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Mark Kawakami

Member since: Jun 1st, 2005

Mark Kawakami's Latest Comments

Blog Activity
Blog# of Comments
TUAW.com32 Comments
Divester3 Comments
Engadget2 Comments
AOL TV118 Comments
Cinematical6 Comments
Download Squad4 Comments
Engadget HD5 Comments
Urlesque1 Comment
Moviefone Blog1 Comment
Lemondrop1 Comment

Recent Comments:

Marine Corps aviators depend on iPad (TUAW.com)

May 31st 2011 4:54PM New ad:

"If you ask a Marine fighter pilot, he might say call it 'kick-ass bitchen'"

Study wrongly suggests iPad readers skim, show poor retention (TUAW.com)

May 20th 2011 8:12PM I don't know why you're even running this post. The "study" was "published" on Miratech's blog last November (and they did some more analysis in February), so it's neither worthwhile (thanks to the potential problems with methodology) nor timely.

However, not to quibble, but Miratech claims that they had users read "similar" articles first from the printed paper, and then from the iPad version. They didn't say they used the same article, so it's entirely possible (probable, I think) that participants were reading different articles.

However, there's still problems with their methodology. The mind fatigues easily, and studies have shown that we retain the most information at the beginning and end of a study session, not in the middle. So it's possible that users retained less when using the iPad simply because there wasn't enough time between the two tasks.

But more importantly, the video of the eye tracking for the iPad raises several issues: First, the content didn't appear to be well optimized for the iPad (Basically it either showed the same layout as the newspaper or what looks like a poorly implemented text view). Second, in order for the eye tracking to work, the iPad had to stay in a fixed position rather than in a position that simulates how a user would actually hold and interact with the device.

Intel and Apple to launch Light Peak as Thunderbolt in the MacBook Pro (TUAW.com)

Feb 23rd 2011 3:52PM Yeah, you are the only one this bothers. I think that may be because "thunderbolt" is a well known English word (it's in the dictionary!) and also it doesn't mean what you think it means. It refers to both thunder and lightning together. You can't hear a lightning bolt or see a clap of thunder, but you can see and hear a thunder bolt.

Celebrity Twitter Spelling Report Card - Grading Obama, Neil Patrick Harris and More (Urlesque)

Dec 20th 2010 9:59PM This is awful. There's nothing questionable about "spaghettification", even though it's not a "real" word. Who could question a word as expressive as that even though it's a self-coined neologism? Only across a Scrabble board should it be considered wrong.

Neil Patrick Harris tweeted in code once, and that's being used against him here. That's almost exactly like dinging down someone for tweeting in Spanish. Absurd.

New tenses to existing words? She uglied our language! Oh no! Such horrifical prosing must be consequenced, statly!

I'm saddened to see such a constipated imagination as displayed here given such a wide audience. By your standards, Charles Schulz should have been put in grammar-jail for "Augh!" and "Blech!" (to say nothing of Woodstock's charming "|||||| ||| ||| ||").

You know the real prose/spelling/grammar faux-pas? Posting an entire blog post as one large image instead of learning to use HTML. I'd love for my vision-impaired father to look over this post, but he can't, because it's an image. Made up of text. For no damn reason at all.

Good job, you smugly pedantic link-baiter.

Snagit for Mac giveaway (Download Squad)

Dec 6th 2010 3:27PM SnagIt for Windows was awesome, so I'm really excited about Snagit for Mac

Trick or Treat with TUAW: Thought Out Stabile iPad stand (TUAW.com)

Oct 28th 2010 7:18PM If I won, I'd have to decide between having it on my desk at work, next to my laptop, or on my coffee table at home. Coffee table would probably be the winner.

Apple posts guidelines for Mac App Store (and we have highlights) (TUAW.com)

Oct 21st 2010 12:31AM The good news is that, at least so far, they do not say that apps can't be sold elsewhere, such as directly to the consumer. The bad news is that it's very easy for existing apps, especially any that create a helper process that stays in the background after the app is terminated, to run afoul of these terms. The issue here is that being on the app store is likely to be a huge advantage for developers putting anyone not distributing through the app store (at least, if they're not Microsoft or Adobe) at a big disadvantage. So developers of existing apps, including some very good ones, will have to choose between crippling their app or ceding App Store territory to their competitors. My hope is that Apple will be a little more lenient on some of these rules in order to foster a healthy ecosystem.

But these terms aren't too terrible. At the moment, there's nothing about selling add-ons outside of the app, nothing about requiring the app store for add-ons, nothing about creating an interpreter for other computer languages, nothing about using something other than xCode for developing the app (just packaging and submitting). Of course, any or all of these could be in the complete guidelines since what TUAW listed were just highlights, and the guidelines could be amended at any point. But at least regarding what's here, Apple is being a lot more lenient with the OS X app store than it is with the iOS app store.

Poll: What's the Best New Show of the Season? (AOL TV)

Oct 15th 2010 6:48PM It's Terriers. I can't believe it's not even on the list. It's totally Terriers.

'30 Rock' and 5 More Shows Accused of Stealing From Other Shows (AOL TV)

Oct 12th 2010 5:30PM Success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. Comedic Success is 90% inspiration and 90% perspiration... and 50% plagiarism. It has ALWAYS been true.

'The Big Bang Theory' Season 4, Episode 3 Recap (AOL TV)

Oct 8th 2010 4:16PM My question is this: How did they get all those cats to more or less stay in one place? There's a reason they have the term "it's like herding cats."

(and don't tell me they're trained cats... anyone who has had to work with "trained" animals on a tv show or movie knows that the difference between a trained animal and an untrained one is that the trained animal might eventually do something like what it was supposed to do... maybe)