February 2012
Who's Next?
Louis C.K.
Tim Schafer
?
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Kodak is Now a Shell →
More than anything, this feels like the nail in the coffin: Kodak will stop making cameras and will focus instead on brand licensing.
Eastman Kodak Co, the bankrupt inventor of the hand-held camera, plans to stop making digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames in the first half of 2012 in a bid to cut costs.
…
The company, which generates three-quarters...
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From Distributed Files to Distributed Websites →
The Pirate Bay recently switched from hosted torrent files to magnet links. This change greatly reduced the size of the site, making it possible for the site to fit on a free USB key:
“I did a complete snapshot of ALL the Pirate Bay torrents, in case somebody wants to close it or something similarly crazy,” he told TorrentFreak.
Using this script, “allisfine” managed to copy the title,...
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Double Fine Just Used Kickstarter to Fund their... →
Their goal was $400,000. They’re at $532,459 in less than 24 hours. Why this matters:
Keeping the scale of the project this small accomplishes two things. First and foremost, Double Fine gets to make the game they want to make, promote it in whatever manner they deem appropriate, and release the finished product on their own terms. Secondly, since they’re only accountable to...
Et tu, Angry Birds? →
interactioned:
A Wall Street Journal post from two years ago shows a list of apps that gather your data and what you do with them. Angry Birds not only collects your contacts — it transfers them to third parties.
Remember when magazine publishers were in heavy negotiations with Apple to access subscriber data for purchases made through the App Store?
They should have just flipped through the...
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More on the Shutting of a Virtual Currency
I asked Nick Kam (who unlike myself actually understands law) to take a quick look at the virtual currency class-action lawsuit filed against Google. Here’s his take (emphasis mine):
Upon a cursory review of Google’s Notice of Removal to Federal Court which contains a summary of the Complaint filed in Santa Clara Superior Court, it seems the Plaintiffs’ central claim is one...
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Pinterest is essentially a well designed interface for Amazon wish lists. How do you think Jeff Bezos feels right now and how large of an offer do you think Amazon has made?
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What Happens when a Virtual Currency Disappears?
In 2011 Google acquired social games maker Slide for approximately $200 million. Only a few months later, as part of their 2011 spring cleaning, Google decided to shut down all but one of Slide’s existing games including SuperPoke! Pets. Player outrage was impressive following Google’s announcement, and today we learn that it was not empty: a class action lawsuit against Google has...
“All of the energy concentrated in one gallon of gasoline is enough to charge an...”
– ExxonMobil’s Perspectives Blog
ExxonMobil’s intent is to illustrate our need for gasoline, but every time I see this figure I can only think that internal combustion engines could become more efficient.
Take note PR teams: this is a poor metaphor to use if your audience treasures...
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On the Language of Marriage →
Nick Kam dives into the Perry v. Brown opinion and discovers “the law clears at the 9th Circuit are having too much fun”:
We need consider only the many ways in which we encounter the word “marriage” in our daily lives and understand it, consciously or not, to convey a sense of significance. We are regularly given forms to complete that ask us whether we are “single” or “married.”...
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Path uploads your entire iPhone address book to... →
“Two Paths diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one that uploads your entire address book without permission.” -Paul Haddad
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“Build task claims to succeed in spite of generating error messages.”
– Best Xcode error message yet.
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Content Creep Check-In: Salon's Record Numbers
A few days ago I noted the continuing erosion of “content” based businesses; businesses that use page views and revenue, not quality, to gauge their output.
But enough of the Demand Media deathwatch, today we have some good news: Salon has turned themselves around by focusing on quality first. Kerry Lauerman, editor in chief of Salon, explains how Salon achieved a record year in 2011...
“Windows in the building will not be opened nor are they allowed to be opened. ...”
– An all-building email regarding tomorrow’s ticker-tape parade, which kicks off outside my office window. No word on what to do with all this ticker-tape.
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“News Corp. has spent $30 million on development (which has been “written...”
– FolioMag.com
Imagine the iPad newsroom you could build with $500,000 a month. Hell, I’d consider $500,000 a year.
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“Canadian bookselling chain Indigo Books & Music is joining Barnes &...”
– “In our view Amazon’s actions are not in the long-term interests of the reading public or the publishing and book retailing industry, globally,” says Indigo VP Janet Eger. So refusing to stock titles due to business conflicts helps readers?
Protectionism is the last gasp of the obsolete. (Via...
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Our Whale Dependency
Could someone do an investigative report on “whales”, the people whom spend upwards of $10,000 a year on social games? Given the ecosystem these people support, it would be nice to understand who they are and their motivations (addiction? copious wealth? high allowances?).
At first whales seem like a quirk, a funny did-you-know story for light conversation. But thanks to details...
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“The creepy factor at [Zynga] comes when they start designing for...”
– A former Zynga engineer does an AMA. Wish I could say this is surprising.
I can’t wait until casual gamers become more mature, indie developers figure out how to market actually fun games, and the Zynga world of social gaming falls apart.
Also:
Q: How does the creative process work...
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Content Creep Check-In
An update regarding “content” based businesses:
Since the original post, Demand Media is down 15% and 3 founders/EVPs have left “coincidentally” at the same time.
About.com is crumbling, according to recent NYT earning reports. PaidContent’s Jeff Roberts writes, “About.com is in free fall. The New York Times revealed yesterday that its network of information...
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“There is of course nothing new about fears accompanying the emergence of a new...”
– From David Crystal’s Language and the Internet, 1997
“It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins...”
– A Scandal in Bohemia, 1891
Also,
Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition.
Hacker News on Highlighted Posts →
This might be the most positive Hacker News thread I’ve ever come across.
Yale Discovers a Fungus That Eats Plastic →
(Via PC World)
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The Huffington Post Streaming Video Network is...
The NYT’s Brian Stelter reports on AOL/The Huffington Post’s live streaming video network announcement:
AOL and The Huffington Post are readying a live video network that will have 12 hours of programming every weekday when it starts this summer…
Roy Sekoff, a founding editor of The Huffington Post who will run the streaming network, said it represented a “substantial...
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Networks are Gaming Nielsen →
According to the NY Times, ABC’s “Good Morning America” ran under an alias during the last week of 2011:
But as far as Nielsen ratings were concerned, four of the shows that week weren’t “Good Morning America” at all. They were labeled “special” programming by ABC, which told Nielsen that it would be called “Good Morning Amer.”
ABC made the switch so that the final week...
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“Advertising comprises a full 85 percent of Facebook’s revenues, down from...”
– Huffington Post
What happens when real money is invested in a stock driven by the sale of fake money?
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First winner in the Android tablet market: Woot.
“As he told it, he was on an airliner and opened a bag of peanuts and then...”
– The best argument against the TSA: the breadclip
“To respond to specific industry,
Realize you were just a little birthday street.”
– Siri’s poetic mis-dictation of myself.
January 2012
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A Plea for Better iOS Text Facilities →
buzz:
Some (e.g. Facebook and Instagram) have dealt with this problem by abandoning fully native apps and instead building hybrid apps that rely on UIWebView for all but the simplest content presentation. Other, less ambitious companies have dealt with it by essentially distributing 200 MB PDFs disguised as general purpose software. The really crazy ones, like Joe Hewitt with his Three20...
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The Perils of Prescriptive Design
Customer: Excuse me, would you mind heating up this pastry some more? It's cold in the middle.
Starbucks Employee: Um, let me check... [Turns around and looks at their oven. Each button on the oven's face is labeled and preset to correspond with a specific pastry. The employee seems to be realizing she is unable to warm this pastry just a little bit.]
Customer: It's fine on the outside, just cold in the middle. Just throw it in for a few seconds.
Starbucks Employee: [Throws the semi-warm pastry in the trash] I'm going to have to make you another one...
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“[Android and iOS] are in a pickle. Their pickle is security. When the first big...”
– RIM CEO Thorsten Heins, another CEO who’s betting the company on a conditional event that will probably not happen and is totally out of his control. (Via NYTimes.com)
Putting French instructions on shampoo bottles is a branding move, right?
“[The idea that markets are rational and can regulate themselves] assumes perfect...”
– George Soros, via The Daily Beast
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“[Barnes & Noble] have figured out how to use the store to sell e-books. Now,...”
– Carolyn Reidy, president and chief executive of Simon & Shuster.
This is the delusional logic entrenched publishers are betting on: a magical future will appear where iPods will drive people to buy CD players, smartphones will sell Franklin day planners, Nooks will help sales of paper, and...
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“We see a future where world-leading educators are at the center of the education...”
– Stanford professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, whom worked on Stanford’s free online classes, succinctly sum up the digital educational opportunity I’ve been trying to describe. Koller and Ng are starting a new company to help things along.
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“When an Apple employee approached Pixar for a “Mac Tools Programming...”
– Court documents from the anti-poaching collusion trial involving Apple, Google, Adobe, Intel, Intuit, and others.
I know it isn’t comparable to factory conditions, but this evidence directly conflicts with Tim Cook’s email in response to worker issues, which states: “We are...
“More likely, he said, is that someone had the idea to use the counterfeit...”
– 30 Pounds of Cocaine Turn Up in U.N. Mailroom, NYTimes.com
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“The cost in increased complexity is constant while the cost of throwing hardware...”
– 37Signal’s Kyle Drake on why not sharding Basecamp’s database works for them.
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What "Big Data" can Learn from Dubai's Skyscrapers...
Suddenly, we love data. It’s the hero in our TV shows, saves our baseball teams, generates our art, and is the topic of the moment at Davos. Our obsession borders on religion: we believe data is infallible, containing a single, emergent truth (the Guardian’s Datablog’s subtitle is “Facts are Sacred”). If our businesses or institutions are failing we say they need more...
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“So where do you get the songs for your digital music library? You probably own...”
– Apple, explaining iTunes in January of 2001.
Remember: the iPod wouldn’t arrive for 10 months and the store would take more than 2 years.
“Last year, about 70 percent of its estimated $237 million operating profit went...”
– Bloomberg on troubles at the New York Times.
There is no good answer to this problem that doesn’t involve a time machine. Better answers, yes, but not good ones.
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Symantec's Source Code was Stolen 6 Years Ago →
From Wired’s Threat Level:
The company surprised the public last week when it disclosed that hackers had obtained source code for its pcAnywhere software and other products, and that the code had likely been stolen in a six-year-old breach that Symantec had never disclosed.
Symantec said in its announcement that users should disable pcAnywhere until the company had time to update...