The AppsLab

Lots of data flying around lately about smartphone usage (an obsession), texting (3,000 a month for teenagers!), increasing desire for mobility. All of which points to our collective obsession to do more, and more of it, while simultaneously doing more of more. Admit it, you’re in that boat too, with me and pretty everyone you… Read More

This one smells like a hoax. I suppose if you followed a cloud-only scheme for important stuff (like many do), it wouldn’t really matter. Laptop Thief Mails Victim His Data On a USB Stick What do you think? Find the comments.

You know you love xkcd. Today’s comic is up there with “sudo make me a sandwich“. Don’t forget to hover. Shibboleet is destined to become the bane of tech support call centers everywhere. I’m betting some will work it into their scripts. If at any point during the call, the customer says “shibboleet” immediately place… Read More

I’m not really the best person to ask about Facebook anymore. Although I keep up with announcements and sometimes mess with new features, I just can’t use it anymore. I know, it’s funny right, considering how many posts I wrote about Facebook here over the years, but there are a couple reasons why I don’t… Read More

As predicted by many and reported by me, Facebook Credits is inching closer to becoming a global currency. Facebook Taps PlaySpan’s UltimatePay To Offer 20 More Ways To Pay For Credits Noteworthy: While Users can already pay for Credits via PayPal, Facebook’s pre-paid cards, and through most credit cards; Facebook users will now be able… Read More

This is relieving after the tempest in a teapot created (I helped) last week. Ars has a detailed writeup about what is restoring modded G2. Apparently, it’s just a NAND lock, similar to ones found in other devices like the HTC EVO. I guess this is what Steve Kondik, a.k.a. @Cyanogen, meant when he counseled… Read More

As I mentioned last week, Anthony (@anthonyslai) deserves some applause and kudos. Aside from being a rockstar on our team, he’s also a rockstar in his free time, pursuing a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford. Once attained, that will be his second master’s degree. So, yeah, he’s smart and works hard. Last week,… Read More

I read a post over on TechCrunch last week about bloatware, ostensibly about carrier software bundled with base Android. An interesting example provided to illustrate the overall point was the lack of a “Set image as wallpaper” option in Chrome and its open source sibling Chromium, and the outcry for that feature, which has its roots in… Read More

A great data visualization of the flow of data and money that occurs when you swipe a credit card courtesy of FeeFighters. Credit card processing is a dark arts, and this infographic helps simply the process.

This is funny and frightening read. A radical pessimists guide to the next 10 years – The Globe and Mail Douglas Coupland is the man who brought us Generation X, Life after God, Microserfs, and many other equally pessimistic and eerily accurate, erm, novels. Noteworthy to me: 14) Something smarter than us is going to… Read More

Simon Guest (@simonguest) has a great post on the differences between UI and UX, illustrated through real world design. User Interface (UI) vs. User Experience (UX) – The only person at Microsoft allowed to login as \’guest\’ Years ago, I noticed that the vernacular nomenclature around product development had shifted from UI to UX, but… Read More

A couple months ago, I mused about using services like foursquare (@foursquare) and GetGlue (@getglue) to document your life, one checkin at a time. Well, meet two more services that you could include in that list, and these two have higher aspirations for you, RunKeeper (@runkeeper) and Health Month (@healthmonth). While we’re here, I should… Read More

Twitter’s transparency offers an interesting, mostly speculative, window into the minds of celebrities. Speculative, because you can’t always confirm who is tweeting, even in the case of verified accounts. Kanye West (@KanyeWest) being one noteworthy exception; you just can’t fake his tweets. The same transparency (and speculation) applies to the official Twitter accounts of countries,… Read More

Very interesting slide deck from Paul Adams (@padday) from Google. The Real Life Social Network v2 (h/t Paul) Facebook relaunched their groups feature yesterday, and I’ve been ruminating on groups as a feature. I might dump some thoughts on that later. Anyway, Paul (Adams, not Pedrazzi) includes some very interesting insights into social behavior, both… Read More

This is not good. Newest Google Android Cell Phone Contains Unexpected ‘Feature’ — A Malicious Root Kit. | NewAmerica.net (h/t MobileCrunch) The short summary version: T-Mobile has added a rootkit to their soon-to-be released G2 Android phone that reportedly resets the phone to its original software after rooting. It’s unclear if the rootkit undoes both… Read More

Louis Gray (@louisgray) mentions an interesting point about the new Apple TV, i.e. it increases the fragmentation between Apple devices and not just the inherent differences between Apple’s two OS families, iOS and OS X. louisgray.com: New Apple TV Extends Fragmentation, Cupertino Style I’m a bit shocked actually. Louis speaks from experience with several devices,… Read More

I’ve always thought time capsules, the supposedly (see below link) sealed canisters of sundries that are meant to provoke revery and wonderment for future generations, not the questionable Apple backup devices, are a strange exercise. I suppose for kids it’s a fun time, thinking about the future and the doe-eyed children who inhabit it and whatnot. Although… Read More

This is pretty neat. Social Web Blog: Google URL Shortener Gets a Website When Google announced its link shortening service in December, it was only available for Google Toolbar and Feedburner users. If you follow us on Twitter (@theappslab), you’ll know we’ve been using the Feedburner implementation of goo.gl since then. Now goo.gl is available to… Read More

Found this humorous and very true data visualization of volume and battery indicators via Geekosystem and Gizmodo.

Reliving my Cyanaogen adventure from last week, I’m reminded of why I love software and why I enjoy designing and building it. Whenever I upgrade software, it feels a little like Christmas. Yeah, sometimes everything goes sideways, but even so, a software upgrade is like a present for me. Like a present, I get that… Read More