Good moooooorning Toronto! Photo by gtall1 on Flickr. Some rights reserved
A quick burst of 16 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team
Where the iPad comes into its own >> Memex 1.1
John Naughton discovers a great new app, Soundnote: "At first sight it looks like any other notetaking App. But it has one magical ingredient: it can record audio and sync the recording to the typed notes. In other words, it does much of what my Livescribe pen does, but with none of the associated gadgetry — and cost. The Livescribe pen retails at around £120, and then there's the cost of the special notebooks (you can print your own special paper, but life's too short for that) on top."
HTML5 Conformance Test Results >> W3 Org
Pits Safari 5, Opera 11, Firefox 4b6, Google Chrome 7 and Internet Explorer 9 (preview 6) against the current HTML5 (not CSS3) testbed. See if you can guess what order they ranked before you click.
Windows Phone 7 "selling well" so far >> ZDNet UK
Jack Schofield looks at WP7's progress (though nobody can work out whether there's been a supply constraint or a mad dash to buy), and asserts: "It seems likely that the number of WP7 apps will overtake the number of iPhone apps, though most of the WP7 apps may be in-house programs that are invisible to consumers."
Filed away to revisit in the future, though it contains its own getout clause.
'Evilgrade' Gets an Upgrade >> Krebs on Security
Apps that are updated on Windows but don't use a cryptographic key can have updates spoofed. "Among the software products that Amato says EvilGrade can compromise are iTunes, Java, Skype, Winamp — even security applications like Superantispyware, Sunbelt and Panda Antirootkit (a longer list of vulnerable apps is available in the documentation)."
iTunes considered harmful.
Nokia Gets Support of ITC Staff in Apple Smartphone Trial - Bloomberg
Apple wants to get Nokia's phones ruled in breach of international rules, which would mean imports to the US would be blocked. (Would anyone notice?) Nokia, separately, wants to do the same to Apple.
Porn maker sues 7,098 alleged film pirates | Media Maverick - CNET News
"F--- 'em all," [Axel] Braun told Xbiz. "People don't realize that when you pirate a movie it hurts all of the people who work very hard to get it produced - from the cast to the production assistants to the makeup artists...So we are going after every one of them who pirates our content."
You mean they're not doing it for the enjoyment in those films? But they always sound so happy.
Google is lost in location-based battle with Facebook, will it check in? >> Scobleizer
Robert Scoble: "In the past, to find a business, we'd go to Google and type something like 'Palo Alto Sushi.'
"We're heading toward a world where you'll use location-based services to do the same thing. That is a HUGE disruptive threat to Google.
"Here's why.
"In Google's world they controlled everything and were able to decide which ads get displayed next to searches for businesses.
"The world has now shifted to where people like my wife stay signed into Facebook 18 hours a day. Now she can see which businesses her friends are using."
New IE 0-Day used in Targeted Attacks >> Symantec Connect
"Since the specific exploit page only worked when someone was using Internet Explorer 6 and 7, the script only transferred the visitor to the page hosting the exploit when this condition was met. In other cases the users didn't see anything but a blank website." There's a moral in here, if only we could disentangle it...
10 Reasons Python Rocks for Research >> Hoyt Koepke
Makes a lot of good points, though quite a few of them aren't exclusive to Python by any means; it's more the fact that you have all of them together in the package. (OK, tuples are clever once you find the right use for them.) But quite a few of these could be applied to, say, PHP.
Open data from the inside: Lichfield Council's Stuart Harrison >> Online Journalism Blog
"I think the main thing I've learnt is that APIs are great, but they're not always necessary. My early work was on APIs that link directly into databases, but, as I've moved forward, I've found that this isn't always necessary. While an API is nice to have, it's sometimes much better to just get the data out there in a raw format."
What do you have to believe for an Android dominated future? >> Asymco
Horace Dedlu asks calmly what it would take for Android to become dominant, what the constraints are, how the future looks. Consistently rational, and points out that those cheering Android have forgotten that Windows Phone is more likely to take share from there than from Nokia, Apple or RIM. "Looking at the world through modular/inter-dependent lenses lets you see that mobile platform dynamics will not evolve as they did in the PC era. At least not for the foreseeable future."
How much is that data plan going to cost you if you use internet TV? - The Globe and Mail
The unanswered question about Google TV (and similar TV-over-web plans, Apple): are they going to pay for all that streamed data? Because there's no sign in Canada (where this article applies) or the UK of "unlimited" data plans even on fixed broadband.
Recorded crime data at local authority level >> data.gov.uk
Come on, someone has to be able to do something dramatic with this innocent-looking CSV.
Apple confirms move to 90-second iTunes samples >> CNET News
Because it reckons you'll buy more tracks than with the present 30-second ones. Well, it gives you three times the chance of getting an earworm.
Amazing Facts About Facebook And Breakups >> Mathias Mikkelsen
Pre-Christmas is a minefield and spring is the worst. All human life is on Facebook, it seems.
iPhoto '11 updated to squash "extremely rare" library bug >> DownloadSquad
"Extremely rare". Suuuuure. The bug that deletes libraries whole. Mmm-hmm. The onle blamed on third-party plugins. Nobody uses those.
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The smartphone patents war, in diagram form.