Linkbait 20

This week’s. Or something’s.

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• An overview of what WebKit 2 is. Summary: not really important for web developers; it’s mostly a reshuffling of internal threads and functions. No doubt important, but in theory we should not notice anything.
  The only browser that I’m certain uses WebKit 2 is the MeeGo WebKit Nokia ships with the N9/N950. But doubtless others will come.
• List of differences between the Nokia N9 and N950 (MeeGo). The software update that will follow when the N9 is released will likely contain an updated browser.
• Bruce Lawson jots down some notes for non-technical journalists covering HTML5.
• Long, good overview of mobile payments. Page 2 contains many details on NFC adoption, and also the caveat that “for any new approach to really catch on, it has to offer some compelling advantage.” I’m still not sure if NFC has such an advantage. It all depends on how customers are going to put their money on their phones (will they need credit cards?) and whether peer-to-peer contact is possible (right now it seems that’s not the case).
• What’s going on with RIM and its disappointing sales? The BlackBerry may be wildly popular as a youth texting device, but that doesn’t mean the young users buy a new phone every two years. Tomi explains.
• The IE team explains how drag and drop is implemented in IE10.
• Horace Dediu points out that om a global scale the Verizon iPhone doesn’t matter, and that it does not influence iPhone sales figures to a meaningful extent.
• The Guardian discusses the mobile financial revolution in Africa, which we’ll encounter only years later.

  Seeking to establish a reliable means of interacting with farming communities in the Ugandan countryside, Grameen has started to lease smartphones to local farmers so that they can receive information - seasonal weather reports, planting advice, disease diagnostics, market prices - and pass it on to their neighbours. They also gather information from the farmers they register and feed it back to Grameen in Kampala, which passes it on to agricultural organisations and food programmes.

  This factoid will certainly go into the next version of my Future of the Mobile Web presentation.
• And what kind of smartphones are distributed? Android. Not that the Ugandans will be much interested in the whole credit-card-based NFC ruckus. The future of mobile banking will look quite different.
• Apparently JavaScript haters are now retreating to the opinion that the fact that JavaScript has become the most important programming language in the world was due to dumb luck. Brendan Eich jumps to the defense, and ReadWriteWeb summarises.
• Vision Mobile takes a good look at mobile platforms and why some of them are succesful.
• John Gruber studies the tablet market and makes an important distinction between shipments and sales. I agree that the tablet market right now is pretty much iPad-only.
• Vision Mobile measures several projects’ openness, from Android to WebKit. Android is the least open one, yet the most succesful one. (Come to think of it, WebKit is more succesful than Android.)
• Infographics, baby! How does a touchscreen work?
• Infographics, baby! Mobile gaming. Text in Dutch, but graphic in English.
• Infographics, baby! The Android Story. Site in German, but graphic in English.
• Infographics, baby! Mobile Internet Costs around the world.
• Mozilla wants to create its own, web-based mobile OS. I’m sorry, but this is one of the more ridiculous ideas I’ve heard lately. Web-based OSs aren’t very competitive as it is (ChromeOS and webOS have both failed to make a mark on pretty much anything), and creating yet another is a solution for which there is no problem. Besides, how will Mozilla make sure that anyone uses it?
  A waste of good engineering hours that could easily be spent on something useful.
• Horace Dediu estimated the number of iPhones solid in Q2 to be about 15 million, while it turned out to be 20 million. He wonders why he got it wrong, and concluded that the usual Q2 drop did not take place due to Apple not announcing the iPhone 5 in June. Consumers who wanted an iPhone simply bought whatever was available.
  Horace feels this is a pivotal moment in Apple’s strategy, but the phenomenon could also be explained by simple postponement: instead of sales dropping in Q2 they’ll drop in Q3 between the announcement and the release of the iPhone 5. We’ll see.
• Want to split atoms? Don’t do it at home.
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