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Category: Technology

Instapaper Fiction

March 24, 2012
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I like fiction delivered to a convenient and elegant place to read! So:

  1. Go to ifttt, log in/register/whatever
  2. Create a new task.
  3. Choose the Feed trigger.
  4. Choose New Feed Item.
  5. Use the Feed URL http://hilobrow.com/tag/world-shook/feed/, on the assumption that you want to read HiLoBrow’s H. Rider Haggard serialization.
  6. Feed it into Instapaper (or Readability if you like that). You can leave the default field values alone. If this is your first time using ifttt, you’ll need to register the channel first.
  7. Give it a description.

Or just go ahead and use the recipe I made.

Price Awareness

February 29, 2012
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I don’t get the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7. It’s a pretty standard tablet, with LTE as the standout feature. It’s a 7.7″ model. It runs Android 3.3 — in theory ICS will come in the future, but we hear that a lot. At 16 GB of storage, it retails for $499 with a two year contract. How does that make sense when the 16 GB iPad 2 is selling for $580 no contract at Best Buy? And where’s the cheaper WiFi model?

Streaming VIDEO_TS?

November 5, 2011
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Oh mighty Internet: is there a preferred solution for streaming VIDEO_TS directories? Boxee does it but support is rumored to be flaky. Plex maybe does it? I can handle more or less any platform although OS X or Linux are more desirable.

Big Apple Bite

March 2, 2011
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Gruber has been more accepting of the new iOS App Store rules than I am, but I like his latest post on the subject. New information to me: there’s a limit of 3,500 items in the in-app purchase catalog for any iOS app. As he notes, this has obvious implications for Amazon. It also occurred to me last week that the 30% Apple cut wouldn’t work terribly well for the oft-rumored NFC implementation. If Apple wants us to use iPhones as payment devices everywhere, they’re not going to be taking 30% of all transactions made via the iPhone. So I keep on thinking there’s more to the picture than we’ve seen so far. I’ll say this: Apple continues to be annoyingly opaque.

Yet More Apple/Kindle

February 15, 2011
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Apple’s released its new subscription/purchase rules. Interesting commentary here. He drills in on the one sentence in the press release which refers to anything other than subscriptions: “In addition, publishers may no longer provide links in their apps (to a web site, for example) which allow the customer to purchase content or subscriptions outside of the app.” If Apple hadn’t rejected the Sony Reader app, I’d assume that “content” referred to subscriptions, but since Apple clearly does care in some unspecified way about non-subscription content I can’t feel confident there.

30% is a huge cut. If you’re getting something for it, such as payment processing, it’s not unreasonable. If you’re a small content provider and this frees you from having to worry about PCI compliance, processor gateways, and so on? Sure! But if you’re a big content provider or aggregator (hi, Amazon), you are not getting value for that money.

More Apple/Kindle, Still Some ?

February 2, 2011
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Apple said something somewhat confusing that nonetheless implies that the way in which they enforce the rules has changed. Gruber summarizes. If Apple means what they seem to mean, that’s alarming. Also difficult to enforce. If Amazon removes the store button from the Kindle app, but still sells Kindle books pushed to the iPad via their Web site, is the Kindle app still offering the customers the ability to purchase books outside the app? I can buy ePub books from various sources without involving Stanza, and then download ’em to Stanza. Does this violate anything?

This wouldn’t have happened when Jobs was around.

That’s a joke.

Mostly.

Kindle/Apple?

February 1, 2011
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Sony says Apple rejected their Sony Reader app on the grounds that all purchases on the iPad must go through the App Store. I don’t care that much about Sony on a practical level, but the implication is that the Kindle app is likewise in trouble, since it allows me to buy a book via the Amazon web site and download it to my iPad. If that’s no longer allowed, I’d be fairly annoyed.

On the other hand, the Kindle app pushes you over to Safari to make the purchase. It isn’t clear if the Sony Reader app did the same thing. The Sony Bookstore is not available on the Web; if you click on the “Want this eBook?” link on a Sony Bookstore page you’re instructed to download the Reader. I’m guessing that Sony didn’t implement a secret Web purchase page for the sake of the iPad.

The New York Times is not citing Apple sources in their reporting. There’s one troublesome line: “The company has told some applications developers, including Sony, that they can no longer sell content, like e-books, within their apps, or let customers have access to purchases they have made outside the App Store.” At face value, that would imply that the Kindle likewise violates the rules. But Sony has an interest in making Apple look like they’re being unreasonable, and we don’t even know if Sony was the source for that information.

Clause 11.2 of the current App Store guidelines (PDF) says “Apps utilizing a system other than the In App Purchase API (IAP) to purchase content, functionality, or services in an app will be rejected.” Key words are “in an app.” Safari is an app; I think a strict reading of those terms would rule out the way Amazon’s doing it as well. On the other hand, a strict reading of those terms would rule out any ecommerce. It could be better written. Possibly the intent is that it be read as “for an app.” Either way, there’s room for rejecting the Kindle app, and of course Apple reserves the right to do whatever for whatever reason.

Given the upcoming subscription feature launch, it wouldn’t surprise me if Apple’s reevaluating its stance on paid content for iPad apps. It would surprise me somewhat if they decided to tighten the screws on Amazon, and it would disappoint me, but it’s certainly possible. Check back in a month or so, I guess.

Oh, and a side note: the reason Kindle beats the crap out of the Apple iBookstore? Authors can’t link to the Apple iBookstore on their Web pages. I can’t buy while I’m sitting at my computer and push the book to my iPad. I gotta drag out the iPad, search, blah blah blah. Surprisingly bad design decision on Apple’s part. Killing the Kindle app (and presumably other ebook apps like the Nook app and perhaps Stanza) would really hurt the iPad as a book reader.

More on Evernote

January 20, 2011
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The CEO of Evernote posted a followup on their Mac App Store numbers. Convenient; I was wishing they would today. The rush of new Mac users tailed off quite a bit but it’s still a big percentage. He’s gone from thinking that mobile usage drives Evernote to believing that “the presence of a well-formed app store is the single most important factor for the viability of a platform for third party developers.”

I wish he’d talk about the percentages of users he’s getting from iOS vs. Android. It’s a free app on both platforms. Apple people like to critique the Android App Store for being junky, having low app size limits, and so on, but I’d rather see some actual numbers there.

Google and Video

January 18, 2011
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Google hates H.264! H.264 is used almost everywhere, not just for Web video; it’s also the Blu-Ray encoding standard. So this is very exciting.

Despite my knee-jerk pro-Apple response, I believe that Google is correct in stating that WebM is the better political choice for Web standards. It is open in the sense that there’s no licensing fee and Google has no ability to institute one. It is not an open standard insofar as the standard does not belong to an impartial standards body, which is slightly problematic, but practically speaking it’s not a huge deal. H.264 does, FWIW, belong to such a body. But it’s not free to license, and that is again the more important issue.

WebM may not be the better choice from a legal point of view, in that we don’t know if it’s encumbered by patents. It would be nice if Google would indemnify people using WebM from patent lawsuits, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to require them to do so. Google doesn’t have to do your legal work for you, even if it would be nice if they did. Anyhow, I am not competent to have an opinion on the legal issues, so “we don’t know.” If I needed to make a corporate decision about this I’d pay for a lawyer to tell me things.

Technically speaking I don’t care. Web video is not the place where I demand top-notch video quality. H.264 might be better; even if it is, it’s not going to matter 99% of the time.

Now the fun part. Google’s stance, while correct, is in direct conflict with their Flash support. Google’s statement: “Adobe Flash Player is the most widely used web browser plug-in. It enables a wide range of applications and content on the Internet, from games, to video, to enterprise apps.” So, yes, this is true. Likewise, H.264 is the most widely used Web video format, which enables a wide range of video on the Internet. You’re either making decisions based on usage or not.

Which makes me suspect that Google is, with WebM, making the right decision for the wrong reasons. This only makes me about 50% happy.

Edit: this post makes the excellent point that Flash does share one key characteristic with WebM: namely, it’s free to distribute. However, Adobe has not to my knowledge guaranteed this in perpetuity.

Mac App Store

January 10, 2011
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I tried it out; it does what you’d expect. But here’s the ridiculous news, which is best summarized by the following graph. Since the Mac App Store launch, more than half of Evernote’s new users have come from the Mac, compared to a minuscule percentage before the launch.

Evernote new user graph

I mean, it’s the first weekend, and I’m sure it’ll level out. But man.