Prime8: The weekly GGA web roundup 29/09/14

Prime8 has been bending phones this week. He’s sat on them, stamped them on the floor, put them in vices and gone all ‘Uri Geller’ on them. He’s also expanded his experiments by throwing rocks at our monitors to prove they will smash. He’s costing us a small fortune and we’re not even sure why he’s doing it. I blame violent video games.

Here’s this weeks web roundup…

 
Bendgate: The Aftermath
This week the Apocalypse came early with the earth-shattering revelation that the iPhone 6 can bend a bit if you sit on it when in your pocket. Apple were quick to set the damage-limitation gears in motion by opening up their testing labs to the press. Welcome to Apple’s torture rooms.
 
 
The Anti-Facebook
Hate to break the bad news but looks like there’s yet another new social platform to get your head around. Ello is marketing itself as the ‘anti-Facebook’; a social network completely free of advertising and tracking algorithms that is run by a small commune of designers, developers and artists. Can an ad-free platform actually take off? Find out here.
 
 
Silicon Valley’s smartest decisions
A while back in another Prime8 we linked to a Q&A about the ‘Stupidest decisions ever made in Silicon Valley’. As a counterpoint, here’s the ‘Smartest decisions ever made in Silicon Valley’. Amongst all the ridiculous sales prices and buyout costs, there’s a few surprise answers that reference things done as far back as the 1950’s.
 
 
To charge or not to charge?
We see it all the time: people have an idea for a product and immediately want to charge people to use it. In an ideal world we’d all be doing that but it rarely works in reality. So how do you get people to pay for your hard work and awesome ideas? Try solving The Penny Gap.
 
 
Don’t move house – just move your house around
A bit of architectural coolness (and something I’ve personally been waiting for for years): a house that can be reconfigured to change rooms and spacing. Yay science!
 
 
The startup fail post-mortem 
New companies fail everyday, especially in this age of ‘anyone can do a startup’. Here’s a brilliant analytical post-mortem based on findings from entrepreneurs that lists 101 reasons startups fail.
 
 
GGA’s website of the week:
A gorgeous, story-led site from NATO following their journey through Afghanistan. Beautiful and terrifying.
 
 
… and finally.
The Daily Mash tackle the explosive issue of ‘Bendgate’ in their own thought-provoking style. Did you know Apple have had a grand-total of 9 complaints so far? Totally a news-worthy story.

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Until next week…