I don't think so, I saw posts all over Facebook and Twitter about it with many people saying that they were planning to close their Instagram accounts.

The mobile site has a dramatically different style than the Slashdot website. It doesn't have the same color scheme, fonts, layout, or any stylistic element in common that I can find. I realize this is a beta and this is Slashdot, but I thought it was pretty standard to start working on the look of a website before beta stage?

Agreed, maybe start by looking at some successful examples:

http://www.iluvvideo.com/

http://www.scarecrow.com/

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/14/14431038-thousands-rally-in-karachi-for-malala-14-year-old-pakistani-girl-shot-by-taliban?lite

I examined this and other similar maps based on (urban) neighborhoods where I've had terrible reception on particular providers, and I don't think you can easily tell from these maps. I think it may be best to just ask people who already have phones and will be living and working in areas where you will be.

Kickstarter is a great idea, but I think it will soon become difficult to fund projects due to lack of quality control. I think there will be too many projects that get funded but fail to deliver (like this one), people will become wary about what they fund, and eventually it will be almost as difficult to get a Kickstarter funded as it is to just find an investor.

I think this DEVO App Kickstarter is a good illustration of the problem. As an iOS programmer and I can tell you that this project will almost certainly end in disappointment. He basically wants $15k to redo the graphic assets of his failed colorforms-like app, but I think it takes an expert to see this through the clever sales pitch.

is playing Angry Birds

I'm not much of an expert, but I can think of more human missions that have failed (expensively and tragically) than robotic missions that have failed. And the mars rovers have lasted dramatically longer than expected. Plus, getting the rover unstuck from the sand shows that you can fix tough problems that require improvising even with a robot.

I'm an iOS developer, and keep in mind when you read this that there is an entire industry of developers whose business plan is to submit pointless novelty/spam games and apps to the App Store as fast as humanly possible. Because of this, Apple has made it so you can't submit any app that simply aggregates web content or has limited functionality, and I think it's good for the App Store to impose this. On the iOS forums I follow, people get rejected constantly for simple aggregator apps like this.

So being a bit of a collector of these spam apps and having seen a lot of them, I don't really blame Apple for not being able to tell the different between those spam apps and this -- which maybe deserves a bit more consideration than the average spam aggregator app. I blame the app spammers who have wrecked the system, not Apple.

And anyway, geez, just make the project a webpage and twitter account and it has the same effect and you aren't limited to iOS. Oh, but then it's not as "cool" because it's not an iPhone app!

Seems like a big chunk of that 1% would have to come from when they started selling Linux netbooks at Best Buy and it felt like it was beginning to gain traction, but I'm sure that market is out because of tablets. I looked up Linux netbooks on Amazon and they're all out of stock. So in a way, the new Linux desktop battle is fought with Android tablets, which Apple is now trying to kill with lawsuits.

rename before marketing

Uh duh, the Aztecs already did this, the world is ending in 2012.

Yes, that app may have some design problems that are introducing latency, but audio latency is a known problem that the makers of Android have admitted. Search for "Android audio latency" and you'll see what I mean. Some apps may be able to achieve better latency in Jelly Bean, but I won't believe it's low enough until I see the numbers. Even 40ms for iPhone is a bit high.

I'm an iOS music app developer, and for music apps and action games, despite the similar hardware Android just doesn't cut it yet performance-wise. Check out the touch-to-sound latency times below that another music app developer posted last week. For many apps it doesn't matter, but for audio and many types of games, 200ms latency is too much! I haven't tested Android myself, but on iOS I get about 40ms.

WaveSynth for Android 1.0.1
HTC (4.0.3) -> 186ms
Google Nexus 7 (4.1.1 Jellybean) -> 213ms
Galaxy S2 (4.0.3) -> 256ms

WaveSynth 2.1
iPhone 4 (5.1.1) -> 49ms

link

I've done quite a bit of Apple II, Commodore 64, Atari 2600 (I know my 6502) and I'm now an iPhone developer, and I agree with John Romero on this one. You can write and C and go pretty low level when you want to. I don't know exactly what it is, but it somehow has a similar vibe to programming those older machines -- I've thought the exact same thing myself many times.

Adjusted for inflation, the cost of an Apple IIe is more than a Macbook Air and iPod Touch combined. In some ways I do hate how locked down iOS is, but jailbreaking is really easy and allows you to program your device without the developer fee.