Antennagate is Over, but is Glassgate next?
A design flaw in the new iPhone 4 could make it easy to crack the glass-backed devices. The cause? Slider cases. This is probably the reason why Apple gave out bumper cases to fix the antenna scandal. It also explains why these bumper cases not only cover the antenna, “fixing” the death-grip issue, but also make no contact with the back of the phone.
While we’ve had our own concerns over the iPhone 4’s glass back, what the iPhone engineering team discovered post-Antennagate, according to Block, is that non-bumper cases that slide onto the iPhone 4 can cause scratching when particles get between the case and the glass. Those scratches can lead to serious cracking in no time.
via Gizmodo
Google Researches Cars That Drive Themselves
The search giant, Google, is branching out in all types of directions in order to expand it’s ad revenue business. They’re on your computer, they’re on your phone, and now on your TV. These all seem to make a lot of sense from a business standpoint, but why are they trying to drive your car? This is the question many techies were asking themselves when Google announced their self-driving car. Apparently, this research has been going on for at least a year.
As ZDNet, Scoble, and Arrington point out: it really doesn’t matter why they’re doing it, we should just be happy that they are. Research and development is becoming a thing of the past as companies are pushed by investors to launch products instead of actually researching new things. No R&D means no innovation. No innovation means no artificial intelligence to eventually enslave humanity and we all know that is the ultimate goal.
MySpace Spaces Out on New Logo
Yes, the image above will be the new logo for MySpace when their redesign launches at the end of this year. According to MySpace VP of User Experience Mike Macadaan “MySpace is a platform for people to be whatever they want, so we’ve decided to give them the space to do it.” I’m assuming the “no pun intended” was cut from this quote. To be fair, the logo is supposed to be more like a Google Doodle, allowing the user to customize it to fit their personality. Looking at it from that perspective, it seems kind of cool. In any case, MySpace can do whatever they want at this point as it seems impossible for them to gather any more haters. via TechCrunch
Twitter Finally Serious About Monetizing
The running joke about Twitter is that they have the world’s attention and are not making much money from it. They don’t know how to monetize. Recent events are changing that perspective, though. They have been experimenting with promoted tweets and ads for a little while now. Apparently, these are going well. According to newly promoted CEO Dick Costolo, “We’re definitely beyond the experimentation stage. It’s working.” He later said, “We feel like we’ve cracked the code on a new form of advertising, and we feel like we’ve got a hit on our hands.” via NYT