Encyclopedia Britannica on iPhone.

Britannica Mobile – iPhone Edition In order to ensure the best experience, we’ve specifically optimized this site for the iPhone. Please visit http://i.eb.com on your iPhone or iPod Touch. If you don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch handy, you can still access plenty of great Britannica content from your desktop. Come see us at … Continue reading “Encyclopedia Britannica on iPhone.”

Britannica Mobile – iPhone Edition

In order to ensure the best experience, we’ve specifically optimized this site for the iPhone. Please visit http://i.eb.com on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

If you don’t have an iPhone or iPod Touch handy, you can still access plenty of great Britannica content from your desktop. Come see us at http://www.britannica.com.

Nicely done.

Spore coming Sept 7th.

I’ll be waiting with baited breath. Related posts: 30 day Tariffs for iPad in UK Mobile Phone Operators are shit. All of them. Holiday plans in June: Roaming Data Games Development Seminar – Belfast, 14th Sept

I’ll be waiting with baited breath.

Swear to God, I had nothing to do with it.

MacNN link

Apple stock was subject to slight gains as Citigroup added the Cupertino-based company to it Top Picks Live list, which allowed the computer manufacturer to maintain a Buy rating, with a target of $212 per share.

Microsoft to start manufacturing phones?

Zu-ne. verb. 1. To fuck over or generally bugger up partners who believed your shite for years and invested heavily in it. (From Zune, noun, a music player released by Microsoft which is incompatible with their previous music sales efforts under the PlaysForSure brand and immediately began to undermine their own branding and hurt their … Continue reading “Microsoft to start manufacturing phones?”

Zu-ne. verb. 1. To fuck over or generally bugger up partners who believed your shite for years and invested heavily in it. (From Zune, noun, a music player released by Microsoft which is incompatible with their previous music sales efforts under the PlaysForSure brand and immediately began to undermine their own branding and hurt their partners).

If you’re currently a vendor of phone handsets using the Windows Mobile operating system, you’re about to get Zuned.

Microsoft has just acquired Danger, makers of the consumer smartphones, the Sidekick. They’re reportedly buying Sidekick to keep it out of Google’s hands as well as to line it up against Research in Motion’s Blackberry and Google’s Android, not to mention Apple’s hit iPhone (which recently garnered 23% of the smartphone market). The Sidekick, although popular, does not run Windows Mobile.

What does this mean to any manufacturer currently using Windows Mobile? Well, if Microsoft is getting into the hardware game for phones then you can expect to have a rough time. This is bad news for beleaguered handset maker, Palm and possibly even worse news for Sony-Ericsson. Palm is floundering after dividing it’s market offering Palm OS and Windows Mobile based handhelds rather than concentrating on developing a decent successor to Palm OS (and what the hell did they do with everything they got from their acquisition of Be?). But there’s more.

After Nokia started road-testing it’s new Linux-based platform in the 770/N800/N810 series of handhelds, Sony-Ericsson knew that it’s use of Symbian as an OS for their phones would leave it in the doldrums in terms of features and development speed. Their solution was the opposite of Nokia’s and they decided to license Windows Mobile.

Boo. Bad mistake.

If Microsoft starts manufacturing their own hardware running their own operating system, where does that leave everyone else who’s investing in Microsoft’s operating systems?

Exactly. Without a paddle.

Don’t believe me? Wikipedia speaks!

During its launch week, the original Zune, now Zune 30, was the second-most-sold portable media device with a 9 % unit share; behind the market-leading iPod’s 63 %. For the first 6 months after launch, NPD Group figures show that the Zune 30 achieved approximately 10% market share in the Hard Drive based MP3 market and 3% in the overall MP3 player market.

Good for Microsoft. $100 million spent on marketing for a 3% market share in the US and 0% outside the US. But that 3% comes at a cost – that’s a few million sales for Microsoft’s previous PlaysForSure partners. Microsoft robbed their hardware partners of those sales and then proceeded to screw over anyone who opened a PlaysForSure store because it didn’t play anything from Napster, Rhapsody, Yahoo Music, or even their own MSN Music Service.

So, what’s the chance they’ll sacrifice their own hardware sales to enable licensees to make a buck?

WebKit: Tom Raftery tests it right

One of the things about blogging is that it’s a two way experience. I think it’s important to share interesting links, though I’m loathe to just list them. One such like is on the always interesting Tom Raftery’s Social Media (which, for the life of me I always spell as “Rafferty” but that’s my own … Continue reading “WebKit: Tom Raftery tests it right”

One of the things about blogging is that it’s a two way experience. I think it’s important to share interesting links, though I’m loathe to just list them. One such like is on the always interesting Tom Raftery’s Social Media (which, for the life of me I always spell as “Rafferty” but that’s my own issue).

Today he’s talking about browsers and how the new WebKit based browser builds are screaming fast. So much so that he took the time to test them out on both Vista and Mac OS X which shows a lot of dedication to the craft and seriously makes me want to run this WebKit build. Running the SunSpider Javascript test…

Highlights

  • Internet Explorer 7 on Vista: 66 seconds.
  • Firefox was fastest on Mac OS X with 10 seconds (29 seconds on Vista).
  • Safari was faster on Vista than Firefox
  • WebKit r30123 took 9 seconds on Vista and 5 seconds on Mac OS X

Can you credit it? Safari on Mac OS X was 13 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 on Vista?

The real question now is when do we get WebKit builds on the iPhone.

I ran the tests this morning and got 21 seconds for FireFox 2 and 44 seconds for IE6 so there must be a CPU/Memory component too. Hmm, interesting.

Pixish: a new site where you can create image contests.

For Artists: You’ve got talent, admit it. You can draw, paint, take a great photo, or design something beautiful. But you need a way to get your work out there. Pixish is your chance to get published. … For Publishers: Right now, if you want images, you have two options. You could hire an artist … Continue reading “Pixish: a new site where you can create image contests.”

For Artists: You’ve got talent, admit it. You can draw, paint, take a great photo, or design something beautiful. But you need a way to get your work out there. Pixish is your chance to get published.

For Publishers: Right now, if you want images, you have two options. You could hire an artist (expensive, difficult, and time-consuming) or you could surf microstock sites (cheap, but frustrating and time-consuming). Pixish seeks to be a middle path.

Pixish is a cool idea. One that will hopefully improve the look of books, T-shirts and application user interfaces.

Silicon Valley -> Ireland

Pop on over to eirepreneur: Gareth Coen and colleague Diane Roberts were inspired by the Enterprise Ireland bash during Paddy’s Valley to offer a similar event here in Ireland. Gareth, based in Silicon Valley, and Diane, based in Dublin, recently started a consultancy firm with the goal of helping bridge the gap between Valley and … Continue reading “Silicon Valley -> Ireland”

Pop on over to eirepreneur:

Gareth Coen and colleague Diane Roberts were inspired by the Enterprise Ireland bash during Paddy’s Valley to offer a similar event here in Ireland. Gareth, based in Silicon Valley, and Diane, based in Dublin, recently started a consultancy firm with the goal of helping bridge the gap between Valley and Irish tech start-ups.

If you want to know more, and save money, read on.

I remain sceptical about this approach, still likening it to trying to make Ireland into Hollywood by shipping a couple of casting agents over here but if you’re in charge of a tech startup and you’re running the kind of tech that would benefit greatly from a step onto the first rung of the ladder then you should register immediately using the secret code provided and enjoy.

19/100 My Community and How You Can Engage It

I have no clue. Which community? Dads? Ego-mad idiots? Single Dads? Gamer geeks? Mac users? Guys who are getting married a second time? Mac “Power” users? Guys with iPhones? Guys with amazingly hot girlfriends? Home-owners? Guys who have just bought a house? Guys who have a new car? Guys who have a blue car? Guys … Continue reading “19/100 My Community and How You Can Engage It”

I have no clue.

Which community?

Dads? Ego-mad idiots? Single Dads? Gamer geeks? Mac users? Guys who are getting married a second time? Mac “Power” users? Guys with iPhones? Guys with amazingly hot girlfriends? Home-owners? Guys who have just bought a house? Guys who have a new car? Guys who have a blue car? Guys who have MacBooks? Guys who own a company? Guys who own more than one company? Guys who live within 5 minutes of the beach? Guys who want WiFi everwhere because they carry a WiFi capable device everywhere? Guys who don’t know how to dress themselves?

That’s the first challenge: identify my community.

Once you’ve identified me, then you can start to engage me.

This is something that people forget. That’s something that internet marketeers forget. That’s something that spammers don’t even attempt.

Make sure you know what you’re talking about and to whom you’re talking to.

That’s all I have to say about that.

[Chris Brogan’s 100 topics]

Golden Braeburn: get unscrewed.

Wil Shipley is planning to start something new. Golden Braeburn is an attempt by Wil to change the way that Mac ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) work. In essence, you get screwed by shopping cart hosting companies, you get screwed by merchant account holders, you get screwed by card processing companies, you get screwed when you … Continue reading “Golden Braeburn: get unscrewed.”

Wil Shipley is planning to start something new.

Golden Braeburn is an attempt by Wil to change the way that Mac ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) work. In essence, you get screwed by shopping cart hosting companies, you get screwed by merchant account holders, you get screwed by card processing companies, you get screwed when you try to build your own shopping cart and trying to keep current.

In essence, you get screwed.

So, Golden Braeburn is about unscrewing you.

Cool. Let’s see what happens.

[I so have to create a company with an breed of Apple in the name. I’m such a fanboy.]

Yahoos

Ya·hoo (in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels) one of a race of brutes, having the form and all the vices of humans, who are subject to the Houyhnhnms. (lowercase) an uncultivated or boorish person; lout; philistine; yokel. (lowercase) a coarse or brutish person. Cringely sounds off that the Microsoft-Yahoo deal might be a good thing for a … Continue reading “Yahoos”

Ya·hoo

  1. (in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels) one of a race of brutes, having the form and all the vices of humans, who are subject to the Houyhnhnms.
  2. (lowercase) an uncultivated or boorish person; lout; philistine; yokel.
  3. (lowercase) a coarse or brutish person.

Cringely sounds off that the Microsoft-Yahoo deal might be a good thing for a company like Yahoo that has been conservative to the point of cowardly and Microsoft which has been fierce to the point of brutality.

I call bollocks.

Yahoo does need to wake the hell up. They made some acquisitions like Delicio.us and Flickr which they’ve sat on. Where the efforts to make them into a vast empire. With Flickr they’re just waiting for the next photo-sharing site to come up and eclipse them.

I feel a deep sense of loss when I think of the deal – because the only outcome of it will be a company that is less capable and less agile than the two companies that formed it. Yahoo has a lot of potential but no-one seems to know what to do with it.

What Yahoo needs is a fearless leader. They need someone who has vision and the balls to dig entrenched management out of their mires. They need a brute of a leader, someone unafraid to be rude, someone who will shout and scream for what he wants, who’s not afraid to demand brilliance. They need a yahoo.

Steve’s busy. Anyone up for it?