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Google will highlight what they believe to be mobile friendly web pages in mobile search.
Starting today, to make it easier for people to find the information that they’re looking for, we’re adding a “mobile-friendly” label to our mobile search results.
Details here, but just about any responsive site should be fine. This is a good thing for the web, and I hope other search engines will follow.
Apple has released the WatchKit, which lets developer create apps for Apple Watch. The apps aren’t stand-alone though, they live on your iPhone, at least until later in 2015. If you’re not ready to jump into Apple’s developer pages, even the public ones, then check out iMore’s need to know piece.
Science magazine writes about Rosetta, and the probe Philae, and the adventures it endures, as well as the future of them both. It’s an interesting piece.
This tidbit stands out though, regarding how water could’ve come to Earth.
And ROSINA, a Rosetta instrument that uses spectrometers to measure gas abundances, has obtained a highly sought after result: the so-called deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio of water in the comet’s thin atmosphere, or coma. The measured value for 67P is much higher than the ratio in Earth’s oceans and higher than in other comets, says ROSINA principal investigator Kathrin Altwegg, of the University of Bern. Three years ago, the comet Hartley–2 was found to have a D-to-H ratio near that of Earth’s oceans—sparking interest in the notion that comet impacts delivered much of Earth’s water. Altwegg says the result for 67P could make asteroids the primary suspect again.
I’m still not quite ready to write about iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, but Yuvi Zalkov is, and he prefers the larger model.
I love this thing. I find it so worth the size and the price. But I don’t think it is for everyone. There are 5.5 inches of tradeoffs to consider. For many people, it is just too big. But I want a mobile writing machine – badly.
I always want to be carrying around my crappy writing projects. And to be able to write more crap whenever I want. And for that purpose, hot damn this thing is amazing.
Gizmodo reads Barbie: I can be a computer engineer, and it goes from bad to worse. There are so many things wrong with the underlying message here that I honestly think the creators of this book are oblivious to them.
The English version of .SE’s yearly report on Swedes and the internet is out.
The report is based on .SE’s own primary data collection which surveys Swedes’ use of the internet and shows how information and communication technology is used and and affects individuals, families and society. 3000 people were interviewed from age 12 and up.
Telephone interviews are extensive and contain questions about the subjects’ background data, access to technology, use of traditional media and most of all the use of the internet in its different forms. Questions are asked to parents with children at home between the ages of 2–11, about their use of the internet. To adolescents between 11 and 15, the questions are also asked to their parents.
Read it here. Spoiler: We’re using the internet quite a lot.
Nokia, who sold their device business to Microsoft, has announced a new device. The Nokia N1 is an Android 5.0 tablet that’s trying to channel the iPad mini. It’s almost ridiculously close to Apple’s device, and so is the imagery on the product website. On the flipside, this also means that the N1 might be the best looking Android tablet thus far.
Groupon is now open to consider another name, leaving Gnome alone:
Our relationship with the open source community is more important to us than a product name. And if we can’t come up with a mutually acceptable solution, we’ll be glad to look for another name.
All the bad press probably got to them, but that matters little. At least they’re doing the right thing.
Say Media, who once upon a time bought blog platform maker Six Apart and wanted to be both a tech company and a publisher, is pulling out of the media business.
Today, Say is reverting back to its technology roots: XoJane and the rest of its owned sites, including tech property ReadWrite, fashion site Fashionista and decorating go-to Remodelista, are up for sale. CEO Matt Sanchez said trying to be both media and technology company ultimately proved too hard. Ultimately, even during a time when every media company wants to dress itself up as a tech outfit too, the differences between the businesses were too great to bridge.
“When we launched Say, it was really about, how do you provide technology and services for independent media,” he said. “It was this vision of building the modern media company by building, partnering with and buying independent media companies, build the tech beneath it and think holistically about the entire media stack. We just came to the conclusion that it’s very difficult to do both.”
Say Media will now focus on its Tempest publishing platform, and plan to make it free to use. Money’ll come from ads on sites using it, presumably.
The aforelinked Digiday story talks a lot about how hard it is to be both a technical company, and a publishing one. I’m having a hard time with this reasoning, because it all boils down to having the right people, as every other company does. This split is no different than having both an editorial and an advertising side of your business, they still have to work together. It all boils down to the right people, and their leadership. Say Media isn’t pulling out of the media business because the development/publishing combination isn’t working, they’re doing so because their online properties are failing.
The feud over ebook pricing between publisher Hachette, and Amazon, is over. Recode:
On the surface, the deal appears to be a win for Hachette, which will set prices for its electronic books sold through Amazon. But Amazon is offering “financial incentives for Hachette to deliver lower prices,” Kindle exec David Naggar said in a statement.
The whole thing was weird to begin with, and the feud points to two things.
Consumers and authors are caught in the crossfire.
Twitter outlines their near future plans in a blog post. This struck me:
For instance, we’re experimenting with better ways to give you what you come to Twitter for: a snapshot of what’s happening. We can use information like who you follow and what you engage with to surface highlights of what you missed and show those to you as soon as you log back in or come back to the app.
A catch up feature, which I doubt I’d use but assuming it’s not obtrusive, I’d at least not hate it. Problem is, every time Twitter has fiddled with giving its users more relevant or useful tweets in the timeline, they fuck it up. Getting people you follow’s favorites springs to mind.
En grupp av bolag stämmer Bredbandsbolaget för att de vägrar blockera sajter som Pirate Bay, men den här gången är det inte bara giriga skivbranschen som är i farten, utan även public service-bolag som SVT, tv-kanalen TV4, och Svensk Filmindustri. Så här skriver IDG:
Bakom stämningsansökan står skivbolagen Universal Music, Sony Music och Warner Music tillsammans med Nordisk Film och Svensk Filmindustri, rapporterar Dagens Media.
Till dessa har även tv-bolag anslutit sig. SVT, TV4-Gruppen, MTG TV, SBS Discovery och C More ingår alla i Film- och tv-branschens samarbetskommitté, som tillsammans med IFPI Sverige och Sveriges Videodistributörer, är initiativtagare till stämningen.
Läs även Linus Larsson i ämnet.
Måhända är det här det enda rätta?
Jag tänker sluta betala licensavgift om @svt går vidare med stämningen mot Internetbolag. Hoppas att alla gör detsamma.
— Tore. SD grundades av nassar (@ToreK) November 12, 2014
Lägg nämnda företag på minnet. De står nämligen för censur och bör bojkottas i alla lägen. Vidrigt beteende.
It’s important that your writing position is ergonomic, putting low stress on your body. Writers are well known for not paying enough attention to this, thus experiencing more pain than necessary. One of the complaints about tablet-centric setups is the angle downward, towards the screen, and how this is bad for you. This is all true, but it’s not a tablet-specific problem. In fact, just about every laptop has this problem.
Take the 11″ MacBook Air, as close to the perfect writing laptop you can get. It’s got a nice full-sized keyboard, a decent enough screen (although it doesn’t do it for me these days since it’s not retina – yet), and it’s very portable.
Then take the iPad Air 2 (or any full-sized iPad, the mini changes things a bit), a decent stand such as Twelve South’s Compass 2, and connect it to your bluetooth keyboard of choice. Let’s go with Apple’s wireless one since that’s almost identical with MacBook keyboards.
Right now, a probe is trying to land on a comet.
The harrowing landing has been a decade in the making. The Rosetta orbiter launched in 2004, and orbited earth three times to pick up the speed required to let it catch 67P. At its furthest point from the sun, Rosetta got only 3 percent of the sunlight we receive on earth — a problem for its solar panels, which is how it generates its electricity. So it was designed to go into a kind of hibernation, with only the most vital functions running. In January, Rosetta woke up and in August, it caught 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
This is so cool, fingers crossed it succeeds. Follow the probe on Twitter for more, and keep an eye on Sploid’s liveblog.
Groupon is launching a product called “Gnome”, and are making life hard for GNOME, an open source Linux desktop environment that’s been around since 1999. It’s also a registered trademark.
Recently Groupon announced a product with the same product name as GNOME. Groupon’s product is a tablet based point of sale “operating system for merchants to run their entire operation." The GNOME community was shocked that Groupon would use our mark for a product so closely related to the GNOME desktop and technology. It was almost inconceivable to us that Groupon, with over $2.5 billion in annual revenue, a full legal team and a huge engineering staff would not have heard of the GNOME project, found our trademark registration using a casual search, or even found our website, but we nevertheless got in touch with them and asked them to pick another name. Not only did Groupon refuse, but it has now filed even more trademark applications (the full list of applications they filed can be found here, here and here)
Dick move by Groupon.