Introversion, brain studies & work-ethic [List]

I'm throwing this together for my own recollection since lately there's been a multitude of articles covering similar topics.

INTROVERSION:
The Self-Contained Introvert - Tonya Sheridan
Introverted? The Power Of Being Alone - Urban Times
23 Signs You’re Secretly a Narcissist Masquerading as a Sensitive Introvert - Scientific American
23 Signs You're Secretly An Introvert - Huffington Post
5 Things You Should Know About Introverts - Lifehack
The Secret To 'Fitting In' - Urban Times
30sec Tip: Stop Being so Self-Conscious - Lifehack

BRAIN STUDIES:
How ‘slow-wave’ sleep helps us learn - Futurity
Poverty does bad things to your brain - Futurity
Decline in US household incomes likely to continue - Futurity
What Happens to the Brain When You Meditate (And How it Benefits You) - Lifehacker

WORK-ETHIC:
Getting Sh*t Done in an Open Office - 15Five
14 Things Successful People Do On Weekends - Forbes
10 Habits of Passionate People That You Can Adopt As Well - Lifehack
12 Ways to Prevent Distraction When Trying to Get Things Done - Lifehack
How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the “2-Minute Rule” - Buffer
Watch This If You're Putting Off Work Right Now. - Urban Times
16 Ways to Get Motivated and Break out of the Slump - Lifehack

Niche Retail [List]

- Active Junky
- AHAlife
- COOL MATERIAL
- DVOR
- Fab
- Fancy
- Fizzm
- Gentlemint
- HYPEBEAST
- Huckberry
- IPPINKA
- Kaufmann Mercantile
- Life and Home 
- LYST
- Mobile Gear
- Monoqi
- OpenSky
- Pickie 
- PLAYWHO
- The Clymb
- The Gadget Flow
- The Grommet 
- TouchOfModern
- WANTCY

DISCONTINUED:

- Belle & Clive
- BUREAU OF TRADE

- Gojee

- Grand St.

- Wingtip

Social Shopping [List]

- Bindle
- Buyosphere
- Fruugo
- Krush
- Kumbooka
- Nuji
- Pinterest
- ThisNext
- Wanelo 
- Wists
- Wooplr

Immersive TV Viewing Apps [List]

The following are some of the best Apps that offer a more immersive TV watching experience. I saw Qurious demonstrated while at a Boxee Beta launch in Brooklyn, NY and that was definitely amazing. Unfortunately I don't know if they've done anything beyond develop that prototype. For all I know they're now members of some of the other projects listed below.

Apps:
- BuddyTV
- ConnecTV
- Dijit
- Fan
- i.TV
- IntoNow
- Kwarter
- miso
- Peel
- Qurious
- TeeVee
- Viggle 
- Yap TV
- zeebox

Android apps run on QNX and MeeGo

Recently two very different OS platforms have been gifted support for Android software. On the MeeGo device it's done through third-party software but it looks like RIM is actually adding the capability themselves to their BlackBerry PlayBook. This is pretty amazing and certainly changes the stakes a bit. No longer do new OS platforms have to do all the work instead they can just build-in a compatibility layer. The example running on an Nokia N900 is especially relevant given all the ruckus lately with Nokia switching to Windows Mobile. This also may be of interest to companies looking for a way around all the corporate lawsuits regarding the Android platform.

- Blackberry PlayBook (QNX-based OS)
- Nokia N900 (MeeGo)

Maybe Nokia should go back to making boots

So Nokia just went public with a whole new direction without notifying their partner Intel. Whether or not Microsoft will use this opportunity as further grounds to undermine a valid Linux based competitor known as MeeGo remains to be seen. Nokia and Intel share intellectual property in that platform so it's debatable what may happen.

Hardware Issues:
Supposedly Nokia did try to bring to market some devices with MeeGo but there were issues with the hinge construction. So the phone companies turned them down. My personal view on this is why was Nokia still thinking hinges? Slider phones are a joke and the market leader, which is pretty much the iPhone, has no keyboard. Who's stupid idea was it to keep including something that has no market relevance? Slate/slab phones are basic and to the point, easy to construct.

Market Irrelevance:
Overall it's funny to think anybody cares what Nokia does here in the USA. Nokia has always chose to ignore the states in favor of the rest of the world. I thought this was commendable at first but they made all the wrong moves going forward. Not to mention, what good are expensive boutique stores marketing your products if nobody can really buy them?

Mistake of buying Symbian:
Purchasing Symbian wasted money and drew attention away from their other more credible assets. Nokia should have parted ways with Symbian a long time ago. Instead, like their CEO says, they poured gasoline on the fire and purchased the Symbian platform. Then they pretended to make it into an open-source Android rival. They should have focused on their Linux assets like Maemo (now known as MeeGo) and QT instead.

Missed Opportunities:
The Nokia Nx00 series could have beat Apple's iPhone to market but nobody (executive wise) had any foresight at Nokia to make it happen. They treated the Nx00 series like an experiment instead of refocusing their product teams around making it into an awesome phone platform. It took Apple a year or two to totally replicate the advantages of the Nokia Nx00 series (copy & paste, native App store, Flash, Skype) but they at least made an effort. Nokia could have done something but instead chose the worst path, Symbian. The aging Nokia Nx00 series is still the best product they've ever released and just to prove it here's Android running as an application.

Partner Example:
Sony Ericsson was involved a lot with the Symbian platform and look where they went. They sold out to Android because they probably felt like they got screwed over by Nokia when they took total control of the OS. Now Sony Ericsson is making phones with Android and PlayStation Portable integration included. Looks like they didn't see Android as giving up.

Relevant News:
- Symbian remembered by those who started it - Pocket-lint

News Filtration & Dashboards [List]

NEWS ANALYSIS/FILTRATION:
- Bottlenose
- Comunitee
- Curate.Me 
- DataSift
- Futureful
- Gravity
- MagPortal
- News.me
- Parse.ly
- Prismatic
- Recorded Future
- Seshn
- Scoop.it
- Scoopinion
- Social Reader 
- SkyGrid
- Swayy
- The Posthuman Startup
- Trove
- Qwiki
- WAVE Report

DASHBOARDS:
- Chartbeat
- Ducksboard
- Duedil
- Geckoboard
- Happy Metrix
- HootSuite
- Netvibes
- Next Big Sound

Magazine-like News Readers [List]

- Brief me
- Denso
- Editions by AOL
- Flipboard
- Flud
- Gazette
- Google Currents
- Hitpad
- Jux
- Livestand by Yahoo! 
- news.me
- NewsMix (by sobees)
- Niiiws
- Ongo
- Mosaic
- Pressly
- Promepi
- Pulse
- Scoop.it
- Smartr
- Taptu
- Zeen
- Zite

Related News: 
paidContent.org - Comparing The New Aggregators: Flipboard, Pulse, Zite, Float And More

Reflections & Outlooks [Lists]

Technologies:
- 40+ Things You Need to Watch in 2011 - Mashable
- 8 Sci-Fi Technologies That Are No Longer Just Fiction - Mashable

Movies:
- 55 Science Fiction/Fantasy Movies to Watch Out For in 2011 - io9
- Some cyberpunk moives to Look for in 2011 - Cyberpunk Review

Games:
- Zero Punctuation: Top 5 of 2010 - CrunchGear

Interactive Automotive Platforms [List]

- Abalta WEBLINK
- Audi Multi Media Interface (MMI)
- BMW ConnectedDrive
- OpenXC
- Cadillac CUE 
- Chevrolet MyLink
- Chrysler Uconnect
- Ford MyFord Touch
- Garmin K2
- Kia UVO2
- Mercedes-Benz mbrace2 
- Mitsubishi EMIRAI
- Nuance Dragon Drive!
- Parrot ASTEROID Smart
- QNX CAR Platform for Infotainment
- Toyota Entune

Cellphone Loyalty-card Replacements [List]

- CardBank
- cardMobili
- CardStar
- Key Ring
- LoyaltyCard
- OneGratis
- PlacePop
- Punchd
- Scanaroo

Apple over-coming iPhone log-in hell by integrating Facebook?

Image via CrunchBase

The biggest nightmare for me using the iPhone is logging into every stupid App I download. Lately it sounds like Apple might be looking for a way to fix this by integrating Facebook Connect. Facebook no doubt already has the largest user-base and effective log-in platforms known.

Safari already offers an option to remember passwords but does nothing for the problem described. Each iPhone App wants you to create an account with yet another user-name & password. This annoyance is most noticeable once you find yourself restoring the phone to it's original configuration. Few of these accounts do little more than store user-settings in the cloud, from what I can tell. It's not like they ask many personal questions beyond what do you want your user-name & password to be.

I'm not overly concerned with privacy but I know there's been lots of commotion regarding Facebook's overly complex privacy settings. I'm guessing Apple will likely just make it an option to speed up the log-in process on Apps.

NEWS LINKS:
- Pocket-lint - Facebook integration on way with iPhone OS 4.0
- Gizmodo - Facebook Might Be Built Into iPhone OS 4

Google phone store closing!?

This is my plead to Google, please re-purpose the Google phone site into a useful comparison tool for picking the right Android phone hardware & Apps to meet customer's needs. Am I only one who cares to compare? Also Google would you please set a proper example to company's like Apple. Yes that fruity company that tries to convince us all they always know what's best & shouldn't question their leadership, that's a joke people.

Overall I just want an easy way to look over the latest & greatest Android hardware & Apps. Perhaps even add a social layer to the mix. I know Google has failed at that in the past but this is new, this is Android. I want a way to sync my phone and share my travels. Come on Google! Show me having options stands to better my options instead of the complete opposite. Right now I'm confused by the abundance of Android phones on different networks. Help me to see through the confusion & complexity. The phone companies aren't going to do it, that's for sure.

SYNC/BACKUP FEATURES:
- photos (example Picasa integration)
- music
- SMS, MMS (make search-able via online interface)
- App preferences
- phone settings

LINKS:
- Google Phone

Personalized Wardrobe [List]

SUBSCRIPTIONS / RECOMMENDATIONS:
Bombfell
Frank & Oak  
StyleSeek
Trunk Club

SUITS:
A Suit That Fits
DressMonkey
Indochino
Modern Tailor
My.Suit
Oumlil

DRESS-SHIRTS:
Bespokeable
Blank-Label
Bleuflamme
Cut on Your Bias
Hamilton 
J. Hilburn
Joe Button
Second Button
ShirtsMyWay

DRESSES
CONTINUUM: Ddress
Cut on Your Bias 
UnitedStyles

T-SHIRTS:
Reactee
SonicShack
Twitgear

SWIMWEAR:
Shortomatic

Mobile Platforms

This is certainly somewhat unexpected. Especially given who everyone is competing with but Samsung, Creative, and some others are releasing mobile platforms of their own. Not sure what chances these have against Apple & Google. Regardless of what you or I think these new platforms do seem to bring a lot to the table with regard to user-interface design.

PLATFORMS:
- Aliyun OS
- Apple - iPhone OS
- Baidu Yi (based on Android)
- Google - Android (user-interface replacements Aro, Borqs, HTC - Sense UI, Intuitive User Interfaces, CyanogenMod, Fluffy Spider, petitpetit PTPT, Rightware - Kanzi, Samsung - TouchWiz, SPB Shell 3D)
- Microsoft - Windows Mobile (user-interface replacements HTC - Sense UI, Intuitive User Interfaces, SPB Mobile Shell)
- Mozilla - Firefox OS
- Open webOS
- RIM - BlackBerry OS
- Sailfish
- Samsung - bada
- Smartisan (based on Android)
- Tizen

APP STORES:
- Apple Apps
- Samsung Apps

DISCONTINUED:
- ACCESS Linux Platform (user-interface replacements ELSE Mobile)
- Azingo
- Creative - Plaszma OS
- MeeGo (merger of Moblin & Maemo)
- Nokia Ovi
- Symbian