Samsung launches bada open mobile OS

post from Macnn | The Macintosh News Network on 09 November 2009 11:25:00 PM. © Macnn | The Macintosh News Network

Samsung today entered into the mobile OS arena with bada. The software, whose name is based on the ...

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=b659f2ad7f982b6606f7d003919384b5

Digg this

Cocktail 4.6 adds Snow Leopard support, interface
tweaks

post from Macnn | The Macintosh News Network on 09 November 2009 11:15:00 PM. © Macnn | The Macintosh News Network

Maintain has launched a new update to its maintenance utility, releasing Cocktail 4.6. The software ...

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=c810d6fee2ae9b1131bb4a545ea09e25

Digg this

The Yankees

post from Daring Fireball on 09 November 2009 10:57:00 PM. © Daring Fireball

My friend and fellow Yankees fan Khoi Vinh has written an interesting piece regarding the Yankees and their league-leading payroll:

For almost a decade, the Yankees have consistently maintained the highest payroll in Major League Baseball while failing to bring home a World Series title, and during that time the grousing took the form of ridicule. What Yankees fans heard then was: ?See? You Yankees can?t buy championships, even with all of your money.? What we hear today is: ?See? You Yankees just buy championships with all of your money.?

This is not a coherent line of argument, but then again it would be naïve to look for any motivation here other than envy, because the logic at work is so suspect. It?s pretty safe to say that a good number of those who hate the Yankees because of their payroll are unabashed capitalists, too; they?d be very unlikely to begrudge the fact that the highest valued, best performing organization in any given market also led that market. That?s not just capitalism, it?s the way capitalism is practiced in America.

This “the Yankees spend too much on payroll” argument reminds me of my quip two years ago about Mark Cuban “loving” his MacBook but not wanting to be mistaken for an “Apple fanboy”. I wrote:

There?s a whole class of recent switchers who define ?Apple fanboy? as ?anyone who?s been an enthusiastic Mac user since before I switched to the Mac?.

Same with baseball. A team that “spends unfairly on payroll” is any team that spends more than your favorite team.

This line of criticism has always struck me as futile and misguided. What exactly should the Yankees do with the profits the team generates, if not spend it on ballplayer salaries? Keep it in the Steinbrenner family pockets? Yankees fans don’t feel guilty about the Yankees payroll. It’s not like the team is run at a loss. It’s a business, and their business is winning baseball games. Winning leads to profits from ticket sales, TV, and merchandise; profits are used to sign all-star-caliber talent; and the talent leads to winning.

Isn’t that the formula every team tries to follow? Actually, no. Many baseball team owners spend far less of their teams’ revenue on player salaries than teams like the Yankees. Khoi writes:

Anecdotally at least, I knew that their single-minded dedication to winning championships year after year no matter the cost stands in contrast to the perpetual inefficiencies I?ve heard about at other clubs, where owners routinely pocket revenues from the so-called ?luxury tax? that they receive from free-spending teams like the Yankees, rather than re-investing the money in talent.

So I dug around a bit online and compiled some figures, dumped them into Excel and found that, relative to the value of their franchise, the Yankees actually invest a fairly high percentage of their revenues directly in their payroll. Of the US$375 million in revenue that the club generated in 2008, in 2009 they dedicated US$201 million of it to talent, making for a 54% investment rate. That ranks them fourth amongst all major league teams.

He includes a table showing the numbers for all 30 MLB teams. The numbers range from the Detroit Tigers, who spent 62 percent of their revenue on payroll, to the San Diego Padres, who spent a pathetic 25 percent.

Keep in mind, too, that when George Steinbrenner bought the Yankees from CBS in 1973 (for just $10 million!), the Yankees were a last-place team, and had been a losing team for nearly a decade. There was and never has been anything automatic about the Yankees’ success. It has been earned, and as the 1980s showed, the path was not smooth.

The goal is not merely to be good, but to be the best, to win the World Series, every year, with no excuses when they fall short. To try to be great, not hope to get lucky. Every team owner says they want to win. What I love about the Yankees and respect about the Steinbrenners is that they mean it, and act accordingly.

Read The Full Article:
http://daringfireball.net/2009/11/the_yankees

Digg this

Servoy 5.0 offers hybrid SaaS services from
single codebase

post from Macnn | The Macintosh News Network on 09 November 2009 10:50:00 PM. © Macnn | The Macintosh News Network

Servoy has launched an update to its hybrid SaaS software, Servoy. Version 5.0 can run on dedicated ...

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=b7c4b4a1ff0824d80a2515701bc360ff

Digg this

Final Mac OS X 10.6.2 update breaks Atom support

post from Macnn | The Macintosh News Network on 09 November 2009 10:30:00 PM. © Macnn | The Macintosh News Network

Apple's final Mac OS X 10.6.2 update breaks support for Intel's Atom CPUs, according to an OSNews re...

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=db7392c3d4a83b4eb1d3049675b94460

Digg this

Final Mac OS X 10.6.2 update breaks Atom Support

post from Macnn | The Macintosh News Network on 09 November 2009 10:30:00 PM. © Macnn | The Macintosh News Network

Apple's final Mac OS X 10.6.2 update breaks support for Intel's Atom CPUs, according to an OSNews re...

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=db7392c3d4a83b4eb1d3049675b94460

Digg this

Lots of Excuses

post from Daring Fireball on 09 November 2009 09:44:00 PM. © Daring Fireball

The first comment on Robert Scoble’s Droid piece I linked to earlier today is from Thomas Marban, one of the developers of Twidroid, which is widely (maybe even universally) hailed as the leading Twitter client for Android. Marban writes:

one of the main reasons why UIs are unequally inferior are not only the way you build apps (open vs. closed hw/sw system) and the SDK itself but also marginal to non-existing UI standards, no ready-made drag & drop UI items, variations in carrier- & device firmware, hard- & software input, screen sizes, international customizations, modded phones, rooted phones and last but not least completely different expectations among users and the linux’ish target group itself. in a nutshell: beautiful mess. obviously, all these reasons eat up a huge pile of time that one could better spend with improving UX and polishing the interface. those who started early with android development have learned and are still learning it the hard way, just like they did with win 3.1 back in the days.

That doesn’t sound like someone who plans to ever ship something of the caliber of Tweetie, Birdfeed, or Twitterrific. From what I’ve seen of Twidroid, it’s not even as good as Craig Hockenberry’s original version of Twitterrific for iPhone, which was written as a jailbreak app before the iPhone officially supported third-party software. If Android hardware diversity is already a problem for third-party developers, it’s only going to get worse.

?

Read The Full Article:
http://scobleizer.com/2009/11/08/droid-palm-pre-iphone-product-comparison/#commen
t-22255943

Digg this

Client Folder Maker 3.5 adds Snow Leopard support

Geeksuit has launched a major update to its folder creation and management software, releasing Clien...

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=ae17bd51569bb374ea42039229976300

Digg this

Holdem Poker Odds Calculator released for iPhone
and iPod Touch

BroadbentApps has released Holdem Poker Odds Calculator 1.0, their odds calculator for iPhone and iPod Touch. The Holdem Poker Odds Calculator allows for quick calculations of Poker Odds right at the Poker Table. The interface allows for quick input of cards and players, making it ideal even when playing Online-Poker. The App allows for matchups between 2 and 10 players and accepts input for all players known cards.

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-8533.htm

Digg this

NAVIGON launches Traffic Live service for
MobileNavigator

NAVIGON has announced that its Traffic Live service is now available for users of the MobileNavigato...

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.macnn.com/click.phdo?i=bf68799904ea3d9b1767cd64ce6fc2ba