Instapaper

• The save page bookmark works with Google Reader. That is, it saves the link I’m reading rather than the Google Reader web page.
• Page turn. Rather than display the page as a long, scrollable single page, Instapaper paginates the document. You can “turn” the page much as you do in iBook or the Kindle app.
• Progress indicators. I like that it shows roughly how long a document is and how much has been read.
• Clean, minimal interface.
• The trick of reading the current page to make site like NYTimes (with page view restrictions) or LWN (pay walls) is a great idea but not completely reliable.
• Recent updates have been less stable. Going from day to night mode — an otherwise nice idea — almost always crashes. Putting the app into the background often loses the current location (it returns to the end of an archived article).

Pocket

You’ve probably seen that it’s the Sinclair Spectrum’s thirtieth birthday today. There are lots of great retrospectives — this is probably the best single source I read — so I’m not going to rehash all that. But I thought it might be worth a few words of my own.

Like many Brits my age, the Spectrum was my first computer. Technically it was the family computer, but after a few weeks I was pretty much the only one who used it.

It started with this image. Or rather the glitch that you can see in the middle of the screen.

It’s one of the screens in a new app that I’ve been developing. There’s lots of hard stuff in there but this is the first problem that has really stumped me. What it appeared to be was this: a text view (UITextView) on a table (UITableView) showed a nasty glitch when you tried to place the curser in the text box.

It seems that there’s a large variation in people’s experience with iCloud and iTunes Match, Apple’s recently introduced service for making your entire music collection available across all your devices. At the risk of making things worse — since I have nothing conclusive to add — I thought that I’d add my anecdote to the collection.

Like most software — and especially Apples — it works best when you work in a particular way. It’s often difficult to tell how close your expectations are to the real thing until after you’ve handed over your credit card. But what I will say is that iTunes Match works pretty well if you want to do what I do. So if you read nothing else in this post, you should look at the next few paragraphs.

It’s odd to feel a sense of loss for someone you never knew. The last time I can remember that this happened was when Douglas Adams died ten years ago. There are not many people like them.

What else can I add that has not already been said? Honestly, I’m not even going to try. Instead, here is a selection of links that I think hit the nail right on the head.

I’ve been playing around with Google+ more-or-less since it launched, but I’m not sold on it yet. After a bit of thought, I think it’s because there’s a fundamental disconnect between the kinds of behaviour that it encourages and the kinds of behaviour that it’s actually good at. Or maybe I’m just using it wrong. Either way, I’ll explain my reasoning here.

First, I should describe my frame of reference. I use both Twitter and Facebook, but I like the former much more.

I thought it was worth writing about my experience converting my iOS Developer Program account from an individual to a company since a lot of people on Twitter were taking an interest. I can’t claim objectivity or that my experience will mirror yours, but hopefully you can be better prepared than I was.

First things first. Can you even make the transfer? Despite claims to the contrary, it is possible. I think the process is often confused with the ability to move applications or whole accounts between companies (which isn’t currently possible).

If you look at the sales reports from iTunes Connect, it seems that Apple are taking nearly 40% of the sale price for downloads made in Europe. Of course they claim to take 30% and, indeed, that’s exactly what you see in the US store.

So what’s going on?

The good news is that Apple are not screwing you over. The numbers do add up. The difference is that prices in the US App Store do not include sales tax (VAT) but those in Europe do. This means that before Apple take their 30% cut, they first take off the tax that needs to be paid. If that’s not clear, let’s work through an example.

Rumour has it that Yahoo! are looking for a new CEO. Some people have been putting their name forward for the role, or at least offering suggestions for Carol Bartz’s successor. This post is in response to Joe Stumps list of ideas.

To be clear, I know that list is not completely serious. I know that he’s not really angling for the CEO role and I understand that many of the options would not be achievable even if they were the best thing for Yahoo! That’s not the point I’m trying to make.

The cartoon¹ for today’s Dilbert Day to Day Desk Calendar seemed appropriate for some things that are happening in the mobile software industry at the moment.

If you’ve not been following events — shame on you — then you can read all about it here. In summary, a number of small developers have been sued by a “patent troll,” that is a company that does not develop or make anything but demands royalties for the use of “intellectual property” it bought.