From early on in the Apple/Samsung dispute, I pointed out that Apple's reaction really seemed to indicate to the world that Samsung's devices were the ones they were most scared of. And, of course, for those looking for alternatives, it was possible that it would act as really, really good advertising for Samsung. It's still early, but there's some anecdotal evidence that the verdict only emphasized that fact even more. Via Mashable, we learn of a post from Enrique Guitierrez, who was in a Starbucks over the weekend and overheard people talking about the verdict -- and they seemed to indicate that it was making them more interested in buying Samsung products:

Guy: "Wait, so what they're saying is, Samsung is the same as Apple?"
Friend: "I know, right? Makes me think twice about how much I paid for my Mac Book"
Guy: "Seriously"

Not 10 minutes later, a husband and wife, same newspaper:

Husband: "... Samsung's iPad is the same as Apple's iPad, and I paid how much for the Apple one? Honey, I told you they were a ripoff", after looking up the Samsung tablet on his iPhone.
Wife: "Oh wow," looking at the screen, "... that's a lot cheaper. Think we can return it?"

Those aren't the only examples in the post either. He notes that these people don't understand the details, but they seem to have gotten the message that Samsung makes at least an equivalent product for a lot less money... and that's making them a lot more interested in Samsung. Once again, it makes you wonder why Apple didn't just focus on competing in the marketplace, where they had a tremendous brand advantage.

Android blogger Ron Amadeo has a great post over at Android Police where he tries to explain the design of the new Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone, which many people have deemed pretty hideous. In his opinion, it all comes down to legal tiptoeing.

As you may recall, last year Apple sued Samsung over earlier products in the Galaxy line, claiming infringement of all sorts of different rights, among them some broad trade dress registrations involving basic design choices like black borders and rectangles with rounded corners. Amadeo walks through the many notable aesthetic elements of the S3 (including the stark changes from previous Galaxy phones) and compares them to Apple's list of trade dress claims, noting how several aspects of the phone seem designed to counter specific complaints—and the case he makes is pretty compelling. These are just a few examples (bolded portions are quotes from the Apple trade dress complaint):

A rectangular product shape...
... A rectangle needs to have parallel sides; the GSIII sides aren't straight at all. The outmost part is about 1/3rd of the way down, with serious curves leading to the top and bottom. So it's very much not a rectangle, or a rounded rectangle, or even horizontally symmetrical. It's more of an amorphous blob.

...with all four corners uniformly rounded;
Nope. The top and bottom corners are not the same shape. Observe the outlines of the top-left and bottom-left corners. Note how they are different.

The front surface of the product dominated by a screen surface with black borders
Having a giant screen on the front is kind of unavoidable. The only colors available though, are white and dark blue. Neither of those colors are black. The lawyers can sleep easy.

Substantial black borders above and below the screen having roughly equal width
Apple's use of "roughly" is really obnoxious, but just in case they get into minutia (lawyers love minutia!), the top and bottom borders are not the same size. These to-scale measurements show the top bezel is about 16% smaller than the bottom. Also, they're not black!

In the past, some people have argued that this sort of thing is an example of intellectual property doing its job and encouraging innovation, because competitors come up with new and different ways of doing things—but, as we have pointed out, the innovation being encouraged is the wrong kind. Instead of letting market demands dictate what engineers and designers spend their time on, their effort is wasted reinventing the wheel over and over again. The result is often an inferior product that lacks overall vision, as some are saying about the S3, at least aesthetically speaking. If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, what's a horse designed by a committee of lawyers? Some horrific Darwinian accident from the deep ocean, I'd wager.

I'm still waiting for Android tablet computers to catch up to the iPad in terms of usefulness, and I'm guessing there's probably still another year or so to go (if the phone market is any predictor). Samsung, of course, has been leading the push for Android-based tablets and they made some news with the launch of its latest version of the Galaxy tab at CTIA. Indeed, the new devices do look pretty neat. But why spoil genuine appreciation of the device when you can hire actors to pretend to like the device... and then claim to the world that they're not actors at all? That appears to be exactly what Samsung did. Much of the launch focused on these interviews with three "regular folks" from "different backgrounds" who were given a chance to test out these new tablets and then be interviewed about them. You can see the full launch video here, and the "interviews" start around the 8 min mark. Intrepid blogger Harry McCracken thought the interviews felt a bit off... and a bit too full of corporate marketing-speak. So he decided to go searching for "freelance travel writer Joan Hess, independent filmmaker Karl Shefelman, and leading real estate CEO Joseph Kolinksi." And he ran into some difficulties:

I was curious to learn more about them. So I Googled around and couldn’t find any references to a travel-writing Joan Hess (one with, as she said, a following on Twitter) or a real-estate CEO Joseph Kolinski.

I did notice, however, that freelance travel writer Joan Hess bears a striking resemblance to New York actress Joan Hess:

And that real estate CEO Joseph Kolinski could be New York actor Joseph Kolinksi's twin brother:

Filmmaker Karl Shefelman, on the other hand, looks a lot like... filmmaker Karl Shefelman. Who works for a New York production company. One that's done work for Samsung.

Of course, some people will claim that this is standard operating procedure and that everyone should assume that anyone in such a video is clearly an actor, rather than a real person speaking off the cuff. But this is a press launch event and the clear implication by Samsung officials is that these were real people and real interviews. If the product really is as great as they say, why not actually trust real people to say that, rather than hiring actors?

Astronomers are constantly discovering new phenomena (or really, really old stuff, depending on how you look at it) all the time. There is simply a lot of stuff in the universe and we're not going to ever finish looking at all of it. A sizable chunk of the cosmos isn't even observable to us. But it's still fascinating to try to catalog everything out there. Here are just a few discoveries keeping astronomers busy these days.

• A tiny blob of light named UDFj-39546284 is tentatively dubbed the most distant galaxy seen so far. The James Webb Telescope will confirm the classification, and until then there's a 20%(!) chance that this thing isn't a galaxy at all. [url]
• The Kepler telescope has found 54 planets in a "habitable zone" around their respective stars -- and 5 of those are approximately Earth-sized. There are plenty more to find still, too. [url]
• According to statistical analysis, the cosmos is at least 250 times bigger than what we can see. So you can't believe everything you see.. and there's lies, damn lies and statistics to back that up. [url]
• In a not-so-distant court, astrology has been re-affirmed as a "trusted science" in India. Apparently, India's Supreme Court had already ruled astrology as a science in 2004. [url]
• To discover more astronomy-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.