Gnh. First day of work in 2012 and already I’m getting angry by online reporting. Various sites report citizens of Belarus are now banned from visiting foreign websites, referring to an article published last Friday by the US Library of Congress. The thing is, no-one appears to be asking Belarus. And some comments on the aforelinked articles are interesting:

On The Next Web, ufoby writes:

The article is not quite correct. Yes, the internet is regulated and yes it’s bad. But the regulations don’t have any list of banned websites. At least not yet. So you still can access anything. What regulated now is local businesses that can’t have websites hosted outside Belarus, should only use .by domain name and have a complicated offline procedure of registration. Access is also regulated, but in a different way it’s described here. You can only access internet with the passport. That’s it. It means to install it home you should be registered at a service provider with a passport. To use it in internet cafe you should show passport. Restaurants, cafes and other public spaces are also obligated to ask the passport from anyone who tries to use Wi-Fi.

And on TorrentFreak, Sandra de Palma writes:

I think the law is mis-interpreted by all the blogs and news sites that picked this story up. It says that as a business owner with a web site, your site has to be hosted in the country and that it has to have a .by domain name.

Normal web site users can still access Google, Wikipedia and other web content which is not located in the country.

At the time of writing, BBC tech reporter Dave Lee is on Twitter providing a different take to the existing online reports:

Foreign Office tells me Belarus law does not apply to individuals seeking foreign websites, unlike every blog in the universe is reporting. [link]

Although it’s not a ban on foreign internet, Belarus web law does prohibit visiting the websites of opposition groups. [link]

From what I can tell from this mess, things don’t look great for web use in Belarus, much in the same way they don’t look great in the USA when you take into account SOPA. However, today’s reporting has been sensationalist, with publications more or less cloning existing reports verbatim, without checking alternative sources, not least those in Belarus. Perhaps the reports will turn out to be accurate in the short- or long-term, but it won’t be through investigation—it’ll be through luck, having relied on a single source that may or may not be accurate.

Sarah Perez reporting for TechCrunch on the latest mobile market-share numbers, where iOS accounts for about half of usage:

Of course, it may not be fair to compare iOS directly with the other mobile platforms, given that the iPad accounts for a good bit of Apple’s market share in this slice of mobile data.

Slightly odd comment, given that the same isn’t said about Android devices. Bizarrely, though, depicted a pie chart splitting elements separates the iPad, iPhone and iPod (i.e. devices) but on the Android side separates flavours of the OS (Android 2.2, Android 2.3, etc.). That isn’t very fair, and yet it’s what you get when accessing the OS versions pie chart in the associated Net Applications report. This is roughly equivalent to the desktop version listing iMac, MacBook Air and Mac mini on the Mac side and Windows 7, Vista and XP on the Windows side. Bonkers.

UPDATE: Net Applications has responded to a query about the above:

Our reporting online goes 2 levels deep.  Currently, Apple is a unique case in that it is the provider of both the hardware and OS, and the same OS is used on multiple devices.  We had to make a decision which way to report Apple data – with OS version numbers or device type as the second level of or online reporting.  Most feedback we’ve received has been that device type is more intriguing than OS version number

So the reasoning is “this is what people want”, which means direct comparisons aren’t possible, thereby rendering the data somewhat meaningless. Still, the press seems happy to compare Apple to every other Android manufacturer rather than separating out each vendor—mixing and matching data and massaging figures to a publication’s agenda is how things are all to often. It’s a pity, then, that some of those providing the data aren’t really helping.

It’s time to shut up shop for the year on this blog. I’m aiming over the next two weeks or so to do very little that involves computers, and so even if Tim Cook releases a video called “my favourite farts”, or an idiot analyst downgrades Apple to “set fire to” because it “didn’t release the iPhone 6 before Christmas”, I don’t care. I’ll be too full of mince pies.

So: until 2012, have a good one. Thanks to everyone who’s read and linked to this blog during the past year, and to all of you who take the time to offer interesting and savvy comments.

(Man, it’s like my rant-o-meter’s broken or something…)

Taylor Hatmaker for Tecca, reporting on the 6 biggest technology flops of 2011 (an article with the URL ‘worst-technology-of-2011’):

3. iPhone 4S

Man, that iPhone 4S was a total disaster, wasn’t it? I mean, apart from the record sales and the new technology inside it, obviously.

While it’s no flop when it comes to sales figures, the iPhone 4S remains one of 2011’s biggest consumer letdowns.

So, hang on: the iPhone 4S is not a sales flop, just a consumer letdown? I guess that explains the huge number of consumers that bought one, and why it’s been included it in an article entitled ‘A Year In Fail: The 6 biggest technology flops of 2011’ and not ‘The 6 biggest consumer letdowns for people who were expecting digital unicorns’.

Earlier this year, Apple’s iPad 2 upped its prececessor’s [sic] appeal considerably, slimming the original slate down while speeding it up — but it’s tough to not be disappointed by the iconic company’s most recent handset.

*no new form-factor sadface*

Apple’s newest iteration of the iPhone is certainly nothing to sneeze at — it’s still one of the fastest, best-looking smartphones on the block — but it’s no iPhone 5.

*NO NEW FORM-FACTOR SADFACE*

After spending the better part of the year salivating over a reinvented iPhone with a larger screen, a thinner profile, and other untold Apple-flavored wonders,

All of which were ‘announced’ by rumours coming from unnamed and unreliable ‘sources’, natch, and not Apple itself…

Apple aficionados were presented with the iPhone 4S — a nominal upgrade over the previous model that touted the now much-parodied Siri app as its main selling point.

That is, if we ignore the camera upgrade, faster CPU, and redesigned antenna. But these things count for nothing if the body is the same, clearly.

While Siri is a capable (if at times perhaps too capable) virtual companion, 2011 is still an off-year when it comes to the world’s must-have gadget. Patience is a virtue, and all eyes are on 2012’s iPhone to up the ante.

Because in becoming the fastest-selling Apple iPhone ever, the iPhone 4S didn’t up the ante at all. Still, maybe next year everyone will be happy. Oh no, hang on a sec, next year will be exactly the same, with people predicting summer iPhone-shaped unicorns and getting all disappointed when Tim Cook and chums ‘only’ present a new iPhone, the fools!

Hipstamatic is a photography app that’s captured the imagination of myriad iPhone owners. The app enables you to switch lenses and camera types, aping film cameras and providing a little soul to otherwise sterile digital snaps. Synthetic Corp, the company behind the app, cunningly took advantage of the sheer number of people keen to create retro photos, providing various packs of lenses and effects, and also offering a print service. It’s an effective combination and a solid, entertaining app; the default set-up that you get when paying for the app is enough for some, but the add-ons are reasonably priced for those who want a little more variety.

Bizarrely, the company has now gone full-on freemium with a new product, Hipstamatic Disposable, with a pricing model that makes gold-farming games almost look reasonable, and also manages to more literally take photography back to the dark ages. This time, the app is free, and you pay for digital film. I am not making this up. Hipstamatic Disposable takes the major benefit of the digital age—not having to worry about the number of snaps you have left—and stamps all over it, in the desire to make money.

I hate the freemium trend. We’re way past value-add now and fully into the realm of gouging. We’ve seen golf games where you effectively pay for a few extra strokes, and now here’s a camera app where you pay for the film. I sincerely hope Hipstamatic Disposable falls on its stupid face and breaks its stupid digital lens, before some dolt starts working on a word processor where you have to buy sheets of paper and typewriter ribbons, or a driving game where you have to fuel up your car (with petrol prices defined by actual prices, to enhance the realism), or an art app where you buy little tubes of expensive acrylic paint that annoyingly dry out if you forget to put the little digital caps on to the little digital tubes before shutting down the app.