Links for Wednesday January 20th, 2010
Daring Fireball Linked List: MacRumors: 'Will Apple's Tablet Actually Be Called the iPad?': In contrast with John Gruber, I say that iPad is the name. Apple isn't going to want to have "book" anywhere in the name of The Tablet, becuase they'll want to stress that it's a multi-purpose device. If The Tablet were called "iBook", then people would think that all it could do is read books.
Some New Perspective on Microsoft/Apple: There have been a lot of rumors flying about Apple making their own search engine. And while Jim Goldman is unsure, this sounds plausible to me:
"Further, this source tells me that Jobs "cannot and will not build a search engine" of his own. The amount of expertise you need to build relevance is simply not what Apple wants to do, he argues. Apple, he says, wants to inject its own ads into Maps, Weather, Stocks and Search results, so, getting a Search API from Microsoft is really what Apple wants."
Google talks Chrome OS, HTML5, and the future of software: Long, interesting interview with Matthew Papakipos, the engineering director for the Chrome OS project, and Eitan Bencuya of Google. In talking about the use-case for netbooks running Chrome OS, Matthew Papakipos said:
"I have three different machines at home, and I started leaving them in different rooms: one in the kitchen, one in the living room, and one in the family room. And it's amazing how often you just pick it up, look up one piece of information, and shut it off. And you're done with that whole transaction in 45 seconds. Which is awesome, because sometimes that's all you want."
To me, that sounds like something that "real people" (i.e. non geeks) would actually do.
Nokia N900 review: I would really like to play around with one of these, but $550 is too much to spend on a toy, especially given this review. It's going to be interesting to see if Nokia can get a smartphone software platform that's at least "as good" as the iPhone. So far, it's not looking entirely likely.
Palm Pre Plus (and Pixi Plus) review: I've been idly toying with the idea of picking up a Palm phone on Verizon, and then terminating my contract when the new iPhone comes out. But this review is a little lukewarm, and Verizon's ETF is crazy now, so it's probably not going to happen. And the mobile hotspot sounds really cool, but the $40/mo charge is a bummer.
Baggage Fees Hurting Airlines Bottom Line: Anecdotal evidence against the supposed benefits of bag fees to the airlines bottom lines:
"Ever since airlines began hiving off traditional services like in-flight meals, seat assignments, and checked baggage from the basic airfare, the carriers have carefully tracked the growth of this secondary revenue. But they never correlate it against their overall revenue picture. And U.S. legacy carriers have studiously ignored the fact that Southwest and JetBlue, which generally avoid what is now called as a la carte pricing, have gained market share, won the most customer kudos, and, not coincidentally, been the most consistently profitable."
One way to fix an overheating graphics chip in an iMac: This is totally crazy (and I'm glad I never had this problem on my iMac). I mean, check out the picture.
Windows hole discovered after 17 years: It's pretty amazing that Windows 7 still lets you run 16-bit DOS executables.
