TimBray
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Google introducing 'zoom to fill screen' option on a 'near-future' version of Honeycomb
Having a big, 1280 x 800 10.1-inch screen is just no good if your favorite old Android apps haven't been updated to use it. Ideally all devs would tweak their products to properly light up those pixels, but that's not always possible. Google's stepping in, adding another display option on "a near-future release of Honeycomb" that will simply zoom the app to fit the screen. This is separate from the current stretching option, which sometimes look bad or doesn't work. When this mode is enabled the app will be rendered at approximately 320 x 480 and that image blown up to fit. Pretty looking results? Unlikely, but a little Vaseline on the lens can only boost the confidence of these aging apps. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Android turns average man into El Vendor! (video)
You might not know Greg Bell by name but you've certainly been affected by his work. The man who directed Logitech's amusingly creepy Lonely TV viral ads has returned with a series of videos meant to promote Android. The premise is, of course, absurd: middle manager, trapped beneath a fallen vending machine, continues to work because his Android powered smartphone allows him to be productive even without the full use of his hands. In a bit of video magic, the handset with a 32-day battery is the Nexus S running Gingerbread... but only when shot from the front. Otherwise it's a Nexus One when shot from the back, presumably because this was filmed before the S' launch. Regardless, the result is a series of clever videos encapsulating an everyman's transformation into nerd superhero, El Vendor -- we dare you to not click all five.
Apple vs. Google gets personal: 'Steve Jobs simply hates Eric Schmidt' (video)
Image Credit: Daniel Adel, New York Times Nothing sells papers (or ads) like turning a little corporate competition into something personal. Case in point, a New York Times piece from the weekend titled "Apple's Spat With Google Is Getting Personal," that opened with this rather ominous, one-sentence paragraph: "It looked like the beginning of a beautiful friendship." Cue the orchestra. The lengthy piece chronicling the relationship between the Silicon Valley titans was formed by two dozen interviews with industry watchers, investors, and current and former employees. It covers a timeline spread that began with Google and Apple working in harmony to prevent Microsoft's domination of online services and mobile devices, and ends with Apple's patent lawsuit against HTC that reeks of a proxy battle against Android and Google. According to the NYT then, the heart of the dispute is betrayal, or Jobs' belief that Schmidt (a former Apple board member) "picked his pocket" by developing cellphones that "physically, technologically and spiritually resembled the iPhone." Here's how one especially feisty encounter is described: "At one particularly heated meeting in 2008 on Google's campus, Mr. Jobs angrily told Google executives that if they deployed a version of multitouch - the popular iPhone feature that allows users to control their devices with flicks of their fingers - he would sue. Two people briefed on the meeting described it as "fierce" and "heated."" And that's just the beginning. Read the rest after the break.
Tim Bray back on Mac
Remember all that hubbub about Mac geeks switching to Ubuntu? Well, Tim Bray (one of those geeks) is back on the Mac and he thinks that it beats Ubuntu, though just barely. He lists a number of interesting reasons for why one would choose OS X or some other Linux distro, all of which seem very reasonable. He has decided to keep his data in non-proprietary formats, which means that any OS can open up his stuff which, in turn, means that he can choose whatever OS he wants. We could all learn a little something from Tim's attitude towards computers.[via Daring Fireball]
