January 2012
11 posts
3 tags
John Battelle on "Focus On The User" →
Recently there’s been much controversy over Google’s apparent hard-coding of Google+ profiles into Google search results. In response developers from Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace have produced Focus On The User, exposing the negative impact on more relevant search results. John Battelle, co-founder of Wired and author of the Google book The Search, explains how this happened and what...
Why The Movie Industry Can’t Innovate and the... →
Steve Blank:
The music and movie business has been consistently wrong in its claims that new platforms and channels would be the end of its businesses. In each case, the new technology produced a new market far larger than the impact it had on the existing market.
1920’s – the record business complained about radio. The argument was because radio is free, you can’t compete with free. No...
U.S. Website Blackout Draws Praise in China →
LA Times:
Internet users in China speak admiringly of the public rebellion against anti-piracy bills in Congress. Such a display would be nearly impossible in China.
Anonymous Takes on DOJ →
Surprisingly good reporting on the Anonymous’ response to the FBI’s take-down of the site MegaUpload following public backlash against the SOPA legislation from Mother Jones:
Within minutes of the announcement, Twitter accounts associated with Anonymous, the shadowy hacker collective, announced #OpMegaUpload, a massive retaliation against government and entertainment industry...
Siri's Got a Thing For Students →
WolframAlpha, the knowledge engine that does much of Siri’s heavy lifting, preempted Thursday’s Apple Education Announcement with an announcement of it’s own.
Apple Insider:
Wolfram announced the launch on Wednesday, directing interested teachers and students to education.wolfram.com to find a “new way to integrate technology into learning.”
I guess...
Making Love To Webkit →
Steven Witten’s mindblowing redesign pushing the limits of CSS3D (make sure to view in a current Webkit browser, ie Chrome/Safari, and try the site navigation buttons).
China answers Tor →
Not only is China able to identify Tor sessions, it can do so in near real-time and then probe the Tor bridge relay and terminate the session within a couple of minutes.”
Amazing. (via slashdot, image via Carakrater)
Second Crack →
Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper, describes Second Crack:
So why did you make this?
Because I’m a programmer, and this is what I do.
Some people jog away from their house every day, only to jog back. Others walk on a treadmill, expending energy to get nowhere. In both cases, it may appear to others that they’ve accomplished nothing, but they’ve chosen to do these...
Why Pirates Wear Eyepatches →
Pirates would wear eyepatches not because they have horrible empty eye holes, it was so that they would have one eye already adjusted to darkness when they go under deck. They went underdeck quite often so it was handy to be able to see better straight away rather than wait for the eyes to adjust.
(Via Reddit)
December 2011
9 posts
Description of "The Flow" →
This post by Oren Teich, while interesting in its entirety (particularly for those interested in software development), surprised me with a particularly apt description of “The Flow” — the inspiration behind this blog. I’ve excerpted this section below.
Individual creatives are aiming for flow. Cranking out code, art, words. Just hammering away. In one session of good...
1 tag
The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing... →
Martin says that the trouble began in 1976 when finance professor Michael Jensen and Dean William Meckling of the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester published a seemingly innocuous paper in the Journal of Financial Economics entitled “Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure.” […]
The principal-agent problem occurs, the article...
Roger Ebert On Why Movie Revenue Is Dropping →
MG Siegler:
The popular argument nowadays is that the movie business is tanking because the majority of movies suck. But that’s not really true. Sure, many big, Hollywood movies suck. But for each of those, there are a few smaller, independent movies which are great. In fact, as a whole, I might argue that quality is better than it ever has been thanks to technology greatly driving down the cost...
2 tags
4 tags
Apps are too much like 1990's CD-ROMs and not... →
Scott Hanselman:
I’m starting to resent Apps like I resented CD-ROMs.
I started playing this evil little game called Tiny Tower last week. It’s effectively a Sim-Tower-heroin-clone-resource-management game. Every few hours I return to feed the beast make sure the little “Bitizens” are OK. Moving things, managing resources, restocking virtual shelves with new...
Hacking Scrabble (part 1)
zephod:
This post isn’t really about Scrabble. It’s about taking a load of ugly data and hacking around with some scripts to refine it into something I can commit to memory. Then its about Scrabble. Winning at Scrabble.
The Problem
Knowing exactly which two-letter words exist gives a player a sizeable advantage because it opens up tight corners of the game board and allows them to run two...
November 2011
8 posts
3 tags
3 tags
A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design →
October 2011
8 posts
2 tags
My Favorite Thing on Reddit Today. →
Facial monitoring: The all-telling eye →
7 tags
Roboto vs. Helvetica →
The Understatement by Micheal DeGusta:
Google announced the mouthful known as “Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich” today. The first bullet point of their presentation was a new system-wide font, Roboto. John Gruber quickly pointed out what had caught my eye as well: Roboto sure looks a lot like Helvetica, the typeface so famous they made a movie about it.
7Szo5.jpg (3425×1744) →
world map folds to globe
Custom UI Controls for iOS and Mac OS X - Cocoa... →
September 2011
1 post
4 tags
Ballsy →
Google is mulling a Twitter-like suggested user feature for Google Plus. Bradley Horowitz, vice president of product at Google, floated the idea via a tweet Friday afternoon.
Google using a competitor’s product to announce that they’re ripping off their features.
(Via Mashable)
August 2011
4 posts
4 tags
Without Jobs as CEO, Who Speaks for the Arts at... →
What is the secret to Apple’s success? After introducing the iPad 2 in March, Steve Jobs offered one answer:
It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing — and nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices.
Steve Jobs’ resignation...
3 tags
Polymath →
Horace Dediu:
Apple’s violent success should serve as a powerful beacon that others should follow. Rather than copying its products other companies should copy Apple’s processes–its way of thinking. They should copy how Apple harbors the creative process and the technology processes under the same roof.
3 tags
Invaluable Resource For Any Designer →
Subtle Patterns is an invaluable resource for any designer, boasting a large collection of beautiful seamless patterns which are easily previewed and downloaded. Check it out.
4 tags
Redesigning the Browser Window →
Great post from Antrop on a new way of looking at browser windows. I’ve often wondered whether we couldn’t make better use of the left or right hand space in browser windows and I think this post presents some beautiful options.
February 2011
1 post
Does Apple deserve a 30% cut of iTunes in app... →
via RoughlyDrafted Magazine
Daniel Eran Dilger Get ready for the iPhone Crisis-Gate of February 2011: Apple is evil for demanding a 30% cut of … Read More » Permalink | Leave a…
January 2011
5 posts
7 tags
Who Will Create iTunes for the Cloud?: Tech News... →
If you’re like me, your digital media life is messy. If I were to take inventory of where all my digital media resides, the list would include Flickr, Facebook, iTunes, Android, Netflix, YouTube, Picasa, Flipshare, Amazon, Kindle, iBooks, Windows PC, Mac, iPad and so on.
Like I said, a mess.
And while I’m an early adopter, I’m probably not very different from tens of millions of consumers who...
5 tags
Oops: No copied Java code or weapons of mass... →
Sometimes the sheer wrongness of what is posted on the web leaves us speechless. Especially when it’s picked up and repeated as gospel by otherwise reputable sites like Engadget. “Google copied Oracle’s Java code, pasted in a new license, and shipped it,” they reported this morning.
Sorry, but that just isn’t true.
It all started with an article written by Florian Mueller, who by the way is...
5 tags
Oops: Android contains directly copied Java code,... →
Florian Mueller has been killing it these past few months with his analysis of various tech patent suits on his FOSSpatents blog, and today he’s unearthed a pretty major bombshell: at least 43 Android source files that appear to have been directly copied from Java. That’s a big deal, seeing as Oracle is currently suing Google for patent and copyright infringement in Android —...
4 tags
The End of Cultural Elitism →
AS ANYONE who has ever wiggled in his seat at a classical concert or stared in disbelief at a work of conceptual art can attest, culture in America has usually been imposed from the top down. Media executives, academics, elite tastemakers, and of course critics determined what was good and what wasn’t, what would have cultural purchase and what wouldn’t, what would get rewarded and what wouldn’t....
4 tags
Memo to Newspapers: Stop Thinking Like a Portal →
The story of homeless radio announcer Ted Williams became an Internet sensation this week, as a video of him got passed around on Twitter and in the blogosphere, and quickly led to appearances on the Today Show and job offers from around the country. But the video that started it all — an interview with a reporter from the Columbus Dispatch newspaper in Ohio — is no longer available on YouTube. In...
December 2010
2 posts
Amazon, WikiLeaks and the Need for an Open Cloud →
via GigaOM
At least one senior technologist thinks that Amazon removing WikiLeaks from its servers could raise red flags about the utility … Read More » Permalink | Leave a…
Chrome Gets New ‘Crankshaft’ Engine, Syncing,... →
Google VP of product management Sundar Pichai says the boost makes Chrome 50 times as fast as web browsers were just two years ago when Chrome launched.
“Something that took a minute to happen in JavaScript two years ago can now happen in under a second,” he said.
(Via webmonkey)
November 2010
8 posts
The Art of News; The News of Art →
via The New Yorker
Hans Haacke’s “News” (1969-2008) at the New Museum. It’s a bit disconcerting to watch a facsimile of your … Read More » Permalink | Leave a comment »