February 2012
42 posts
Samsung Galaxy S III 1080p display Rumor →
I doubt it. At best it would be “1080p” PenTile display like the “720p” display on the Galaxy Nexus. Still it would quite an achievement.
Nokia Understands Adding Value →
Unlike Android manufacturers.
Instead of silly surface UI customizations and crapware, Nokia is trying to add apps that actually are useful.
Not to mention hardware differentiation: the Lumia 800 looks less like an iPhone than most top android phones. They didn’t make it out of cheap plastic. And they’re not 5” gigantophones or bananaphones.
Nokia Lumia 610 Preview →
The “shiny bits” look ugly but otherwise it seems to be a good price for a very decent smartphone. Specially if you consider it will sell for half of what an iPhone 3GS sells around these parts (promos excluded).
The specs:
* Windows Phone OS
* 3.7” WVGA screen
* 5MP camera
* 8GB storage
* 256MB RAM
* 189 Euro price tag (probably before taxes)
Designing a RESTful Web API →
I decided to write this article to serve as my personal ”quick start guide” for designing RESTful Web APIs. As such, this document is concerned with the how rather than the why.
Hacker News Link
Reddit Link
How to Remove Your Google Search History Before... →
Time runs out on March 1st if you haven’t done it yet.
Please Steal These webOS Features →
The quick access to settings would be really useful and could easily go at the top of the notifications panel - some androids have this feature.
The system wide accounts thing also looks useful. Again, something that android sort of has (though it seems to focus on sync rather than generic account info).
The rest… meh.
Samsung Galaxy S II and Vlingo's Voice Talk: a... →
It appears that the only way to disable voice talk is by rooting the £400+ phone. That almost certainly invalidates your warranty - and indicates that somewhere along the line Samsung and Vlingo forgot about the regular customer.
They didn’t “forget”, they just don’t care.
Blog is now the main page
Moved the blog from blog.luisrei.com to [www.]luisrei.com - there were once again issues with the RSS feed. Sorry for the spam.
Face Meet Palm: Part II
parislemon:
Today:
Enlightened savior of journalism: Day two of Scoblegate — the deep dive into Robert Scoble’s desire to start a venture fund. Related: day two of eating shit and looking like a total jackass.
Face Meet Palm: Tech Journalism Edition →
parislemon:
Watch front and center as the last great bastion of journalistic integrity dives face first into a huge pile of shit.
Then opens his mouth.
And Eats. It. All.
This is funny. The douchebag who became famous for pretending to be Steve Jobs on twitter and who has since been trying journalism but is really terrible at it “reported” Robert Scoble was starting a fund....
Googlighting →
What happens when the world’s largest advertising business tries to sell productivity software on the side? Beware the Googlighting Stranger
A must see!
ACTA sent to European Court of Justice →
EU trade commissioner Karel De Gucht said that bringing ACTA to the court will “allow for Europe’s top court to independently clarify the legality of this agreement.” De Gucht also believes that this move will “cut through the fog of uncertainty” and let the debate focus on the facts of the agreement, as opposed to “the misinformation or rumour that has...
Microsoft complains Google & Motorola are abusing... →
Microsoft announced this morning that it’s filed a formal competition complaint against Motorola and Google with the European Commission, arguing that Motorola is abusing its patents committed to Wi-Fi and H.264 video by demanding excessive royalties and trying to block sales of products that include the standards. The move follows a similar complaint filed by Apple with the EU last week...
The Kindle Fire as a Gateway Tablet →
According to a study conducted by TechBargains.com, more than half of Amazon Kindle Fire owners plan on springing for an iPad 3 — a significant statistic considering Amazon’s sold roughly 5 million Fires to date.
The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia →
I removed the line about there being “no evidence” and provided a full explanation in Wikipedia’s behind-the-scenes editing log. Within minutes my changes were reversed. The explanation: “You must provide reliable sources for your assertions to make changes along these lines to the article.” That was curious, as I had cited the documents that proved my point,...
“Whenever a blogger cries a cash register rings.”
– Horace Dediu, The Critical Path, Episode 25
Repeat Timer Pro - Concept, Design, Marketing... →
A behind-the-scenes look at the ideas and processes that went into the utility app - from concept and design to the marketing strategy and its results.
Asymco: The story of Fernforest and Petro Dale →
This story is an entertaining and informative analogy of the development of the movie industry. If you listen to the Critical Path, there’s nothing new here but it’s still entertaining.
“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is...”
– Christopher Priest, The Prestige
Mac OS X Mountain Lion vs. Real Mountain Lion →
This morning, Apple gave the world a sneak peek at Mac OS X Mountain Lion. It boasts some impressive new features, integrating some of iOS 5’s most popular utilities. But instead of merely telling you what they are, we decided to also compare Apple’s Mountain Lion to … a REAL Mountain Lion! (Sure, this kind of gag is usually called “low hanging fruit” because...
UI of Shame: Spark KDE Tablet →
KDE, infamous for being one of the worst DE/UIs in the history of Computing, powering a tablet. Look at it:
Small buttons (e.g. X for close) that can’t possible work well in a touch UI
KDE trademarked clutter everywhere (favorite example: new, save, exit fullscreen buttons)
Ocasional imitation of Apple stuff (e.g. the date picker)
And of course, not a single distinctive app is shown....
How Target Knew a High School Girl Was Pregnant... →
As Pole’s computers crawled through the data, he was able to identify about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a “pregnancy prediction” score. More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy.
Apple OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion preview →
Looks awesome.
Samsung's super-sized Galaxy Note changed my life →
(via Shawn Blanc)
BlackBerry 10 OS images →
Looks like RIM is about to join the also-ran group in the smartphone wars after having failed to sell their tablet. The tech life lesson RIM is about to learn:
Either jump ahead or get left behind.
Goodbye RIM.
Android Login V1
Saw this on my google account access list. Googled and came across this thread on Google+.
Costin Manolache (Android Team @ Google) explains it in the comments:
The ‘full account access v1’ entry is a side effect of how Oauth2 is implemented pre-ICS, the server generates a temporary ‘all access’ token and than down-scopes it. It is a bug that the entry is shown in...
Sherlock (TV series) →
Best new TV show of the past few years.
Currently sits at a total of 2 seasons, 6 episodes.
Watch it!
Which is less expensive: Amazon or self-hosted? →
Additional info/corrections here.
My Recent RSS Feed Issues
Sorry to everyone who subscribes to the RSS feed and saw hundreds of old posts show up over the past few days. And thanks to the people who warned me about it.
I was importing my old wordpress posts into tumblr.
Should’ve done it before actually moving to tumblr (back in July).
Should’ve, could’ve, didn’t. My bad.
Nailing Horseshoes To The Tires of Your Car →
Or installing Windows on your Macbook Air.
Joanna Stern reviews it.
My advice: use OSX. If you really need something that only runs on Windows, just use VMWare or VirtualBox. That’s what I did when I developed for the Samsung Bada (the SDK is Windows only).
Office 15 Metro design look and feel →
Microsoft finally takes a step in the right direction in terms of UI design in Windows.
God, “Ribbon Office” was ridiculous even among other examples “clutterware”. Let’s hope the Metro UI team can get to Explorer some time soon.
Stealing Your Address Book →
I think that people asking for this are people without experience with Android or Windows 7. When everything asks for permission, it’s as good as if nothing asks permission - it becomes just an annoying click that you have to do.
There are just too many apps that have a valid reason for requesting your address book. And yes, Path’s reason is perfectly valid. The line they crossed...
“Time to coin “McCracken’s Law”: If you resort to...”
– Twitter / @jeffcarlson: Time to coin “McCracken’s …
The Open Web Needs You? Not exactly
Someone is panicking over Webkits dominance and comparing it to IE6 dominance back in pre-historic times. This is a silly comparison since unlike IE, Webkit is open source and isn’t controlled by a single vendor though it’s de facto controlled by two competitors/rivals: Apple & Google.
What the “Open Web” needs is an effective standards body. The W3C isn’t it,...
Here's the Number That Matters in Facebook's IPO... →
Point to all this being, when Facebook was merely trying to grow its user base, the incentives between Facebook and you, as a user, were pretty tightly coupled. Now, particularly in the United States, user growth is slowing and getting more money for each user is necessary. My guess is that Facebook’s need to monetize at higher levels and users’ desires will come into conflict more...
Banana Republic →
I still find the amount of anti-semitism in today’s world shocking. This is a good read.
Peer Review: We Are Sorry to Inform You →
Reviewer rejections for papers that are now considered fundamental in CS from people such as Turing, Dijkstra, Shannon, Codd, etc
Funny.
(Via @sixhat via @suneman)
