It’s hard not to see the lawsuit as a patent troll—especially given the fact that Interval doesn’t actually produce any products and the word “licensing” is right in the company’s name. Still, Allen and his spokesperson David Postman clearly believe that they are defending a concept that is not practically universal among search engines and web browsers, but rather something that would not exist at all had Interval not come up with it.
“We are not asserting patents that other companies have filed, nor are we buying patents originally assigned to someone else,” Postman said in a statement. “These are patents developed by and for Interval.”
A Google spokesperson responded to the lawsuit by saying that it uses the patent system to work against innovation, not for it. “This lawsuit against some of America’s most innovative companies reflects an unfortunate trend of people trying to compete in the courtroom instead of the marketplace,” the spokesperson said. “Innovation—not litigation—is the way to bring to market the kinds of products and services that benefit millions of people around the world.”
Microsoft cofounder drops patent bomb on Apple, Google, Facebook
Patent troll? Yes. The patent system really needs to be reworked in light of the direction of technology. Let’s follow Australia’s lead and kill software patents altogether.
If you are a PC gamer and even have the slightest interest in fantasy or RPGs you need to go pick up The Witcher on sale this weekend for $10.
I’m playing through it now and it’s awesome, I like it better then Dragon Age actually—and I’ve been accused of being a Bioware fanboy.
The Void and several other games are also on sale on Impulse.
Catalyst for classroom participation At Abilene Christian—where the iPad is being distributed to 100 students in two pilot program classes—Dr. Ian Shepherd has designed his fall Econ 261 class to incorporate a digital textbook from McGraw-Hill, the Blackboard Learning Mobile app, as well as PDFs of supplemental texts. He’s perhaps most excited about the No Advance NOtice (NANO), an ACU-built assessment tool that lets him instantly quiz the entire class using polls, true-false questions and open-ended essay queries. He believes that tool will help him draw reticent students into classroom discussions. He’s taking aim at the “20-80 Rule”—the belief among educators that 20 percent of students dominate classroom time.
“With the device I have available, I can ensure participation from across the board,” Shepherd said. “I know there’s always going to be free riders, there’s always going to be someone there who had a bad night. What I’m hoping to do with the tools is flip that to an 80-20.”
How schools are putting the iPad to work | Business Center | Macworld
America’s education system is broken, embracing modern technology to provide a better learning environment is one of the things schools need to do to fix it.
Doesn’t need to be an iPad, by the way, but it is a compelling device for keeping students focused while also being powerful enough that students will make them part of their daily life outside of school (unlike maybe the Kindle DX).
Super interesting that one of the schools commented on the lack of multi-tasking being a useful feature for them, not that the technical kids aren’t going to get around that one way or another.
Very solid take on the current state of web design applications (and why they all suck right now).
With Flux 3 just released I wonder how well it stacks up to Jason’s wish list. Need to spend some time with it and find out.
Judge Walker also makes these legal findings:
• Same-sex marriage meets the historical requirements to be “marriage” rather than some new thing.
• Domestic partnerships are not close enough to the same thing as marriage.
• Prop. 8 does not serve a legitimate government interest—let alone a compelling government interest.
• Prop. 8 discriminates on both sex and sexual orientation.
• The highest level of scrutiny should be applied.
• Even if we used the lowest level of scrutiny, Prop. 8 would fail because Prop. 8 satisfies no government interest.
• A private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex couples is not a proper basis for legislation
Proposition 8 was ruled unconstitutional.
Squashed: The Proposition 8 Ruling (in simple language)
I couldn’t agree more.
<3
Defcon :: View topic - Coming Clean
I really appreciate these guys candor and honesty, I wish more companies would be willing to be this up front with—not users—fans and friends. It’s about the relationship.
Defcon does some very interesting and gorgeous Tron influenced games that you should check out if you’re at all into strategy. Actually, if you’re not already into strategy some of Defcon’s games aren’t a bad place to start.
Pondering Apple’s September 1 media event | iPod & Entertainment | Playlist | Macworld
This is a nice idea, gaming on an Apple TV, and I’m sure it would have some draw for casual gamers but that’s a hard space to enter with three firmly embedded consoles covering the full spectrum from casual to hard-core. The problem is that Apple doesn’t have any of the big connections with game developers of ‘high-resolution’ games.
Unless they’re working with Valve that is.
If they take an App Store approach and present an iOS API familiar to developers making games on the iOS devices they could do really well. But they need the adoption rate to compel developers of current iOS devices already maintaining three different resolutions & UI conventions for their games to add a fourth to their support list.
I don’t want to say that it will never happen, but it feels like they’ve got the cards stacked against them (not that they haven’t overcome that before) but it’s a direction Apple hasn’t moved on in the past. Does the target audience for an Apple TV want to play games? Is that a bonus or a killer feature for them? Doesn’t seem like it to me, but it will be interesting to see where this could go.
Apple looking at dual-mode touchscreen desktops and laptops
Interesting take, I do think we will see more convergence and things like address books can be standardized. I’m not sure I fully buy that the two operating systems will merge in the future, at least anytime soon.
Inside Snow Leopard Graphics Update’s surprising gains | Games | MacUser | Macworld
Like David, I’m optimistic about the future of Mac gaming. However, there are some very big challenges ahead that I believe will slow Mac adoption as a gaming system.
As Dave points out, the largest challenge is hardware; particularly not hardware that can be upgraded without a huge investment in the first place. Apple’s non-upgradeable systems aren’t exactly much better either given the higher price you pay for a decent system. Pricing out a Macbook this last weekend getting even the lowest end Apple laptop cost as much as $400 more then similar PC laptops in terms of CPU, GPU & RAM. Granted, you’re going to get stuck with a crap case/size, keyboard and trackpad, not to mention battery life. High specs aren’t that important to a lot of Mac users, other then organizing large photo libraries or watching Flash videos they’ll rarely see their CPU’s jump (they might run out of RAM though). Gamers are a lot less forgiving, they live by the power of their machines and they will often pay a premium for high performance hardware but typically at heavily budgeted prices by building and upgrading their own systems.
Until Apple addresses this market it’s going to hold the platform back. Existing Apple users will start gaming on their Apple hardware, but gamers won’t go out and buy Apple hardware unless they find other features compelling.
The other issue is that we need to see more game developers join the fray, Valve (and Blizzard) is big, especially for PC gamers but they are hardly the only AAA developer that needs to get on board before the Mac gaming platform is fully legitimized. The rub here is that while PC gaming is experiencing a bit of a resurgence lately it is still shadowed by cheaper and more accessible consoles. If PC is a niche of gaming how much more so is the Mac? A lot rides on the next few years and particularly what and when the next generation of consoles will arrive to catch up with the quality higher performance PC’s can produce. OnLive is another big question mark, if it’s adopted widely and cloud gaming grows that could change the playing field significantly.
Google is talking about fighting piracy, but perhaps the first thing they should focus on is actually making it possible for users to buy apps. All users. Sounds rather logical, doesn’t it? So what are we talking about? The problem lies with Android Market.
You can only pay for apps in 13 out of the 46 or so countries where Android phones are available. For those of you who like stats, 13 in 46 works out to less than 30%. Contrast this with Apple’s App Store, which supports paid apps in 90 countries. This is a huge advantage iPhone developers currently have over Android developers.
This is, in our opinion, one of the main reasons why piracy is running rampant on the Android platform. If a large portion of the world’s Android users can’t even pay for apps, is it so strange that some of them turn to piracy?
