April 2012

There were 24 posts published in April 2012 (this is page 3 of 3).

New Design, New Name

I’ve been meaning to update the design on my blog for quite a while now, and I finally got around to doing it. I felt like the old design was a little too severe with all that harsh black and white. This new version is a little softer, has better fonts, and is better optimized for devices like the iPhone and iPad. This also gave me a chance to rip out a bunch of the WordPress junk, like comments and categories, that I don’t really use.
To go along with the new look, the blog has a new name. A few months ago a friend of mine posted on Facebook something along the lines of “It’s 10 minutes to midnight, and I’m just now eating dinner!” The line “minutes to midnight” jumped out at me immediately. My first reaction was, naturally, “That would be a great name for a band!” Since it’s unlikely I’ll ever be in a band, the next best thing was to use it as a name for the blog.

So, to sum up: new look, new name, everything else stays pretty much the same.

iPhone Sales by Store Type

The article focuses a lot on Best Buy, but I’m more interested that the number of iPhones sold directly by carriers instead of by Apple itself. AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint collectively accounted for 69% of all iPhones sold between December 2011 and February 2012, while Apple sold only 15% of the total. It’s a much better experience to buy directly from Apple, but it seems most people’s first stop when shopping for a new phone is their service provider.

Project Glass

Cool concept video of the Project Glass augmented reality project from Google. It’s pretty out there, and I shudder to think of the privacy implications, but it’s an undeniably interesting idea. Feels more like something out of a sci-fi movie than current technology.

Flexible E-Ink

The new plastic display has a resolution of 1024×768 and is six inches across the diagonal, which is comparable to the Kindle and Nook. Because it’s made of plastic and not glass, though, the LG display is half the weight (14g) and 30% thinner (0.7mm) than a comparable, glass e-ink panel. Existing e-book readers need to be thick (and heavy) to protect the glass display, but LG is promising that its display is a lot more rugged. The press release says that the plastic display survives repeated 1.5-meter drop tests and break/scratch tests with a small hammer, and that it’s flexible up to 40 degrees from the mid point.

I don’t feel much need for an e-ink display in addition to my iPad, but this could change my mind.