Evernote’s biggest change on iOS is the possibility of creating and editing notes with rich text styles. Whereas previous versions of the mobile app forced users to always edit notes in plain text — thus breaking styles coming from the desktop app — Evernote 4.1 allows basic creation of numbered and bulleted lists, as well as sections, paragraphs and blockquotes straight from an iPhone or iPad. Obviously, users can now also select text to make it bold, italic or underlined, with more options such as strikethrough and highlight available in a new formatting bar.
Category: General Tech
The $99 Touchpad
This morning, the HP Touchpad’s price was slashed to $99 at most resellers.
Within hours, most resellers had sold out of the ill-fated device.
This is a pretty crazy situation. This week, HP announced it would no longer be shipping any webOS-powered hardware, including the Touchpad, which is less than 2 months old. And yet, at $99, most nerds I know seriously considered pulling the trigger on one.
So, would the Touchpad have succeeded at a lower price, or was today’s rush simply a scramble at what is probably the best — and last, at least for now — webOS device?
On webOS and Failure
Given the stiff competition webOS faced in the marketplace, it’s tempting to just say that webOS has failed. The truth is that we don’t really know if webOS could have succeeded given HP’s utter inability to execute on the basics of making smartphones and tablets.
I think it’s better to say this: HP failed webOS.
I agree. HP didn’t push the webOS team to build anything besides a mediocre tablet, really. By pushing to get it out the door in a year, HP showed as little concern about the product as I think some Android tablet builders show.
Wither webOS
In the company’s earnings call today, HP CEO Leo Apotheker just announced that its shutdown of the webOS hardware business — covering the Veer, TouchPad, and Pre series — will wind down in the fourth quarter of the year.
I’m offline for one day and HP goes and does something crazy. This move really bums me out.
Why Did my Harddrive Fail?
Glenn Brensinger at Small Dog Electronics:
The most common reason drives fail is a cheap component. Hard drive makers are constantly trying to lower their prices, and the sad fact is that the drive components don’t care whose brand name is on the drive. Whoever made it, the drive was made with components from the lowest bidder. It doesn’t matter who sold the system—HP, Dell, Apple, Sony—they all use hard drives manufactured by another company who had to cut costs in order to get the contract. Apple makes every attempt to use only the highest quality components in their systems, but to say that a hard drive will never fail simply because it’s in an Apple computer is wishful thinking.
Verbs Adds Facebook Chat
Verbs, the excellent IM app for the iPhone and iPod touch has been updated to include Facebook chat support.
While I don’t have a Facebook account, I do know that Verbs is the best looking (and best-functioning) IM app I’ve tried for iOS.
To help celebrate this release, the lovely people over at #include tech. have given me a handful of promo codes for the app, which I’ll be giving away over on the site’s Twitter account later today.
Tweetbot 1.5
Well, it’s finally here. You asked for it — you wagged your finger about it — you hate the people you follow on Twitter so much that you don’t want to hear another peep out of them, yet deep down you don’t really want to get in one of those uncomfortable, “Why did you unfollow me!?” moments. Or maybe someone’s had a little too much caffeine and you just need a break. With Tweetbot 1.5, you can mute those pesky over-tweeters and keep meme-esque hashtags from cluttering your #pantsfree timeline. Although I hear there’s a self destruction mechanism built in if you ever mute #tweetbot.
Fusion Garage Unveils Grid 4
I won’t lie. While I expect this phone to be a flop, that UI is quite pretty. Given Fusion Garage’s track record, however, I’m not going to get my hopes up on this thing being functional.
Computers Are For Creating
Buy a shirt; feed Shawn’s growing family.
Connected Disconnect
Observation
This weekend, my wife and I enjoyed a weekend away in Franklin, TN. While out to eat for Sunday brunch, I noticed something that really got under my skin.
At the restaurant, there were — as you could imagine — several tables with large, multigenerational families enjoying brunch after church. At many of these tables, the kids weren’t talking with their parents, aunts and uncles and grandparents, however.
They were glued to iPod touches.
Marco Arment Refuses Venture Capital Dollars for Instapaper
ReadItLater just raised $2.5 million to bulk up its content shifting operation while online document site Scribd, a start-up with $26 million in funding, just launched a new reading app that has similar features. Meanwhile Apple is preparing to go live with iOS 5 that also allows users to read web content later.
If you’re Marco Arment founder of Instapaper, known for popularizing the time-shifting reading genre that is now suddenly quite popular, what do you do? Nothing, really.
XP Slipping in Web Share
Another month rolls round, bringing with it another bunch of browser market share statistics. July was the first full month during which Firefox 5 was available, so it was the first indication of how well Mozilla’s new Rapid Release schedule would play in the market.
First the overall market share numbers. Internet Explorer is down 0.87 points to 52.81 percent. Firefox is down 0.19 points, to 21.48 percent. Chrome and Safari both made gains, of 0.34 and 0.57 points each, to 13.45 and 8.05 percent respectively. Finally, Opera fell slightly, by 0.08 points to 1.65 percent.