Additional iPad Haptic Feedback Details

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Update: Completely false rumor.

My colleague, Jacquelyn Erdman, writing on her website, Technolust & Loathing:

In Oct 2010, at the ACM SIGCHI conference in NYC, grad students presented on this technology and allowed people to demo it. See my conference notes at: http://technolustandloathing.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/acm-uist-notes-4-next-generation-touch-screens. They students mentioned that “someone” bought the rights to the technology, but wouldn’t say who. I then saw a very tiny blurb about Apple having the technology in the ACM Communications magazine several months back. I actually thought they would have this up and running for the iPad 3, (see prediction here), but I wasn’t sure how quickly it would roll out as I thought the iPad 3 was going to be out for last holiday season. So, enough of my rolling of the eyes on the release and self-congratulations and let’s talk about the technology! Jacquelyn goes on to describe what it was like to use it, and speculates on how Apple has probably improved it since then (if this all turns out to be true). She wrote this piece shortly after I shared the news from Apple Insider this morning about Apple using technology in the new iPad to be announced today from a company called Senseg. This could be huge.

Update: Apple patented this tech in 2010.

Jacquelyn dug up this 21 month old article on Apple Insider.

Thieves Are Your Best Customers in Waiting

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David Sleight, writing on his website Stuntbox:

These days the most common answer I get to, “Why’d you pirate that?” isn’t, “It was free,” but, “It was the only way I could get my hands on it.” Or, “It was a bazillion times easier.” As Jeremy noted, users are correctly identifying Byzantine content delivery mechanisms as damage and routing around them. Here’s what content conglomerates need to realize: This is a good thing. Fantastic even. The audience is telling you, in no uncertain terms, they want your stuff. And they are telling you precisely what stuff. The people you’re calling “thieves” are telling you where you need to be. They are jumping through hoops only slightly less complicated than the ones you set out for them via official channels, displaying the sort of pent-up demand that should make you drool. This is what’s commonly referred to in business circles as an opportunity. An excellent post that I recommend you read in its entirety.

Mountain Lion: Hands On With Mail

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Dan Frakes, writing for Macworld on changes coming to Mail in Mountain Lion:

A VIP is any person you designate as being important enough to have their messages treated differently by Mail. You designate someone as a VIP by clicking the star icon to the left of the person's name in any incoming or sent message. You'll immediately notice that every message to or from that person now displays a star in message lists, making it easier to find those messages. In addition, when you designate a sender as a VIP, that person gets his or her own entry in a new VIPs section of Mail's Mailboxes sidebar. Click a VIP's name, and you get a list of all messages, across all mailboxes (including Sent and Trash), to or from that person. If like me, you use Mail exclusively, you'll want to read this article as it details all the gritty details of what's coming. Having been using the developer preview of Mountain Lion for 4 days already, I had not even noticed these changes yet.

Visualizing the iPad 3 Screen

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David Smith has posted an excellent comparison of the iPad 3 screen when stacked up against the various resolutions of existing iOS devices, Apple notebook machines and desktops. He makes an good point when talking about the insanely high resolution of a retina display on a 9.7" screen:

This will present problems for developers and designers of iPad apps unless Apple also releases a new display with either a higher resolution or a HiDPI mode. Otherwise we will no longer be able to view 1:1 mockups or run the simulator at full size without clipping part of the view. Check out the comparison chart he made on his site.

Two-Face: Will Google Become The New Patent Villain?

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MG Siegler, writing for Pandodaily:

This also presumably means they’ll be suing Microsoft and trying to bring down the H.264 video codec — which, by the way, Google created a competitor to (WebM) out of fear that someone would come along one day and try to enforce patents that would kill the H.264 video codec. How’s that for a mind fuck? Indeed. Make sure you read his whole piece. Good read.

Evil

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There has been some recent news in the last month that I want to talk about. Google announced several weeks ago the new Google+ infected search results, where they attempt to shove as many aspects of Google+ in front of the user, whether the user wants it or not. This goes against something Google has said they never would do, for years and years - polluting their own search results with preferences of their products over competitors. Back in the late '90s and early '00s this is the exact reason many people switched to Google in the first place. All of ther competitors pulled bullshit such as this, and Google being the "good guy" did not. Zuckerberg and his monstrosity has them so scared that they've now abandonned their own principles in the name of market share. In recent weeks, a new browser bookmarklet has emerged for improving Google web search results by eliminating the special tratment of Google Plus pages. The bookmarklet, called "Focus on the User", as John Gruber writes:

Open source “Don’t be evil” bookmarklet that uses Google’s own data to show social results ranked by relevance instead of promoting Google Plus above all others. John Battelle wrote an article on the motivation behind and creation of the Focus on the User bookmarklet. Danny Sullivan also wrote an explanation as to how it works. MG Siegler chimed in as well: But again, the key issue here is that what Google is doing with Search+ is making Google worse. This bookmarklet illustrates that in a very effective way.  And, if all of that wasn't enough, Google's new privacy policy changes come to mind. These have gotten so much attention that main-stream sources are writing about it. A good start is "Google's Broken Promise: The End of 'Don't Be Evil'" by Mat Honan (note, John Gruber says that "'Don't be evil' has been over for a long time."
The Electronic Freedom Foundation posted a good artile on their blog conceringing Google's privacy policy changes. Danny Sullivan, at SearchEngineLand writes: In many ways, this is Google growing up into the new portal it has become. Rather than people signing up for individual products, Gmail, YouTube and so on, they’re now signing-up for Google — or at least a single set of terms (in most cases) for all the company’s products. It’s similar to how you sign-up for Facebook, rather than individual products within Facebook. Whether you like it or not. MG Sielger wrote, over at the new PandoDaily, that the reason Google is making all of these user hostile moves is simply due to their continued need to be relevant (as their own ads, their primary revenue source, rely on this). Sarah Lacy touched on both the topics of their privacy policy changes and their new compromised search results in an article called "Google: Do Yourself a Favor and Just Come Clean Already". I wish to point all of these things out to you dear reader, because I'm beginning to feel that my thoughts I put down on pixel, some months ago, are starting to feel more and more like a very good decision.