Nik Cubrilovic has another post that I missed about how to setup up a secure system for browsing if you are a Facebook user. He breaks it into three steps, each of which have several sub-steps.
I it still recommended by the TBR staff ((Which is just me.)) that you don’t use Facebook. The benefits (what ever you convince yourself they are) do not out weigh the eventual consequences. ((If you disagree, then so be it.))
Nik Cubrilovic on a Facebook cookie that tracks you, even if you are not a Facebook user:
>The cookie was being set even if the user had never been to the Facebook site, and even if they didn’t click a ‘like’ or ‘share’ button.
Damned good reason to never pollute your site with a Facebook button. ((I am contemplating the removal of the Tweet button on this site.)) It was present on my computer…
New, illogical name. Same look with some amazing features. Notably an amazing camera, and the Siri assistant. You are going to want the 64GB model this time around.
I am probably going to append this to the very next email I send to an attorney, or anyone else with a legal disclaimer — especially if my reply is one word.
Mike Masnick reporting:
>The Patent Examiner blog has the incredible story of Innovatio IP, a patent troll that recently acquired a portfolio of patents that its lawyers (what, you think there are any employees?) appear to believe cover pretty much any WiFi implementation.
Be sure to read the comments from the lawyers, they are — uh — amazing. In related news I am close to buying the patent for standing while urinating — though I only plan on enforcing it at stadiums for right now.
Horace Dediu with a great analysis of why the Sprint deal isn’t crazy:
>If anything the riskiest thing for Sprint would have been not to do the deal at all.
I have been using Growl for so long that I forget it’s not a part of OS X by default. Now in the Mac App Store with a real business model. ((Selling the app for $1.99.))
Business Wire:
>With increased consumer demand for both no-annual contract wireless plans and faster data speeds, Walmart and T-Mobile USA, Inc. announced today that T-Mobile will launch a $30 unlimited web and text monthly 4G prepaid service plan — providing customers great value on a no-annual contract 4G data offering.
That’s a clever move by T-Mobile. (Note that “unlimited” here actually means 5GB.)
Six touch based apps and 20GB of free “cloud” storage. Photoshop touch looks nice.
Speaking of the simple formula Apple uses, here’s Clayton Morris’ take:
>Polish is what Apple does, showing us something we’ve seen before in a new light.
He was responding to the notion that Apple needs to “bring sexy back” — a notion that is absurd.
Fascinating data from Luke Wroblewski on iPhone usage. Don’t read this as someone trying to state why the iPhone is better, because this is showing how users are using the devices differently.
Anecdotally in my day to day observation of western Washington I have noticed that I typically only ever see BlackBerry users and iPhone users with their phones out being used to pass the time. Mostly I just see Android users using the phones to make calls.
For whatever reason, it seems to me, that iPhone users just enjoy using their iPhones as more than just phones.
I can’t say that, as a user of the service, I feel confident this is a good thing for Typekit.
**UPDATED** (on Oct 3, 2011): Typekit now has a [post up on their blog](http://blog.typekit.com/2011/10/03/adobe-acquires-typekit/) about it. The team is staying together (that’s good) and Typekit says that they will remain “a standalone product”, whatever that means (it doesn’t necessarily mean and independent company.
The good is that Typekit gets tons of cash, the bad is that it is coming from a company that makes seriously impressive products that have seriously confusing interfaces — also they make Flash. If Typekit can remain independent and just use the money as they want, this is nothing but a win. *If.*
Tom Simonite with an incredibly accurate view on how Apple makes amazing new products:
>The formula is simple: take a bunch of neat technology that has never lived up to its promise, rethink what it’s for, do some secretive hard work, and then release a natural, retrospectively obvious experience that redefines what computers can do.
It’s the last bit of that sentence that Apple has done extremely well with in recent years.
Simonite also, on page 2, has a great little thought about the rumored “Assistant” voice control:
>I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Apple gets a cut of anything sold through Assistant, whether movie tickets or restaurant bookings.
I would be surprised if they did, unless of course Apple was providing some sort of back end support — meaning Apple builds the tools you need to integrate support for Assistant into your product, not the other way around.
Horace Dediu analyzing iOS and Microsoft:
>Microsoft invented the software business and built it to become the world’s most valuable business by the year 2000. It’s still been growing since and after 35 years it is reaching a profit of $27 billion per year. It did this while maintaining enormous margins and a highly disruptive monopoly business model the likes of which the world had never seen before.
>It is scarcely believable then that a device business has been created to overtake it in four years.
You should really take a look at the entire post, it is amazing to see just how big iOS has become in such a (very) short time.
Elinor Mills reporting on Facebooks response to the lawsuit:
>”We believe this complaint is without merit and we will fight it vigorously,” Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes told CNET in an e-mailed statement.
I know I rag on Facebook a lot, but if you aren’t up in arms about this you really should be. If Facebook gets away with this the flood gates will open — and no one should want that.
>This week Shawn and Ben are joined by our pal Marco Arment to talk about the new Amazon Kindles and home coffee roasting and AeroPressin’.
It’s good one, thanks to Marco for joining us.
Michael Pusateri breaks it down, I won’t reveal the answer here. But, he does estimate this:
>Doing the math: 11,131 stores * 449 visits per store = 4,997,819 visits per day by Americans.
That’s just America…
A letter from Justin Lee to the New Zealand Police on Letters of Note:
>For me to have traveled from Porirua to the foot of the Bombay Hills just out of Auckland by six thirty, I would had to have crawled into the first car in the hospital parking lot and headed for Auckland at around 1,000 km/h. For this reason, it is entirely possible that the constable who clocked me back in 1974 was holding his laser equipment upside down and instead of doing 116 km/h as per the infringment notice, it is more likely that I was doing 911 km/h.
This is an excellent letter.