Wayne Pan

• momentile.com’s IE6 denial page. http://www.flickr.com/photos/robotjohnny/3629069606/sizes/l/ Awesome. #
• Thanks Apple, you totally busted -webkit-transition’s in iPhone 3.0 #
• http://twitpic.com/88gs7 - Google getting better at real time search? #
• Yes emoji made it through to the new iPhone ???? #
• http://twitpic.com/8fiau - Oops by Google: “this is a dummy ad do not run me in the wild” #
• We instill in our kids that hitting is bad, yet when a piñata is in front of them we say beat the shit out of it and you’ll get candy! #

• Well one thing that iPhone 3.0 doesn’t fix, Update All in the app store. Just asked to accept new ToS 10x’s. #
• Wait… so iPhone 3.0 GM == 3.0 GA? Same firmware #, same md5? YAY, this means I made it to 3.0 GA w/ tethering intact! #
• Apple just emailed me about an iPhone touch bug I filed 1y ago. They claim 3.0 fixed it, no! I’m betting a mass email 2 check ur bugs in 3.0 #
• Why Apple needs to make an iPhone keyboard. http://bit.ly/dql1X #

Apple needs to introduce a physical keyboard attachment for the iPhone. With the 3.0, Apple gave developers access to the connector and it’s inevitable that devs will want to start supporting physical inputs in their apps. This would be so much easier if Apple said okay here’s the keyboard and here is a standardized API to use. Consumers and developers both win.

Let’s imagine Apple doesn’t do an OEM keyboard. A third party manufacture is going to fill the space but who will it be? Which apps support it? What if there are multiple keyboards that each work with different apps? Am I, as a consumer, going to have to decide which one to buy and hope my favorite apps support it?

The scenario above could be absolutely avoid if Apple puts out their own keyboard. If Apple is serious about the iPhone being a gaming platform then a gamepad would be nice too.

There are more than enough reviews out there of the Palm Prē out there so this won’t be one of them (I leave that to the professionals ;)).

I had a chance to actually play with a production Prē today and here are my impressions:

• It’s small. Much smaller than an iPhone when closed
• I almost cut my finger when I slid the keyboard down. I can’t believe they let those sharp edges out of the factory
• screen is absolutely beautiful, crisper than my iPhone
• Everything is rounded, almost to a fault.
• It’s blazingly fast. Rendering a webpage is quicker than any other mobile device I’ve come across
• In some cases they give no visual feedback that something has happened. For example if you click on a link in the browser, it just sits there. Something should happen on the screen to indicate that I’ve taken an action. These rough edges make it obviously the Prē was rushed.
• Multi-tasking is huge. Once you’re accustom to switching apps without quitting, I’m not sure you’ll be able to go back to the iPhone way.

Only time well tell if the Prē catches up to the iPhone on the software/app front. The only leg up that the Prē has is multi-tasking which I’m sure Apple will eventually let out of the bag. (I think Apple will roll out “approved” apps that are approved to run in the background, it’s inevitable.)

On the hardware front, I think all the Prē reviews have been unfairly comparing the iPhone 3G against the Prē. The fair fight is the iPhone 3G S vs Prē and if you’ve read the reviews that hit the web today, the iPhone 3G S wins hands down.

Overall, I think Palm has a winner on it’s hands. Palm has a strong chance to second in marketshare behind Apple if they can deliver WebOS on multiple carriers and on multiple devices.

• Why do I have to restart just to install Safari? Am I running WinXP or OS X here?!? #
• I?#gmail. Friends kept 1-off typoing my gmail addr so I created an actual account for typo addr & enabled fwding to myself, problem solved #
• I didn’t notice at first, but they took out the blue loading progress bar and replace it w/ a spinner. No indication of progress! #safari4 #
• Funny, crunchgear now has an interview up w/ the artist from the Feel Good Inc. cover I tweeted about a couple days ago. http://bit.ly/K2Z1X #
• ATTN wordpress users. Stop using this theme: http://www.neoease.com/inove/ kthxbye. #
• Advertising every where, even on your airline tray table. http://twitpic.com/7697t #
• 7:30am -> LAS -> delay -> SFO -> Bart -> CalTrain -> taxi -> car -> home ETA: 2:30. Public transportation is hard. #

• Switching to green tea for a week (instead of espresso w/ a splash of soy). Productivity++ or –? #
• best website loading screen http://bit.ly/5RTcF
  [NSFi - Not Safe For iPhone] #
• Starting Time Machine. 1,435,812 items, 89.79 GB to a poor 5400rpm WD Passport. This might take a while. #
• Saw this on digg the other day; awesome Feel Good Inc cover: http://bit.ly/2shdq0 #
• svn co http://svn.webkit.org/repository/webkit/trunk

  A shame when I have to dig through source code to find out how to do something in js. #

• Great now I have to take my “Sent from my Palm Pre” email sig down now that it’s out. #

• A year and a half in the making… I can finally put this game away! http://twitpic.com/5zaj0 #
• Netbeans for PHP is the new ? IDE. I even has (vim) autocomplete/(emacs) hippie-complete! #
• http://bit.ly/PSSrg
  aka do wtf you want, as long as you don’t sue us. #
• Too much sand in the SD 790 from pismo this weekend. ANOTHER canon powershot broken. 2nd one in a year What to buy this time… #
• Popular languages on GitHub ranked by number of bytes stored: http://gist.github.com/118810 #
• “My hive query is running” is the new “My code is compiling” excuse to take breaks. #

• Local carwash on Twitter http://twitpic.com/5e7nb #
• MobileMe is SLOW today, taking 5 mins to send mail. I’m only renewing if I can get another year for $50 on eBay. #
• Yes! Adium beta now has IRC. http://beta.adium.im/ Bye bye colloquy. #
• Renewed MobileMe 1y for $50, get one on eBay: http://bit.ly/GB4cp before the rush (iPhone 3g anniversary). Watch out for “Sub” accounts #
• OS X Pro Tip: Full paths in Finder title bar! http://bit.ly/N0F5Z #
• According to this Apple Store display, the iPhone already has a compass! http://twitpic.com/5llb4 #
• There’s hope for a Color Kindle! http://bit.ly/32zv #
• Current sucker count for my “Sent from My Palm Pre” email sig: 8. Only 14 more days left… after that, the sig will just be sad. =( #
• Early bird gets the worm. Okay then how late do I have to get up to get the bacon? #
• I ? iPhone tethering. Take that expensive hotel wifi. #

• Physics WIN! http://digg.com/d1qvhP (via @kevinrose) #
• kindle dx thoughts… http://bit.ly/cKJW3 #
• nice collection of apple wallpapers http://bit.ly/6YjDD #

Disclaimer: The last book I fiction book I’ve read was probably in high school, and probably The Catcher in the Rye. However, I read. From technical books, to blogs, to magazines… to me reading is reading.

I’ll get straight the point since this post won’t carry much weight anyway. I don’t see the point of the Kindle DX. Let’s take a look at it from various value propositions.

Newspaper Replacement

Great. Let’s go green, get rid of the insanely inefficient newspaper delivery system. From paper, to ink, to delivery trucks, to ultra-wasteful fully stocked newspaper machines going digital will do everybody a whole lot of good.

Consumers get their news faster, the newspapers cut out fixed costs and go digital. WIN-WIN. The only thing I see missing from this picture is the advertising space that newspapers are missing. But that can be mitigated by selling more targeted ads, better ad targeting system, and geo targeted ads even. Right now there’s little or no metrics on ads put into newspapers.

This all sounds great, except for the fact that I already get all these newspapers digitally. nytimes.com, NYT iPhone app, it’s already here and it’s free. Why would I need a Kindle for this? On top of that, does the Kindle version of NY Times off the crossword puzzle?

Textbook Replacement

Textbooks cost, $80, and you have to buy them every year. There’s no pricing yet on Amazon’s digital versions but I’m going to go out on a limb and say they’ll be less than $80. Fantastic! Cheaper textbooks (forgetting the fact that the Kindle itself will be $489 unsubsidized) are a win for any college student. However, you’re missing the tactile feel of having a physical book. Dogging pages, highlighting excepts, scribbling notes on the sides. You’ll be missing all those!

What would be great would be a touchscreen notebook reader that OCRs your scribbled notes. That way you can get full indexing and search.

eBook Reader

Granted, I don’t read much outside of magazine or blogs. That might be because I have ADD but it might just be that I like my news and information in bit sized portions. If they made the Kindle color (which I think you need to properly absorb a magazine article) and offer me a subscription of magazines delivered digitally then I might just consider it.

In the end, Amazon jilted their Kindle fans, who most likely just purchased a Kindle 2 months ago by launching the Kindle DX. They got the pricing wrong, $489, when they should have worked with newspapers to offer some sort of subsidized version of the Kindle. They obviously didn’t get the textbook replacement since only a small handful of universities are taking part in the pilot.

But who knows, maybe piracy will save the Kindle.