The Design of a Signage Typeface

post from Daring Fireball on 24 April 2012 04:03:22 PM. © Daring Fireball

Ralf Herrmann, on the design of his (excellent, to my eyes) signage typeface Wayfinding Sans Pro:

So I set off, driving thousands of miles across Europe toexplore the legibility of these signs and typefaces, first hand.Once I even ended up in a holding cell at the border crossing toNorway, because the customs officers just wouldn?t accept thatsomeone would drive all over Europe simply to take photographsof traffic signs.

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http://ilovetypography.com/2012/04/19/the-design-of-a-signage-typeface/

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Skype for Windows Phone Is Basically Useless

post from Daring Fireball on 24 April 2012 04:03:22 PM. © Daring Fireball

Matthew Miller, ZDNet:

Skype 1.0 for Windows Phone lets you make Skype video and voicecalls over 3G and WiFi, search for and add contacts, and makecalls to landlines. However, no one can call you via Skype unlessyou have the app open and running on your phone. Unlike Androidand iOS, Skype needs to be your active app in order to receivecalls as there is no background functionality at all in the app.

Microsoft should just buy Skype so they can make sure the Windows Phone version is top-notch.

What? Oh, yeah?

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http://www.zdnet.com/blog/cell-phones/skype-for-windows-phone-is-basically-useles
s/7461

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Aranez Announce the Swivel New iPad Leather Case

post from prMac on 24 April 2012 03:20:00 PM. © prMac

Aranez announce their latest luxury case for the New iPad - the Aranez Swivel New iPad Leather Case which features a 360 degree swivel for the iPad screen that allows users to view handsfree either portrait or landscape. The Aranez Swivel New iPad Leather Case is made from genuine high-grade cow leather which gives it a ultra stylish feel and finish. The New iPad Leather Case offers superior protection against daily knockabouts and elements, protecting every corner and the screen.

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-41790.htm

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Are you in the 3% that still relies upon product
quality printouts

post from prMac on 24 April 2012 02:25:00 PM. © prMac

Are you part of the 3% that still relies upon product quality printouts from suppliers? Auditweaver emails you product test results before they find their way to your loading dock. Auditweaver was developed to handle notoriously tougher communication and documentation sharing between outsourcers and their contract manufacturers. With auditweaver, you can set supplier production schedules, manage materials, conduct testing and set alerts internally, and with others in your supply chain.

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http://prmac.com/release-id-41789.htm

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Whos eating up AT&Ts data capacity Its not
new customers

post from Apple on 24 April 2012 02:04:11 PM. © Apple

What does a mobile network hosting 41.2 million smartphones look like? A network where growth in data traffic far exceeds data revenue growth. AT&T is selling a lot of smartphones and data plans, but even millions of new iPhones customers don?t fully account for the huge spikes in mobile data traffic that AT&T is experiencing.

AT&T’s first quarter earnings numbers show that new smartphone customers aren’t the ones straining its data networks. Rather AT&T’s chickens have come home to roost. Customers are finally starting to consume the big buckets of data AT&T is selling them, taking their fair share of network capacity while not paying more for the privilege. Consequently AT&T is seeing a massive increase in data traffic without seeing a corresponding jump in data revenues.

Revenge of the tiered pricing plan

During AT&T?s Tuesday, Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega revealed that AT&T had added a net total of 10 million new smartphones over the last year. The devices now account for nearly 60 percent of its postpaid subscriber base. De la Vega also revealed that AT&T?s wireless data revenues are tracking about $24 billion a year, growing at steady rate of more than 20 percent a year.

But AT&T has pointed out before that data traffic on its mobile networks is actually doubling each year. So that mean a 100 percent annual increase in mobile gigabytes shipped is being driven by mere a 32 percent increase in smartphones. What?s more, AT&T is only collecting a few billion dollars more in revenue to handle that deluge of new data.

The lion?s share of AT&T?s data traffic growth isn?t being driven by new smartphone customers; it?s coming from its existing subscribers, and for the most part they?re not paying more for that extra consumption. AT&T?s numbers would indicate that many customers are getting a lot a closer to their data caps without exceeding them ? basically they?re consuming more data while still paying the same amount on their monthly bills.

Some of those customers are AT&T?s grandfathered unlimited customers, but they?re a shrinking minority, accounting for 39 percent of smartphone customers in the first quarter. Plus, AT&T has begun throttling back speeds on those customers once they exceed 3 GB on HSPA+ and 5 GB on LTE. That means that most of AT&T?s data traffic explosion is coming from tiered plans, which makes sense if you look at AT&T?s pricing structure.

Of the 25 million smartphone customers on tiered plans, 70 percent subscribe to an upper-tier plan, which means a 2 GB plan under the old pricing scheme and a 3 GB plan under the new one. But in a recent study, wireless analyst Chetan Sharma found that the 70 percent of smartphone users in the U.S. consume less than 1 GB a month, which is half to two-thirds less than the amount of data most of AT&T?s customers are actually paying for. There?s been a huge disconnect between the amount of data customers buy and the amount they actually use ? but that gap is finally starting to close.

Capacity crunch or poetic justice?

As you have probably figured out by now, AT&T?s capacity crunch seems to be a problem largely of its own making. Customers are finally growing into the data plans, and they?re eating up all of AT&T?s mobile data network capacity in the process. I should also point out that AT&T?s networks have also become far more efficient than it used to be, allowing it to deliver more bandwidth over the same infrastructure and spectrum. When the iPhone 3G first launched in 2008, the typical AT&T HSPA cell could support a theoretical limit of 3.6 Mbps. That number is now 14.4 Mbps. An LTE cell using the same amount of spectrum can theoretically support 37.5 Mbps.

So I wouldn?t feel too sorry for AT&T, despite all of its claims of being broadsided by traffic demand. When it set up its current tiered pricing structures, it knew its customers would eventually scale their usage to match their monthly allowances ? and they?re still a long ways from even getting close to those caps. If AT&T didn?t know this, then it never should offered 2 GB and 3 GB tiers in the first place.

This is what infuriates me about the way the operators price data. The per-megabyte cost we pay for mobile data has actually fallen considerably in the last few years, but we wouldn?t know that by looking at our bills. If carriers from the beginning had set reasonable plan tiers that actually reflected how customers consumed data, operators could have gradually lowered prices as their networks became more efficient. It?s probably a stretch to say they would have come off as heroes, but their mobile data policies probably wouldn?t be vilified the way they are today.

Instead, they chose to gouge customers by selling them far more gigabytes than they could possibly use. Now that customers are starting to actually use up those gigs, carriers are claiming they?re running out of capacity. Didn?t you guys see this coming?

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http://gigaom.com/broadband/whos-eating-up-atts-data-capacity-its-not-new-custome
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Motorola wins preliminary ITC ruling against
iPhone

post from Apple on 24 April 2012 02:04:11 PM. © Apple

The mobile patent wars continue to drag on, with Motorola scoring a point Tuesday with a preliminary decision against Apple at the International Trade Commission. Apple was judged to have violated one of four Motorola patents with the iPhone, and if a six-judge panel agrees with the preliminary ruling, Apple could theoretically be hit with an injunction on sales of the iPhone in the U.S.

There’s a lot more than needs to happen before Apple will really start to worry, but it would have likely preferred a different outcome. The preliminary ruling involves a Motorola patent on Wi-Fi, which an ITC judge decided covered some aspect of the iPhone according to Bloomberg.

The ITC generally rules more quickly on patent matters than the pace of lawsuits moving through the regular court system, and so has overseen quite a few disputes over the last several years involving mobile patents. The ITC doesn’t have the power to award damages but it does have the power to bar imports if they violate a US patent.

Apple has now been on both ends of an ITC ruling, winning a final ruling last year against HTC that had little actual effect: the ITC delayed the implementation of its ruling, and the HTC then deployed a workaround that bypassed the patented technology very quickly after the ruling emerged.

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Microsoft Comparison Chart of Cloud Storage
Services

post from Daring Fireball on 24 April 2012 02:04:09 PM. © Daring Fireball

Has any company in history had more of a love affair with feature checklists than Microsoft? These must appeal to some people, but the appeal of post-PC computing is ease-of-use and obviousness — a feature checklist can’t convey any sense of these things.

(You’ll never guess which cloud storage service gets the most checkmarks in the list.)

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Read The Full Article:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/skydrive/compare

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iPhone Sales Numbers From AT&T

Eric Slivka, reporting for MacRumors on AT&T’s quarterly numbers:

Consequently, AT&T’s 4.3 million iPhone activations likelycorresponds to approximately 75% of its total smartphone sales of5.5 million units for the quarter.
Even more impressively, the continued trend toward smartphoneadoption means that the iPhone is representing a growingproportion of total phone sales (smartphone and non-smartphone) atAT&T. The carrier notes that smartphones represented more than 78%of its total phone sales to postpaid customers, meaning that theiPhone accounted for roughly 60% of AT&T’s total phone sales tothose customers during the quarter.

The iPhone accounted for a majority not just of AT&T smartphones sold, but all phones.

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Read The Full Article:
http://www.macrumors.com/2012/04/24/iphone-activations-drop-43-at-att-but-represe
nt-60-of-total-postpaid-phone-sales/

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