David Fickling and Ross Kelly reporting for the Wall Street Journal in Australia:

It wasn’t clear what benefit Apple would gain from any agreement, as details of the proposed deal were not discussed in full in front of the court. But Apple’s attorney, Stephen Burley, conceded there was some potential benefit from an agreement on the matter. “(Samsung’s) inconvenience would be diminished and we would be comforted” by such a deal, he said.

As explained by Enzo Ferrari.

Chris Martucci:

I came across the Monty Hall Problem while reading last night, and initially, I thought the author must have been mistaken. Of course, he made no mistake. He did, however, succeed in proving the common failures of human reasoning.

It’s a brain twister.

Elements is a beautiful, versatile text editor for iOS. Elements allows you to view, edit and share plain text documents on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. All of your data is stored in a folder on your personal Dropbox account so that it’s accessible from any device you have.

I’ve used this since it was first released. Great app.

Reuters reports that Tyler Lessard, RIM’s senior vice-president for global alliances and developer relations, left the company. He’s just the latest in a long line of people that are abandoning RIM.

Mike Kirkup, a director of developer relations, resigned in August. RIM’s head of marketing, Keith Pardy, left in March, just ahead of the PlayBook launch, and two of his staff later exited for jobs with Samsung, a fierce rival whose phones and tablets use Google’s Android.

1UP:

This year’s BlizzCon will again close out with a concert. Two years ago it was Ozzy Osbourne, last year was Tenacious D, and in 2011 attendees will get to rock out to the music of the Foo Fighters.BlizzCon is taking place at the Anaheim Convention Center once again on October 21 and 22. Even with the prices being increased, tickets are already sold out. Those who desperately want to see things for themselves will be able to fork over some cash to watch live coverage on DirecTV or with the web-based BlizzCon Virtual Ticket for $39.99.

In the space of a few short years, BlizzCon has become an absolutely must-attend event for computer gaming enthusiasts. Blizzard certainly knows how to throw a good party, and I’m sure Foo Fighters are going to tear the roof off the place.

Claire Cain Miller reports for the New York Times that Ted Koppel commented that too much news drivel and said it wouldn’t be a bad idea for Google to deliver people the news they need, rather than the news they want. Google CEO Larry Page responded:

“I see this as our responsibility to some extent, trying to improve media,” Mr. Page said. “If you ask anyone about how that information’s going to be propagated, what you’re going to focus on, I think it could work a lot better than it does now.”

Slippery slope folks.

CNBC:

Says talk that its Playbook tablet is being discontinued is “pure fiction” * Says remains highly committed to tablet market and to its QNX operating system.

The message is short but sweet; RIM is trying to counter rumors that surfaced earlier today that the company is walking away from Playbook sales. What is apparent, though, is that the market hasn’t responded very well at all to the device – RIM is sitting on a huge stockpile of unsold Playbooks and is scrambling to figure out how to make customers buy them.

Smashing Magazine:

Due to the growing popularity of iterative product development, the spoken word has become an integral part of the design process. The shift in focus from documentation to collaboration has put greater emphasis on communication. Now more than ever, there is a need to articulate a design “voice” during the early stages of conversation about a product, and to maintain it throughout the process 

Some good tips.

These are the most anticipated games of 2011, put together by market research firm Nielsen.

Mac Rumors:

Japanese blog Macotakara reports (via MacPost) that a China Unicom executive apparently confirmed during a presentation at this week’s Macworld Asia that the “iPhone 5” set to be announced next week will indeed support HSPA+ sometimes-called “4G” technology, offering a maximum theoretical data speed of 21 Mbps (up from 7.2Mbps). A slide showing the information was photographed by Japanese site PC Watch.

That’s quite a slide for China Unicom to show a week before Apple’s launch.

BGR.com:

Research In Motion has reportedly stopped production of its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and is considering exiting the space altogether. Collins Stewart analyst John Vinh made the claims in a note to investors Thursday morning, citing anonymous sources at RIM’s manufacturing partner Quanta.

RIM only shipped 500,000 PlayBooks in the first quarter of availability and 200,000 in the second quarter. It’s been a disaster for RIM.

Nokia says it part of its plan to “align its workforce and operations.”

Reuters:

With their me-too type of products priced almost at the same level as the iPad’s starting price of $499, none of them have however been able to gain any significant market share from Apple.

Like I said yesterday, the Android tablets can’t compete at the high-end with the iPad and now they have fierce competition on low end from Amazon. They are in trouble.

Google:

Now, anyone around the world can view, read and interact with five digitized Dead Sea Scrolls. The high resolution photographs, taken by Ardon Bar-Hama, are up to 1,200 megapixels, almost 200 times more than the average consumer camera, so viewers can see even the most minute details in the parchment. For example, zoom in on the Temple Scroll to get a feel for the animal skin it’s written on—only one-tenth of a millimeter thick.

Plenty of good nominees this year, but Heart and Guns N’ Roses certainly deserve to be there.

paidcontent.org:

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) will renew some old acquaintances at the U.S. Department of Justice before its Motorola (NYSE: MMI) deal is allowed to pass. The company announced Wednesday that the government has asked for “more information” about certain aspects of the $12.5 million [sic, billion] deal, which would bring one of the leading Android smartphone vendors under Google’s wing.

This isn’t a deal killer, but it certainly throws up a roadblock in the way of Google acquiring Motorola Mobility. Anyone expecting a quick resolution is probably going to be waiting a bit.

Molly Wood for CNET:

Amazon, not Apple, just mainstreamed the tablet market.

And

I’d argue that it’s an iPad killer all the same.

Remember how I said earlier today that product launches drive some writers to the brink of stupidity. Shawn King sent me this one that completely fell over the cliff.

A friend of mine turned me on to this today. From what I’ve read and watched in the movie on the site, I’m really impressed. I have to get my hands on one of these.

52 Tiger:

Mac OS X Lion features automatic spell correction out of the box. The way it works is similar to autocorrect in iOS. As you type, Lion notices a misspelled word and offers a correction. To accept it, just keep typing.It sounds great, but in my experience it causes more errors that it prevents.

Dave is right, and I’ve seen enough people complain about this very feature to merit noting this helpful hint here. Visit 52 Tiger for details on how to shut it off.

Stay in touch using our built-in email app that gets your webmail (Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL etc.) into a single inbox. Import your messages and contact lists from other email accounts. Additional email apps are available in our Amazon Appstore for Android.

HAHAHAHAHA!!!

Analog makes it easy to apply stunning filters and borders to your photos. There’s tonnes of stylish filters included, and easy sharing to Flickr, Facebook, Picasa and CloudApp.

Analog is made by Real Mac Software, the folks behind RapidWeaver, Courier and LittleSnapper. I’ve been using their apps for years and enjoy the experience. Analog just arrived on the Mac App Store yesterday.

Bloomberg:

The Kindle Fire will have a 7-inch display and sell for $199, compared with $499 for Apple’s cheapest iPad, Amazon executives said. The device, a souped-up version of the Kindle electronic-book reader, will run on Google Inc.’s Android software, the Seattle-based company said.

A lot of people are going to buy this.

Great pictures.

Chris Chang, MIC Gadget:

With its past experience, one might think Apple would have been able to track that prototype down in a heartbeat. However, Apple was outsmarted. The person who had access to the prototype wiped the phone’s software, thus disabling the GPS hardware needed to track it down. It was then allegedly sold to one of the iPhone case manufacturers for RMB ¥20,000 (about $3,100). We were told that Foxconn was aware of the loss and had penalized internal management for the incident. We also heard from another source that the person who “lost” it was paid to do so.

This would certainly explain a lot of the rumors coming from case manufacturers in the past few weeks.

Loaded with pure EVH sound and power, the EVH 5150 III 50-watt head is a smaller-sized version of its big brother, the mighty 5150 III head, with many of the same great features. Its smaller size and portability make it a perfect amp for players who want arena volume, tone and performance in a compact package.

I have one of the original 5150 heads and it’s incredibly powerful with great tone.