Introducing Google Currents
On June 24, US Congress passed the bill, allowing those who first submit an application get their ideas patented, instead of the first to invent. It also ensured that the Patent and Trademark Office keeps more of the revenue from inventor’s fees with which to fund itself. Bloomberg reports that in an 89-9 vote yesterday, the Senate cleared the bill that was passed in Congress – known now as the America Invents Act – which will now be passed to the White House to be signed by President Obama.
GOP lawmaker who voted for a ban on gay marriage caught trying to solicit a gay man on Craigslist
I am both shocked and surprised*
The emails, sent from Rep. Phillip Hinkle’s publicly listed personal address, ask the young man for “a couple hours of your time tonight” and offer him cash up front, with a tip of up to $50 or $60 “for a really good time.”
Via bringtheruckuss
* I am neither shocked, nor surprised. How does the expression go? Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Oh, and this.
Cascade - The New York Times understands the importance of measuring connections visually. News organisations will have the ability to see the spread/influence of a story and involve community super-users in the creation of actual opinion content. Welcome to the future, baby.
Page views will, if people are smart, become a redundant metric for tracking the success of a website. Advertisers/Ad Sales take heed, you need to develop systems that allow for the way things are going, not the way things are.
HitPad - Another iPad news reader.
Murdoch finally launched The Daily yesterday. It’s the first iOS app to employ in-app subscriptions.
I’ve tried to like it, I really have, but at a $30 Million initial development budget and an overhead of $500,000 a week, I’m underwhelmed by both the design and the engineering. I wont belabour the point, but my two largest peeves are as follows.
How it is that I am able to play Dead Space at a blistering frame rate, but scrolling through the carousel of news articles on the home page is akin to one of those deeply unpleasant nightmares where you’re being pursued by something dripping in 14 kinds of evilness and unable to run away?
You are a news application; it should not take 47 seconds to load my content every time I open you. I don’t care if your articles look prettier, I can sync 1500 stories from Google Reader using Reeder in less time. I’m betting Silvio Rizzi, the extremely talented author of Reeder didn’t quite have your budget. As you open the application, a branded, broadcast-style splash page performs no function other than reinforcing how smart your audience is that they tapped on the right icon. Well done them! I bet they’re so proud with themselves.
