Ben's Blog World: From the Editor's Desk: Perhaps the hyphen is the source of evil?

Monday, July 22, 2013

From the Editor's Desk: Perhaps the hyphen is the source of evil?

Phil Nickinson

So much for a slow summer, eh? We've got two events on the books next week, the Moto X dropping the week after, and we're starting to plan for IFA in Berlin the first week of September. So let's keep things short this week, shall we?

So Jay-Z is now Jay-Z. Will losing the hyphen sap his power?
I was sad to see Rolling Stone hop on the 'ZOMG THE JAY Z APP IS EVIL" bandwagon. "IT NEEDS FULL NETWORK ACCESS." Yes, Rolling Stone. It needs full network access. Because it connects to the Internet. Just like your app. Rolling Stone was hardly the only offender here, though.
More interesting is that the "Magna Carta Holy Grail" app has since been quietly pulled from Google Play. It's possible that was in the works from the start, but I doubt it.
What's the consensus on the album? I'm not enough of a hip-hop fan to intelligently weigh in, though I have listened to the record a couple times.
The more I think about it, the more any sort of Nexus Q successor or whatever Google's living-room play is must include Amazon Video on Demand. Otherwise I'll be sending my screaming toddler to Mountain View to rain fire and brimstone and more whining and crying than one father can stand. Girl's gotta have her Dora.
I'm curious to see how much not having optical image stabilization will affect how much I like/use the HTC One Mini. NFC, Snapdragon 400 and a 720p display I'll probably be OK with.
Work continues on the official Android Central App. I think for the next release we'll play with Google's staged rollouts, just to see what it's like on the back end.
Interesting note: A little less than a week after we pushed out v1.3 (to the beta group first, and to everyone a couple days later), nearly 80 percent have updated. To the 689 people who are still on the very first version we published, we considerately ask, "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?"
Holy crap.
Only one mistaken Tweet on Sunday after Phil Mickelson won the British Open. Hell of a round from Lefty. (Yes, I'm in his camp.) I didn't get to watch it live, though, as I took advantage of the one hour it didn't rain this weekend to mow the lawn. Listened to it on the Sirius XM app, though, and I daresay the commentators there made it pretty damn fun.
I'm at home this week with family obligations (wish @snickinson a speedy continued recovery from a kitchen mishap, if you'd like), but we'll still be in full effect at Tuesday's Verizon event in New York City, and Wednesday's "Breakfast with Sundar" in San Francisco, where we should get a look at the new Nexus 7 and Android 4.3.