I’d Trust Her More Than My Choices Today!

This #ElectionDay, RT if you'd elect Anne Bonny as your captain. #BlackSails pic.twitter.com/wbi0uTVSnB

— Black Sails (@BlkSails_Starz) November 4, 2014

Previously here:

Vote Against Everyone

iFive MX2: User Report

Over at the ZOL forum [Google Translate]. Note that photos don’t come through using Google Translate and Firefox. Try Chrome browser with the original URL.

Previously here:

iambillbil Looks At iFive MX2
iFive MX2: Photos, First Review
iFive MX2 Windows 8.1 Tablet Unboxed
Five Technology Announces iFive MX2 Windows Tablet
iFive MX2 Windows Tablet
Five Technology Teases New Windows Tablet (Updated)

Reader Alert: Hit “Older Posts”

This blog’s template sticks ten posts at a time on the front.

Today is yet another one of those days when I’ll be doing more than ten posts in a day.

So to see everything, when getting to the bottom of the scroll hit the “Older posts” link.

The first post published today was: iFive Air Listed At China Tmall

I’m not liking how many times I have to post this advisory. I had to do it twice in one day, last week. There are already well over 5,400 posts in this blog. At least ten a day means over 3,600 posts in one year.

ZOL Liveblogged Purchase And Test Of Nexus 9

Yeah, she looks excited …

Jump to her photo for the start of the recorded liveblog [Google Translate].

It’s all a bit hilarious — unboxing and testing in America for transmission in China — but it provided the first assortment of benchmarks, seen after the break.

Google Relents On SD Card Storage

Well, this seems like good news. Although I’ll wait until developers and actual users try it.

Richer access to secondary shared storage devices

Hey all, in KitKat we introduced APIs that let apps read/write file in app-specific directories on secondary storage devices, such as SD cards.

We heard loud and clear that developers wanted richer access beyond these directories, so in Lollipop we added the new ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT_TREE intent. Apps can launch this intent to pick and return a directory from any supported DocumentProvider, including any of the shared storage supported by the device. Apps can then create, update, and delete files and directories anywhere under the picked tree without any additional user interaction. Just like the other document intents, apps can persist this access across reboots.

This gives apps broad, powerful access to manage files while still involving the user in the initial selection process. Users may choose to give your app access to a narrow directory like “My Vacation Photos,” or they could pick the top-level of an entire SD card; the choice is theirs.

Now, if only Google would listen some more and put card slots in their Nexus devices.

— via Twitter

Previously here:

Google Changes Android To Kill SD Cards

“Fuck You. I’m Not Yours”

E-Book Mingles Love and Product Placement

Sweet’N Low appears several times in the 356-page story, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. In one scene, Mags, a Sweet’N Low devotee, shows off her nails, which she has painted to resemble the product’s pink packets. In another, she gets teased by a co-worker for putting Sweet’N Low in her coffee.

“Hellooo, isn’t it bad for you?” the friend asks. Mags replies that she has researched the claims online and found studies showing that the product is safe: “They fed lab rats twenty-five hundred packets of Sweet’N Low a day … And still the F.D.A. or E.P.A., or whatevs agency, couldn’t connect the dots from any kind of cancer in humans to my party in a packet.”

The scene was brought to you by the Cumberland Packing Corporation, the Brooklyn-based company that makes Sweet’N Low. Cumberland Packing invested about $1.3 million in “Find Me I’m Yours.”

Product placement in a novel might strike some as unseemly. But “Find Me, I’m Yours” is not like most novels. It’s an e-book, a series of websites and web TV shows, and a vehicle for content sponsored by companies. And if it succeeds, it could usher in a new business model for publishers, one that blurs the lines between art and commerce in ways that are routine in TV shows and movies but rare in books.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

You fucking whores.

Only On Twitter

(Which, coincidentally, is also how Twitter should market its damn self. That. Where else could I see two writers talk to each other like that? Facebook? Puhleeze. Twitter should billboard the fuck out of everywhere with examples like that. And use the tagline, “Only On Twitter.”)

Xiaomi One Billion Dollar Media War Chest

Xiaomi has lured away from Sina Tech Chen Tong. Tong will be a vice president in charge of media “content” strategy and acquisitions for Xiaomi (which includes the Mi TV).

Reuters has this: China’s Xiaomi to invest $1 billion to expand internet TV content

But this joint is the only place you’ll see the actual Weibos.

Xiaomi Social Media War Room

A staff of fifty — so far — who do social media and customer service.

How many people from Apple, Google, or Amazon can you contact that way?

There’s no mystery about the success of Xiaomi.

They are where their customers are.

Vote Against Everyone

Today is election day in the United States.

Where I am, two incumbent candidates are running unopposed.

Tell me again how voting will “change” shit?

When you go into your polling place, I want you to think about Mexico.

Mexico gets a high-speed train.

We get brutal SWAT teams who shoot dogs.

Now vote against all of them.