Ads, duh.

The Wall Street Journal on Facebook’s amendment to their S-1 that they filed yesterday:

Facebook Inc. pulled back the curtain on how much it thinks it is worth, targeting a valuation as rich as $96 billion in what would be a record debut for an American company. […]

Currently, the largest valuation for a U.S. company at the time of an IPO was United Parcel Service, in 1999, at $60.2 billion, according to Dealogic.

Long-time readers of this site know that I have never had an interest in Facebook. I’m not anti-Facebook, I just don’t personally have any desire to have a Facebook profile. Mostly because I see it as being just another time sink. But, as Facebook inches towards going public, I’m getting more and more interested in the network as a company.

Cool video demonstrating a concept for easier granular control of the cursor: swipe left or right across the keyboard to move the cursor respectively, and more.

The tap-and-hold bubble is neat but can be very frustrating and slow at times, especially when trying to fix one letter. In fact, a not-insignificant reason to use a Bluetooth keyboard when doing a lot of typing on the iPad is for easier eding of the text. It’s why all these iOS text-editing apps (Byword, iA Writer, Writing Kit, et al.) have dedicated cursor mover buttons.

Some fascinating charts by Chris Sauve breaking down the market share of the entire tablet market.

This week’s episode of The B&B Podcast Ben and I talk about the Samsung Galaxy S III (which was announced during the show), Paul Miller’s decision to leave the Internet for a year, and thoughts on the ethics of linking to a Kickstarter project which you are not a backer of.

Eric Migicovsky, creator of the latest runaway Kickstarter project, the Pebble smart watch which I’m sure you’ve all heard about by now, shares a little bit of the funding and development story.

I haven’t yet backed the Pebble. If I did it would be for science rather than for my personal desire for the watch. While I do think an iPhone-connected smart watch could be very cool, it would need to be more than a “read-only” device. Other than accessing the Music app, the Pebble can do little more to control your iPhone. It can’t answer your phone calls, reply to your text messages, dismiss a Twitter DM notification, tell you the weather, etc.

The Pebble is certainly on the right track. Their Kickstarter project alone proves that there is a market for watches that connect to our phones. And, the Pebble is useful without a smartphone to connect to as well, due to its built-in functionality and SDK. But for those picking up a Pebble so they can pair it with their iPhone, I can’t help but wonder if the Pebble will prove to be more novelty than utility.

Though it never stopped me, I always thought using a higher-wattage power adapter for my laptop was a bad idea. Turns out, according to this Apple knowledge base article, it’s no big deal at all.

Although you should always use the proper wattage adapter for your Apple portable, you can use an adapter of a higher wattage without issue.

Also, the AC plug that can be used in place of the cord? It’s called a “Duckhead”. You learn something new every day.

(Via Chris Bowler.)

Nate Jackson, a former Denver Bronco, wrote an open letter to Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III (the number 1 and 2 draft picks this year) about what life is like as a football player in the NFL:

Once the whistle blows on Sundays, you’ll be released from captivity, and you’ll be free for three hours to truly live your dreams on the grandest scale you can imagine, against the best athletes on the planet. You will win or you will lose, but then the football game will end. The NFL game never will. Godspeed, boys.

(Via Kottke.)

Marco Arment, back in 2010:

A common fallacy is assuming that any new platform in an exciting market — recently, smartphones and tablet computers — will be flooded with developers as soon as it’s released, as if developers are just waiting outside the gates, hungrily waiting to storm in.

The more things change the more they stay the same.

RIM handed out alpha prototype phones of BlackBerry 10 to 2,000 developers today. The prototypes can’t yet make phone calls or connect to Wi-Fi. The hardware is still “pokey” and there is still much software optimization to do.

So why give out these devices in their current sad state? Alec Saunders, VP of Dev. Relations, has the answer:

The reason why we’re doing this — which is unprecedented for us and it’s quite uncommon in the industry — is because we want to create a wave of application support behind the new BlackBerrys before we bring them to market. If we launch without applications, well, it will be slow.

What else is odd is that the operating system on the phones isn’t even BlackBerry 10. As Dieter Bohn reports with his hands on review of the device:

As far as the OS goes, this is almost entirely the PlayBook OS, not BlackBerry 10. Although RIM says that it has built-in some of the hooks and calls that will be part of BB10. The idea is for developers to begin building their apps now and test them on phone hardware so they’re ready when RIM releases actual hardware.

The Verge has the sneak peek video from today’s keynote, along with some screenshots of the new BlackBerry 10 OS.

Lex Friedman’s review of the new Big Jambox from Jawbone:

When I reviewed the original Jambox, I marveled at the volume such a small speaker could generate. The airtight Big Jambox houses a pair of proprietary active drivers along with a passive bass radiator, and when it comes to audio, blows its predecessor out of the water. Compared to the basic Jambox, the new version can play much, much louder than the original, and produces audio with a well implemented balance between lows and highs. And while I was impressed by the original Jambox’s bass, the Big Jambox really kicks out impressive low-end presence. In addition, at lower volumes the Big Jambox uses a loudness-compensation algorithm so that sounds we perceive as quieter, such as bass frequencies, sound relatively balanced. In my listening tests, this worked well.

See also Lex’s hands-on video of the Big Jambox over at the TechHive Beta Blog.