512 Pixels

That logo really does feel dated.

I’d like to congratulate my buddy Myke Hurley on launching 70Decibels, a new network for his excellent podcasts.

If you’ve never checked out Myke’s podcasts, this really is the time. The Bro Show and Enough - The Minimal Podcast are two of my favorite technology shows. The App Orchard with Joshua Schnell of Macgasm is excellent, as is Myke’s own show, The Hurley Bird. Need a laugh? Check out 11 Minutes. I laugh every time I listen.

As a quick side-note, the world-famous Ungeniused podcast has moved to the network’s new site as well.

Myke is a fantastic podcaster, and has assembled an amazing network of hosts and shows. I’m proud to be a part of it, and couldn’t be more happy for my friend starting his new adventure.

Seriously, this is why we have editors.

Jacqui Cheng:

Thanks to the early delivery of some German iPhone 4S devices, the first benchmarks of the A5-powered phone are now in. According to these early tests, it looks as if the new A5 processor in the iPhone 4S is running at 800MHz—slightly slower than the iPad 2’s 1GHz A5 processor, but 68 percent faster than the iPhone 4’s 800MHz A4 processor.

So the iPhone 4S is nearly as fast as the iPad 2, and a lot faster than the iPhone 4. What a turd.

I’m happy to announce that starting the first week of November, I will be offering RSS sponsorships here on 512 Pixels. I’m also happy to announce that I’ve joined a brand-new RSS sponsorship network named The Syndicate to make this better than it could ever be if I was working on my own.

The Syndicate is a network of technology, design, development, and business writers offering RSS sponsorships on some of the best-known sites in our corners of the Internet.

The network reaches a healthy audience of tech- and design-savvy nerds who have an affinity for fine software and products.

Here are some quick stats on the network:

• Network members include Marco.org, Asymco, The Brooks Review, ShawnBlanc.net and others.
• 92,000 RSS feed subscribers.
• More than 1.3 million monthly page views.

If you advertise with The Syndicate, your company, product or service is posted across all of the network sites during the week of your sponsorship. The network’s readership is creative, influential, and entrepreneurial, so you know you’re hitting the audience you want, in an effective and affordable way. If you want all the sites to post on the same day, there’s an option for that, as well. You might even get Ben Brooks to get a tattoo of your logo.¹

Want more information? Check out The Syndicate’s website to learn more.

Federico Viticci:

The Omni Group released two updates for its OmniFocus app for iPhone and iPad today, adding several bug fixes and improvements, iOS 5 compatibility, and a new Location Reminders feature that leverages iOS 5′s geo-fencing APIs to send you a reminder when you’re in the right area to complete an action. The same technology is used by Apple in Reminders, a new native app in iOS 5.

I’ve been playing with Reminders for this very purpose. Silly me — I knew the Omni Group would keep me from straying.

This might be the nerdiest game I’ve ever seen. But I love it.

Thanks, Grant.

Reed Hastings:

It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.

This means no change: one website, one account, one password… in other words, no Qwikster.

Decisions like this really should have been made behind close doors. Disagreement and mid-changing is fine, just not in public postings to the company blog.

Also, how does Reed Hastings still have his job?

The Apple PR Machine:

Apple today announced pre-orders of its iPhone 4S have topped one million in a single day, surpassing the previous single day pre-order record of 600,000 held by iPhone 4.

“We are blown away with the incredible customer response to iPhone 4S,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The first day pre-orders for iPhone 4S have been the most for any new product that Apple has ever launched and we are thrilled that customers love iPhone 4S as much as we do.”

What a piece of junk. Clearly, consumers wanted more from this device.

Brett Kelly:

So, the moral of the story is that it will cost you an additional 5% of the total cost of owning the iPhone 4 to get the better phone. That breaks down to around $4 extra per month of your contract.

In other words, when you consider it as part of the total cost of owning an iPhone, the extra $100 paid for the newer phone is a negligible expense.

This is a great post to send people to who complain about paying an extra $100 for the 4S over the 4.