“Apple just had its best quarter ever. The iPhone, released just four years ago, is now their most important product. The iPad, released just last year, is a bigger business than the Mac. Earlier this month, Apple pushed past Exxon as the most valuable company in the world. This is Sandy Koufax retiring. This is Barry Sanders retiring. This is John Elway hanging it up after winning two Super Bowls in a row. This is Rocky Marciano walking away undefeated.” — MG Siegler
“I look at Guy Fieri and I just think, ‘Jesus, I’m glad that’s not me.’” — Anthony Bourdain
“The worst, most dangerous person to America is clearly Paula Deen. She revels in unholy connections with evil corporations and she’s proud of the fact that her food is fucking bad for you. If I were on at seven at night and loved by millions of people at every age, I would think twice before telling an already obese nation that it’s OK to eat food that is killing us. Plus, her food sucks.” — Anthony Bourdain
OK, OK. I’ll pay the ten bucks, but there’s no way I’m getting it done in the van.
These rankings are based on traffic data gathered during the week ending July 16, 2011.
Staggering. I had no idea that Facebook was still such a juggernaut.
Via Courtenay Bird.
(via courtenaybird)
With multiple APK support, you can now upload multiple versions of an APK for a single product listing, with each one addressing a different subset of your customers. These APKs are complete, independent APKs that share the same package name, but contain code and resources to target different Android platform versions, screen sizes, or GL texture-compression formats. When users download or purchase your app, Android Market chooses the right APK to deliver based on the characteristics of the device.
So, Google’s solution to rampant fragmentation in device features and OS molestation is to make the developer ship multiple versions of the same app on a per device basis? Sounds like an open-faced shit sandwich to me.
“Positive and negative. You’re a bit, aren’t you?”
I don’t reblog often, but I couldn’t help myself. The whole blog is wonderful and this particular GIF is especially great.
As more and more of our devices are able to tweet and offer personalization, we need some sort of way to do multi-user profiles. Sounds straightforward enough but the challenge will be making it beautiful, fast and simple.
This is one of the more exciting areas where I believe we’ll see major innovation in the next 3 to 5 years. But it won’t hinge on entering a username and password when we pick up a communal device (yuck!) Manually switching profiles into sandboxes is a terrible user experience. This is where near-field communication (NFC) can really change things, and where we need buy-in on standards and features from Apple, Google and Microsoft.
Imagine that whenever you approached a laptop, PC, iPad, etc. you were automatically recognized and authenticated because the iPhone in your pocket created a secure, ad-hoc connection to the device you want to interact with. The Facetime camera does a quick check to make sure it’s really you. Once you’re authenticated, your documents, music, movies and web profiles are linked to the filesystem asynchronously in the background. Your Dock shifts into place. The wallpaper seamlessly crossfades. When you get up and walk away the system senses that you’re no longer in proiximity and reverts back into guest mode. If you aren’t recognized then the device simply lives in guest mode. No media, settings or recommendations are loaded and everything has to be done the hard way. That’s the kind of seamless experience that can be achieved with smart technology like NFC.
But outside of the basics of having your settings, media and web-based accounts available to you when you switch, there’s a huge issue with recommendations right now. There’s dozens of start-ups trying to build better recommendations for you but they’re having a hell of a time because of dirty data. Let me give you a few examples. You pick up your family laptop and buy a lens for your camera on Amazon. A few days later your wife buys The Hunger Games on her Kindle (which was your Kindle before she figured out how great it was.) But you’re both using the same Amazon account. Now your recommendations are full of Twilight books and camera straps. I’m sure some of you are thinking, “well, why are you using the same Amazon account?”, but I’m sure most of you are thinking, “that happens to me all the time.” Or maybe you’re scrobbling your library to Last.fm to get better music recommendations but one of your friends comes over to your house that’s going through a reggaeton phase. Now, your recommendations are shot. They’re shot because profile switching is a barrier that someone has to actively interact with. And while there may be no value in it to them there may be a lot of value in it for you.
Switching should be seamless and passive. And now that we’re all walking around with truly personal, powerful, sophisticated devices, it really could be. So the answer to the question is an emphatic yes, we definitely want multi-user profiles on our devices. But this time, we want them to be simple, smart and actually work.
Which circle will you end up in?
By Taylor LeCroy. Via Jeff Kelley.
We’ve been working hard to make Carousel even better and we’re excited to bring you our first big update!
Search, pinning, gestures, likes and more. It’s like xmas in June for Instagram and Mac fans.
Bungie has posted on their official blog an interview with iOS developer Daniel Blezek who has been working on porting Marathon to the iPad. Blezek has been working on this project for some time but there were initially questions about the legal issue related to distributing Marathon’s original level packs.
Based on notes from the interview, however, it seems that this is now a Bungie-sanctioned port.
Myth or GTFO.
Rejoice beer lovers!
The Fort Collins, Colorodo cult classic beer (only whispered about for decades on the East Coast) Fat Tire is scheduled to come to Richmond and be on shelves in late August!!!Via RVANews.
Dangerous news.
A lot of people were surprised — the Sofa guys do great work but don’t seem to do the sort of things Facebook would be interested in. I don’t think this is the last such design talent acquisition they’re going to make. Facebook is building a serious, world-class design group.
Maybe this is just a design talent acquisition, or perhaps Sofa was doing exactly what Facebook is interested in. Take a look. This is the current state of the Mac App Store top free social networking page:
5 out of the top 10 apps are Facebook-based apps. And in the top spot? A 3rd-party Facebook app (ahead of the official Twitter app, I might add.)
I don’t believe that Facebook is going to take a crew of designers and developers that create beautifully crafted apps for Mac and shoehorn them into their existing web design groups. Those two worlds are very different. I believe that someone at Facebook has recognized that:
All Facebook needed was a talented, seasoned, willing team of world-class Mac developers to make sanctioned Facebook Mac apps. It looks like they got what they needed.
It’s been an exciting first month for Carousel but we were genuinely surprised when we launched the Mac App Store last night and saw this:
And just in time for WWDC!
Thanks to everyone who purchased a license through the Mac App Store and the Mobelux Store. It allows us to continue developing apps like Carousel. We can’t wait to show you what we have in store for 1.1!
So proud of Carousel and the whole Mobelux team. On a somewhat related note, Jamie will be our official WWDC representative this year so if you see him walking around Moscone or at one of the many parties, give him a congratulatory beer. Or arm-punch. Or both.
Taken with Instagram at Rhodeside Grill.
