By Spring 2010, with money running tight and options fading, we started searching for potential buyers of the company. Over the past three months, we have been remarkably close to striking a deal, only to have the potential buyer get cold feet. We also considered refocusing Xmarks as a freemium sync business, but the prospects there are grim too: with the emergence of competent sync features built in to Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, it’s hard to see users paying for a service that they can now get for free. For four years we have offered the synchronization service for no charge, predicated on the hypothesis that a business model would emerge to support the free service. With that investment thesis thwarted, there is no way to pay expenses, primarily salary and hosting costs. Without the resources to keep the service going, we must shut it down. Our plan is to keep the service running for another 90+ days, after which the plug will be pulled.
posts
New Healthcare Changes in Effect
Ben Popken for The Consumerist:
Another aspect that kicked in on Sep 23 was that health care companies can’t deny insurance to children with preexisting conditions. Major players in the health care industry responded to this one by instead of denying insurance, it would opt to stop selling child-only health insurance policies entirely. It remains to be seen what other inventive ideas the health care industry will come up with as it adjusts to the new regulations.
PlayBook: The Blackberry Tablet
Today at Research In Motion’s developer event, Mike Lazaridis introduced the company’s new tablet – the PlayBook. The device will sport a Cortex A9, 1GHz dual-core CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 7-inch display, webOS-like app switching, an e-reader component, full document editing, and pairing with BlackBerry phones. The device will be capable of 1080p HDMI video and will have HDMI and USB ports, a front and rear HD camera configuration, and will be 9.7mm thick. The PlayBook is based on a platform designed by QNX, just as we’d heard previously.
Eric Schmidt on Apple, Facebook and More
This is a fascinating interview of the Google CEO by Charlie Rose.
Segway Company Owner Dies in Accident
Martin Wainwright for the Guardian:
The flamboyant former miner at the head of the Segway scooter company has died in a freak accident by sliding on one of the miniature two-wheelers off a cliff.
Damn.
[ via DF]
On MarsEdit
The biggest selling point for the new version: an improved WYSIWYG interface for post composition. You now have the option to compose posts in either Rich Text or HTML format, and as you type, a separate preview pane pops up and lets you see how your post is going to look. It would be nice if you could edit in the preview pane—for example, in one test post, a subject-verb disagreement eluded me in the composition window but popped into plain relief in the preview window, and it would have been easier to correct it the minute I saw it—but this feature is not a vital must-have.
The Quest for Simple Task Management
Two days ago, I wrote this in response to a piece by Joshua Schnell on managing tasks:
Getting too wrapped up in how I manage my tasks doesn’t leave me any time to actually do my tasks.
My buddy (and former boss at our college’s newspaper) Trey Heath wrote this, concerning the same topic:
I am a huge fan of GTD and since I started following the methodology four years ago, I can say without a doubt that GTD has made me 100% LESS productive.
‘Just Plain Wrong’
Ben Brooks, on seven inch tablets:
This small size sounds great if you think about it, surely it will be lighter and more portable. Seven inches is a huge difference though, you lose almost 3 inches off the iPad size and for what? Well you get a smaller device that still doesn’t fit in your pocket and doesn’t have the screen real estate to be really great.
The problem isn’t that tap zones become much smaller, the problem is the onscreen keyboards get much smaller.
The New 27-inch LED Cinema Display
9 to 5 Mac has some photos of the new beast. I can’t wait to I have one on my desk at work.
iWork for iPad Updated
New features include iDisk connectivity for storage, the ability to export to native Office formats and a tool for grouping and ungrouping objects.
‘Social Media Guru’ Jobs Plentiful
For years now, studies and news articles have talked about the value of using social networks to make potential employment contacts. Today it turns out social networking is the job—or at least part of it. The proliferation of sites like Twitter and Facebook as marketing tools has led to a boom in social-media positions at just about any company with a Web presence. In response, colleges are adding related courses and even entire M.B.A. programs to prepare students who are interested in turning an otherwise amusing hobby into their profession.
On the RIM Tablet
Jared Newman over at PCWorld has posted a piece titled “4 Ways a RIM Tablet Could Smoke the iPad, Galaxy Tab.”
Obviously, a loaded headline. Let’s take a look at this:
1. Blackberry Messenger
One feature that both the iPad and the Galaxy Tab lack is a quick and simple way to communicate with others. Messenger could be a cornerstone of the BlackPad, allowing people to stay in touch with Blackberry phone users. Businesses who use Blackberry would love it.