Fairphone 2 + more things

3 minutes estimated reading time

Fairphone 2 – a pre-production review of the new modular smartphone – Computing – a review of a Project Aria-esque device. The Fairphone 2 is similar to Jolla, which also experimented with their ‘other half’ concept but no eco-system built up around it. It will be interesting to see if Fairphone 2 can be any more successful

16 Deals Feeding Chip Biz’s Merger Fever | EE Times – the flurry of M&A activity is the product of Wall Street’s relentless pressure on chip companies to show revenue growth that cannot be achieved organically

Online IT Project Management Software | LiquidPlanner – interesting project management software

Will digital books ever replace print? – Craig Mod – Aeon – Digital books stagnate in closed, dull systems, while printed books are shareable, lovely and enduring. What comes next? – which is usually the kind of problem digital solves….

No More Coffee Queues, Starbucks Mobile Order and Pay Comes to London | Lifehacker – I hope that it has less friction than Qkr

Samsung refutes claims that its TVs are more energy-efficient in lab tests than real life | VentureBeat – it will be interesting to see how this plays out

Have The World’s TV Makers Been ‘Doing a Volkswagen’? | Time – Samsung accused of cheating on energy consumption tests for TVs

This Is Why Dunkin’ Donuts Is Closing 100 Stores | Time – aggressive market for breakfasts in the US

IBM’s super fast, powerful and tiny carbon computer chips could soon be in all our devices | Quartz – if they don’t mess it up like Josephson Junction chips in the 1980s. More technology related posts here.

Caffeinated Peanut Butter Is Here | Time – putting this on my wishlist from Santa Claus

How Steve Jobs Fleeced Carly Fiorina — Backchannel — Medium – something that Steven Levy doesn’t not but in an added piece of irony of this is that Compaq had one of the first hard disk based MP3 players that no one remembers any more. It was a product licensed to Hango Electronics and sold as the Personal Jukebox

Amazon to Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices – Bloomberg Business – so the back of your TV is going to be festooned with boondoggles and black hockey pucks as everyone decides to play nasty

Synaptics Said to Shun $110-a-Share Bid From China Investor – Bloomberg Business – which would help China’s strategic position to be higher up the food chain on chip design

Google, Microsoft Resolve Patent Fight Over Phones, Xbox – Bloomberg Business – war on trolls like Microsoft founder Paul Allen and his business Intellectual Ventures. Will Microsoft still be taxing Android phone makers though?

iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus Preliminary Results | Anandtech – interesting how performance has been improved across the circuit board including memory access and processor performance

Phil Knight sees the finish line as Nike’s leader | US Today – kind of a big deal in the sports industry

Why have marketers stopped putting creativity first? | CampaignLive – I’d also add that performance marketing has created a culture of marketing being about Excel spreadsheets

brandchannel: Reader’s Digest Owner Rebrands to Trusted Media Brands – it makes sense as Readers Digest is actually a stable of magazines

Never not wrong: Saying Apple should ditch its chips | Macworld – but that doesn’t stop it from licencing more Qualcomm technology