Bitsplitting With Amanda Wixted

The latest podcast episode is live, featuring Amanda Wixted of Zynga and Namco fame. I met Amanda several years ago at (I believe) the second C4 conference in Chicago. Since then I have had the opportunity to run into her at various conferences, and was honored to have her join me in New York for the iOS Radio Hour, along with Buzz Andersen and Marco Arment.

I was surprised to learn that Amanda grew up primarily in Europe and the Middle East, and yet she wound up attending High School in Pebble Beach, California, near my home town of Santa Cruz. I hope you enjoy learning more about her story and the path that led her to a career as a professional mobile game developer. Thanks for joining me on the show, Amanda!

Respect The Crowd

Everybody knows Apple’s maps are not as good as Google’s maps.

If somebody had belligerently stated a year ago that “Apple is not going to just walk in and be a serious player in maps,” they would have been proven right. Apple shipped their own Maps app on iOS 6, displacing the Google maps that had been a key component of the operating system since 1.0, and set the overall usability and “magic-ness” of iOS back a few notches.

It’s all about the data. It doesn’t matter how beautiful Apple’s maps are, or how quickly they load, if they consistently assign wrong names and locations to the businesses and landmarks that customers search for on a daily basis. Here’s a map of “Spy Pond Park,” a neighborhood playground and baseball field that is central to many iPhone-toting parents’ regular routines. Inexplicably, Apple’s Maps refers to it as “Boston Park”:

SpyPondPark

Upon upgrading to iOS 6, this landmark was one of the first locations I looked up. Finding it mislabeled, I dutifully selected the “Report a Problem” option and submitted detailed correction information.

That was over 6 months ago. Today it’s still “Boston Park” on my phone. And it’s infuriating.

It’s not just “Boston Park.” My local post office shows up on the wrong side of the street. The nearest Whole Foods supermarket is purported to exist in an industrial park behind the local subway station, when it is actually located across the expressway and down the road about 1/4 mile. Other parks in my town are represented as large blank areas on the map, not locatable by name, even through trial and error.

Each of these issues is minor in isolation, but the weight in accumulation is enough to drive any sensible person to another mapping solution. If you can’t trust your Maps app to get you where you need to be, then you can’t use the Maps app. That is unfortunate, indeed.

I was among the most excited of Apple fanboys when I first heard the rumors about Apple entering the mapping market. I put my faith in Apple’s ability to zero in on the remaining nuanced usability problems in maps: the things that Google had overlooked. Instead, I learned upon updating that I had lost access to the effortless transit directions I had grown so accustomed to, and lost all faith in the accuracy of Maps’s data.

It would be foolish to expect perfection from any map, but to be a serious contender the data has to be reputable enough that mistakes are an exception rather than the rule. But more importantly for an app with such a critical impact on day-to-day living, it’s imperative that corrections to the data be as useful to the consumer as to the vendor. Currently, corrections to Apple’s Maps app are only useful to Apple, presuming they are taking them into consideration at all.

In the old days of paper maps, we expected the data to be mostly accurate, but could accommodate an occasional error. Street names change. Town borders shift. Highways are demolished and reconstructed. But in the old days, corrections were also as easy as applying pen to paper: mark out the mistake and clarify the current state of the world. One deft move and the problematic map was fixed — for the owner — forever.

I commend Apple for including the “Report a Problem” feature in their Maps app from day one. They knew that the data was not bulletproof, and they understood that their vast, loyal user base was a great resource for improving it. But I think this reporting process is failing Apple precisely because corrections to Apple’s maps lack all of the advantages of the-fashioned old pen & paper method. After laboriously detailing the problems with a point of interest in Apple’s maps, correcting its name, dragging its pinpoint to a corrected location, etc., the user is rewarded with continuing to suffer using the app with the incorrect data.

These are the most important points of data in Apple’s maps: the ones that a specific user has taken pains to refine and finesse. And Apple opts to leave them in their infuriating, sometimes dangerous state of error, making the app decreasingly useful to the customer.

I’m holding out hope that Apple is working on some major coup for the integrity of their mapping data. It would be fantastic if they announced at WWDC, for example, that they have listened to feedback from developers and customers, and are embracing some new approach to gathering and refining mapping data. Could they have something up their sleeve that would facilitate leap-frogging Google and other POI data-mongers? We can only hope.

In the absence of such improvements they should offer their users something akin to the instant fixes that were afforded by pen and paper. When I report to Apple through my own copy of Maps that the post office is in the wrong place, it should no longer be up for debate where the post office is. When I state with no uncertainty that “Boston Park” is actually called “Spy Pond Park,” I should from that point onward be able to request “directions to Spy Pond Park” without frustration.

Crowdsourcing data refinement can be a very powerful tool. Look at the success Wikipedia has had in their efforts to catalog, in a nutshell, high-level synopses of all the world’s encyclopedic data. Wikipedia works because well-intentioned contributors who spot an omission or error in the data can submit a fix and see the changes immediately. Never again (unless the change is explicitly backed out) will they be punished by reading the non-factual or incomplete information that prompted them to take action.

There are good arguments for why Apple can’t be quite as open as Wikipedia, or to choose a more apt comparison, as open as OpenStreetMap. Apple puts their brand on the iPhone because it is supposed to exude quality, and they expect to be held responsible for the quality of that product from top to bottom. Completely opening mapping data for iOS would undoubtedly lead to attempts at sabotaging Apple’s reputation by injecting embarrassingly incorrect data into the database.

On the other hand, completely botching map data in many locales, while doing little or nothing to address the problem, is also detrimental to Apple’s brand. I used to sing the praises of my iPhone above all competitors. Now, when I am jarred from my fanboy-hypnosis, staring down at an alleged life-changer that doesn’t know how to get me from point A to point B, I’m not so convinced I can defend it.

In order for Apple’s customers to continue “reporting a problem” with Maps, they need to feel that their reports are having some impact. They need to feel respected. Ideally, good reports would lead to timely corrections on a mass level that would benefit all other iOS users. Anecdotally, this is not happening. So at a minimum a user’s own report should be respected by the device they hold in their hands. Let the customer know their voice was heard by improving the usability of their device immediately. Customers demand confidence in map data, whether it be from Apple or fine-tuned by their own hand. If we can’t count on map data, we won’t use the app, we won’t report problems, and we won’t help Apple one iota in shoring up this massive shortcoming.

Bitsplitting With Brent Simmons

Episode 5 of the Bitsplitting Podcast is up, featuring my friend Brent Simmons of NetNewsWire, MarsEdit, and Glassboard fame.

After getting to know Brent a bit online through the developer community, I finally got the chance several years ago to meet him in person at the very first C4 conference. It was only a short time after meeting that he approached me about acquiring MarsEdit. The rest, as they say, is history. I now have the pleasure of seeing Brent once or twice a year. I always have a blast chatting, laughing, and sometimes singing with him.

It was a great time talking with Brent about his upbringing in the greater Philadelphia area, his frustrated attempts to finish college, and the circuitous path that led him to starting his own software company. Thanks for joining me on the show, Brent!

You Can Check Out Anytime You Like

A week or so ago on John Gruber’s The Talk Show, Gruber and special guest John Moltz recapped the situation with WWDC selling out and with the sprinkling of alternative conferences and events springing up to fill excess demand during the same week in San Francisco. Among those conferences is altWWDC, put on by folks from Appsterdam, and the CocoaConf Alt conference.

During the podcast they remarked on the use of “WWDC” literally in the naming of “altWWDC,” and joked about how likely it was that Apple would take notice and demand something change on that front. As far as I know, altWWDC has escaped thus far unscathed, but CocoaConf Alt has not been so fortunate:

We had secured space in the hotel directly next door to the big show, and we were putting together a phenomenal list of speakers. Ticket sales were better than we had hoped. All was well until we got an email from the Intercontinental San Francisco, saying that they had determined that our event was in conflict with Apple and that due to their contract with Apple, we couldn’t use the space.

Taken at face value: CocoaConf reserved space in a reputable San Francisco hotel, counted on that reservation to sell tickets and to begin organizing the conference in earnest, and now the hotel has backed out of its agreement.

There is a lot of “who, what, when, why and how” missing here. Did Apple specifically ask the Intercontinental to cancel the deal with CocoaConf upon learning about it, or did somebody at the hotel discover a conflict while reviewing the contract terms and proactively seek to avoid an issue with Apple? My hunch is that the hotel is either overacting on its own initiative, or that some individual at Apple is overacting without the full, reasoned consent of Apple’s leadership.

Whatever went down, and whoever is to blame for it: this is not good for developers, not good for San Francisco, and not good for Apple. In an era when WWDC conferences sell out in minutes, it’s only natural that other events would rush in to help to fill the void. And it’s only natural that some of those events will seek to capitalize on the momentum of Apple’s huge event already drawing the spotlight on San Francisco and attracting hundreds if not thousands of additional visitors who are not registered attendees of the conference.

Apple should actively encourage parallel events such as these. They could even go a step further by participating to a limited extent in the events. Sending a few company representatives out to float among each of the satellite activities would give attendees of those events a sense of connectedness to Apple without overly-straining Apple’s limited resources inside the conference.

One of the major benefits of WWDC to Apple is to draw the world’s attention the company’s relevance to desktop and mobile developers, and to how eager the company is to serve them. Even being cited as the cause of quashing meet-ups in the periphery of WWDC is not in the service of that goal. If Apple was involved in pushing for this decision, they should clarify and retract that position. If they were not involved, they should take care to ensure that the hotels they sign contracts with in the future understand they hold no ill will towards these events.

I’m Feeling Useless

I was intrigued to see that Google has changed the country identification for Palestine from “Palestine territories” to just “Palestine.” A subtle but serious hint that the company recognizes Palestine’s right to independent statehood.

I was sort of mystified, however, by John Gruber’s observation that the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button in the BBC’s screenshots instead show the text “stroke of luck.” It would be one thing to learn that the phrase is localized to various regional English dialects around the world, but in my brief tests I have yet to find a single other English Google site where the button text is altered. I also find it very strange that the button text in the screenshot is lowercased. It’s literally “stroke of luck” and not “Stroke of Luck” as one would expect, to fit in with both conventional UI design and with the rest of Google’s UI.

Looking closer, I see the standard “Google Search” button shows up as “Google search a”, and the “About Google” link at the bottom says (I think): “Never you like to know about Google.”

I am inclined to think that the source of the screenshot is the Palestinian Google home page translated automatically to some dialect of English by an automatic translation service (perhaps Google, itself). I don’t think Google has adopted “Stroke of Luck” as part of its revamping of the Palestine Google home page.

Looking into this got me interested in trying out the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button for the first time in many years. I returned to my native English www.google.com where, the text still reads “I’m Feeling Lucky,” but funnily enough you can’t actually use the button to meaningfully achieve what it used to: jumping to the one presumably most-relevant result for your search. Why? Because the moment you type any text in the search field, a prerequisite for using the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, the entire UI of Google’s famously simple home page shifts dynamically to a completion-list-oriented UI. The lucky button is long gone. Look carefully, and you’ll see there are now “I’m Feeling Lucky” links next to each completion-list result, but these are only visible if you arrow-select, or hover your mouse over the item in the list.

So what is the point of the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Google’s home page? You can only click it before you’ve bothered to type anything. On the Palestinian Google home page, clicking the button takes you to Google’s doodles page. But on the American Google home page, merely hovering a mouse cursor over it will change its text to something even more whimsical: “I’m Feeling Wonderful,” “I’m Feeling Stellar,” or “I’m Feeling Puzzled,” for example. Thereafter, hovering over the button Click one of these and you’ll be shuttled off to some vaguely appropriate internet destination.

The “I’m Feeling Lucky” button hasn’t, to my knowledge, been changed to “stroke of luck” in any regional version of Google’s home page. It has, however, been changed into a useless button whose behavior has no relevance to the original “most-relevant result” behavior. It’s just a piece of useless junk on Google’s otherwise still admirably minimalist home page.

Update: Matthew Panzarino commented on Twitter that the dynamic removal of the button is caused by the Google Instant feature, which users can turn off to restore traditional functionality. To Google’s credit, the preference can even be selected without logging in to a user account. However, given that the traditional behavior of the button now works only in a non-standard, user-customized configuration, I think it would best be ejected from the home page.

The Medium Compromise

I have been trying to appreciate Medium since it launched several months ago. I wanted to like it from day one, largely because of my admiration for Evan Williams, who co-founded the company. When a guy who co-founded Blogger and Twitter takes a stab at raising the bar on social writing, it begs my attention.

Williams’s mission statement for Medium is inspiring, if vague:

Medium is based on the belief that the sharing of ideas and experiences is what moves humanity forward. The Internet is the greatest idea-sharing tool ever imagined, but we’ve only scratched the surface of its capabilities.

Yes! Let’s share, let’s move humanity forward, let’s, umm, scratch the surface some more? When I visit the Medium site I find a huge list of article summaries with author bylines, suggesting a magazine-style format. But unlike a magazine, there is absolutely no topical cohesion. The first four articles as I write this are on the subjects of electricity demand, star-spotting the actor who played John Locke from “Lost,” and two items on the nitty-gritty of user-interface design. Yikes! This is just like the Internet: a vast repository of ideas on virtually every subject, being, I grant you, shared.

But wasn’t the internet already getting pretty good at that? Today, anyone with an internet connection can establish a bona fide, personalized soapbox with a free Blogger, WordPress, or Tumblr account. These services all provide for limitless self-expression while also giving authors the ability to dramatically customize and, to a great extent, “own” the style and structure of their expressions. Medium feels more like an effort in the other direction: to homogenize and commoditize self-expression such that each component contribution is differentiated only with a small byline, avatar and genre label on an otherwise mass-produced “Medium” experience.

In Luke Esterkyn’s high-level “How Medium Works” article he, ahem, scratches the surface of what rubs me the wrong way about Medium:

Posting on Medium […] is elegant and easy, and you can do so without the burden of becoming a “blogger” or worrying about the arduous task of developing an audience.

To me this betrays the implicit compromise of Medium’s mission: at last one can be a “serious writer” without concerning oneself with the matters of serious writing. I can see from Medium’s success that they have indeed attracted great writers, and I don’t mean to disparage even one of them for participating. But I am mildly surprised so many have chosen to donate their talents to Medium rather than publishing on their own or through a publication with a more focused brand.

Perhaps some of the authors contributing to Medium truly have no other outlet. I commend Medium for encouraging people to write if they otherwise would not, but I don’t think this fulfills Williams’s lofty mission. It seems more like a case of dealing smartly in excess supply: we have an excess of better-than-average writing, and Medium has found a means of collecting, packaging, and distributing that content.

I’m reminded of the high-quality packaged foods found in supermarkets. Some premium foods are produced at such quantity that stores are able to sell the very same products in vastly different packaging. The food that sells in a fancy, name-branded package might look the same, smell the same, but cost far less in the drab store-branded box. It’s a big win for consumers who stumble upon higher-quality products at rock-bottom prices. But they also pay a price: sifting through aisle after aisle of generic product, looking for clues of greatness. Buying, trying, and rejecting the generic crap that doesn’t meet their expectations. The premium producers pay an even greater price: a severed relationship with customers. The very ownership of their brand, which serves to build up and then defend the pride of ownership in their work, is lost when Safeway, CVS, or Walgreens slaps their logo on their hard-won success.

Obviously I’m not blown away by Medium, but I’m not writing it off. As a consumer, I’m attracted by the large amount of free, relatively high-quality content. I’m willing to sift through some generic boxes for this. As a producer, it strikes me as underwhelming and uninspiring.

My four-year-old son sometimes becomes withdrawn and quiet. I might try to coax some talking out of him, to gauge his mood. “How are you feeling?” No reply. “Are you feeling good?” No reply. “Are you feeling bad?” No reply. Finally, he might moan lethargically, using his beautifully imprecise language: “I’m just feeling a little bit good and a little bit bad. I’m just feeling a little bit medium.”

End WWDC

Not long ago, when Apple’s WWDC conference dates were announced, a slow trickle of registrations would occur as developers consulted with spouses, bosses, and co-workers to determine, in their own sweet time, whether or not they would attend. There was never any rush, because the conference never sold out. Weeks after the announcement, developers who had not registered might even receive a personalized telephone call from Apple, urging them to make a decision. Seriously kids, this is how it used to be.

Over the past several years, demand increased such that at last, those telephone reminders from Apple were no longer necessary. By 2008, the conference sold out for the first time, in a matter of months. By 2010 it took eight days. Last year it took less than 2 hours, and this year? Less than two minutes. I was one of the lucky ones who got a ticket. A few minutes later, as I witnessed friends and colleagues upset after missing the boat? I cancelled my order. It made me uncomfortable to know we had all made the same effort to register as quickly as possible, but for arbitrary reasons I was admitted in and they were left out.

The conference has room for at most 5,000 developers. According to Apple’s job stimulus statistics, there are 275,000 or more registered iOS developers alone. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Mac developers add only 25,000, bringing the total to 300,000. Every year, 5,000 attendees are selected from the qualified pool, meaning just 1 out of 60, or 1.5% of potential attendees will have the chance to attend.

What are the goals of WWDC, anyway? For Apple, it’s primarily a chance to educate developers and to encourage them to contribute to the growth of Apple’s platforms. By teaching developers the latest and greatest technologies, they leverage developer efforts to differentiate Apple and to make its platforms more competitive.

For developers the main goal is to get a leg up on the persistent challenge of developing great software for these platforms, even as they are constantly changing. A side-benefit is the opportunity to commune with like-minded developers who are trying to do the same. Ideally with folks who share similar visions for how software should be developed and how the end product should behave for customers.

As the sheer number of Apple developers increases, the capacity of WWDC remains the same. The goals of the conference both for Apple and for developers are increasingly unmet as the number of developers who would like to be educated, indoctrinated, and communed with far outweighs the number of developers who actually can be.

Over the years people have made plenty of flip suggestions for how Apple can solve the problems that plague WWDC: get a bigger venue, charge more money, split it up into multiple conferences. But any of these would be a very small band-aid on a very large wound. WWDC is flat-out busted, and can’t be fixed by any of these analog solutions.

The whole point of the conference needs to be rethought, and the goals addressed from scratch using new approaches. As the greatest challenge for WWDC is in scaling to meet demand, I think it’s obvious that the rethought WWDC should be considered in terms of digital solutions. Call it WWDC if you like, but it needs to take place 365 days a year instead of 4. It needs to serve 300,000 developers, not 5,000. And it needs to take place online, not within the cramped confines of a small convention center in San Francisco.

Apple has effectively headed down this course with their laudable offering of free videos of conference sessions. The high-level goal of merely educating developers is largely met by these. But what of the other goals? The vast majority of benefits that Apple and developers see in WWDC could be achieved online using more effective digital materials that are available to, and more importantly, that scale to the vast number of developers eager to learn about and promote Apple’s platforms.

Instead of a week each year when a developer must enter a lottery for a chance at talking directly with a knowledgable Apple engineer in the labs, beef up the existing Developer Technical Support process and workflow so that vexing issues can be driven to the point of resolution, and so that the fruits of those discoveries can be shared with others. For every “lifesaving” tip a developer has received in the WWDC labs, how many others continue to struggle in anguish because the effort was never made to codify that wisdom in the form of a developer technote or other reference material? It doesn’t make sense … it’s a bug, if you will … that so many Apple developers feel that their only opportunity to solve a problem is by meeting in person with an Apple engineer at WWDC.

Instead of asking Apple’s engineers to spend weeks every year preparing, rehearsing, and delivering sessions in San Francisco, ask them to spend a reasonable percentage of the year consulting with and assisting in the development of long-term interactive, iteratively improved video documentation. Start with the last 3 years of WWDC talks on a given subject and condense it down to concise summary of the most pertinent instruction, tips, and demos. It would be ridiculous for Apple to maintain separate text documents for each year, and for developers to be told “Oh, that was addressed in 2011’s NSTextView documentation, go back and look it up.” Yet that’s what developers are forced to do when trying to extract gems of knowledge from past WWDC sessions. (Cough, it’s regrettably true that Apple’s “Release Notes” sometimes serve as a similar kind of decentralized documentation authority).

And what about the community incentive for developers? Isn’t it important to have an opportunity to meet with and catch up with developers from around the world? Yes, it is important, or I should say it would be if it actually worked any longer at WWDC. The very small fraction of developers who are admitted, combined with the unpredictability of whether you or your friends will make the cut, make it essentially useless as an annual catching-up venue. Look to smaller conferences for this ambition. While some of them are similarly challenged in meeting demand for attendance, many are more fine-tuned both in teaching style and in topic choice. They each have a special feel of their own, which naturally attracts a repeat audience whose members are more likely to find fellowship with one another than in the comparatively giant, rotating petri dish of this year’s random WWDC ticket winners.

I have loved the times I’ve attended WWDC, and I may yet end up enjoying it again, but its time has passed. It’s time to move on. In 1983, 1993, and 2003 it was the right tool for the job because it largely fulfilled the objectives for both Apple and developers. In 2013 it’s a strangely exclusive, rotating club with arbitrary membership rules, and increasingly dubious advantages. It’s a source of annual stress and uncertainty for would-be attendees, and has just delivered a whopping blow to thousands of developers who didn’t make the cut for this year’s show.

I would miss many things about WWDC, but the things I would miss could easily be offset by superior, scalable solutions. And I would be happy to leave behind the increasing number of obnoxious aspects of the yearly ritual. It’s time for something better. It’s time to end WWDC.

Bitsplitting With Jacqui Cheng

I’ve just posted the third episode of the Bitsplitting Podcast, with my friend Jacqui Cheng from Ars Technica.

I have known Jacqui for many years, but have rarely had the opportunity to sit down and chat about sundry topics technical and otherwise. I learned a great deal about Jacqui’s background as a software engineer, her many hobbies, and the evolution of her own self image.

It’s been gratifying to finish up three episodes so far, and to be so happy with each of them. I think this is really working out well. Thank to all who are tuning in.

Check Your Libel

Two days ago, the internet went nuts over Apple’s alleged homophobic, capricious censorship of Saga #12, an adult-themed comic. As far as I can tell, the allegations originate in a statement from the comic’s co-creator, Brian K. Vaughan, in which he claimed that the issue had been banned specifically by Apple:

Unfortunately, because of two postage stamp-sized images of gay sex, Apple is banning tomorrow’s SAGA #12 from being sold through any iOS apps.

The claim was taken by many at face value, and folks were understandably outraged by the implication that Apple was specifically rejecting the issue based on gay-themed content. It didn’t take long before the claim had been republished in zillions of tweets and on blogs ranging from casual fan sites to Comic Riffs, a blog residing under the banner of the Washington Post.

In short: it didn’t take long before everybody “knew” that Apple was a big, bad, homophobic, reckless censor of artistic content. Until yesterday, when the news came out that Apple had not, in fact, rejected the content in question:

It appears that Vaughan may have been jumping the gun in assigning blame. Apple confirmed to Macworld later on Wednesday that it did not block Saga #12, and Comixology CEO David Steinberger subsequently took responsibility in a post on the company’s blog.

It turned out that the content in question had never even been submitted to Apple. I’m guessing some kind of communication breakdown occurred between Comixology, the creators of the app, and Image Comics, the publishers of the comic. Amid this miscommunication, Brian K. Vaughan presumably leapt to the conclusion that Apple was at fault, and chaos ensued.

I myself have been guilty of jumping to conclusions about Apple. But when allegations like these take on a kind of collective confirmation, it’s unfairly damaging to the brand and, by extension to the reputations of the people who work for Apple. I am not an expert in legal matters, so I can’t say that it constitutes libel, per se, but it meets my everyday understanding of the term: a false written statement that damages a person or company’s reputation.

It’s extremely upsetting when a damaging claim turns out to have been false. We need to be outraged by this, or the whole system of fact-based accountability breaks down. As mad as you or I or anybody else may have been about the alleged misdeed by Apple, we should be at least as mad that we were misled to believe it was true.

To Brian K. Vaughan’s credit, he apologized publicly for the mistake, in a brief statement published by The Verge and also on Image Comics’s Tumblr:

I wanted to apologize to everyone for this entire Saga #12 kerfuffle. Yesterday, I was mistakenly led to believe that this issue was solely with Apple, but it’s now clear that it was only ever Comixology too conservatively interpreting Apple’s rules. I’m truly sorry. I never thought either company was being homophobic, only weirdly inconsistent about what kind of adult material was permissible.

It’s an apology, and that’s a start. But in my opinion it doesn’t meet the standard of a great apology. First, the “led to believe this issue was solely with Apple” leaves open the implication that some of the fault remains with Apple, when all evidence points to the fault being entirely in Comixology’s decision to not submit the issue. Second, the apology fails to acknowledge and specifically apologize to Apple for the damage his statement has done to them.

When any of us witnesses what we believe to be an injustice, it’s tempting to cry out loudly and forcefully. The web is a great tool for dissemination of information, but it’s just as good or better at spreading misinformation. In the old days, libel was something that, practically speaking, only an elite class of published writers risked committing. Most people didn’t publish written content for all the world to read. These days, any one of us could be on the verge of stating as fact something that is very damaging to a person or company, yet very false. Check your libel.

Why Mention Android

Facebook is apparently due to launch an Android-based phone next week. John Sherrod wonders why they bother to mention the Android brand at all (emphasis mine):

Lately the trend has been for companies to develop phones and tablets based on a heavily customized version of Android and not even mention Google’s OS in their press events. The mention of Android is particularly surprising given all the ways that Google and Facebook compete with one another.

Google has been ridiculed in the years since Android’s debut for failing to profit much from the technology, in spite of using it to stake out a modicum of control over a large segment of the mobile industry.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the Facebook product is a success. Let’s assume they make a ton of money off of it. What better way to rub it in a competitor’s face than to make it very clear that you succeeded not in spite of but thanks to their technology. That you succeeded with it in a way that they couldn’t?

Mentioning Android today sets the stage for a graceful postmortem, regardless. If Facebook’s phone is a flop, they can assign some blame to Android (c.f. Motorola Rokr). If it’s a huge hit: “Google, we pwned you!”

(Via Daring Fireball)