It’s true. I’ve been staring at two large glowing rectangles for 8 hours now, taking occasional breaks to stare at a smaller glowing rectangle (as I did on my lunch break), and will probably spend some time staring at one of several glowing rectangles during my evening at home.
It really sounds pathetic when you put it that way.
Report: 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles – The Onion
A lot of web developers have forgotten the lessons of IE6, and just as they used to build desktop websites coded only for one engine, now they’re coding mobile sites specifically for Webkit, even when other browsers would be perfectly capable of rendering the designs they want.
This is exactly the sort of thing that gave IE6 such a stranglehold on the web for so many years (and as much as we’d like it to be, it’s not dead yet), with Netscape/Mozilla and Opera completely marginalized until Firefox managed to break through. It’s not quite so bad because two companies are driving WebKit (Apple & Google) rather than just one (Microsoft), but let’s try to learn from history this time around instead of repeating it.
Call for action on Vendor Prefixes – The Web Standards Project
The Web Standards Project is a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.
Originally posted on Google+
Years ago, I wanted a smartphone so I could write down all the blog posts I compose in my head when I’m away from a computer. Now that I have one, I end up reading Facebook, Twitter, or Google Plus instead, and I compose blog posts in my head when I’m away from both my computer AND my phone. Maybe I just need a pencil and notepad.
Cool idea: Google is designing a “Web intents” system for web apps similar to intents in Android. For those who haven’t used Android, “intents” allow apps to register actions they can take — such as “I can share (or edit) images!” — and other apps to hand data over to them. That way your camera app doesn’t need to know about every possible image-sharing or editing app you can put on your phone.
Now they’re extending the idea to web applications. There’s a JavaScript-based proof of concept, and they’re planning to add native support to Chrome.
Originally posted on Google+
Update: While it would have been cool, Web Intents never got off the ground. Paul Kinlan describes what happened.
I got hit by the mysterious overnight battery drain that’s been affecting G2 owners over the past week or so. Without using it at all, it had dropped to 58% battery. No, I haven’t received the OTA update to Gingerbread yet. Reports have been that it might be related to a Google Maps update that came out last week. Seeing as how I checked the battery usage and it showed 91% was Maps, and I hadn’t used Maps since several hours before I plugged it in last night, that seems highly likely.
I figure there are two reasons it hit now and not earlier.
My guess: Maps isn’t shutting down properly, and if GPS is enabled, it’s calling out and using up power.
The other weird thing: Before I realized I’d left GPS on, I uninstalled updates to Google Maps. Then I went back to the battery usage report, and instead of 91% Maps and tiny percentages of others, it showed the more typical 30% Cell standby, 30% Wi-Fi, etc. I suspect uninstalling the updates may have removed it from the battery usage report, and I was seeing the remaining 9% blown up to 100%.
Update (Wed): I reinstalled the Maps update and made a point of turning off both GPS and Wi-Fi when I charged the phone that evening. No battery drain during the 8 hours between the time I unplugged it last night and the time I picked it up this morning. Tonight I’m going to try it with just Wi-Fi and no GPS and see what happens.
Update (Fri): Well, that was unexpected. I turned GPS off and left Wi-Fi on last night, and the phone was down to 55% battery when I woke up this morning. Even though I know it had a stable signal since it was sitting 4 feet away from the access point. I would have thought GPS was a more likely culprit, but this suggests otherwise. Tonight I’ll have to try it the other way around.
Update (Sat): Last night I turned off Wi-Fi and turned on GPS before unplugging it from the charger. This morning I forgot to check the battery level, but I looked at it just after noon — and it’s still at 90% after at least 12 hours.
To make matters more interesting, Katie has long had problems with her Vibrant losing battery quickly, but since she turned off Wi-Fi, she’s been able to go several days between charges.
I think we’ve found the culprit. The question remains, though: why now? What is the phone doing over wifi that it wasn’t before?
A few months ago, Amazon opened a section of their online store where they sell apps for Android devices. Following the same boring-but-descriptive naming scheme that Microsoft pioneered with such products as a word processor called Microsoft Word, a flight simulator called Microsoft Flight Simulator, and so forth, they call it the Amazon Appstore.
Apple, of course, is suing them for trademark infringement. Amazon’s stance: “App store” is a generic, descriptive term for a store that sells apps. Apple counters: “Is not!”
It’s a bit more eloquent than that, but look at this:
“Apple admits that the current edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘app’ as, in part, ‘[a]n application, esp. an application program,” Apple said in the court filing. “Apple further admits that the current edition of the New Oxford American Dictionary defines ‘store’ as, in part, ‘a retail establishment selling items to the public: a health-food store.'”
And the best part:
“Apple denies that, based on their common meaning, the words ‘app store’ together denote a store for apps,” the document said. [emphasis added]
Really? Funny, I thought that was how the English language worked.
(In the interest of full disclosure: I own an Apple laptop, and Android phone, and use Amazon’s affiliate program…but not their app store.)
