Where Language Stops and API Starts

Oracle vs Google trial is finished and everybody, except Oracle, felt relief as it finished in Google's favour. But there is one thing that struck me during the trial: different treatment of language and APIs. While language is considered mostly un-copyrightable, it is open question can you copyright an API.

Comfortable iPhone 5 Screen Size

Legend says that size of the iPhone's screen is chosen to fit perfectly average female hand. As there are more and more rumours about larger screen, I wondered how large screen can be squeezed in the case of the same size.

PenTile Math

Every launch of the great product contains seed of disappointment. After all the excitement what it could be, harsh reality of the real thing hits us hard. Samsung Galaxy S III was not different: why, oh why they had to put awful PenTile display in? How bad is it?

Megasomething Overkill

If you want to sell something to men, just give them continuously improving numbers in specifications. We want more power, less distortion, higher frequencies and longer runtime, even if we don't really need them. They are easy to compare and it's easy to prove that we have something better than the other male.

Every now and then, something becomes such overkill that nobody cares about it anymore. Take camera resolution. My first camera had two megapixels. With such resolution, you could only do standard size photos without too much cropping. With every next generation of cameras, resolution went up. Somewhere around eight megapixels people stop caring. It was good enough for all practical purposes.

Specs are Less Cool Part of Samsung Galaxy S III

Don't get me wrong - specs are top of the line. But what was more amazing during today's presentation were new features and services. It is mixture of what Samsung forgot to copy from iPhone last time and new and original stuff. These I liked the most:

Face recognition. On cameras, it meant that camera can recognize where faces are. On mobile, it recognizes whose face it is, like on social network. That gives some cool features. You can:

• open person from picture
• share picture with people who are on it
• group gallery by person

Right UI for All Hands

In my last post, I argued that problem with big smartphone screens is not in their size, but rather in unsuitable user interfaces. I also promised that I will reveal my special tool for UI calibration.

Tool will collect your biometric data and then present optimal UI layout.