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I have an iPhone and my wife has a Lumia 920 which I bought for her because of the larger screen and durable build (to withstand baby throwing it on the floor). As a piece of hardware, it’s near perfect. I love Apple’s products, but the 920 edges out the iPhone on hardware (IMO). WP8 on the other hand, is has a pretty face, but sadly lacking. There are only two areas where I’ve find it outshines iOS: Live Tiles (nice touch), and predictive text input (better). Everything else is worse, and the app selection pales by comparison (and I don’t mean numbers of apps, but quality and usefulness). If you’re not into apps and just want to do basic email, browsing then it might not matter. But be mindful that some sites which display a mobile version when viewed on iOS do not do so on the IE browser.

3 days ago on iPhone 5 User buying a Lumia 920 to toy around with. 1 reply

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Flickr was the last place on the internet for such thoughtfully created images

True, but that’s not a big enough market compared to something like Instagram.

3 days ago on Yahoo unveils the new Flickr with one terabyte of free space 1 reply

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And the 49 other people out there who use Picasa are grateful to you.

3 days ago on Yahoo unveils the new Flickr with one terabyte of free space 1 reply 2 recommends

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Great move, but very very late. Sadly, I don’t think Flickr can gain back the massive amount of ground that it lost to Instagram. If Yahoo had embraced mobile earlier, Flickr could have been Instagram (for the masses) + Flickr Pro. Now it’s more of a niche site for pro photos (which is great, but a much smaller audience).

3 days ago on Yahoo unveils the new Flickr with one terabyte of free space

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Or Delicious.

4 days ago on Yahoo acquires Tumblr in $1.1 billion cash deal, promises 'not to screw it up' 1 reply 2 recommends

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Yeah, I was just wondering that the other day. I plan to ask a friend who works at Nokia to try to find out if there’s a way to flash the ROM on the 920T (I found a custom ROM for 920 online but not sure if it works on 920T).

5 days ago on Nokia 920 in China hardware restricted to (crappy) China Windows Marketplace 1 reply

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How right you are :) Not to mention that these sort of restrictions have nothing to do with communism.

5 days ago on Nokia 920 in China hardware restricted to (crappy) China Windows Marketplace

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Not going to happen – Yahoo would add little value to Apple. Yahoo is no longer a search company anyway (they run Bing). If Apple was going to splurge for a big acquisition it would make more sense for it to be something closely related to their hardware needs (like Sharp or TSMC), or media services (like HBO or Netflix)

5 days ago on Yahoo to hold press event Monday as Tumblr buyout rumors swirl (update)

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Well, at least the telcos are happy. Interoperable messaging apps is the last thing in the world they want, to keep us defaulting to overpriced SMS.

6 days ago on Pick your poison: messaging will be fragmented, expensive, or locked-in

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I hope they do better than with Flickr and Delicious :(

7 days ago on Yahoo reportedly eyeing Tumblr for possible $1 billion acquisition

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Google had a chance with Google Talk to become a leader in the messaging app space, but wandered off in too many different directions and missed the boat. They’re finally getting their focus and act together but it’s too late. Why should I, or anyone else already using another excellent service, switch?

7 days ago on Exclusive: Inside Hangouts, Google's big fix for its messaging mess

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Except that if you buy an iPhone through a carrier in China, you can still access the US app store. So for some reason, MS/Nokia did not get/make the same deal that Apple did.

11 days ago on Nokia 920 in China hardware restricted to (crappy) China Windows Marketplace 1 reply 1 recommend

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Right, and how does this story lie at the “intersection” of tech, science, art and culture? You could argue it’s about culture, but it certainly doesn’t intersect with any of the other three.

14 days ago on Award-winning director accused of breaking China's 'one child' policy, faces $26 million fine 2 replies 1 recommend

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True, except that takes a lot of time and at the time China implemented the one-child policy, it was nowhere near establishing that kind of economic growth, education, etc. It was also implemented as a knee-jerk reaction to the huge population growth in the 60s and 70s as a result of previous equally misguided policies (whereby China needed more farmers/workers to fuel growth).

China no longer needs the one-child policy and while it may have arguably helped it in the 1980s and 90s (China might have had serious overpopulation problems without it)—though at a tragic human cost—it’s hurting it now.

14 days ago on Award-winning director accused of breaking China's 'one child' policy, faces $26 million fine 1 reply 1 recommend

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While the population growth rate in China is fairly low, because it’s population is already so big, population growth in real numbers is still substantial. However, due to the one-child policy, its population will stabilize and eventually decrease (to be surpassed by India in 20-30 years). By then China will have avoided overpopulation but have a different and perhaps equally serious crisis on its hands: an ageing population.

14 days ago on Award-winning director accused of breaking China's 'one child' policy, faces $26 million fine 1 reply

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That’s absurd. The fines that people get for breaking this rule (a common occurrence), are nothing close to that kind of money.

Unrelated, why is this on a tech news site? Did HuffPo hijack the Verge?

14 days ago on Award-winning director accused of breaking China's 'one child' policy, faces $26 million fine 2 replies

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Until about a year ago, Apple most definitely dominated the high-end smartphone market. It still dominates the high-end tablet market. It arguably dominates (or has a dominant position in) the high-end laptop market.

23 days ago on Does anyone know why Google bought Motorola?

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Nokia’s worldwide reach, brand recognition, distribution network and excellent track record in hardware development is significantly ahead of Motorola globally (outside the US).

23 days ago on Does anyone know why Google bought Motorola?

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I guess this proves you can stay away from the internet for a year and not miss much but crap (well, except House of Cards and the Baumgartner Jump—that’s great).

23 days ago on You've chosen: #whatpaulshouldsee when he comes back online tonight 2 recommends

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Definitely. Samsung is not Google’s friend. It happily ate Google’s free lunch to help its rise to the top, but now many consumers buy Samsung phones because of Samsung not because of Android. Once that is further cemented, Samsung won’t need Android/Google anymore—it can do its own OS so long as it’s Android app compatible.
Google doesn’t feel like a smart tactician in these games. They should have “acquired” Nokia the way MS did and they would have had a much better chance at challenging arch-enemy Apple and arch-frenemy Samsung.

26 days ago on Does anyone know why Google bought Motorola? 1 reply 1 recommend

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Good businessman, not good visionary. Yes, MS has continued miss all the consumer trends, but they continue to pump out billions in profit from their PC related businesses, which is mostly driven by the enterprise, not consumers. True, that was started under Bill and Ballmer, but Ballmer has continued to do well with it. The fact is, despite all of its Surface commercials, new device attempts, XBox/Kinect, and hillarious Ballmer statements about its commitment to consumers, MS is a heavily Enterprise-focused company, much like Oracle, SAP and IBM. They don’t need to win the battle for consumers, because they’re fighting another war that they’ve already won and have no challengers in.

26 days ago on Does anyone know why Google bought Motorola? 2 replies 3 recommends

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Novel idea, but financially I don’t see it working as well as selling it for $2 and getting a lot more “impulse buy” users who won’t take the time to get into the “reverse funding” idea (which it really isn’t).

28 days ago on ‘Crabitron’ is a ‘reverse Kickstarter’ that lets you fund a game by actually buying it 2 replies

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How exactly is this tech related news?

28 days ago on Mayor Bloomberg, NYC Police Commissioner: Boston bomber suspects planned attack in Times Square 1 reply 2 recommends

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My journey: Instapaper (a couple of years) → Pocket (six months) → Readability

All are good, but I think I’m sticking with Readability now.

28 days ago on Instapaper acquired by Betaworks, owner of Digg