Haydn Shaughnessy at Forbes is worried about Samsung’s success (via BGR):

Samsung Electronics continues its astonishing launch program by introducing the Galaxy Note 8.0 into the US, tomorrow, April 11th, having quietly launched in the UK last week. But is the Korean company stretching itself too far, too fast?
This is why you have to take tech press with a grain of salt. Actually, with a salt lick.
Shaughnessy sees Samsung’s success as a bad thing. And if they were doing poorly and not exceeding estimates, that would be bad too.
And Eva Mendes is too hot.
You can’t win with these guys. Anything for a headline.

NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has some smack talk about the iPad:

Huang went on to explain that the iPad is capable of games that are “vintage 1999,” while the Kepler Mobile chipset can handle high-dynamic-range lighting and active shadows, features not found in today’s mobile games.
He’s CEO of a graphics processor company who’s chips are not in the iPad, so I understand why he’s saying what he’s saying.
I just hope he understands what makes the iPad the most successful tablet in the world. It’s not the graphics processor (It’s worth noting the CPU in the 4th generation iPad is no slouch).
A game’s first priority is to be fun. Bleeding edge graphics are nice to have, not a requirement—particularly on tablets. In fact, there’s a whole sub-genre of 8-bit games that’s hugely popular on smartphones and tablets. Three I have on my iPad 2 are Canabalt, Ridiculous Fishing and The Incident.

So brain games might be bullshit:

The answer, however, now appears to be a pretty firm no—at least, not through brain training. A pair of scientists in Europe recently gathered all of the best research—twenty-three investigations of memory training by teams around the world—and employed a standard statistical technique (called meta-analysis) to settle this controversial issue. The conclusion: the games may yield improvements in the narrow task being trained, but this does not transfer to broader skills like the ability to read or do arithmetic, or to other measures of intelligence. Playing the games makes you better at the games, in other words, but not at anything anyone might care about in real life.
via Co.Design

—Paranoid Android, Radiohead

—Aristotle

From the Verge:

CBS CEO Les Moonves is the latest TV exec to publicly entertain the idea of halting free broadcast TV if streaming provider Aereo is allowed to continue its service. Responding to a question about News Corp. COO Chase Carey’s threats to make Fox cable-only, Moonves told The New York Times that he “wholeheartedly supported what Chase said.” He explained that CBS was in preliminary talks with cable operators in the New York – Connecticut area (currently the only area in which Aereo operates) about what the switch would take, emphasizing his reluctance to take such a drastic approach. “Frankly, we don’t think it will get to that point,” he explained.
The definitions of television are changing.
The definitions of a computer continue to change.
The definitions of everything you once knew and know now are changing.
I don’t care if I’m sounding like a broken record, but keep the words of Darwin in your head at all times. Adapt or die.

The Verge: Apple’s bounce-back patent receives ‘final’ rejection from US patent office
It’s clear Samsung has copied a shit ton from Apple’s iOS, iPhone, iPad, retail stores and everything in-between.
That being said, I don’t think Apple, or any other company should own the patent on elasticity, virtual or otherwise.
As a web designer who started his career in 1999, I’ve seen seen many examples of (Flash) interfaces and websites that used bounce-back interactions in contexts similar to those in iOS years before the iPhone came to be.

via fchimero

How to make the internet swallow the universe:

Japanese school girls are cooler than American school girls:



via digitalbane

Facebook has rethought the mobile experience with their new flavor of Android, Home:

Introducing Facebook Home

The family of apps that puts your friends at the heart of your phone.

With Home, everything on your phone gets friendlier. From the moment you turn it on, you see a steady stream of friends’ posts and photos. Upfront notifications and quick access to your essentials mean you’ll never miss a moment. And you can keep chatting with friends, even when you’re using other apps.

This phone is clearly not for me.

When I described Home to my wife in the car earlier today, she replied, “I don’t like the sound of it. Most of my friends’ lives aren’t all that exciting to me.” I agree with her. The lives of most of the people I’m connected to on Facebook aren’t very interesting either, so having their updates front-and-center on my phone doesn’t appeal to me (conversely, I don’t think my life is exciting to most of the people I’m connected to on Facebook).

I do acknowledge there are probably a lot of people this does appeal to. People who have to be constantly updated every time a friend eats a cupcake or wipes his/her ass or takes a picture of his/her kid. No thanks.

My life is to be lived, not to follow what everyone else I know is doing.