Tech Links: February 6, 2013

"Hello" by Chris McVeigh

Business

And you thought the efforts to lock down the design of their devices was extensive. Apple has trademarked the interior bits of their stores. Where do you put the little “TM” or “R”? The restrooms?

Marc Andreessen predicts the end of traditional retail. "Retail chains are a fundamentally implausible economic structure if there’s a viable alternative. You combine the fixed cost of real estate with inventory, and it puts every retailer in a highly leveraged position. Few can survive a decline of 20 to 30 percent in revenues. It just doesn’t make any sense for all this stuff to sit on shelves. There is fundamentally a better model."

Netflix's goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become Netflix

Quirky is a design and manufacturing website for inventors. In 2010, one of their users, Bill Ward, came up with an idea for a dustpan called the Broom Groomer with a comb-like edge for cleaning off all the dustbunnies and stuff that builds up on your broom. Turns out, gadget company OXO came out with a very similar design in 2012 called the Upright Sweep Set. Last week, the folks at Quirky staged a protest and paid for a billboard that accused OXO of ripping off their design. OXO responds on their blog with a mini-lesson on patents and international intellectual property rights.

Entertainment

Website vgleaks.com is claiming a world-wide exclusive by revealing the full spec for the upcoming next-generation Xbox, codenamed Durango.

News

TruthTeller is an ambitious new automated application built by the Washington Post, which fact checks political speeches, ads and interviews "in as close to real time as possible." The prototype is intended to be a complement to the paper's Fact Checker Blog. More on the project from TechCrunch and Poynter.

Reading & Discussion

Aaron Swartz: The Punishment Did Not Fit the Crime

The Learners Bill of Rights, a set of “Principles for Learning in the Digital Age,” is the outcome of a twelve-person meeting held in Palo Alto last week to explore the voice of the educated in online learning discussions: As we begin to experiment with how novel technologies might change learning and teaching, powerful forces threaten to neuter or constrain technology, propping up outdated educational practices rather than unfolding transformative ones.

Mark Zuckerberg's Hoodie

Rebecca Solnit on how Silicon Valley corporations are transforming San Francisco: "competition for any apartment in San Francisco was so intense that you had to respond to the listings – all on San Francisco-based Craigslist of course, the classifieds website that whittled away newspaper ad revenue nationally – within a few hours of their posting to receive a reply from the landlord or agency. The listings for both rentals and homes for sale often mentioned their proximity to the Google or Apple bus stops."

A recent Atlantic article magazine raises the question of whether online dating discourages long term commitment. This is not the first time Atlantic has raised concerns about online dating sites. In 2006, the tone of an article on the topic was neutral. Not so much in 2010, 2011, and more recently. But perhaps we just all need more data.