Apple iPad 2 16GB WiFi-only: $425 SOLD
Comes in original box with charger and cable
Mint condition – 4 months old, only lightly used approx. 2 hours/week

Apple iPad 16GB WiFi-only: $300 SOLD
Comes with charger and cable
Good condition – used up until I got the iPad 2

iPhone 4 16GB Factory Unlocked: $500 SOLD
Comes with charger and cable
Good condition – has minor scratches on the back as hiding the shiny with hideous cases is sacrilege

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1″ 16GB (Google I/O Limited Edition): $450 CLAIMED
Comes in original box with charger, cable and (unused) earphones
Mint condition – less than 10 hours total use

Samsung Series 5 3G Chromebook (Arctic White): $350 SOLD
Chromebook + charger + VGA adapter
Mint condition – only used once

Samsung SCH-LC11 4G Mobile Hotspot (Verizon Wireless): $175 (or $125 if purchased with iPad or Galaxy Tab).
New in box

Sony A700 body w/VG-C70AM Vertical Grip: $700 SOLD
Includes two original Sony batteries and USB cable
Good condition

A decade ago, four young men changed the way the world works. They did this not with laws or guns or money but with software: they had radical, disruptive ideas, which they turned into code, which they released on the Internet for free. These four men, not one of whom finished college, laid the foundations for much of the digital-media environment we currently inhabit. Then, for all intents and purposes, they vanished.

Full article in TIME

Google does far too little curation of the Android Market, and it shows. Unlike Apple’s App Store, the Android Market has few high quality apps. A study by Larva Labs (the developers of the excellent Slidescreen app) estimates that Apple has paid out 50 times more money to developers than Google has. While the Android Market is available in 46 countries, developers can only offer paid apps in 13 countries (for instance, Canada has only had access to paid apps since March 2010). In addition, the price for foreign apps is not displayed in the user’s local currency and developers do not have the option of customizing pricing by country. To make matters worse, you can’t pay for foreign apps using your Amex card or carrier billing. There’s also no support for in-app payments and changelogs (to communicate app changes).

Below are just a few examples of what’s wrong with the Android Market. Those 144 spam ringtone apps (which are clearly infringing copyright) are currently cluttering the top ranks of the Multimedia category. I was not surprised to find that they were being monetized through Google Ads.

Trademark and copyright infringement is widespread in the Android Market:

The music downloading app “Tunee” (one of many such apps) is one of the Top Free apps in the Multimedia category with more than 250k downloads. While some would dishonestly try to pretend that such apps are meant for downloading public domain classical music, the developers of Tunee are very clear about their intent. Their screenshot shows copyrighted music by the band Muse (Warner Music Group) being illegally downloaded.

These apps are damaging to companies that are building legitimate Android music apps (e.g Rdio, Spotify and MOG), not to mention Amazon whose MP3 store comes bundled with most Android phones in the U.S. Is Google’s strategy to turn a blind eye to illegal music downloading until they launch their own music store?

Developers and users are getting fed up and it’s time for Google to clean up the house.

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We’ve been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.

Since iTunes for Windows uses non-native APIs such as CoreFoundation and CoreGraphics, Steve Jobs is effectively calling iTunes for Windows a sub-standard app.

Is iTunes hindering the progress of the Windows platform by not taking advantage of the latest native Windows APIs? By Steve’s logic, Microsoft should start banning apps such as iTunes from Windows.

The Nexus One ships with a 2.6.29 kernel but if you like living on the bleeding edge you can install your own kernel (e.g. the experimental 2.6.32 kernel). Below you’ll find an update image I built which includes a 2.6.32 kernel, su, scp and ssh.

Steps to unlock your Nexus One bootloader and install your own firmware:

• Verify USB debugging is turned on in your Nexus One settings (Applications -> Development).
• Install the Android SDK and fastboot.
• Power off your Nexus One. Hold down the trackball and power the device back on.
• Run ‘fastboot oem unlock’ and then follow the instructions on the device.
• Download Amon_RA’s custom recovery image for the Nexus One.
• Run ‘fastboot flash recovery recovery-RA-nexus-v1.5.3.img’ and then reboot your Nexus One.
• Copy nexus-2.6.32-root-signed.zip to your Nexus One SD-card and then run ‘adb reboot recovery’.
• Once the device boots into Android system recovery, select “Flash zip from sdcard” and then nexus-2.6.32-root-signed.zip.

With root on your Nexus One, you can use apps such as n1torch (use your Nexus One camera flash as a flashlight).

Note that for security reasons you may want to replace the standard su with something like superuser.

Btw, my company, doubleTwist, is hiring engineers in San Francisco and Android experience is a plus. Perks include a doubleTwist engraved Nexus One

The Nexus doesn’t come with any iTunes-style companion software, either. Enterprising techies know about the free DoubleTwist program for Mac or Windows, which simulates iTunes for the purposes of loading up your phone with music, photos and videos.

This week, Walt Mossberg in a follow-up to his Nexus One review:

Google doesn’t supply any equivalent to Apple’s iTunes or the BlackBerry media-syncing software. However, the third-party program doubleTwist, available at doubletwist.com, is designed to function as a sort of iTunes for syncing Android, Palm and BlackBerry devices.

What are you waiting for? Go download doubleTwist now and sync with your Nexus One

We’ve also put the mounting instructions up at Mount Android (requires Chrome, Safari or Firefox).

BART’s excuse for ripping down the ad was that it was “too dark” and not letting through enough light into the BART exit. However, we have pictures that show there was plenty of light coming through the ad (the ad is printed on a clear plastic material):

We then submitted the following revised ad with a white background. A white ad would have let even more light through (notice how bright the bottle is in the original ad above). However, it was rejected for having a solid white background (!).

At the ad agency’s request, we then made the background completely transparent. It’s a lot harder to read text on a transparent background… After complying with all their requests to change the ad, we still haven’t been given a firm date on when the ad will be back up.

Apple is a major BART advertiser (in the past they’ve plastered entire BART stations with iPod ads). Apple’s WWDC conference ends on Friday. It’s pretty obvious what’s going on here… I’m sure our ad will conveniently be back up after WWDC ends.

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