Boot up: Cook interviewed, Portal on a calculator, UI improvements for Android and iPhone, and more

Apple CEO Tim Cook. Photograph: Robert Galbraith/Reuters

A quick burst of 10 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Amid something of a rambling feature:

A Chicago nonprofit group called the Uhlich Children's Advantage Network or UCAN attempted to go paperless a few years back. Walter Grauer, Vice President of Information Technology at UCAN, says the group initially pursued a paperless office because UCAN wanted to "go green." But they quickly realized they could actually save some money if they were more efficient.

"'Going green' is one thing, but it needs to have an added benefit for costs," he says. "You need to be saving money as well as paper."

What they found is that the biggest general wastes in their office were paper timesheets and people clicking "print" at their desktops and then forgetting to pick up what they'd printed from the printer. The answer: Electronic timesheets. And now employees are required to physically stand up and push a button on the printer if they want to print something; they need to click print twice -- once at their desktop, once at the printer itself.

With small changes, Grauer says they reduced their printing output by about 300,000 sheets of paper every month. They print a lot of paper -- 300,000 is about seven percent of their monthly output -- but still, he says: "It saved some cash, definitely."

Although not optimal, here are couple of tricks to get around the Instagram blockade.

A 20-year-old college student has rebuilt Portal, Valve's 2007 space-bending game, from the ground up, on -- wait for it -- a graphing calculator. In a display that puts the old calculator versions of Mario and Tetris to shame, Alex Marcolina posted to a gaming forum and reddit on Sunday about his re-engineered version of Portal. It took three years to build and cannot, due to resource constraints on TI-83/84 calculators, execute more than 16 kilobytes of code.

WOW.

iOS is boring. It's unconnected. It isn't flexible. It's slow. That's generally the consensus. And while many look to Jony Ive's new role as the answer, it doesn't exactly solve these problems. So I thought I would give it a shot.

The ideas are principally about simplifying quick access to apps or functions from the lock screen. One objection: there's a reason why it's a lock screen. More important to iOS's evolution would be "intentions" like Android's, and other functions. (Thanks @Martwah for the link.)

Google removed 27 malware-infected apps from its Play Store last year, a move that prompted Microsoft to start its campaign [ in 2011], but despite an upward trend in Android malware, there's no evidence to suggest it's as bad as Microsoft makes out. Google is also making changes to Android 4.2 to include a malware scanner that analyzes "sideloaded" apps for malware threats. With no recent high profile Android malware stories, Microsoft kicked off #droidrage again, seemingly out of the blue, and it has backfired.

And how. (Thanks @martwah for the link.)

Long, and wide-ranging, from Steve Jobs, to collaboration, to conditions in Chinese suppliers, to maps, to Forstall's firing, and more.

David Bayon:

I'm not sure exactly when I lost patience with Microsoft and Windows 8 -- most likely when using the Surface for the first time. It's always been an OS with a split personality, but from the start we were promised the hardware would make it all seem natural. It would innovate, the OS ushering in a new era of mobile computing.

With a few exceptions - touchscreen Ultrabooks are undoubtedly cool - the new era hasn't started well.

"It's definitely as good as a hybrid gets right now," proclaims one of our reviews team, of a Dell hybrid laptop with a screen that swivels round within its bezel. The comment was meant as a positive, but it's hard not to see it as summing up the first wave of hybrids.

"Hybrid" as in "it's a tablet and a notebook." Biology note: most interspecies breeds are sterile.

Apple is expected to purchase at least US$5 billion worth of flexible PCBs in 2013 with Taiwan-based FPCB makers contributing 30% of total supplies, according to industry sources. Apple's total FPCB purchases in 2012 will be close to US$4bn, of which Taiwan suppliers will account for 20-25%.

The rollout of iPods, iPads, iPhones, MacBook notebooks and iMac desktops has made Apple the largest buyer of FPCBs globally and also a driving force pushing forward the development of the FPCB industry, the sources noted.

Apple's demand for FPCBs is set to continue expanding in 2013, given Apple's smartphone shipments are estimated to top 160-180m units in the coming year compared to 97m shipped in 2012, while its tablet shipments are likely to increase to 75-80m units from 40m units during the same period, said the sources.

Those are very big numbers.

Ron Mateo:

Stock Android isn't perfect either, and that's what we're here to talk about today. Jelly Bean has all sorts of confusing user interfaces, weird bugs, things that don't make any sense, and things that desperately need polishing.

I criticize because I care - that goes for Sense, TouchWiz, and MotoBlur too. I want the Android user experience to be good, and this is a big component in making it better - open, honest discussion of what sucks (and, hopefully, receptive developers). If you always think everything is awesome all the time, and that polish, "nit picking," and user experience don't matter, then you turn into desktop Linux. No one wants that.

A really thoughtful, user-experience-led piece. Matias Duarte, head of Android's design, consistency and UI team, responds (briefly) at the end.

Turns out some early signage leaked out, showing a nice BOGO (buy-one-get-one) deal on "select" Sammy devices. Let me stop you right there -- the Galaxy Note 2 is not apart of this deal. But, the fully capable (some might even call a Nexus-killer) Samsung Galaxy S3 is up for grabs.

A few "lesser" Galaxies also mad the list like the GS2 and Galaxy Victory. The fun starts this Friday, Dec. 7th and lasts all the way until the 24th, giving Christmas shoppers ample time to squeeze in a few GS3?s before the 25th. The best part? This deal is good for new and upgrades as long as you're willing to sign away your life for 2 years. Anyone going to jump on this?

Wonder if this is classed as SG&A or marketing for accounting purposes.

You can follow Guardian Technology's linkbucket on Pinboard. To suggest a link, either add it below or tag it with @gdntech on the free Delicious service.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2012/dec/07/technology-links-newsbucket

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