I often comment on various news in my twitter. One problem with that is it has the notorious (or shall I say, genius) 140 character limit. Minus the link to the original story, there is little space to make a meaningful comment, specially when tweeting in English, which is way less effective compared with Chinese in terms of information per character. What I will write in this series of posts will be my short (or perhaps, long) comments on news that have caught my eyes. I store all of the news in a Flipboard magazine called Tech Pot, while my plan is to post an issue of comments whenever there are about a dozen new stories. The first issue, this one, is numbered 43, for no particular reason. It is just a simple head-start that could hopefully help me continue with the trend.

Apple 12 Days of Gifts

Evernote for iOS updated with scanning mode that converts business cards to contacts and more

A feature that is finally there, but unfortunately is only available to premium users. I have not tested it out, but I believe it is going to be great.

Evernote’s Market For Physical Goods Now Accounts For 30% Of Its Monthly Sales

This in my opinion is quite a healthy business model that is robust against internet bubbles.

Change to Twitter’s blocking policy has users up in arms

Blocking someone used to mean that they could no longer follow you. But now it means you can’t see their Twitter activity, but they can see yours.

Once again, I’d like to quote what Google’s Eric Schmidt has said: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Adobe’s Quarterly Forecast Misses Estimates

I am not surprised by this news at all. One reason is the epic security breach of Adobe earlier this year, another is that I still believe the software subscription model is simply robbing money out of the pockets of its ever-decreasing user base.

Microsoft reportedly considering Qualcomm COO Steve Mollenkopf for CEO

I am definitely going to suggest everyone to name their next boy Steve.

Cloud Storage Service SugarSync Abandons Freemium For A Paid Account Model

I am leaving SugarSync. There is saying that, “if you are not a paid user of a company’s service, then you are not their customer, but their product.” So I am going to stop being the product of SugarSync, but of other companies.

Seriously, I think the cloud storage market is still in high competition phase now. Raising more sheep is more important than harvesting wool at the moment.

SRI think tank and university turn software verification into gameplay

I was about to say something positive about this game. Now after about an hour of playing this “game”, I decide to write a separate post criticizing the game. Really hard.

(Disclaimer: I had been a student intern at the CSL lab of SRI. I am not involved in this project in any means, though some of my previous colleagues are.)

George H.W. Bush Joins Twitter, Praises Mandela In First Tweet

I know this is a trend. But here are some facts: Bill Gates has 1,116 tweets so far (which I do not think he is tweeting from himself); Bill Clinton has a much smaller number of 115; Tim Cook 22; while Warren Buffett only 4. Perhaps their contributions on twitter are significant, but I do not see it now. I simply do not know understand why the news-makers think these people joining twitter are news big enough that everyone in the world should know.

Instapaper Named App of the Week, Available for Free

In my DEPP system, Pocket is taking the place of Instapaper. It is simply coming free too late. Sorry.

Codecademy Releases Its First Educational App, A.K.A. My New Subway Time Killer

I have not tried the app yet. In fact as a CS major I do not have to. However I think this is a good time killer compared to playing games. It would be inspiring to see education in other field could utilize people’s fractionated free time.

App’s clever feedback system helps happy users tweet, while angry customers can only email

Intentionally messing up with user reviews—this is lame, not clever.

Apple heralds in Christmas with its 12 Days of Gifts app, now spreads cheer to US users too

Apps used to be thought of as something you use produce stuff. They can be consumed too. This app is just one example: after the 12 days you will throw it away and never use it anymore. Similar ones include the iTunes Festival 2013, as well as the iPhone 4 case app back then for the antenna gate. Another category are the tourism apps by city: you visit a place and download these apps and probably will never need them again. Surprisingly currently there are not as many apps of this nature beyond the above mentioned, except magazines.