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Moving the blog

So it’s been two years I’ve been writing on my blog now, and I thought it was about time I tried moving this thing to my own domain and feed it from my own WordPress installation. What started just as a little test of a free service turned into a pretty regular habit of throwing my thoughts out there, and to my great surprise, a lot of people seem to actually enjoy reading it.

If all goes well, my subscribers will continue to get updates as usual via their RSS readers. If I screwed something up, which is entirely likely, hopefully you’ll find my new address somehow and update your bookmarks.

The new domain should be simply www.joecieplinski.com/blog.

All my old posts have been imported from my previous service to this new one, including all my comments. So you can feel free to search the archives and get all my old content, as always. New posts will only be coming to this new site, however. (I plan on making one final entry at the old site just to inform regular readers as a backup plan in case they don’t get this message.)

Anyway, I haven’t been writing much lately, I know. Mostly because I’ve been wanting to take more control over this site, and getting all the details squared away took far longer than I had hoped. Lots of good stuff going on out there. Some sad stuff, too, of course. But I’m sure I’ll have more to say, if you all are still willing to listen. Stay tuned.

Facebook "passed over" at the last minute for today's Apple announcement? I don't think so.

We’ve heard from a source that sometime late last night, Facebook was told that they would not be a part of Apple’s event today. This is nothing new. Companies are told to prepare to go on stage at these events all the time only to get pulled at the last second. It’s just a bit odd that a company as large as Facebook was passed over.

via techcrunch.com

I find this extremely hard to believe. Why would Apple, at an event called “Let’s talk iPhone” want to share the stage with Facebook, arguably a future serious competitor, to announce the release of a Facebook iPad app, which frankly, is not only long overdue, but also does nothing to further Apple’s clear message of new iPhone and Siri today?

If anything, I’d think Apple would want to shove this one under the rug and hope no one noticed that the iPad app wasn’t already there a year ago.

Let Facebook make its own announcement for its own iPad app. I can’t see why Apple would have even considered making this a part of today’s event, let alone cancel it at the last minute. Sounds like a source trying to cover his tracks to me.

Sometimes rumors are just wrong. Like 90% of the other rumors about today.

The phone screen size lab experiment

Vendors are trying to figure out what works when it comes to screen sizes, according to Geoff Blaber, analyst at CCS Insight.One of the big product trends at IFA was screen sizes between 4.5 inches and 5.5 inches, which include the LTE version of Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy S II, HTC’s Windows Phone-based Titan, Samsung’s Galaxy Note and the Tablet P from Sony, which has two 5-inch screens.

via Macworld

It’s fun to watch all these other companies just now get around to performing the research that Apple did prior to its 2007 launch of the iPhone. Only, instead of testing all these screen sizes in the lab, making a clear determination on which one they felt people would find most useable, they are simply releasing every size of screen imaginable on the general public, hoping one of them will hit it big.

What they’re going to find is what Apple found out four years ago. 3.5 inches is where you want to be. Sure, a 4.5-inch screen might be a bit easier to see for people with poor near sight, but it makes the device harder to pocket, hurts battery life, and most importantly, is harder to manipulate with your hands, unless you have gigantic hands.

Guy gets banned from the Android Marketplace

> **Don’t copy other people’s stuff** > It seems obvious – but don’t copy Google’s (or anyone else’s) trademarks or logos. Even for a short-term experiment. It might seem tempting to piggy-back off the success of a popular name, but it’s not worth the risk. Big corporations don’t understand, even if you’re “trying to do the right thing”.
via [makingmoneywithandroid.com](http://makingmoneywithandroid.com/2011/09/how-to-make-250-a-day-and-get-banned-from-the-android-market/)
I think this story demonstrates, more than anything about Google, just how justified trademark infringement cases are. People like to lump in these cases with all the patent trolls out there, but the fact of the matter is that what this guy did with his app icon is a tiny version of what Samsung is doing with just about all of its Android products: misrepresenting your products as those that come from another company that is far more successful.

I have no doubt that the only reason this app took off is because the icon convinced most people it was an official Google app. Disclaimers in the description are meaningless. I know from experience, most people don’t bother thoroughly reading your app description, believe me. Especially on a free app. They see a logo, and they grab the app.

That’s why when he re-released the app with a non-Google looking icon, it went nowhere.

Now, this guy says his mistake was unintentional, and it may well have been. Because a lot of people don’t understand just how valuable a brand is to a company. But in Samsung’s case, it’s beyond clear that the copying is blatant and very much intentional. And the financial impact and the long-term impact these sorts of impersonations have on a brand is incalculable.

So while I can’t stand most of the legal craziness going on lately, and I don’t agree with all of Apple’s most recent legal tactics, I have to say, when it comes to the trademark stuff, I can totally see the point.

More ads coming to Twitter (as if we didn't see that coming)

> Our relationship with the web is going to be undergoing a fundamental shift over the next decade, I suspect, because it *has* to undergo a shift. Historically, we’ve paid for television, movies, books, and magazines, and in many cases we pay for those things even when they contain ads—and we pay a premium for magazines and TV shows that are ad-free. But apparently we believe that when you Just Add Internet, only greedy people would keep asking for money, because everything is subsidized by magical money-shitting ponies.
via [chipotle.tumblr.com](http://chipotle.tumblr.com/post/9645600552/twitter-adds-more-ads-to-timelines)
I’m fine with services that either present ads or have a subscription fee for no ads. I’m even fine with services that have a fee AND have ads. I can choose to buy into these services or not.

What I can’t stand is the Silicon Valley startup mentality of “get lots of users and then figure out how to make money on them later.”

It’s not like Twitter didn’t know the time would come when it needed to make money from its users. It’s just a little bit sleazy to lure people into a free ride, only to pull the rug out from under them later with ads. That’s what will piss off the users. Not the money. The lie.

I understand this is M.O for most of the Internet. But THAT’s the thing that needs to change. This notion that you should get popular first, then profitable second. The idea that once people are hooked on something, they’ll start paying because they have to. It’s bad business.