I can’t seem to find a topic worthy of more than a paragraph, so here’s another post of curated links. Could be worse.
A P2P Wifi Tethering Market
What you say? It’s exactly what it sounds like, a community of users allowing others to tether off their connections in exchange for credit to use when they need connectivity. It’s called Airmobs. Great idea and awesome example of itch-scratching, but one that’s unlikely to last for long, given the carriers won’t be happy.
Pepper Spray That Takes Pictures
From Hack a Day, this modded pepper spray canister fires the flash, snaps a picture (presumably of an assailant), and sends it via Bluetooth to your phone so you can present it to authorities, and can call police upon receiving a picture. It also sprays pepper spray.
Palm’s webOS Kept Alive by Android devices
I love this story about how a devoted open source project, webOS Ports, is keeping the dream alive for the under-appreciated and before-its-time webOS. I actually knew a couple people with Palm Pres (Rich was one), and they both had lots of good things to say about webOS. You can find the influence of webOS in mobile design today, e.g. Google Search’s cards. It’s good to see the old dog still hunts, in a manner of speaking.
Apple Stories
Apple Core Rot, a pretty detailed overview of ways that OS X has degraded in quality. I’d add my trials and tribulations with wifi connectivity to the list of things-that-used-to-work-but-don’t-now. Unfortunately, OS X is still the best option for me on a desktop, but it’s not as clear-cut as it was back in 2007.
He said right before that very issue forced the second hard restart of the day and the rewriting of this post. Sigh.
Dan Lyons, he of Fake Steve Jobs fame, has a snarky (surprise) and possibly a bit too true answer to the question Why do Americans Hate Android and Love Apple? The comments and follow-up posts from the bloggers he names will be interesting.
A 23-Year Game of Tag
And finally, a funny story about a group of friends who have been playing tag for 23-years.
What? Nothing about BlackBerry 10 (or are you waiting for the Superbowl ads: http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/25/technology/mobile/rim-blackberry-super-bowl/index.html)? What do you think? I’m still tempted… I wonder will we look back on BlackBerry as we do Palm O/S. I suspect there is an Android lifeline for BB story to be told at some point maybe… link collection of links. Again.
Mostly skimmed the coverage, did notice that 40% of the apps are Android though, or some such. Noel got a Playbook at jQuery Conf last year, and I saw they would get BB10, so maybe he can do a review.
I think most analysts are missing the real power of BB (and attractiveness to would be partners) – i’s server infrastructure. Security (as you know) is a massive issue in our enterprise world, as is the blurring of work and personal personas. Presenting…
“BlackBerry 10 server software will allow corporate and government users to divide employees’ BlackBerry 10 phones into separate work and personal spheres and give I.T. managers complete control over the work spheres.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/technology/blackberry-maker-unveils-its-new-line.html?_r=1&utm_source=buffer&buffer_share=134ca&
Haven’t had a a whole lot of time to read through the analystfest, but on first inspection it would be the Q10 and not the Z10 I go for. It’s the keyboard… I’m pretty fast with it and love it. And I just don’t see the Z10 going up against iPhone 5 on its own merits.
Read a headline on TC or somewhere, two horse, two pony race, or some such. Does BB have enough time to give the new stuff a fighting chance?
I think BB will be an attractive purchase for someone (cough). #saynomore
Interested to hear that person’s review 🙂