From the monthly archives:

October 2010

Google Nexus Two to “break carrier control”? Not likely

October 29, 2010

Image via CrunchBase Rumours abound that Google is working with Samsung to bring a phone that’s being touted as the “Nexus Two” to market. Even though Eric Schmidt made it pretty clear in an interview with The Telegraph that there would be no Nexus Two along the same lines as the Nexus One, it actually [...]

0 comments Read the full article →

Cult of Mac reviews the 11in MacBook Air

October 25, 2010

And boy, does Leander like it: “Apple’s new 11-inch MacBook Air is astonishing. It’s unbelievable. It’s the most exciting consumer PC that’s come out for years. It’s a netbook, but it’s not a PoS. It’s blazing fast. It’s unbelievably light and thin. It’s beautifully made. Really beautifully made. It has an older CPU and skimpy RAM, [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

Ubuntu changes its desktop from GNOME to Unity – Computerworld Blogs

October 25, 2010

Ubuntu changes its desktop from GNOME to Unity – Computerworld Blogs: Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu and the company behind it, Canonical, surprised the hundreds of Ubuntu programmers at the Ubuntu Developers Summit when he announced that in the next release of the popular Linux operating system, Ubuntu 11.04, Unity would become the default desktop [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

Why Google TV will fail, in one sentence

October 21, 2010

From Life With Google TV: My First Day Review & Impressions: “A menu appeared asking me to enlarge a box on the screen to match my actual screen size.” User experience FTW. UPDATE: For a more positive view of the set-up process of the same  box, see Richard Lawler’s post.

36 comments Read the full article →

Why Quora works

October 18, 2010

I’ve become somewhat obsessed with Quora of late, both on the working level of “getting answers to stuff” and the meta-level of understanding why it works. And I think I’ve worked out why it works so well. One simple trick: You’re only allowed to answer a question once. This forces users away from the kind [...]

0 comments Read the full article →

The blog, as we knew it, is dying

October 11, 2010

From an excellent New York piece on Nick Denton, Gawker Media, and journalism’s future: “At the time of his public posturing, however, Denton was conceiving a comprehensive redesign of his blog network that signalled his steady march toward mainstream respectability. Gawker recently published a series of Fall Previews of books, music, television, and movies, such [...]

4 comments Read the full article →

The value carriers bring to Android

October 9, 2010

Commenting on Andy Rubin’s comment that “the carriers have a lot of value to bring” to Android, John Gruber asks: “What software on Android phones have the carriers added that’s any good at all?” I can think of one example: Verizon dropping Google search for Bing. But I suspect that this wasn’t the kind of [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

Why “free” is the millstone round Google’s neck

October 8, 2010

The launch of Google TV is, I think, exposing a hidden challenge for the company. It’s best express in this comment on a GigaOm story by user ‘lz430′: “My jaw dropped when I saw the price. Indeed, it’s Google and I love Google and everything they’ve connected and done thus far. But as others have [...]

2 comments Read the full article →