Yesterday, while waiting for Weezer to come on stage, my brother and I were railing on the Flickr App for iPhone pretty hard. It’s kind of humorous to see that the application got an update between then and now, but I’m sad to report that the app is just as mediocre as it was before the update. In version 1.2 of the Flickr application, they’ve added support for HD video uploads, posting photos to Twitter, and uploading photos in the background. Don’t get me wrong. These are great things to add to their application, but why in the world have they decided to forgo any community features in their app?
There’s still no way to access and converse in groups. This is a pretty big feature to leave out of your application, considering the humongous community Flickr has already. For us, Flickr is part community and part photo, and by removing either of these things from an application, Yahoo Inc. is seriously missing a giant opportunity. The community is why Flickr is so successful, and not giving people access to that on their mobile devices is a huge oversight.
Hopefully they’ll get this worked out in an upcoming version.
If Blockbuster was hoping that Canada would remain a safehaven for their dying business model, then today they took a shot straight in the gut. Netflix is coming to Canada, and Canadians are pretty damn excited about it, considering the amount of tweets we’re seeing about the news.
Yup, you’ve heard me right, Netflix is finally coming to Canada this fall, despite being available in the US for years. According to Netflix.ca, Canadians will now be able to “Watch as many movies & TV episodes as [we] want!” But, they also announce in smaller print, “Unlimited movies & TV episodes over the Internet right to your TV and computer.” So, we’re not 100 percent sure what’s being announced here. Are Canadians only getting access to streaming content? Will we see a crippled lineup of titles? We have no idea.
We’re also not sure if we’re going to get access to iPhone and iPad applications for Netflix. As it currently stands, all we know is that Netflix is coming to Canada, but the nature of their arrival is still a giant question mark. If you remember back when Apple brought TV shows to Canada, a large number of titles were missing on release day, and there’s still a huge number of shows not available in Canada.
I’ve sent off an email to the PR team asking these questions. If we hear back, I’ll be sure to update you.
I’m by no means a financial analyst, and despite having an economics degree, have a pretty low interest in Apple’s financial information. But, if you’re one of those people who like playing with numbers, and then using them to project Apple’s success, then you’re probably going to need to know that Apple will be giving their 3rd quarter briefing tomorrow, July 20. Apple’s CFO Peter Oppenheimer reported that Apple had their best non-holiday quarter ever during the last quarter, and it’ll be interesting to see exactly what those numbers are.
Since the last quarter, Apple has released the iPhone 4 and the iPad , so it’ll be interesting to hear just how these products have affected their bottom line. My guess, they might be breaking last quarter’s record. A lot of people have purchased these new products, and it’s highly likely that it’ll give Apple a boost in revenue and a boost in stock prices tomorrow.
We’ll be listening in on the call and reporting on anything we find interesting. Stay tuned tomorrow for more information.
na na na na na na na na LEADER na na na na na na na na LEADER ('leaderboard' was the correct answer)
When I was in kindergarten, I couldn’t draw or color. Staying inside the lines was just not in my DNA. Not remotely. It’s like I didn’t even know the lines were there. I’d be handed a picture to color, and would take a crayon and just start scribbling anywhere. Sometimes, but not always, on the paper I’d been given. According to my teacher (who also happens to be my mom, so this comes from a reliable source), one day she sat me at a table with other children who COULD draw well, thinking that maybe some of their ability would influence me.
When I saw how much better their coloring was, I started to cry. True story.
Even though I work in the advertising industry where graphic design rules the order of the day, clearly I’m not an artist. Thank the baby Jebus that an app like Charadium exists, to level the playing field and bring everyone else down to my level. As long as you’ve got the most basic, rudimentary motor skills and a decent spelling ability at your disposal, you’ve got everything you need.
If, like most other iOS device owners, you’ve kicked around playing Scrabble in Words With Friends, you’ll feel right at home in this online Pictionary clone. Launch app, create account, tap ‘Quick Play’, and you’re automatically dropped into a game with 4 or 5 other people for some hot finger-on-screen drawing and guessing action.
Forget fine-point pencils and cross-hatch shading techniques. This is doing to to the world of fine art the same thing that Leonidas and the Spartans did to the Persians in 300. Drawing with your fingertip is far from a precise art, but that’s ok. When your turn to draw comes up, just start scribbling. The game gives you a bit of time to think about what you’re going to draw before you start, so you can put a bit of thought into it. As time winds down, you generally see people just start scrawling the word itself across the screen in order for someone to score something in a given turn.
Scoring is simple: first person to guess the word gets points. The faster a word is guessed, the more points are doled out. Play until a game ends or you feel like stopping. You can also add friends to a buddy list and start a game with people you know, but where’s the fun in that? Clearly adding me (‘humantorch’) to your buddy list would be a horrible, horrible idea and you should never do that EVER.
I see you've started spelling the word 'Knockers,' sir. Truly, you are this generation's Shakespeare.
The only real downside I found while playing this is John Gabriel’s Greater Internet F***wad Theory, which states that a Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total F***wad, and sadly this is (rarely) the case. Since there’s no way to actually know who the strangers you’re playing with are, you will occasionally get some jackass who just starts drawing wangs (or less rudely, just starts spelling the word out right at the start) when it’s his turn. There is a “report abuse” function, but this is probably of little use since said jackass can create a new account with a new username in about 30 seconds. Granted, I only saw this twice, so I don’t think it’s all that common, but just so you know, it’s out there.
That one issue aside, this is good fun. I’ve kinda burned out on Words With Friends, so this has been a nice change of pace.
By now you’ve heard that Apple has admitted to the issues with the iPhone 4 antenna design. And by now you know that you can receive a free bumper if you buy an iPhone 4 between now and September 30th, 2010. Plus, if you’ve already purchased a bumper you can get a refund. One thing you may not have heard from the press conference is when additional countries are going to be receiving their iPhone 4.
The initial launch of the iPhone 4 on June 24th was limited to five countries—the United States, the UK, France, Germany and Japan. Starting on July 30th, 2010, an additional seventeen countries will have the iPhone 4. The list is Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, China, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. There was an eighteenth country that was to have the iPhone 4, South Korea, but this is no longer the case. As Steve Jobs said in the conference: “It will take a little longer to get approval there.”
There is no date for the release of the iPhone 4 in South Korea. My guess is that it just depends upon how quickly South Korea wants to have the iPhone in the hands of their citizens.
In addition to the iPhone 4 being available in those countries, the white iPhone also makes its debut on the 30th of July as well. However, initial quantities will be limited for the white iPhone 4. As of this writing, none of the Apple Stores have been updated to reflect the announcement. This is what the Canada Apple store Store shows.
The thing I’m waiting for is to see who the first person in line for all of these countries will be. Are they going to stay in line longer than a week, like the first guy in Dallas?
I’m tired and bored with the raging debate on the minutiae of Antennagate, so I thought I’d write up some final thoughts on the whole debacle and leave the dead horse for someone else to beat.
Sure, we’re here to get pageviews just like everyone else, but at some point a line is drawn in the sand, and some people hit it running full steam ahead. There’s not much left to be said about Antennagate, and yet every pundit and wannabe pundit seems to find some crack in the armour so small, that they continue with sensationalizing this crap over and over and over.
I’m over it. Here’s why.
I haven’t read one legitimate new opinion on this whole debacle for well over a week now, and yet, the same crap keeps cramping up my rss feed. The one thing that put me over the edge was the TechCrunchTV video with Jon Gruber, MG Siegler, Arrington, and Kincaid. The video had potential to really put this whole raging debate to rest, but instead comprised of Arrington acting like Arrington, and Siegler and Gruber sitting dumbfounded by the ridiculous comments coming out of Arrington. Sure, he may have been playing devil’s advocate, but it’s hard to believe anything that came out of his mouth after he said that the iPhone is a phone that doesn’t make calls. If there was ever an inaccurate blanket statement, that might be it. The sad thing was Kincaid had some excellent comments and questions for MG Siegler and Gruber, but instead we got to witness Arrington talking over him and trying to “lawyer” Gruber and Siegler into an intervention. It bordered on embarrassing. But, I can’t for one second blame Arrington. He knows how to get pageviews, and he’s certainly getting them now. And, he’s certainly not alone. Every tech blog on the planet has been beating this horse for 22 days. There’s only so many times you can say the same thing in different ways before everyone realizes what’s going on, and that’s been the case here.
There’s a second reason I’m over it.
I made a calculated decision during the announcement to not write up any posts until the media event was over. We probably lost out on a lot of traffic, but I noticed pretty quickly that others were posting headlines with one sentence of content, publishing the articles, and then filling in the content later. There’s a reason they do this. They’re trying to get their articles around social media sites, google news, and blogs before anyone else. But, we’re not that guy. I don’t see the value in abusing our readers with 15 posts in one hour, in each, a sentence or two. It’s ridiculous.
Apple told us what they’re going to do, now let’s see how it plays out
Everyone wants to knock the top dog on the playground down a peg or two during recess, but even that top dog gets a reprise from the recess-beating during class time. This hasn’t been the case for Apple, nor do we expect it to let up any time soon. We saw this coming right after Gizmodo purchased a stolen phone. Every subsequent Apple article was written in a negative context, pushing an anti-Apple agenda. They have the right to write whatever they want, and I could honestly care less about what they say, but they have influence over the tech world, whether we like to admit it or not. It doesn’t take long for people to jump on the bandwagon for negative stories. A single negative story from an influential source can have a snowball effect, flooding the Internet with thousands of similarly toned articles.
The next time you read an article about Antennagate, I’d ask you to take a moment and critically evaluate what they’re saying. Are they saying anything at all? Are they regurgitating someone else’s viewpoints, or are they adding to the commentary? If it’s a regurgitation, you might want to take a moment and remove them from your RSS feed. Anyone can copy and paste someone else’s thoughts, but very few in this industry seem able to come up with original thoughts. If there’s one thing I can promise to you guys, the readers, it’s that we’re trying hard to create unique commentaries on our posts. Sure, sometimes we fall short, be we recommit to being better every week.
Bullshit headlines that really mean nothing
There’s nothing that pisses me off more than misleading headlines. We’re as guilty as everyone else, but we try to minimize it. Sometimes we even unintentionally post a headline that’s misleading. This particular article, titled, “Steve Jobs confirms: Android outselling iPhone,” is a prime example of everything I’ve talked about in this post. Steve Jobs didn’t confirm anything about Android in his keynote, outside of stating iPhone 4 sales. To pretend that he did is putting words in his mouth, and more importantly, making it the title of your post is outright irresponsible. While this article doesn’t particularly fit with the Antennagate topic, it certainly illustrates how far media reaches to establish a story. It’s been happening a lot since the iPhone 4 release, and it’s getting really old, really quickly.
We might not write 20+ articles a day for you guys, but we certainly only pass on things we think you’ll care about. We also try and combine topics into one post. We try to tell the whole story in a complete format. We don’t do episodic content like some of these other websites. A misleading headline means your article is already beginning out of context, and I’d argue that this is why Antennagate blew up. People who know absolutely nothing about attenuation, or who weren’t engineers were trying to explain things that they know nothing about. You can only boil a point down so many times before the real point gets lost entirely. When that happens, everyone’s left grasping for straws.
The valley isn’t representative of the world
As hard as it is to realize, San Francisco and the rest of Silicon Valley isn’t representative of the world as a whole. While I’m reluctant to point the finger at AT&T for this whole thing, I do find it rather interesting to note that there hasn’t been nearly the same kind of public outcry in Europe or other initial launch countries. People have noticed that a death grip lowers signal strength, but the dropped calls problem just doesn’t seem to be an issue for most. I can’t comment fully on this because the iPhone 4 hasn’t been released in Canada yet, but I’m certainly eagerly anticipating trying it out around town. I know Apple’s been singing the praises of AT&T lately, but this certainly would have been an excellent time to do some international research on the issue. Sadly, the technology echo chamber begins in the Valley and extends around the globe, but it sure would be nice if tech writers would take a moment, remove themselves from their personal surroundings, and figure out if this antenna is a problem for anyone else outside of the US. It would certainly provide some perspective on this whole problem, and it would accurately let them point the finger at the appropriate parties. But, that requires work, and it’s hard to do that when you’re busy concocting fallacious headlines, posting two sentence articles, and pimping them around social media sites.
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If you’re interested in the official line from Apple, they’ve already posted an information page about the antenna announced on their website. You can see just how annoyed Apple is with this whole antenuation problem, they’ve released videos showing similar problems on the BlackBerry Bold 9700, HTC Droid Eris, and Samsung Omnia II. Every single phone shows signal strength dropping considerably when held with a “death grip.”
It’s kind of hilarious, but it’s also a giant FU to the whiners complaining about the attenuation problem. It made me smile a little bit. But it doesn’t end there. Apple’s also created a webpage showing off their Antenna Design labs, and test facilities, along with a video of the whole shebang. If you weren’t convinced about their testing before, you might be now.
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July 19, 2010
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