Month: July 2011

Cross Promotion in “More Games” Violates Lodsys’ Patents ⇥

Lodsys is dragging a wider net than ever. From the representative handling this developer’s case:

The patent specification sets forth many different types of perceptions and how they may be elicited. One of those is through interactive services and transactions. Specifically, a perception that can be elicited is the desire of the user to indicate their desire to purchase something that is related to or complementary to the product or service.

He goes on to insist that the game violates Lodsys’ patents because it includes a link to purchase the full version of another game by the same developer.

Everything Requires Maintenance ⇥

Shawn Blanc:

A new operating system is a good reminder that it’s healthy (and for a nerd, fun) to take time out to do a workflow audit. Now is as good a time as any to reassess the tools you’re using and how you’re using them.

Not sure how I missed this yesterday. Now is as good a time as any to refine your workflow. I plan on doing this over the next few days. I’m sure there’s a ton of stuff on this machine that I haven’t touched in months, and will never look at again. Hell, I just opened up my Documents folder and found a folder of Colloquy transcripts that I’ve never looked at, a Dashcode project for a site that doesn’t exist any more, and a paper from high school (yes, I have since deleted all of the above, and more). It’s shameful.

TechCrunch Redesign ⇥

Looks like the redesign is going over really well. Chris Sacca’s critique is priceless:

@alexia Well, to be clearer, @techcrunch looks like it was pimp-slapped by Interstate Bold and pearl necklaced by Caps Lock.

Darby Lines:

I don’t get all the hate for the TechCrunch re-design. A shitty site should have a shitty design. Sort of an early warning system.

Sebastiaan de With:

The new techcrunch.com’s extremely large, sharp headlines hurt your eyes, because you needed another excuse to not read their garbage.

A satirical (I hope) post from an unnamed individual at TechCrunch, as published in the Washington Post:

And so it was with some trepidation that I visited TechCrunch a few minutes ago and found that our much-vaunted redesign had “gone live”, complete with gigantic headline fonts, weird underlapping images and — oh God — a new logo. A new logo that, to my artistically untrained eye, looks like it was drawn with the sharpened tip of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

In response, TechCrunch attempts to defend itself:

TechCrunch is bold. It’s raw. It’s fast-paced. […] The overall look & feel reflects the bold, sometimes irreverent nature of TechCrunch. It doesn’t hold tea parties in the backyard or hang out with the black turtleneck crowd at the hippest art galleries. It’s a design that breaks more news than its competitors, that loves the code junkies working 22-hour days to build world-changing products. It’s the first and only design Heather, Mike and I looked at and said yeah, that’s it. It screams TechCrunch.

Translation: “Wasn’t GeoCities cool?”

Own Your Identity ⇥

Marco Arment is absolutely correct:

If you care about your online presence, you must own it. I do, and that’s why my email address has always been at my own domain, not the domain of any employer or webmail service.

The HP TouchPad ⇥

Shawn Blanc:

After nearly a week with the new HP TouchPad and webOS 3.0 my overall impression is that the TouchPad is less than the sum of its parts. […] I could not find one compelling feature or function that was significant or compelling enough to take the TouchPad seriously compared to the iPad.

The Weekly Design Magazine World Goes Digital ⇥

Hugo Macdonald:

Design Week‘s circulation fell sharply from 7,777 a week in 2008 to 5,725 last year and now it will exist solely online. “People don’t want to wait until Thursday anymore,” says Myerson. “The web is instant and editorial opinion has been democratised by the presence of blogs. The only print titles that can survive are those that are beautiful, precious, collectible design objects in themselves and that’s not the point of a weekly trade title.”

Precisely.

Google Bid Pi for Nortel Patents and Lost ⇥

“Google was bidding with numbers that were not even numbers,” one of the sources said.

“It became clear that they were bidding with the distance between the earth and the sun. One was the sum of a famous mathematical constant, and then when it got to $3 billion, they bid pi,” the source said, adding the bid was $3.14159 billion.

“Either they were supremely confident or they were bored.”

via Gruber.

Funny Again ⇥

The Macalope, regarding RIM’s rumoured Apple TV competitor:

Right. Because you’re already doing such a bang-up job competing with Apple on smartphones and tablets that you thought it was a good idea to open the war on a third front. That right there is just the kind of premium decision-making you can only get from two CEOs.