted, but by all appearances, this has been added to disable applications that the user has already downloaded and paid for, if Apple so chooses to shut them down.
I discovered this doing a forensic examination of an iPhone 3G. It appears to be tucked away in a configuration file deep inside CoreLocation.
If true, this really goes beyond being simple anti-choice and into some weird authoritarian realm. Why shouldn’t a consumer be allowed to modify a product he paid for?
Apple = Microsoft with better UI
COOLER HEADS PREVAIL: CNET follows up with some legitimate reasons for a kill-switch.
