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ExtraBITS for 3 December 2012

You may already know about the Mac app Fantastical, which replaces the Calendar app under OS X. Fantastical is also now an app for the iPhone, which Matthew Panzarino reviews at The Next Web. Also this week, we learn that Barnes & Noble can wipe out one’s library of purchased ebooks if a credit card expires, and News Corp. shutters The Daily iPad app.

News Corp. Ceases Publication of The Daily — Peter Kafka at All Things D (itself owned by News Corp.) hits the nail on the head in his coverage of the shuttering of The Daily, the much-ballyhooed iPad-only news app that had the blessing of Apple. “While the app boasted lots of digital bells and whistles, in the end it was very much a general interest newspaper that seemed to be geared toward people who didn’t really like newspapers.” That’s in line with the title of our article covering The Daily’s launch: “Why The Daily Is So
Yesterday
” (3 February 2011).

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Fantastical for iPhone Gets Rave Review from The Next Web — Over at The Next Web, Matthew Panzarino reviews Fantastical, a new calendar app for the iPhone that rethinks the way we interact with calendars on a small screen. It’s an in-depth piece, and if you’ve been frustrated by Apple’s Calendar app, it’s worth reading to see if Fantastical is the replacement you’ve been waiting for.

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Barnes & Noble DRM Fails with Expired Credit Card — Yet another reason why DRM is wrong. When a Barnes & Noble customer tried to download a previously paid-for book, an error message appeared, stating that the download had failed because the credit card on file had expired. As the cool kids say, “Epic fail.” The expiration status of a credit card for a previously purchased book should be entirely irrelevant for a later download, and to extend the scenario, there should be no requirement that the account be linked to a credit card at all after the
purchase has been completed.

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