Daring Fireball

My wife is doing something pretty awesome, raising money for a cause that means a lot to our family, and you can help her out.

A list in the Touch Arcade forums.

Update: There’s now a dedicated Game Center section in the App Store.

Now available for download in iTunes.

No idea if there’s anything to it, but it sure is fun to think about.

Douglas Trumbull is working on a documentary on the making of the greatest movie ever made. Second one down, under “All Videos”. And Blade Runner fans will want to check this one out, too. (Via Jim Coudal, of course.)

The end of an era: VersionTracker.com is now a redirect to CNet’s Download.com.

Joshua Topolsky:

The new touch isn’t magical or revolutionary, or even unfamiliar. What it is, however, is a product without a peer; a media player that does far more than media playing.

Looks like the embargo on reviews for the new iPod lineup has lifted. Examples: Businessweek, PC Mag, Macworld, The Loop, and Slashgear.

Oh, and how can I forget Gizmodo’s ever-salient coverage?

Great tip from Seth Weintraub.

Larry Ellison:

“Oracle has long viewed HP as an important partner. By filing this vindictive lawsuit against Oracle and Mark Hurd, the HP board is acting with utter disregard for that partnership, our joint customers, and their own shareholders and employees. The HP Board is making it virtually impossible for Oracle and HP to continue to cooperate and work together in the IT marketplace.”

You can just tell he’s loving this.

Ben Kunz, writing for Bloomberg Businessweek on “How Apple plays the pricing game”:

The popular iPod Touch media player has been revamped at three price points — $229, $299, and $399 — all costing more than the iPhone, which does everything the Touch can plus make phone calls.

What gives? Watch Apple, and you can learn pricing tricks for your own business.

I’m sure the expensive two-year AT&T contract for the iPhone has nothing to do with its price.

Dan Frakes:

The big question, for me, is why the nano’s screen had to be so small. Given the existence of the iPod shuffle, there doesn’t seem to have been a compelling need for another as-small-as-we-can-make-it iPod, and a slightly larger design would have allowed for a larger screen. For example, a rectangular nano—perhaps the same width, just a bit longer, with a screen similar in size to that of the 5G nano—would have been considerably more useful, allowing you to view at least five items on the screen at a time, instead of three and a half, perhaps with enough room left over for more onscreen navigational aids.

Skip to the 32:00 mark. Looks like it wants to be used with a hardware keyboard and a mouse or trackpad. Very, very different approach than Apple TV.

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Nilay Patel on the purportedly imminent HP Zeen, a 7-inch tablet that, according to Engadget’s sources, will only be available in a bundle with a printer (WTF?):

As we’d guessed, there’s also no Gmail app or Market access, although there is a homegrown email client and a fair bit of integration with Yahoo services like Mail and Messenger.

Yeah, who wants apps anyway?

Guy steals two iPhones from a Madison, Wisconsin Apple Store; police catch him in short order, thanks to Find My iPhone.

Matt Buchanan:

Verizon, unfortunately, is also what ruins the phone. Or, rather, what it’s forced Samsung to do to the phone, which you could sum up in a word: Bing. Bing is the default—and only—search engine on the Fascinate. A Google Android phone. In the search widget, in the browser, when you press the search button. Bing. No, you can’t change it. There’s no setting for it, and the Google Search widget that you can snag from the Market is blocked (or at least very carefully hidden). Being unwittingly forced into Verizon and Bing’s conjugal relationship is infuriating on its own, but the implementation also feels like the sloppy hack that it is. The co-branded Bing/Verizon portal that an in-browser search takes you to is ripped from the circa-2005 dumbphone-approved “internet,” while the Bing Maps app that it pushes you toward is vastly inferior to Google Maps (no multitouch, Latitude, etc.).

Android is “open”, but who it’s open for, primarily, are the carriers. (Somehow I doubt we’ll see any Windows Phone 7 devices where Google is the one and only search option.)

NPR:

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley dropped something of a political bombshell Tuesday announcing he won’t run for re-election next year for personal reasons.

Daley has been mayor since 1989 and could probably have been mayor for life like his father, the legendary Richard J. Daley who actually died at his desk in City Hall.

Two words for you: Mayor Blagojevich.

The WSJ:

Hewlett-Packard Co. sued former Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd a day after he was named co-president of rival Oracle Corp., according to people familiar with the matter.

The suit was filed in Superior Court of California in Santa Clara, according to the people familiar with the matter. The contents of the suit weren’t clear but a person familiar with the suit said it centered around a confidentiality provision in Mr. Hurd’s exit agreement from H-P.

Just keeps getting better.