Facebook is actually worth more thanks to news of the FTC’s $5 billion fine – MIT Technology Review
Not a fan
Kinect Voice Not Commanding
Come On, Microsoft: Siri Is Making You Look Terrible:
The 360′s new voice interface should be twice as smart, twice as fast, and twice as surprisingly wonderful as Siri. Instead, it just makes me want to break my TV.
(Via TechCrunch » apple)
The Kinect’s voice command is no Siri.
Beleagured Doesn’t Begin to Describe It
Ian Austen, reporting for the NYT:
Research in Motion said on Thursday that a new line of BlackBerry smartphones that it hoped would turn around its flagging fortunes will not come to market until late next year.
It was the latest, and perhaps most significant, setback in a string of product delays and missteps from the company.
In the meantime, profits are down 70 percent. I love to say “I told you so”, so: I told you so.
(Via Daring Fireball)
Budget Predictions For 2012: Expect Even Less
My Budget Predictions For 2012: Expect Even Less:
My almost-last-of-the-year Roll Call column tells you everything you need to know about what’s ahead next year…and why you should believe me because of how accurately I predicted what would happen in 2011.
In case you’re wondering, whether you should read any further…my batting average for this year was a whopping 857. My question: Should I have my agent call the Yankees to offer my services?
Continue reading “Budget Predictions For 2012: Expect Even Less”
Carriers with Low IQ’s
Sen. Franken petitions AT&T, HTC, others for Carrier IQ info:
Minnesota Senator Al Franken has sent letters to several more companies involved in the Carrier IQ scandal, reports say. Franken is in charge of a Senate privacy panel, and has issued new requests to AT&T, HTC, Samsung, and Sprint, in addition to one sent earlier to Carrier IQ itself. The new parties are being asked to explain how they’re using the Carrier IQ technology, and what data they’re gathering through it.
(Via MacNN | The Macintosh News Network)
Sen. Franken is not the guy you want asking hard questions. It’s going to be a circus of scandal, finger pointing, the works.
Dell drops Streak 7, backs out of Android tablets in US
Dell drops Streak 7, backs out of Android tablets in US:
Like HP, Dell is believed to be putting most of its faith in Windows 8 tablets for the US market. It won’t have this option until mid-to-late 2012, however, and will essentially concede its share of mobile tablets for a year.
(Via MacNN | The Macintosh News Network)
Why can’t PC manufacturers release a credible iPad competitor? Execution of course has been lacking by announcing tablets so early the market had moved on to more advanced tablets, but that begs a serious question: Why is Dell behind?
Blackberry Alums
My good friend, fellow MIT alumnus and intellectual property attorney extraordinaire, Tony Sebro, summed up his experience with his Blackberry. The picture ain’t pretty and it is emblematic of the problems facing RIM.
RIM, You’re Done Here
RIM’s legacy is writ large on the world around us. Almost every major enterprise mobile system is patterned on their excellent email and PIM solution. But they are now slaves to their own success. They can’t sell anything other than a keyboard-candybar phone in an era where the keyboard is increasingly irrelevant or hidden away until needed. This failure of imagination in both consumer and manufacturer is their curse. In a world where every phone is smart and every phone does email, there is little to recommend any RIM phone over any other. It’s over and now we’re just waiting for the buy-out and inevitable disappearance of one of the greatest mobile companies in modern memory.
(Via MobileCrunch.)
It’s so often a mistake for your current customers to determine your product roadmap. Current customers can be a fickle bunch. You need to figure out what future customers will want. I’ve often heard that the “only” reason my friends stick with their Blackberries is for BBM. When the one thing keeping your customers is a service that can be and is now replicated, you have a serious problem. You need to be different in a way that motivates your customers to pay you and not someone else.
Malware on Android Market
Aaron Gingrich, for Android Police:
Openness — the very characteristic of Android that makes us love it — is a double-edged sword. Redditor lompolo has stumbled upon a perfect example of that fact; he’s noticed that a publisher has taken ‘… 21 popular free apps from the market, injected root exploits into them and republished.’ The really scary part? ‘50k-200k downloads combined in 4 days.’
Uh-oh:
There’s another APK hidden inside the code, and it steals nearly everything it can: product ID, model, partner (provider?), language, country, and userID. But that’s all child’s play; the true pièce de résistance is that it has the ability to download more code. In other words, there’s no way to know what the app does after it’s installed, and the possibilities are nearly endless. [emphasis mine]
(Via Daring Fireball.)
Do I even have to say it?
Imitation Will Get You Nowhere
Google has run a sting operation that it says proves Bing has been watching what people search for on Google, the sites they select from Google’s results, then uses that information to improve Bing’s own search listings. Bing doesn’t deny this.
via Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results.
Now that’s desperate.