RIM Cuts BlackBerry PlayBook Price by as Much as
$400

post from Daring Fireball on 03 January 2012 09:03:23 PM. © Daring Fireball

Zach Epstein, BGR:

Research In Motion?s debut tablet has been something of a disappointment for the Waterloo, Ontario-based vendor.

Well, I suppose Napoleon’s invasion of Russia was “something of a disappointment” too.

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Read The Full Article:
http://bgr.com/2012/01/03/new-sale-cuts-blackberry-playbook-price-by-as-much-as-4
00/

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Apples Upcoming January Event

post from Daring Fireball on 03 January 2012 07:02:56 PM. © Daring Fireball

Clayton Morris:

This event will focus on iTunes University and Apple in education.[?] Steve Jobs was intimately involved with this project beforehis passing. He gave a hat tip to the textbook side of thisproject in the Isaacson biography.

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Read The Full Article:
http://claytonmorris.com/blog/2012/1/3/apples-january-event.html

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Larry Downes on Best Buy

post from Daring Fireball on 03 January 2012 05:03:09 PM. © Daring Fireball

Larry Downes, in a piece for Forbes that’s shamelessly split across five “pages”:

But the numbers only scratch the surface. To discover the realreasons behind the company?s decline, just take this simpletest. Walk into one of the company?s retail locations or shoponline. And try, really try, not to lose your temper.

It really is that simple. I find shopping at Best Buy to be insulting and annoying.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2012/01/02/why-best-buy-is-going-out-of-b
usiness-gradually/

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Proposed Law Prohibits TSA Employees From
Dressing Like Cops

post from Daring Fireball on 03 January 2012 04:03:51 PM. © Daring Fireball

Cory Doctorow:

The STRIP Act, proposed in the US House of Reps, would require TSAemployees to stop dressing like police officers, because theyaren’t cops, and when they give orders to travellers, travellersassume that these are the orders of real law enforcement officers,rather than minor bureaucrats.

Let’s change their title from “officer” back to “screener”, too. (Via Ben Brooks.)

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Read The Full Article:
http://boingboing.net/2011/12/31/proposed-law-prohibits-tsa-emp.html

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Liz Taylor Knows It, the President Knows It, the
Bum Knows It, and You Know It.

post from Daring Fireball on 03 January 2012 03:03:23 PM. © Daring Fireball

The whole idea of Vertu — a company (well, a Nokia subsidiary) that sells $6,000 cell phones that are nowhere near state-of-the-art in any regard other than in the use of leather, going into a market against a company like Apple that sells what’s widely held to be the best cell phone in the world starting at just $199 — reminds me of Andy Warhol’s great quote about Coke:

What?s great about this country is that America started thetradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the samethings as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola,and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinksCoke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Cokeand no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one thebum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and allthe Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it,the bum knows it, and you know it.

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Read The Full Article:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Andy_Warhol

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Clopen Sounds Like Something You Treat With
Antibiotics

post from Daring Fireball on 03 January 2012 03:03:23 PM. © Daring Fireball

Speaking of Danny Sullivan, he wrote a good piece on Android’s “just buy a new device” software updates, calling it more “clopen” than open:

A big reason behind this mess is that Google doesn?t actuallysell the Android operating system to consumers. If it did, itwould probably care more about ensuring customers (becausethat?s what they would be) were covered from start to finish.
The Android 4 page from Google touts all the advantages thatthe new operating system offers. The page is written forconsumers. But nothing on it explains how consumers can actuallyget the operating system.

It isn’t just that Google doesn’t sell the Android operating system toconsumers. It is that the consumer is Google’s product. Android is adelivery system to serve the consumer to Google’s target market — theadvertisers. So Google’s customer for Android is not the consumer (with the arguable exception of the Nexus phones), but rather the carriers.

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Read The Full Article:
http://marketingland.com/for-consumers-android-is-more-clopen-than-open-2388

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Speaking of Vertu

post from Daring Fireball on 03 January 2012 03:03:23 PM. © Daring Fireball

Rob Beschizza, writing for BoingBoing on Vertu’s $200 USB cable. Not a bad price when you’ve already spent $6,000 on your Symbian phone.

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Read The Full Article:
http://boingboing.net/2012/01/02/behold-vertus-200-usb-cabl.html

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Nobody Understands Debt

Paul Krugman:

But Washington isn?t just confused about the short run; it?salso confused about the long run. For while debt can be a problem,the way our politicians and pundits think about debt is all wrong,and exaggerates the problem?s size.
Deficit-worriers portray a future in which we?re impoverished bythe need to pay back money we?ve been borrowing. They seeAmerica as being like a family that took out too large a mortgage,and will have a hard time making the monthly payments.
This is, however, a really bad analogy in at least two ways.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/opinion/krugman-nobody-understands-debt.html?pa
gewanted=all

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Glenn Fleishman on Roboto

Good article — and, in a self-referential twist, it’s typeset using Roboto itself — but to me, Roboto is just the new Arial.

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Read The Full Article:
http://boingboing.net/2012/01/02/roboto.html

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Will Wright on TV Complexity

Game designer Will Wright, in an interview with Reuters:

It’s kind of remarkable. I’ve set up a couple of PCs and a few TVsover the last couple of years. Buying a new television and settingit up is far more complicated now than buying a computer andsetting it up.

Sounds like an opportunity.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/01/02/technology/tech-us-videogame-willwright
.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

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