A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.

Tag Archives: tech

Jan 07 2012
Mark Twain, probably

Competition sparks tablet price cuts

Competition sparks tablet price cuts

I would strongly recommend against clicking through to this full article by Roger Yu for USA Today, as it has two enormous facepalm triggers: (1) USA Today reporting and (2) mainstream tech reporting. Unfortunately, I try to be a good sourcer, so there it is.

Anyway, the article itself has this one amazing quote which I wanted to share:

Many tablets are simply overpriced, says Roger Entner of Recon Analytics. Apple can afford to charge $499 for an entry-level iPad given the large app market and the brand appeal. But other manufacturers should be more realistic, Entner says. “BlackBerry and Sony have cut their price point from ridiculous to mildly amusing.”

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May 25 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Identify trees with your iPhone

Identify trees with your iPhone

An app that uses image recognition to tell you what type of tree you’re looking at based on the shape of its leaves? So cool. And plus:

Users of Leafsnap will not only be learning about the trees in their communities and on their hikes—they will also be contributing to science. As people use Leafsnap, the free mobile app automatically shares their images, species identifications and the tree’s location with a community of scientists. These scientists will use the information to map and monitor population growth and decline of trees nationwide.

Seems like fun. I gave it a try and while I’m no botanist, it seemed to work pretty well.

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Apr 04 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Pandora and Other App Makers Subpoenaed

Pandora and Other App Makers Subpoenaed

Scott Thurm, writing for the WSJ, elaborates:

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing related to its planned initial public offering, Pandora said it had been informed it is “not a specific target of the investigation.” Pandora also said it believed similar subpoenas had been issued “on an industry-wide basis to the publishers of numerous other smartphone applications.”

Whoa. The investigation is reportedly related to “information-sharing practices by smartphone applications”.

(Via Luis de la Rosa.)

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Apr 04 2011
Mark Twain, probably

Joshua Topolsky and SB Nation Join Forces to Create Gadget Site

Joshua Topolsky and SB Nation Join Forces to Create Gadget Site

Oh my oh my.

SB Nation, if you’re not aware, is an excellent network of sports related blogs. Each team gets its own blog that looks a lot like Daily Kos1 — everyone on the site writes blog entries, the editors of the site write their own material that gets posted on the front page in addition to curating the best of the content of the regular users. Lively discussion happens in the comment threads.2

SB Nation recently added a 2nd level somewhat similar to this. For example, here is the SB Nation page for the Oakland Athletics, and here’s the SB Nation page for all of the Bay Area. Pretty snazzy and good looking, I think.3

I’m looking forward to see what Topolsky and crew come up with. The SB Nation folks are smart, hungry and really get how to build a great community — hopefully it’s a good fit.

  1. It should: Markos Moulitsas, the founder of Daily Kos, is also one of the founders of SB Nation. ↩

  2. I suspect the comment quality on SB Nation sites — at least on Atheltics Nation — is so high because of the group blog nature of the site: you don’t want to post a cruddy comment on what basically amounts to your own blog. ↩

  3. Unlike the Huffington Post, SB Nation pays its writers. Joseph Plambeck, writing for the New York Times in June 2010:

    The company has 29 full-time employees, including people on the advertising and technology side, while most of the contributors to SB Nation’s sites are paid a monthly stipend.

    What a concept. ↩

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