chrisleiker.com

Author: chris

  • thedailyfeed:

    Thanks to a massive online database from the Department of Records, now you can peruse photos from 160 years of New York City history. Our Bryan Bedder set out to see how much has changed since the mid-1800s. 

  • Temporal collisions.

  • With Their IPA, Twitter Makes Yahoo Look Like A Mean Old Drunk

    With Their IPA, Twitter Makes Yahoo Look Like A Mean Old Drunk

    parislemon:

    Twitter has drafted up what they’re calling the Innovator’s Patent Agreement (IPA). With it, the company is promising to only use their patents as the actual inventor intended — read: defensively, not offensively.

    More specifically:

    The IPA is a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers. It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes. We will not use the patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What’s more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended.

    Excellent news. Twitter is promising to implement the IPA later this year and says that it will apply to all their patents past and present. Yes, this means things like Loren Brichter’s pull-to-refresh (which he’s excited about).

    Hopefully other startups large and small will follow Twitter’s lead here. It would be really excellent if larger companies (*cough* Yahoo *cough*) did as well, but it’s hard to see that happening given the current state of things. This is a movement that will have to start from the ground up.

    Big time kudos to Twitter for this.

  • The snozberries taste like snozberries!

  • greatcosplay:

    Mini Tintin

  • Apple To Announce What They’re Going To Do With Their Ca$h Money

    Apple To Announce What They’re Going To Do With Their Ca$h Money

    parislemon:

    The obvious answer is that they’re going to do a dividend. But remember that Apple doesn’t always do what’s obvious. Also remember that the majority of their cash (and cash equivalents) is overseas. If they try to bring that money stateside, it’s going to be taxed accordingly. 

    I’d still bet on dividend, but I wouldn’t bet against something else. Maybe building more of their own facilities overseas? Committing money towards something that allows them to control even more of their build process would make sense.

    To that end, maybe crazy, but what about buying Samsung? It would both harm Google (Samsung is by far the most successful Android partner) and help Apple (which still heavily relies on Samsung chips and screens, etc). They don’t have quite enough cash to do that (but almost!), but the cash they do have could surely sweeten a deal.

    But would they be allowed to do that? And would they want to? The Google/Motorola deal looks to be a nightmare, why would Apple want to take on something similar? Unless, of course, they’re about to get into the television business…

    Anyway, I’m just dreaming out loud here. It will probably just be a boring old dividend. 

    Update: A number of folks have pointed out how odd it would be for Apple to have a press conference just for a dividend. Agreed, that would be weird — but there has been an abnormal amount of interest in this topic due to Apple’s $100 billion stockpile.

    Maybe a stock buyback is more likely? Or maybe it really will be something fairly crazy? 

    I like this idea a lot more than my totally crazy Samsung dream…