On Mobile Flash

Avram Piltch at Laptopmag:

After spending time playing with Flash Player 10.1 on the new Droid 2, the first Android 2.2 phone to come with the player pre-installed, I’m sad to admit that Steve Jobs was right. Adobe’s offering seems like it’s too little, too late.

Please note the date. People were complaining about the iPhone’ lack of Flash way back in 2007. Three years later, Adobe’s mobile implementation is still rubbish.

Continue reading ⇢

A Different Kind of Checkbook Journalism

Matt Gertz for Media Matters:

Media Matters has confirmed Bloomberg’s report using publicly available IRS filings. We also found no evidence of corresponding donations to the Democratic Governors Association in the current political cycle. News Corp. wants Republicans elected to office, and they’re willing to spend money to make it happen.

According to the article, News Corp. is actually the RGA’s “biggest corporate donor.” Bloomberg suggests that News Corp. has made these donations due to their opposition to “proposed federal rule changes that would weaken the position of its Fox network in negotiations with cable companies,” stating that “Governors may have a stake in the issue.”

Continue reading ⇢

Mobile Tasks

Shawn Blanc:

It seems as if every day I bump into things while reading feeds, Twitter, the Web, or email — things I want to download, buy, research, and etcetera. But often I’m unable to take action at that moment. How then can I save it for later?

When on my Mac I use AppleScripts and built-in triggers to throw these items directly into Things. But on my iPhone and iPad there is no such solution. And since even the smallest pebble will make expensive Reeboks uncomfortable to run in, this sore spot of how to handle all the tasks I bump into when on my iPhone or iPad has got me thinking…

Continue reading ⇢

1,445 Words

That’s how many words it took Engadget’s Joshua Topolsky to explain the site’s new commenting system.

Engadget’s comments system needed an overhaul, but as before, I’ll simply ignore the whole thing. Comments just give me headaches. Life is simpler without them, don’t you think?

(You can always email me or ping ForkBombr on Twitter. I view that as better than comments, as it leads to actual conversations, not just yelling.)

Continue reading ⇢

The Apple Graphics Tablet

Ken Gagne:

There’s no doubt that Apple’s iPad is a revolutionary computing device that’s ushering in a new era of tablet computing.

But in 1979, an earlier generation of Apple users used a different kind of Apple tablet, back when the word meant something else entirely.

The Apple Graphics Tablet was designed by Summagraphics and sold by Apple Computer Inc. for the Apple II personal microcomputer. (Summagraphics also marketed the device for other platforms as the BitPad.) To be clear, this tablet was not a stand-alone computing device like the iPad. Instead, it was an input device for creating images on the Apple II’s screen, and it predated the Apple II’s mouse by six years.

Continue reading ⇢

Apps vs. the Web

Craig Hockenberry, for A List Apart:

With such great tools available and talented developers that know how to exploit them, the iPhone should be overflowing with web applications, right? Actually, the opposite is true: there are over 100,000 titles on iTunes and only a handful of popular applications have been created with web standards.

Apple has promoted both the App Store and web browser as ways for developers to get their creations into the hands of customers. They even gave the web a year-long head start before beginning to sell apps in the store. Clearly there’s more at play here: what attracts developers to iTunes instead of the web?

Continue reading ⇢

On the Journalism Degree

Laura Drake:

What a journalism undergraduate degree will get you are amazing memories, good connections with profs who know hundreds of working journalists, marketable skills in the form of writing and communications abilities. What it will not get you, and what no one ever promises it will get you, is a job in journalism.

To be clear, in my recollection, no one at j-skool ever lied about this, either. I’m pretty sure that from literally day one, lectures included messages from profs that, if you wanted to get a job in journalism on the other side, then you were going to have to hustle outside of class.

Continue reading ⇢

Same Song, Different Verse

John Rust:

All the hatred and frustration with AT&T will most likely happen again with Verizon several years down the road. The resistance against dumb carrier policies is a war that will go on indefinitely. Those participating in the resistance are often criticized as whiners and dreamers, as if their efforts are entirely fruitless. There’s a big difference between simply whining and complaining and working to raise awareness on a significant and troublesome policy change.

Continue reading ⇢