Sound bites have been an increasing menace within politics and public life in general for a long time now. I’d always assumed that the news editor would edit down a short interview to an even shorter sound bite to give a bit of talking-head-action to brighten an otherwise fact-heavy story.
It’s always revealing to see behind the curtain. I’ve watched a couple of videos this morning which, when seen together, are certainly that.
HP’s TouchPad seems to be the first real iPad competitor. The webOS-based tablet is certainly the only device I’ve seen to far to tempt me away. It’s got some really clever features, and the multi-tasking UI is streets ahead of the one on iOS. I wondered whether HP’s acquisition of Palm would work out, and I’m very pleased to see it seems to be going well so far. I’d love to try out a TouchPad for myself.
Facebook’s face recognition strategy may be just the ticket
Facebook has started rolling out face-recognition technology into its services. As you are notified that you may be in a picture rather than automatically tagged, it seems they’ve launched it in a reasonable way. As seems to happen for any change to Facebook, people are up in arms about it1. Tim O’Reilly makes a great point:
When it comes to privacy, putting our head in the sand about what’s already possible with data mining and machine learning (and what will become even more possible with every passing year) is short-sighted. Unless we’re prepared to ban face recognition technology outright, having it available in consumer-facing services is a good way to get society to face up to the way we live now. Then the real work begins, to ask what new social norms we need to establish for the world as it is, rather than as it used to be.
Apple Reverses Course On In-App Subscriptions
Big news for newspaper, magazine and other publishers. I’m sure there’s been some interesting discussions between Apple and the big publishers on this.
Apple has quietly changed its guidelines on the pricing of In-App Subscriptions on the App Store. There are no longer any requirements that a subscription be the “same price or less than it is offered outside the app”. There are no longer any guidelines about price at all. Apple also removed the requirement that external subscriptions must be also offered as an in-app purchase.
Going through the whole list, surprisingly few really. But oh so bad.
Full-screen Dashboard: Dashboard now behaves like a full-screen app, always available to the left of your desktop, so all your widgets are just a swipe away.
Big, ugly widgets—one of my least favourite features of any operating system—move out of their hotkey ghetto. I hope you can turn this off, or it’ll be even more annoying than the iPhone’s omnipresent Spotlight screen.