Matthew Buchanan (Home)

— My colleague Karl von Randow, author of Mobile Fotos and other apps, suggests a possible approach to identifying iPhone apps that are on the verge of hitting the big time, and promoting them alongside Apple’s top app lists. The current app store model is largely a closed loop, with top listed apps benefitting from their own celebrity, and new apps relying on massive groundswell — via networks like Twitter — to gain traction. I like the idea of this, and the potential for more revenue to developers (and Apple) is win-win.

— Paul Hochman writes for Fast Company about the coming revolution in wireless electricity, and the competing approaches of the various players. (via David Kaneda)

— The New York Times’s Clive Thompson has a fascinating write-up on the US$1 million prize offered by Netflix to any programmer that can improve its recommendations engine by 10%, and the Napolean Dynamite problem that’s making it hard work. (via Patrick Wang)

— John Gruber commends the Tapulous/Nine Inch Nails licensing deal.

— Samuel Strauss, 1924 (via Justin Ouellette)

— Producer Richard Fletcher is reassessing funding options after British backer Capitol Films pulled 40% of the funding for Redhead Films’ adaptation of Maurice Gee’s 1979 novel Under the Mountain. Richard’s an old school friend of mine and this being a real old Kiwi classic, I very much hope he has some luck down another avenue.