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Firefox 12 released, adds silent updates

Mozilla has updated Firefox to version 12, bundling in a special bonus for Windows users: silent updates. Future releases for the browser will no longer require a confirmation from Windows' User Account Control panel (UAC), which could allow the browser to pick up the pace with software updates, since the user won't need to acknowledge them.


The Windows UAC is designed to alert the user when a new application is trying to make changes — Firefox's rapid update schedule can make this annoying (Firefox 11 was released just last month). Firefox 12 installs a service that runs in the background; give it permission once, and it'll serve up browser updates as they become available.


It's a simple tweak, but a useful one: many users might be tempted to click through UAC notifications (or turn the dialog box off altogether) after repeated, annoying announcements. If you'd prefer to retain control over your updates (handy, if you're worried about extensions breaking) you can still opt to be notified with every new update. You can grab the update from Firefox's website.

Google Drive vs. Dropbox, SkyDrive, SugarSync, and others: a cloud sync storage face-off

Google's very own "Loch Ness monster," also known as Google Drive, has finally launched. It's the new face of Google Documents, and it's also Google's oft-rumored Dropbox-killer. It enters a scene crowded with competitors besides Dropbox that let you sync multiple folders, collaborate with friends, and stream data to your mobile device — so how does Drive fare?

We'll take a look at the top apps that let you sync files between all of your devices automatically, share files using password protection, pick which folders you want to sync, and do anything else you might want to do with a syncing app. While our evaluations of each app aren't full-on reviews, they are encapsulations of where each app excels and what makes each unique. Refer to the chart at the bottom of the page for full breakdowns of each application.

The Internet Now Has Its Own Hall of Fame

THe official Internet Halol of Fame is now open for business, featuring Vint Cerf, Leonard Kleinrock and even Al Gore.

The Internet is getting its own Hall of Fame, and the first inductees will unsurprisingly be the fathers of the internet, and surprisingly one former U.S. Vice President among many others. A dedicated website is now live featuring inductee photographs and biographies, news, interviews, polls and more. A Q&A will also be conducted each month, the first of which features Internet Hall of Fame Pioneer Vint Cerf.


The names of the inaugural Internet Hall of Fame inductees were announced on Monday at the Internet Society’s Global INET 2012 conference in Geneva, Switzerland. The Internet Hall of Fame is an annual awards program that has been established by the Internet Society to publicly recognize a distinguished and select group of leaders and luminaries who have made significant contributions to the development and advancement of the global Internet.

"This historic assembly of Internet visionaries, innovators, and leaders represents an extraordinary breadth of vision and work," said Internet Society President and CEO Lynn St.Amour. "While the inductees have extremely diverse backgrounds and represent many different countries, each individual has an incredible passion for their work. We all benefit from their outstanding contributions to a global Internet, making it one of the greatest catalysts of economic and societal development of all time."

Google Drive is Now Live

Google Drive is finally here!



After much rumor, speculation, and an accidental announcement post that launched this morning on the French official Google blog (that was subsequently deleted), Google has finally made Google Drive official.

Google Drive will offer 5 GB of storage for free, 24 GB for $2.49/month, 100 GB for $4.99/month, and 1 whopping TB of storage for $49.99/month. While the 1 TB of storage doesn’t come cheap, forking over $2.49 or $4.99 a month is pocket change. You can definitely part with your morning coffee for one day to pay for that amount of cloud storage.


Google Docs will now be integrated into Google Drive and it’ll function as it previously had. You’ll still be able to edit projects in real-time with others and share projects as you see fit. You’ll also be able to comment on any type of project, be it a Word document, PDF, or image, and receive notifications for new comments.


Google Drive also features a new search function, which will allow you to not only search by filename or file type, but also by text in scanned documents. Image recognition searches will also be allowed, although Google warns that it “is still in its early stages, and we [Google] expect it to get better over time.”


In celebration of Google Drive’s launch, Gmail’s expanded every user’s free storage from 7.5 GB to 10 GB. For those that opt to use Google Drive’s paid service, their Gmail storage will automatically be bumped up to 25 GB.

Google Drive is currently available for Mac, Windows, and Android, although Google promises that iOS support is coming soon.

Windows 8 Release Preview Dated For June

The new public release of Windows 8 is slated for early June before it officially lands on store shelves in October.

Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft’s Windows Division in Japan, said on Tuesday at a Windows developer event in Tokyo that the company plans to release its Windows 8 Release Preview to the public in early June. This near-finished version will be the last public release of the boxy new Windows installment until it goes retail later this year.


Microsoft's release schedule for Windows 8 is similar to the one seen with Windows 7 even though officials have claimed that the newer OS isn't following the same timeline. Back in July 2009, Microsoft released the Windows 7 Beta and then reached the Release Candidate status in May. The RTM version was ready by July, leading up to the official Windows 7 retail launch in October 2009.


So far Windows 8 is following in the same footsteps. The public Windows 8 beta (Consumer Preview) was released in February 2012, and now Microsoft plans to follow up with the Windows 8 Release Candidate (Release Preview) in early June. The new touchy Metro-themed OS is expected to go RTM in July or August, and land on store shelves this October. Naturally the last two dates are mere speculation.


Just last week Microsoft revealed that Windows 8 will come in only four flavors after much speculation about the eventual SKUs: Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, Windows RT for ARM-based SoCs, and Windows Server 2012 for businesses and enterprises.


A chart provided by Microsoft here shows the difference between the three consumer versions, revealing that Windows RT -- formerly Windows on ARM -- lacks the ability to install x86/64 and desktop software, but provides device encryption. Yet it's extremely similar in features when compared to the standard Windows 8 although it won't support Storage Spaces and Windows Media Player.


Unfortunately, Sinofsky didn't go into details regarding the upcoming Release Preview or anything taking place thereafter. However the company previously said that it plans to share much more information about Windows 8 in the coming months, "including details on pricing and limited-time programs and promotions that we will make available to customers."

Last week during its earnings report, Microsoft said that it delivered a strong third quarter thanks to its enterprise software. The company reported earnings of $5.11 billion on revenue of $17.41 billion, or rather 60 cents a share. Wall Street was actually expecting Microsoft to report of earning 57 cents a share on revenue of $17.18 billion.

Harvard advisory council promotes open access publishing, says journals are too expensive

Harvard Library's faculty advisory council says that the annual cost for journals from publishers is prohibitively high, but instead of asking for more funding, it recommends that faculty support open access — an effort to provide unrestricted access to peer-reviewed journal articles. According to the advisory council's memorandum, Harvard's library spends nearly $3.75 million on journals each year, and prices for online content from two of its providers has increased by 145 percent over six years, "which far exceeds not only the consumer price index, but also the higher education and the library price indices." The advisory council says that the "situation is exacerbated by efforts of certain publishers (called 'providers') to acquire, bundle and increase the pricing on journals." It may sound strange that Harvard, which possesses the largest endowment in higher education, would complain about journal prices — but if it leads the way with open access, individuals and smaller schools and organizations could benefit.


To solve the situation, the advisory council suggests that faculty should publish their own papers with open access policies, and consider submitting their articles to open access journals or those with sustainable subscription costs — to "move prestige to open access." The council also recommends that faculty who are on the editorial board of a journal should consider resigning if they determine the journal can't be published as open access content, and for faculty to raise the issue of open access with professional organizations and peers. It's not clear what the future of peer review would look like in an open access world, and Harvard's faculty will actually have to accept the advisory council's recommendation for it to have any impact, but it's nonetheless a positive development for those who prefer broad access to knowledge.

Microsoft Xbox 360 found to infringe Motorola patents in preliminary ITC ruling

A judge at the US International Trade Commission has just ruled that Microsoft's Xbox 360 infringes five of Motorola's patents. The ruling isn't unexpected, since many of the patent cover H.264 video encoding, which is a standard — the ITC wasn't persuaded by Microsoft's argument that Motorola will "kill video on the web" by failing its obligation to license the patents under fair and reasonable terms. In a statement, Microsoft said it "remains confident the Commission will ultimately rule in Microsoft's favor in this case and that Motorola will be held to its promise to make its standard essential patents available on fair and reasonable terms."

The ruling is preliminary and subject to review by a full panel of ITC judges, so there will be little immediate impact, but Motorola's strategy of litigating with standard-related patents seems to be paying early dividends even as it invites international scrutiny.

HTC One X ready for pre-order from AT&T for $199.99

HTC's flagship One X phone is almost available in the US. After being announced with a May 6th release date, the phone is now up for pre-order on AT&T's site for the expected $199.99 with a two-year contract. AT&T isn't the first North American carrier to get the One X: Canada's Rogers Wireless released it late last week. Like the Lumia 900, though, the Android 4.0 phone is exclusive to AT&T in the US. This version of the phone is almost identical to the international one we reviewed earlier, but it will have LTE and a Qualcomm 1.5GHz Snapdragon processor instead of the Nvidia Tegra 3.

We briefly checked out the pre-order process and were promised that a phone would ship on May 2nd if we ordered now. AT&T's a bit late on the One X release, but getting its second exclusive flagship phone in a couple of weeks is still a fairly decent deal.

Facebook’s Amended S-1: 901 Million Users, 500M Mobile, Paid $300M Cash + 23M Shares For Instagram

Facebook has just filed a fourth amendment to its S-1 to IPO that notes that it now has 500 million mobile users, 901 million monthly active users, and that it paid 23 million shares at $30.89 a share plus $300 million cash for Instagram for a total of $1,010,470,000. Facebook also made $1.058 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2012, up 44.7% from Q1 2012 but down 6.5% from Q4 2011.


So if Facebook maintains its current revenue rate, it would make $4.69 on each of its 901 million users each year. Read on for more on the performance of Facebook’s ad business, and to see our embed of the full amended S-1.


Of the total $1.058 billion in Q1 2012 revenue, Facebook had an operating income of $381 million, and net income of $205 million. Advertising made up $872 million of the revenue, while payments and other fees accounted for $186 million. Payments are becoming a larger part of Facebook’s business, with advertising accounting for 82% of business at the end of Q1 2012 compared to 87% at the end of Q1 2011. However, Zynga is becoming less important to Facebook, as the percentage of its revenue derived from that single game developer decreased to 15% from 19% a year ago, as Kim-Mai Cutler details.for more..

Apple to Discontinue 17-inch MacBook Pro, Predicts Analyst

Apple is predicted to drop the 17-inch MacBook Pro from its mobile lineup later this year due to poor sales.

According to a new report by research analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple is expected to discontinue and replace its current 17-inch MacBook Pro with a newer more compact model. The cause of the predicted discontinuation stems from low sales for the first quarter of 2012, where the company sold roughly 50,000 MacBook Pro 17-inch variants out of a total of 3.1 million notebooks sold. Kuo predicts the company's solution will be to replace the 17-inch MacBook Pro with a new model in the third quarter of this year.


“We also predict Apple will roll out a fully new MacBook model in early 3Q12, boasting strong performance and easy carryability by combining the advantages of MacBook Air and MacBook Pro,” said research analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. “While adding new products, Apple is likely to stop making the 17-inch MacBook Pro this year due to falling shipments, in order to maintain a lean product line strategy.”


This could be unfortunate news for 17-inch MacBook Pro lovers, who may lose some screen real estate from the model re-design.

Apple vs. Google: Lessons from Bill Gates’ playbook

“There are three sides to every story: Your side, my side, and the truth.” —Robert Evans, “The Kid Stays in the Picture”


I’ve been ruminating on how Apple and Google could have come up with such divergent takeaways from studying the incredible, terrifyingly dominant run of Microsoft under Bill Gates.


For those too young to remember, Microsoft had a run like no other. Through a combination of strategic brilliance, relentless focus and sheer determination, Microsoft leveraged its initial DOS beachhead into a PC industry-crushing market share and massive profits vis-a-vis Windows, Office, Internet Explorer and BackOffice, a position cemented by a unified foundation of developer tools and legions of dedicated Microsoft developers.


When Microsoft set its sights on a market, it would squeeze the life out of the market leader like an anconda wrapping itself around its prey. Before it was done, the company struck numerous segments, including personal computing (Apple and IBM), word processing (WordPerfect), spreadsheets (Lotus), databases (Borland and Sybase), networking (Novell) and Internet browsers (Netscape).


It’s not hyperbole to say that Apple’s phoenix-like rise and Google’s ascent are directly and positively correlated with Gates’ decision to step away from running his company as CEO in 2000.for more...

ASUS Transformer Pad 300 (TF300T) Review

Before the $399 iPad 2, before the $199 Kindle Fire, there was the $399 Eee Pad Transformer from ASUS. Like nearly all first attempts in the tablet space, the original Transformer wasn't perfect, but it was quite possibly the best try outside of Apple at the time. And unlike most of the Android competition at the time, it was priced sensibly at launch.

The $499 Eee Pad Transformer Prime showed up several months later, but not as a true successor but rather an upstream member of the family. Combining Tegra 3, an improved display and a much thinner chassis, the Prime once again took the crown as the best Android tablet on the market.


ASUS hasn't lost sight of its focus on cost however. At CES this year it announced a $250 7-inch Tegra 3 tablet, and today we get the first true successor to the original Eee Pad Transformer: the Transformer Pad 300. Priced at $379 for a 16GB WiFi version and $399 for the 32GB model, the Transformer Pad sheds the Eee label but keeps the spirit of the original Transformer. The Eee brand that launched with netbooks back in 2007 is clearly on its way out as the last of the netbooks will ship this year.

Samsung starts countdown to 'The Next Galaxy'

Samsung's preparing to unveil its first teaser for the hotly-anticipated successor to its Galaxy S II smartphone. A tweet from the company's mobile division points readers to the charmingly titled tgeltaayehxnx website — an anagram for "the next galaxy" — where a countdown is teasing "the next step in" for approximately 18 and a half hours from now.


We know for a fact that Samsung's next Galaxy launch is set for May 3rd in London, so Monday won't all of a sudden reveal the details we've been so keen to know, but there's a good chance we'll be treated to the first video teaser. Samsung's next Android flagship device has been a closely guarded secret, which has only served to stimulate interest. Tune in again on Monday morning when we should have a slightly better idea of what the next Galaxy will look like

Gmail Meter indulges your inner statistician

Google has been on a quest for transparency lately, offering users Data Liberation downloads, Google Account Activity, and an account dashboard where they can make granular changes to their privacy settings. Continuing on this trend, the Official Gmail Blog has featured a user script called Gmail Meter, by Romain Vialard, which makes it easy to analyze data and usage patterns in Gmail.


Once installed into a Google Docs spreadsheet, users can choose to receive a monthly report or set their own interval. Long time users will have to wait a bit while Google crunches the numbers, but once that's done users will get an email with easy to read charts and graphs of metrics like average wordcount and volume statistics showing how much and how often you email. It will even generate graphs of daily traffic and pie charts comparing email categories, among several other analyses. Saurabh Gupta, of Google's Official Gmail Blog, has provided a video with step-by-step instructions for generating your own report, so put on your statistician hat and get crunching!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QeCb7Y9f8g&feature=player_embedded

The best tech writing of the week, April 22nd

 @Verge We all know the feeling. You're sleepless in the sad hours of the night or stumbling around early on a hazy weekend morning in need of something to read, and that pile of unread books just isn't cutting it. Why not take a break from the fire hose of Twitter and RSS and check out our weekly roundup of essential writing from around the web about technology, culture, media, and the future? Sure, it's one more thing you can feel guilty about sitting in your Instapaper queue, but it's better than pulling in vain on your Twitter list again.

ON FACEBOOK

Alexis Madrigal argues that it's time for startups to think differently. Everyone wants to build the next Facebook or the next Twitter, while using badges and "leveraging your social graph," but what's missing is real innovation, and real invention. We have the tools, Madrigal says, and we need to give them something new to do.

The Atlantic: Alexis Madrigal - The Jig Is Up: Time to Get Past Facebook and Invent a New Future

Decades ago, the answer was, "Build the Internet." Fifteen years ago, it was, "Build the Web." Five years ago, the answers were probably, "Build the social network" or "Build the mobile web." And it was in around that time in 2007 that Facebook emerged as the social networking leader, Twitter got known at SXSW, and we saw the release of the first Kindle and the first iPhone. There are a lot of new phones that look like the iPhone, plenty of e-readers that look like the Kindle, and countless social networks that look like Facebook and Twitter. In other words, we can cross that task off the list. It happened.

ON DRONES

Michael Hastings looks at the Pentagon's fleet of 19,000 drones, and how it's changing the way the US fights wars, conducts surveillance, and executes important and sensitive missions — all without the need for a single person to be present.

Rolling Stone: Michael Hastings - The Rise of the Killer Drones: How America Goes to War in Secret

Over the past decade, the military has tested a wide variety of unmanned aircraft – from microdrones that run on tiny batteries to those with 200-foot wingspans, powered by jet fuel or solar energy. The drones used in Iraq and Afghanistan – the Predator and the Reaper – look like large model planes and cost $13 million apiece. A drone the size of a 727, the Global Hawk, was used after the tsunami in Japan and the earthquake in Haiti to provide rescue operations with a bird's-eye view of the disasters. One of the largest drones in development today is the SolarEagle, designed by Boeing and DARPA, the experimental research wing of the Defense Department. With a wingspan of more than 400 feet, the SolarEagle will be able to stay in the air for five years at a time, essentially replacing surveillance satellites, which are costly to put into orbit.

ON STEVE JOBS' YEARS OUTSIDE APPLE

Brent Schlender interviewed Steve Jobs many times over the course of his life and career. Now, Schlender goes back through the recordings of their discussions to find out what Jobs did, and who he became, in the 11 years between his Apple stints.

Fast Company: Brent Schlender - The Lost Steve Jobs Tapes

Steve Jobs did not wander aimlessly into the wilderness after being ousted from Apple in 1985. No happy camper, he was loaded for bear; burning to wreak revenge upon those who had spuriously shoved him into exile, and obsessed with proving to the world that he was no one-trick pony. Within days, he abruptly sold off all but one share of his Apple stock and, flush with a small fortune of about $70 million, set about creating another computer company, this one called NeXT. The startup ostensibly was a vehicle for revolutionizing higher education with powerful, beautiful computers. In reality, it was a bet that one day he would get the better of Apple.

ON FEZ

Even as game graphics have continued to improve, a community of indie developers has continued to develop retro, pixel-based games that recall games and systems from the 90's. Simon Parkin looks at Fez in this light, and sees a backlash against the backlash.

HookShot Inc: Simon Parkin - Fez and the death of the pixel

Nevertheless, Fez feels like something of a full stop to the pixel art homage movement. What started out as a rebellion has become a cliché and, while Fez is too smart and assured in its own identity to slip into cliché, it feels as though this default fashion has run its course.As new generation of indie game makers rises, one born in the 90s whose formative game experiences were found on PlayStation, Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64, one wonders where the next underground aesthetic in games is headed.

ON FLYING

If you've flown at all in the last few years, you'll probably agree with Kip Hawley's thesis that airport security is both incredibly technical and optimized, and horribly broken. The former head of the Transportation Security Administration offers a clear look at how the system operates now, and a handful of simple ways to improve it.

The Wall Street Journal: Kip Hawley - Why Airport Security Is Broken—And How To Fix It

As a confidence boost, Gary gave me a series of images with guns and knives in various positions. Knives lying flat were giveaways, but when viewed lengthwise, they had very little visible surface. Explosives were a whole different story. A plastic explosive like C4 is organic and dense. It appears as a heavy orange mass. Unfortunately, a block of cheddar cheese looks roughly the same. As we started testing with a moving scanner, Gary warned me that too many false positives would be a big problem. A "hair-trigger" strategy would get me flunked. Images with guns took about one second to identify. Clear bags took roughly five seconds to double check for blade edges. It was cluttered bags—with their multihued oranges, blues, greens and grays jumbled together—that were the killers.

ON MUSIC WRITING

Listening to music is no longer a solitary process. We constantly share what we're listening to, and write infinitely about how we feel about it — how is that changing how we experience music?

Pitchfork: Mark Richardson - Follow People if You Like Their Music

In the online circles in which I travel, there have been three big waves of music writing this year-- one about Grimes, one about Fiona Apple, and one about Nicki Minaj. With Minaj's new album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, it felt like everyone had to have an opinion, and my favorite music writers were all elbowing each other to get to the front of the line with their review or thinkpiece. And while I'm impressed by a handful of songs from Roman Reloaded and will return to at least two ("Beez in the Trap" and "Come on a Cone") regularly, if I'm honest, I've enjoyed reading about the record much more than listening to it.

ON NATHAN MYHRVOLD

Nathan Myhrvold is Microsoft's former CTO, started a company that's been called a patent troll, and wrote a 2,400-page cookbook called Modernist Cuisine. Oh, and he has a T-Rex skeleton in his house. Joe Hagan tracks Myhrvold and his many interests.

Men's Journal: Joe Hagan - How a Geek Grills a Burger

In 1991, Myhrvold predicted the emergence of the iPhone down to the smallest detail, describing a "digital wallet" that would consolidate all personal communication — telephone, schedule manager, notepad, contacts, and a library of music and books, all in one. It would record and archive everything you asked it to, he surmised. "The cost will not be very high," he wrote. "It is pretty easy to imagine a $400 to $1,000 retail price." Microsoft, however, was too cost conscious and risk averse to execute Myhrvold’s vision.

ON ALIENS

The movie, not the extraterrestrial creature. From 1992, James Cameron responds to critics of his film.

Starlog Magazine: James Cameron - James Cameron's responses to Aliens critics

Please bear in mind the difficulty of communicating a life cycle this complex to a mass audience, which, seven years later, may barely recall that there was an Alien in ALIEN, let alone the specifics of its physical development. I had a great deal of story to tell, and a thorough re-education would have relegated ALIENS to a pedantic reprise of Ridley Scott's film. The audience seems to have a deepseated faith in the Aliens' basic nastiness and drive to reproduce which requires little logical rationale. That leaves only hardcore fans such as myself and a majority of this readership to ponder the technical specifics and construct a plausible scenario.

Nvidia: Smartphones Will Beat Console Performance by 2014

On Thursday Nvidia released a slide showing the progression of GPU performance in the console, PC and mobile sectors from 2001 to 2014. As Nvidia showed us last year, consoles have created a "Z" on the chart, jumping up one level after releasing a new version with better hardware, but flatlining for numerous years thereafter. They can outperform the PC on a graphic level thanks to an integrated design, but that victory is only brief to say the least as PC hardware performance steadily climbs.


What's shocking is the steep increase in GPU performance in the mobile sector. According to Nvidia's chart, devices began to show a real increase between 2008 and 2009, but the steepest climb thus far has been from 2010 until now. What's interesting is that Nvidia's chart shows the mobile GPU to be cranking out better graphics than the current Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles starting 2013. That says a lot given that smartphones weren't even considered as competition until Apple released the iPhone in 2007.


To some degree, smartphones are in a "golden era," mirroring a similar era experienced in the 1990s when GPUs began to infiltrate the PC sector. Developers like id Software and Epic Games were always pushing the envelope, squeezing out every ounce of performance the current hardware could provide while also pushing hardware manufacturers to implement features into the next generation. We're seeing that again in the mobile sector, and it's downright fascinating to watch this technology mature so quickly.


On a visual level, the progression has been phenomenal. We've moved from monochrome Tetris-like games to console-quality titles like Modern Combat 3 in a span of a few years. The rise in visual performance wasn't quite so dramatic in the PC sector, moving from the likes of Wolfenstein 3D in 1992 (PC, Mac) to Return to Castle Wolfenstein in 2001 (PC, Mac, Xbox, PS2).

Everybody Chill Out: Apple is a long-term goldmine.

When I left the country–and much of the Internet–to go on vacation three weeks ago, the tech world still seemed halfway sane. Instagram was just a super-cool dozen-or-so-person start-up, not a billion-dollar behemoth. Google’s augmented reality glasses were only a zany rumor, not a confessed roadmap. And beneath it all, Apple was still the surest bet in tech: On the strength of monster sales of the iPhone, the new iPad, and the news that it would begin offering a tiny dividend, AAPL had surged by more than 50 percent since the start of the year, and its future appeared limitless.

It still does. I admit I was under a rock for the past few weeks, but scanning through the headlines, I can’t find a single negative piece of news regarding Apple’s business fundamentals. (There was the Justice Department ebook complaint, but that doesn’t count; ebooks matter as much to Apple’s future revenues as Google Glass matters to the search company.)

And yet, in the absence of any new information about Apple, investors went nuts. Over the past month, they first ran up Apple by six percent, pushing it to a high of $644 on April 9. Then, just as swiftly, Apple plummeted. Yesterday the stock closed at $572.98, marking a decline of nearly 10 percent since the peak. Looking at the chart, you’d assume the company disclosed something terrible in the middle of April, some bit of news that suggested its future would be dire. But it didn’t. What happened, instead, was that investors got spooked by Apple’s success. The company’s stock is now laboring under the ridiculous smear known as the “law of large numbers”–a theory that, asNetwork World’s Yoni Heisler points out, holds water in statistics but makes little sense when applied to the stock market. The basic idea is that Apple is too big to keep winning; you can only be so good for so long in the tech business, and once you’ve had a string of wins, you’re going to lose.

Perhaps that makes sense in baseball or poker. It doesn’t make sense in tech. Apple’s recent wins weren’t merely lucky. They were the result of a determined, unmatched strategy to create bestselling, profitable products in the most remunerative new market in tech, the business of mobile computing. I’m ethically barred from owning AAPL, but if I were shopping around for tech stocks, I’d pay attention to two stellar facts about the company. First, nothing about Apple’s recent performance suggests any change in that basic strategy–Apple’s products continue to sell extremely well, and, more importantly, they continue to be unnervingly profitable. Second, and more importantly, the markets that Apple is in–smartphones and tablets–are the closest thing in business to being unbounded. Over the next few years hundreds of millions of people around the world willswitch from dumbphones to smartphones, and probably as many more will pick up tablets to replace their PCs. A large number of those people–perhaps not a majority, but a substantial minority–will choose Apple. And because Apple makes so much money on each of its devices, its numbers will continue to stun.

I’ve made this argument before. The problem is that these are long-term trends. Apple’s performance now looks fantastic, but it will take a couple more years–as more and more people in new markets join the mobile revolution–for us to recognize the company’s performance as being truly historic. Apple’s recent stock chart, though, suggests that many investors don’t seem interested in the long term. They’re vulnerable to anxiety, to panic, to cashing in on a recent good thing. You can see some logic to this. If you bought a bushel of AAPLs at $411 on the first trading day of the year, selling at $600 now yields a nice 45 percent return over just four months. Why stomach any more risk if you can keep such a sweet sum?

Because there’s more–a lot more–ahead. When you look back on this time a few years from now, cashing out of Apple now will begin to look like jumping from the train just after it chugs out of the station. The key is to look at long-term trends; don’t focus too much on what’s happening in any given quarter, but rather on the large tech positions that Apple is poised to realize.

You’ll have an opportunity to exercise such self-control this Tuesday, when Apple releases its second quarter financial results. Most analysts will pay attention to the number of iPhones the company sold. If that number comes in above Wall Street estimates of around 30 million, the stock will surge. If it comes in below, even slightly below, the stock will slide, possibly by a bundle.

The smart investor will ignore any slight tick above or below “expectations.” Remember: As it pertains to Apple’s future, it’s going to make little difference if the company sold 28 million iPhones this quarter or 33 million. What really matters is that Apple is continuing to expand its sales (28 million iPhones would represent a larger than 50 percent increase over last year) and that its margins stay relatively healthy.

Top 13 Twitter Pics of the Week

Gangs of Facebook: How a few angry users can kill your app

Facebook may be hugely popular among brand marketers and app makers, but the company does a remarkably poor job of keeping those users protected.

If enough people report that a particular application is offensive, Facebook’s automated spam-reporting technology will likely take it down in minutes without any type of warning. And that can happen even if the reports are completely fabricated.

This attempt at user-friendliness by Facebook is easy for users to abuse, and the outcome is actually user-unfriendly, not to mention, quite frustrating for those trying to do business on the platform.

My company, Dutch Monaco, experienced this kind of false flagging firshand. As soon as we’d published a new client app as part of a contest activity, comments started to pour in. A number of strange comments with fraudulent links began to appear that were clearly spam — most likely generated by software. Those comments were soon removed, but shortly after similar comments began to appear again. Those too were removed, and the users were blocked for good measure. But that wasn’t the end of it.

Within two hours, our client’s Facebook app was taken down and the Dutch Monaco Facebook user name was blocked without so much as consulting the host company. Our client was unhappy and wanted answers fast. In the end, after two days of countless conversations with an accounts team at Facebook, we were able to recover the user name and reinstate the client’s application.

What’s interesting to note is that, once the application went live again, we were sent a generic letter outlining application development best practices, including the most notable tip: Change the copy to be more Facebook user oriented.

It wasn’t until a week later that Facebook informed us that a large number of users in a short period of time had reported that the app contained “abusive content,” even though the application was aimed at recognizing and rewarding user interaction with a familiar brand.

There’s no question that Facebook is a great platform for developing brand recognition, but it still needs to make huge improvements in its content-vetting process.

Some GSM Galaxy Nexus connectivity issues is fix

When Android 4.0.4 rolled out to some GSM Galaxy Nexus phones a few weeks ago, it brought some wireless connectivity bugs along with it. Affected users have been waiting for a fix since then, and while Google hasn't officially released a patch, some GSM Galaxy Nexus users are reporting that build IMM76I of Android 4.0.4 has started being pushed out over-the-air (the previous build was IMM76D). WIthout any official release notes, we can't say for sure whether this will fix the connectivity bug, but some XDA-developersforum posts indicate that this update should indeed straighten these issues out. However, this doesn't appear to be being pushed out widely yet (we haven't seen it on any of our phones), so you may have to wait a bit longer before getting relief from this annoying bug. Hopefully this limited release means all users will receive this update sooner than later.

webOS homebrew developer builds new Google Maps app

Last year HP rolled out a new version of Maps for webOS devices that was powered by Microsoft's Bing. A homebrew developer named Jan Herman didn't love the change — nor did he find the languishing official Google Maps app to his liking — so he rolled his own, and it looks like it may be better than either of the other two offerings. webOS Nationreports that Herman's app, simply titled Google Maps, features multiple viewing options, directions, live search suggestions, current traffic conditions, and even Google Maps Street View. It's actually Herman's first webOS app, built initially for his own Pre Plus, but in the weeks since debuting an early version he has been iterating at a rapid pace, adding a number of new features and ensuring compatibility with all devices running webOS 1.4.5 or higher. There are a handful of known issues, particularly on the Pre3, and Herman still has a long list of features he plans to add to the app. At the rate he seems to be going, however, both should be taken care of sooner rather than later. If you're a webOS user and would like to try his handiwork out for yourself, the app isavailable for download now.