However, if we look at the 10,000 most popular apps (UK downloads), then 464 (4.6%) apps are incompatible with 256MB devices. In other words, for the top 10,000 apps, the proportion of incompatible apps is greater than for the overall marketplace. Taking just the top 1,000 apps gives a slightly higher proportion, with 64 incompatble apps and games (6.4%) – of these, just under 50% of the total are games. This should come as no surprise, given that games are generally more resource hungry than apps.

And this isn’t too bothersome. The real problem is revealed earlier in the article: apps still show up in the marketplace, and then users are warned that they cannot download them because of the hardware limitations the phone possesses. This is prototypical of a poor UX: warning messages leading to frustration. The lesser devices are dead on arrival when they can’t access the hottest apps, which include big names like Angry Birds and The Sims 3. A much better solution would be to simply not display them in the listing, or create lists that are “optimized for your phone.”

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The chart also shows Firefox’s continual decline. I quit Firefox a few years ago after using Chrome, but now use Safari primarily due to its speed. However, I have recently experienced an odd increase in hard drive usage due to the amount of temporary data it stores to pull off the fast speeds.

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The biggest reason? The retina display.

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By launching a direct-to-consumer camera Lytro has leapt ahead of all its potential competitors for the race to become king of light field and computational photography, but that strategy can backfire if limitations of Lytro’s first camera tarnish its brand before Ng and co can move on to some of the amazing future possibilities for their technology.

Though the Lytro camera has received some bad press, the technology behind it is miles ahead of any competition.

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The glasses will send data to the cloud and then use things like Google Latitude to share location, Google Goggles to search images and figure out what is being looked at, and Google Maps to show other things nearby, the Google employee said. “You will be able to check in to locations with your friends through the glasses,” they added.

Everyone I spoke with who was familiar with the project repeatedly said that Google was not thinking about potential business models with the new glasses. Instead, they said, Google sees the project as an experiment that anyone will be able to join. If consumers take to the glasses when they are released later this year, then Google will explore possible revenue streams.

There looks to be some clever UI and gesture based navigation involved. The best part is that ads will not immediately be prevalent. And they shouldn’t be given the high price tag of 250-600 for the service. If it runs on 3G/4GLTE though, you may expect to have a service charge on the goggles to get the best usage out of them.

I am personally weary about this, for a completely random reason: ever wonder why the virtual boy failed? Giving someone a dedicated screen to wear all day could seem cool, but imagine the strain.

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Google has since blocked this from occurring, but other third-parties are still using methods that are inexcusable.

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