Neat trick by Bjango’s Marc Edwards.

Note: I interviewed Marc for The Industry a while back. It’s a good read even now — Marc is a super talented and interesting guy.

We move from an awful example of horrible accessibility to a stunning example of innovation and work for the greater good of humanity.

Google’s self-driving car transports Steve Mahan around his hometown — and he even orders a burrito from a drive-through. Did I mention Steve has lost 95% of his vision? It doesn’t seem to make much difference as he cruises through town in the driver’s seat.

Sorry to start off Monday with such negative news, but some details from this article in the NYT are interesting:

For weeks, there have been signs that the public was not buying new PCs over the holidays in the numbers many had hoped. Now add to them new figures from IDC, one of the best-known scorekeepers for the market, showing that worldwide PC shipments declined 6.4 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier.

That decline was worse than the 4.4 percent drop that IDC had previously forecast for the fourth quarter. It was also a sign that the biggest thing to happen to the PC business in years — Microsoft’s release of the Windows 8 operating system and the millions of dollars that went into promoting it — did not rescue an industry that suffered a nasty sales slump for most of last year.

Then:

Microsoft and Intel will suffer further, with the Wintel PC market share expected to decline to 65 percent in 2013, from 72 percent in 2012.

Firstly, it’s worth noting that I find this hardly surprising.

Additionally, I think this great image shows exactly what Nick Wingfield, the writer of the NYT piece, was trying to explain. There’s certainly a trend in Wintel computers, and it isn’t a positive one.

Speaking of it being easier than ever to support indie creators, here’s a great tool if you happen to be US-based and want an easy way to accept payments, either one-off or recurring.

No love yet for UK folks, though.

Fred Wilson has some smart things to say about subscription revenue models for businesses:

The emergence of the subscription model has made the software business better. In the old upfront license fee model, software companies would trade at 2-4x revenues. Now they trade at 6-8x revenues. That reflects the recurring, almost annuity nature of the subscription model.

Whilst he speculates that “software is not the only technology orientated business that utilises a subscription revenue model”, I think he glosses over a few businesses closer to my heart: namely independent writing, podcasting — and even music and movie making.

It is now easier than ever to start a subscription-based, creative project and have it support itself sustainably, as the subscriber count grows.

Smart point by MG Siegler. I’ve been wary of Android as a business for a while. It certainly seems the only company making money from Android is Samsung.

Not Google, not HTC, not anyone else.

And Samsung, the biggest Android handset maker, is flirting with leaving the platform. This could be the story of 2013.

John Roderick is quickly becoming one of my favourite people.

Thanks to Gabe for the link. Looks like I’m going to have to start listening to this now.

Yes, that says Billion.

There’s been a total of over 40 Billion iOS apps downloaded in total, with almost half of those coming from 2012. These shockingly huge numbers start to paint a picture of how big iOS really has become — and how huge growth is still happening.

Turns out that our coins over here in the UK are rather beautifully designed. News to me.

Thanks, Vignesh.

When I read this, a few things struck me. Firstly, that’s a lot of iPhones.

Second, Horace doesn’t usually preface estimates with quite this many caveats:

So I’m very uncomfortable with my forecast and find it hard to defend this quarter. I considered not publishing one at all because it gives too much confidence when none is warranted.

We may be surprised when the real numbers come out. Horace’ll be biting his nails.

Dead on arrival.

This is certainly a win for the Leap Motion folks — but it remains to be seen how the technology will be used in Asus PCs. Will it just be another unwanted and bundled feature?

Leap Motion seems like a really cool idea, but there needs to be at least one “killer use-case” in order for it to really take off. Right now there isn’t one.

I’m still waiting for consumer units to ship, so friends of mine who’ve pre-ordered can report back and let me know how they’re using theirs. I’d hate for the Leap Motion to just be a gimmicky albeit cool demo. In order for it to be more than just an impressive trick, there needs to be awesome software.

In order to help awesome software get developed, the Leap Motion folks are shipping developer units in big numbers. There are certainly some cool demos on the Leap YouTube channel — but nothing which screams “I want this!”

I hope that changes soon.