January 2010
“Jeb, with all due respect, I’ve just got to take this last question as an...”
– Obama at the GOP. Everyone should watch this; refreshingly candid and practical.
“Tell me the difference between a large phone and a tablet.”
– Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
A: Usage.
We Perceive Things to be More Appealing if They're... →
When they were presented [with physical exercise instructions] in an easy-to-read print font (Arial), readers assumed that the exercise would take 8.2 minutes to complete; but when they were presented in a difficult-to-read print font, readers assumed it would take nearly twice as long, a full 15.1 minutes (Song & Schwarz, 2008b). They also thought that the exercise would flow quite naturally...
The Age of Cross-Pollination.
The best term I’ve heard to describe our current digital culture. (Via Things Magazine)
Jobs Says Publishers Will Leave Amazon for Apple →
Mossberg asks Jobs why someone would pay $14.99 for an eBook from Apple when they could buy the same book from Amazon for $9.99. Jobs answer is very compelling: ”That won’t happen,” Jobs says. “The prices will be the same…Publishers are actually going to pull their books from Amazon because they’re not happy.”
After a few days I’ve landed on a new...
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Headline of the Day:
katiebakes:
“Secrecy-Shrouded Street-Food Cart Might Belong to Brian Boitano”
“I still can’t believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares...”
– Apple’s New Thing (iPod) - Mac Forums
Typical response to the 2001 announcement of the original iPod. Click through for more.
(via mattlehrer
)
What a great find. Click through. Read the thread. It’s awesome.
(via mikehudack)
My favorite quote: “All you wusses waiting for a Newton...
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Twitter Hits 75 Million Users, Most of Them... →
Slow clap. (Via @garyst3in)
Miramax to Close →
A Disney spokeswoman called to protest that Miramax is not ‘dead.’ “Miramax will consoldiate its operations within Walt Disney Studios, and will be releasing a smaller number of films than in previous years. But it will continue to operate within the Walt Disney Studios,” she said.
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All of J.D. Salinger's Short Stories from the New... →
In a lovely tribute, The New Yorker has made all 13 of J.D. Salinger’s short stories available online.
And now, I’m off to add all of them to my Instapaper account.
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Google Renews Its Privacy/Profit Vows →
Google just summed up it’s “privacy principles” with five bullets:
Use information to provide our users with valuable products and services.
Develop products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices.
Make the collection of personal information transparent.
Give users meaningful choices to protect their privacy.
Be a responsible steward of the information we...
“Adobe and more than 50 of our partners in the Open Screen Project are working to...”
– Adobe’s rebuttal to Apple. I like how anytime a company is snubbed by a device or platform these days they form an “Open” group.
They hijack the “Open” brand in an effort to shame companies into spending money to support their technology. This usually occurs when said...
Nasa accepts Spirit Mars rover 'stuck for good' →
A sad day, but still Spirit troops on. The project was expected to last ~1 year, but Spirit has been active for 6+. And now that it’s stationary, it will just switch to projects that are more suited to static observation, of which there are no shortage.
What really caught my eye was this:
Nasa has spent more than $900m (£560m) on its Mars Exploration Rover programme, from design through to...
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“I give that a pretty high marks for an ending. We don’t quit! I...”
– Choire, at The Awl
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Job's Revenge: McGraw-Hill axed from iPad launch... →
McGraw-Hill is bigger than most of the publishers on this slide. But insiders say as soon as Terry shot his mouth off on CNBC, Jobs had the company cut from the presentation. We won’t know for a few weeks if McGraw was only wrist-slapped, or if he’s been thrown out of the game.
(Via Venture Beat’s Paul Boutin)
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What to Take Away from the iPad: The Future of... →
As always, the best recap of Apple’s new device comes from Joel Johnson:
If there’s anything that you can take home from today’s announcement of the iPad it’s this: from here on out the battle between physical keyboards and touchscreen ones has moved beyond smartphones and into every other area of computing. Get ready to hear someone say “I touchtype just fine on a...
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“We have a breakthrough deal with AT&T… And there’s no contract...”
– Steve Jobs on the iPad’s $29.99 unlimited data plan.
“Breakthrough deal” is a euphemism for “give us this deal or we take the iPhone to Verizon and break your legs.”
“In the last decade, I feel the documentary genre has become severely saturated...”
– A Year of Movies
Twitter is pretty much crippled by this iPad nonsense. Rather than crash this time, they’re simply stopped delivering messages. Clever.
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Lessig Calls Google Book Settlement A “Path To... →
Hear, hear! Maybe this will make it on BoingBoing.
More Jaron Lanier (on the radio/ KUOW)
humancomputer:
turninvisible:
“The problem comes up when you put some information that is supposed to represent who you are on the computer and then after that, you treat it as real and after that you change your life, you lower yourself to conform to it”
…If you are seventeen you are creating your status, you are creating your position and your peer group and you have to conform in a way…you...
“People who have seen the tablet say Apple will market it not just as a way to...”
– Lala, meet Apple’s giant collection of credit card data. Credit card data, meet Lala. (Via NYTimes.com)
“Yeah, Very exciting. Yes, they’ll make their announcement tomorrow on this...”
– McGraw-Hill’s CEO confirms the Apple tablet on CNBC. In a related future item, McGraw-Hill content will be banned from all things Apple.
The video’s pretty funny to watch: this guy just casually drops it as if he’s in a private meeting room. Just tosses it out there. (Via Mac...
"Tomorrow, Steve Jobs will reveal the real Apple... →
(via katiebakes)
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The Earth has a Dark Sense of Humor →
Good news! The hole in the ozone is mending itself! Bad news! A fixed hole will contribute to global warming! (Via NYT)
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“My electronic library has about a 50% crossover with my physical library, so...”
– From “Confessions of a Book Pirate.”
The nice thing about book pirates is that they’re a hell of a lot more articulate than the usual Pirate Bay frat-boy. (Via The Millions)
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“How, where, can I ask writers who are unhappy with the Settlement to speak up -...”
– Ursula K. Le Guin. Funny, didn’t see this quote up on BoingBoing. What a lovely last line. (Via io9)
On Nook Consumer Complaints
Beyond Apple Tablet anticipation and Amazon’s changing Kindle royalties, the ebook world is abuzz with tales of Barnes & Noble’s bad customer service. Pre-ordered Nooks have yet to ship and customer service is giving complaints the run-around.
To which I wonder: why did anyone spend $260 to pre-order an unproven device, in a nascent category, from a company who has never shipped a...
“Dear Facebook,
Thank you for your recent suggestion that I...”
– An Open Letter to Facebook (Via McSweeney’s) 