Roundup for 10-10-11

BBC News - Row over photo in shopping centre
GAWKER - What Everyone Is Too Polite to Say About Steve Jobs
TorrentFreak - Eureka! Ditching DRM Decreases Piracy
Mail Online - Steve Jobs dead: Apple boss left plans for 4 years of new products
The Inquirer - Google unveils web programming language dart
BoxFreeIT - Tip: Want to be more productive? Don’t file your email
How-To Geek - How to Control a Remote Computer Using Only Your Chrome Web Browser
The Inquirer - O2 undercuts the competition on iphone 4s
EFYTimes - Supreme Court (in India) Switches Over To Ubuntu 10.04
Hack a Day - 22 miles straight up in 90 seconds
Tennessee News Press - Gov Haslam Pushes For Internet Sales Tax
The Inquirer - Google+ loses 60 per cent of active users
ArsTechnica - Nuance swipes Swype in $102 million deal
Coding Horror - Nobody's Going to Help You, and That's Awesome
CNET News - A Moore's Law for computers and energy efficiency
GamePolitics - Netflix Abandons Qwikster, Quiet on Game Rentals
MobileBurn - Verizon 4G LTE hits 22 new cities on October 20, 13 more on November 17
ZDNet - How many Flash Player updates is too many?
ZDNet - Amazon already hit with patent suit over Kindle Fire
YouTube - Teaser. MOTOROLA'S NEXT.... 10-18-11
ArsTechnica - Dear Meg Whitman... Some unsolicited advice on HP's PC future

Roundup for 10-2-11

I'm going to begin posting daily bits of information, on any topic, that I read and see intresting to pass on instead of flooding my social networks with this. Enjoy!

Bloomberg - Google Joins Apple in Push for Tax Holiday
The Inquirer - Apple could launch an iphone 4s next week
Geek.com - Facebook stores up to 800 pages of personal data per user account
Dvorak.org - FaceBook Admits Tracking Users After They are Logged Off... Claims it Was Just an “Accident"
thinq.co.uk - Whitman gets a $1 salary, Apotheker gets millions
VentureBeat - HTC Android phones (without root) may have “massive security vulnerability”
Techdirt - Amazon's Silk Browser To Be A Data Mining Jackpot
ZDNet - US congressmen ask FTC to investigate Facebook cookies
Wired.com - AT&T Begins Sending Throttling Warnings to Top Data Hogs
CNET News - HTC follows BlackBerry to $299 tablet bargain bin
CyberJournalist.net - Wall Street Journal launches Facebook social news app
ZDNet - Facebook to remove Discussions tab from Pages
How-To Geek ETC - 14 Epic Tech Failures (Infographic)

AT&T Changes iPad & iPhone Fees, sorta

Here are a few stories covering this topic if you care to read up/skim before going further.

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9G30GCG0.htm
http://mashable.com/2010/06/02/att-kills-ipad-unlimited-data-plan/

Much like the ETF open letter that was available from AT&T it really doesn't spell out everything. Also, I'm not a fan of AT&T in any way. I currently am evaluating my options to get away from AT&T to Verizon with an Android phone of some flavor.

Existing Customers - AT&T has decided to change their fees for data plans. Anyone under contract with AT&T will be able to keep their previously agreed data plan as long as they have a contract with AT&T.

Quote from BusinessWeek Article - "Current AT&T subscribers will be allowed to keep the unlimited plan, even if they renew their contracts. But all new subscribers will have to choose one of the two new plans."

So if you are already have an iPad 3G or iPhone then you have no worries as long as you have that plan or upgrade to a new plan with a new iPhone or data package.

New Customers - New iPad 3G and iPhone customers have to choose from the new data packages only. Unless AT&T backtracks or Apple has a fit, this will be the new plan fees going forward for any new customer. $15 for 200MB of usage and $15 for ever extra 200MB which AT&T claims will work for 65% of their iPhone customers. $25 for 2GB and $10 for every additional 1GB. This will according to AT&T will be sufficient for 98% of their iPhone customers. (information pulled from BusinessWeek Article listed above)

"With that plan and voice service, a smart phone could cost as little as $55 per month before taxes and add-on fees, down from $70 per month" - BusinessWeek Article. This will allow lower end users to save money and makes me think we will see a new lower cost iPhone. This will get the iPhone into more hands since Android has overtaken them with total handsets. We will see if that is true at WWDC next week.

Overall, taking away the all-you-can-eat data plan from iPhone is not as traumatic as it is for the iPad. This could very much slow down sales and possibly change how people really want to use the iPad. The iPhone should be ok with this change because it's hard to use 2GB of data in a one month period, in my opinion. I'm still going to pay $30 for unlimited because I like the all-you-can-eat format better for a phone.

Article also featured on:

http://www.webcastnation.com
http://brandonweir.tumblr.com
http://brandonweir.posterous.com

ESPN Fantasy Baseball App for iPhone $4.99

Downloading App now and will have additional images and impression available here soon. $4.99 seems slightly high but we will see if it's worth it. More to come.

If you have a specific questions regarding the app before you buy it email me at FBBiphoneapp@live.com

Direct Link to iPhone App Store information.

First Impressions:

Looks great.
Load times are ok on 3G. Not near as fast as they should be for a $5 app, but faster than the mobile website.
Seems to have all the abilities that you would want from a PC browser UI built into the app in a user friendly layout.
Slidebars with information and stats are a must and great to have. No way you should try and squeeze all those stats on a small screen.

Update 1:
Screen 1 - My Team 1 - Right half of the screen is slideable to show all stats of players
Screen 2 - Players tab
Screen 3 - My Team 2 - Right half of the screen is slideable to show all stats of players
Screen 4 - League Scoreboard
Screen 5 - Overall Scoreboard / League Standings
Screen 6 - Activity Feed. Displays any updates from players on your team.

Update 2: More screenshots
Screen 7 - Schedule for previous/upcoming weeks of your opponents
Screen 8 - League Settings and Scoring for league
Screen 9 - Selector of how your team information. so you can see specific information about players to compare
Screen 10 - Message Board

Update 3: Added direct link to app store for direct download.

Update 4: Added the descriptions from Flickr to the post.