What Ever Happened to Apple Making FaceTime an
Open Industry Standard

post from Daring Fireball on 11 May 2011 11:04:29 PM. © Daring Fireball

Chris Adamson:

Make no doubt about it, Apple very clearly said they were going todo this. Steve Jobs himself said so at WWDC 2010, around 1:36:45on the video:

Now FaceTime is based on a lot of open standards: H.264 video, AACaudio, and a bunch of alphabet soup acronyms. And we?re going totake it all away. We?re going to the standards bodies, startingtomorrow, and we?re going to make FaceTime an open industrystandard.
?Starting tomorrow?? Nearly a year later, there?s noindication this process has started. […]

For what it’s worth, the story I’ve heard is that the first the FaceTime team at Apple heard about making it an open standard was during the WWDC keynote. So when Jobs said “starting tomorrow”, he meant it literally.

?

Read The Full Article:
http://www.subfurther.com/blog/2011/05/10/long-past-time-to-open-facetime/

Digg this

Adam Lashinsky on How Apple Works

post from Daring Fireball on 11 May 2011 11:04:29 PM. © Daring Fireball

Highly-promoted feature for Fortune by Adam Lashinsky. Includes some intriguing information about “Apple University”, which started when Apple hired famed Yale business professor Joel Podolny back in 2008.

The text of the article is not available on the website; you can either pay $4.99 to buy the current issue of Fortune in their iPad app, or, buy the article by itself as a Kindle single for just $0.99. It’s worth a buck.

?

Read The Full Article:
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/05/09/inside-apple/

Digg this

Enolsoft Releases PDF to Image for Mac

post from prMac on 11 May 2011 10:26:00 PM. © prMac

Enolsoft Corporation, a professional developer of multimedia applications, officially announced the release of PDF to Image for Mac. This Mac PDF to Image converter tool is defined to help Mac users to turn PDF documents to image file formats. Meanwhile, Mac users may not need any Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader while converting PDF to image formats with this Enolsoft PDF to Image for Mac. Enolsoft PDF to Image for Mac supports to convert PDF files to many file formats.

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-25345.htm

Digg this

Measuring iPhone Progress

post from Daring Fireball on 11 May 2011 10:04:34 PM. © Daring Fireball

The one to watch is the iPhone’s share of all phones, not just smartphones. Soon enough all phones will be what we today call smartphones. As Horace Dediu shows, the trend line for the iPhone’s share of all phones is increasing.

?

Read The Full Article:
http://www.asymco.com/2011/05/11/measuring-iphone-progress/

Digg this

Chromebook Subscription Pricing

post from Daring Fireball on 11 May 2011 10:04:34 PM. © Daring Fireball

Could be a big deal for the enterprise market.

?

Read The Full Article:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/11/editorial-google-clarifies-chromebook-subscrip
tions-might-have/

Digg this

Four Months After Approving NBC Buyout, FCC
Commissioner Becomes Comcast Lobbyist

post from Daring Fireball on 11 May 2011 08:05:11 PM. © Daring Fireball

Nate Anderson:

Meredith Attwell Baker, one of the two Republican Commissioners atthe Federal Communications Commission, plans to step down — andright into a top lobbying job at Comcast-NBC.
The news, reported this afternoon by the Wall Street Journal, TheHill, and Politico, comes after the hugely controversial merger ofComcast and NBC earlier this year. At the time, Baker objected toFCC attempts to impose conditions on the deal and argued that the“complex and significant transaction” could “bring excitingbenefits to consumers that outweigh potential harms.”
Four months after approving the massive transaction, Attwell Bakerwill take a top DC lobbying job for the new Comcast-NBC entity,according to reports.

Shameful.

?

Read The Full Article:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/after-approving-comcastnbc-deal-f
cc-commish-becomes-comcast-lobbyist.ars

Digg this

Why Publishers Are Finally Saying Yes to Apple

post from Daring Fireball on 11 May 2011 08:05:10 PM. © Daring Fireball

Jeff Bercovici on Apple’s opt-in policy for sharing personal subscriber information to publishers:

Initially, publishers were worried, reasonably enough, that userswould overwhelmingly say no. But they don?t. In fact, about 50percent opt in.
Mark Edmiston, founder of the tablet magazine studio NomadEditions, first heard that figure from other publishers, so he ranit by Eddy Cue, Apple?s vice president of internet services. Cueconfirmed it. ?So, all the sudden, what was an insurmountableobstacle no longer is,? says Edmiston.

?

Read The Full Article:
http://blogs.forbes.com/jeffbercovici/2011/05/11/the-surprising-reason-publishers
-are-finally-saying-yes-to-apple/

Digg this

Sparktweets

Clever use of Unicode.

?

Read The Full Article:
http://kottke.org/11/05/twitter-sparklines

Digg this

Angry Birds for Chrome

Largely built, including animation, using HTML5 and actual open web standards, but still dependent upon Flash Player.

?

Read The Full Article:
http://chrome.angrybirds.com/

Digg this

Putting the Danger Hardware Team Back Together
Again

Seth Weintraub, on former hardware designers from Danger joining Google:

Within the last 12 months, Britt and Hershenson quietly joinedGoogle to run a new wing within Android called Android Hardware.They tell me they spend their days building things that will turninto reference designs for Android peripherals. Android Hardwareis exploring everything from home automation to exercise gamingand robotics. While there are no immediate plans to buildGoogle-branded Android hardware accessories, Brit indicated thathe would love to see Google introduce some of its own Androidperipherals in the long term. The folks in Cupertino have to bepaying attention.

I’d think the “folks” at HTC, Motorola, and Samsung are the ones who better pay attention.

?

Read The Full Article:
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/05/11/andy-rubin-gets-danger-back-together-at-go
ogle-to-work-on-android-hardware/

Digg this