A Windows 7 touchscreen: rarely seen in the wild. Absence of tablets may feature in analyst questions with Microsoft's results.A burst of 13 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team
Tumblr disappeared me… >> danah boyd
Her account on Tumblr was zapped, and now she finds a company blogging there using the handle she has used since her university/college days: "A few years ago, I learned that there is a technology consulting company called Zephoria.com. And apparently, they've become a social media consulting company. In recent years, I've found that they work hard to block me from using the handle of zephoria on various social media sites. Even before the midnite land grab on Facebook, they squatted the name zephoria, probably through some payment to the company. But this is a new low… Now they're STEALING my accounts online!?!?!? WTF?!?!?!"
The Battle For The Most Content And The Emerging Tablet Market >> Distimo
"The major findings are: " • The Google Android Market eclipsed the Apple App Store for iPhone in terms of free applications and now has 134,342 free applications, while the Apple App Store iPhone has 121,845 free applications.
"• If all application stores maintain their current growth pace, approximately five months from now Google Android Market will be the largest store in terms of number of applications followed by the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad, Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, BlackBerry App World and Nokia Ovi Store. The Windows Phone 7 Marketplace will also be larger than the Nokia Ovi Store and BlackBerry App World prior to the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace being available for even a full year."
There are other findings too - that many top publishers are already cross-platform. The question is whether the expectation that the future will continue like the past is reasonable.
Ask Ars: what's the relationship between CPU clockspeed and performance? >> Ars Technica
Informative.
How fast are enterprises going Windows 7? Not fast enough for Unisys >> ZDNet
Small sample alert: only 133 respondents. Nevertheless Unisys (former mainframe giant, now a Windows 7 integrator) isn't happy: ""(O)nly 21 percent of respondents answered 'Migration underway,'" the release noted, "while a combined 53 percent answered 'Haven't started,' or 'Not migrating.' Twenty-five percent said that, at the time, they were 'Piloting Windows 7.'"
Microsoft Q3 2011 earnings results due on Thursday >> WinRumors
"The software giant is expected to post earnings of 56 cents per share, up from last year's 45 cents per share. Revenue is likely to increase by an impressive 12% to $16.2bn in revenue, up from $14.5bn in the same period last year."
Might be the first quarter in decades in which Apple has the larger revenue and larger profit. 56c per share translates roughly to slightly over $5bn; Apple's profit last quarter was $5.62bn.
Scott McNealy re-emerges in tech circles >> CNET News
"Scott McNealy, who co-founded and led Sun Microsystems for many years before its sale to Oracle last year, is once again engaging in the technology world.
"Fittingly for the one-man sound bite factory, McNealy has taken to Twitter, dishing up snarky remarks and relishing the fact that not being CEO of a company means he doesn't have to be politically correct. And he's involved in business again, too, as chairman of stealth start-up WayIn.McNealy isn't dishing on WayIn, but some details are bubbling up."
WayIn will be something like a way to play user-created games while watching TV or live events. Hmm. Twitter it ain't.
White iPhone delay partly due to UV protection >> Tuaw.com
UV protection for people who see it?
Apple CEO Steve Jobs talks about how the iPhone does and doesn't use location information >> AllThingsD
Basically, he goes around the press release. But since he pretty much dictated it, no surprise. Interesting that Apple takes this so seriously now, though. All we got was lots of 'no comment' last week.
Review: The Blackberry Playbook, Thoughtless and Untested >> The Next Web
"What proved most disappointing for me over the course of evaluating the Playbook is the fact that there were flashes of solid utility buried in here. The QNX OS is different and, at least at first glance, usable. The screen is brilliant and crisp. The tablet itself is a fantastic size and a good weight. "The touch-sensitive screen borders are far more usable than they sound at first, it's a very solid feature that I think will be the one lasting contribution that the Playbook offers to the tablet world....
"The multitasking gesture shrinks your currently running app but, in a random and confusing choice, does not freeze the apps when they are minimized. This means that if you're in the middle of playing a game, it will continue to run while it's shrunk down. This behavior is cool looking when it happens to a video app, but it's confusing and frustrating when you want to switch away from a game and it doesn't pause itself until you rotate the tile away."
Ah.
Introducing the new Google Docs app for Android >> Official Google Mobile Blog
"Increasingly, people are using mobile phones to access information -- from email to web browsing to editing documents. Part of getting work done on the go is being able to easily access, edit and share content, which is why we're happy to announce the new Google Docs app for Android. "With this new app it's easy to filter and search for your content across any Google account, then jump straight into editing docs using the online mobile editors. The app also allows you to easily share items with contacts on your phone, right from within the app."
Because the future of apps is there won't be any, we'll use the web instead on our tablets/phones.. No, hang on.
Android tablets: Motorola XOOM returned, Honeycomb half baked at best >> ZDNet
"the XOOM is an excellent piece of hardware. The build quality is fantastic, and it has a powerful dual-core nVidia Tegra 2 chipset with 1GB of onboard RAM, a brilliant 10.1? 1280×800 LED display and high-resolution cameras in front and rear that exceed that of the iPad in terms of raw capability, at least on paper. "There's only one problem. The software on the device as shipped is complete and utter beta-level crap."
Harsh, really.
Grand Central Dispatch for Win32 >> GitHub
Intriguing: Apple's "Grand Central Dispatch" (a method to push some threads off to the GPU for processing) ported and "lightly tested" to Win32.
The interesting thing being that in days gone by, you'd have seen the Mac programmers desperately trying to port Win32 APIs to run on MacOS, not vice-versa.
Open source tools look to make mapping easier >> O'Reilly Radar
Bookmark this page.
You can follow Guardian Technology's linkbucket on delicious
To suggest links, tag articles on delicious.com with "guardiantech"
With Apple clamping down on incentivized downloads, white-label mobile app platform Appia (formerly PocketGear) has launched a new performance based advertising network for app developers to increase app downloads and only pay for results.
Apple has just announced the availability of the white iPhone. Unlike the black iPhone, it is able to reflect all colors of the visible spectrum, thereby making it white. It will be available tomorrow at Apple retail stores, AT&T, and Verizon wireless. It will also be available in the following countries on Thursday, April 28: