Software posts

So, once again, we are hearing about the end of blogging. This time in comes in the form of a New York Observer article. Among others, the piece quotes Gawker’s Nick Denton whose massive blog empire is undergoing a very non-blog redesign. It essentially argues that the blog is toast because people have other outlets for oversharing, and the cult of personality – in which people read blogs for or about specific people – has been overtaken by social media. Fair enough. None of this, however, means that the blog is dead. Instead, what it means is that the role of the blog has changed. Yes, its importance…

An unnamed former AOL executive has whispered a few choice sweet nothings into the ear of the New Yorker, not the least revealing of which may be that allegedly 75% of subscribers to the service “don’t need it”. “The company still gets eighty percent of its profits from subscribers,” explains the New Yorker’s Ken Auletta, “many of whom are older people who have cable or DSL service but don’t realize that they need not pay an additional twenty-five dollars a month to get online and check their e-mail.” That $25 dollars just happens to be the old dial-up fee, from way back when the internet was a joke…

Long long ago, in that distant, ancient era of the 2000′s, we heard unending chatter about this thing called ‘the semantic web’. The semantic web was supposed to be like the holy grail of technology. At its heart, it was meant to do two things: to make all that impersonal data online accessible in regular, everyday language; and to make connections between that data in ways that aren’t always readily apparent. There were a bunch of promising apps. Two of the biggest were Twine – which has since become evri – and Glue, which is now Getglue. But now, those two semantic apps are social apps. And in 2011,…

It actually happened a while ago and nobody noticed until now. Here’s how it will work. A developer can set the MSRP for an app. They will get the higher of 20% of the MSRP or 70% of the retail price. So,  developer can set an MSRP of $10. Amazon can price it at $10 and the developer would get $7. If the retail price drops below $2.86, the developer would get the minimum of 20% of their MSRP, in this case $2. Will developers like this? If they make money, they’ll like it. Otherwise, they’ll blame Amazon’s meddling on their lack of success….

It has become common wisdom that retail stores that carry physical media – CDs, books, movies in particular – are, to use the scientific term, “toast”. And indeed, whatever is being said, physical media stores are going through an upheaval: in the U.S. Borders seems barely solvent; in the U.K, Waterstones and HMV are shutting stores. It’s a pattern being repeated everywhere. Around the wealthy parts of the world, retailers who trade in old media are struggling. But they aren’t dead. Or, at the very least, they don’t have to die. There are steps that can be taken so they can save themselves. It won’t…

Who said you had go to CES in Las Vegas to have your mind blown by the latest technology. Just head over to the App Store for this nifty 3D Scanner that you can install on your iPhone. At $0.99, it’s likely a cheaper way to geek out than airfare and hotel accommodations in Nevada. From the minds at Trimensional, this app uses the standard equipment on your iPhone or latest generation iPod Touch – the camera and the screen. Rather than traditional 3D technology that requires multiple camera angles, this application uses the basic depth-perception ability out there – shadows. According to their website,…

Android is not ‘cool’. There, I said it. Sure, this year it’s almost certain that Android will overtake iOS in terms of market share. And, the Consumer Electronics Show may as well be called the “Half This Stuff is Android Electronics show”. But, rather than simply being a question of what gets the tech world drooling, the ineffable nature of ‘cool’ has real consequences for ecosystems, economics and cultural cachet – and right now, for a variety of reasons, Android just doesn’t have it. Apple’s Cool Factor = Mindshare Here’s something about iOS’s success that people have never been very good at…

Dependent entirely on how you feel about piracy, it will either tickle you previously undefined shades of pink or break your heart to learn that BitTorrent has reported that its tools BitTorrent, Mainline and µTorrent now have an active userbase of 100 million per month. It seems like only yesterday we were forced a peek at Bram Cohen’s attractive* face as he panhandled for donations every time we closed the original BT client. Flash forward and 20 million are logging on per day from 220 nations to share files. Legally, of course. What makes these figures ever-more impressive is that they don’t…

The reviews of Google’s Chrome OS have thus far been lukewarm at best, and tepid at worst – suffice it to say, no one really has strong feelings one way or the other. It’s doubtlessly cool, but most seem to agree that the majority of the public just isn’t ready to switch to computing on a cloud just yet. So now you’re sitting there with your CR-48, unsure of what to do. Why not install another operating system? Users at the Something Awful forums have figured it out, installing Windows 7 and OS X with little ease – assuming of course that you file removing the CR-48′s finicky bottom panel in order to properly…

The need to build elaborate sets to appease historical facts or science fiction worlds has long been on the decline as graphic programs that work on a good laptop can be used to create stunning realities. This video is just further proof that the days of the set designer are numbered. …