December 2011
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“If you observe something long enough, you’ll see something peculiar. If you...”
– Thomas Dyer, a Navy code breaker stationed in Hawaii during WWII. (Via The Pacific Crucible)
Frontiers through the Ages
Water, 1400
Land, 1840
Gold, 1850
Wire, 1880
Air, 1900
Celluloid, 1920
Plastic, 1950
Space, 1960
Silicon, 1980
Networks, 1990
Data, 2000
Two for Two →
jstn:
It’s hard to believe Prometheus will only be Ridley Scott’s third science fiction movie. His record so far (Alien in 1979 and Blade Runner in 1982) is unimpeachable, and to say I’m excited is a gross understatement. I watch Blade Runner at least a couple times a year because I’m obsessed, but…
I had not realized Alien and Blade Runner were the only two science fiction movies...
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Marketers are Now Targeting Drunk Shoppers →
So says the NYTimes:
“The hang-ups of spending your hard-earned cash are so far removed from your life when you’ve had a bottle of wine,” Mr. Tansey said in an e-mail. The New Zealand trip was terrific, he said. But a pair of $3 sunglasses on eBay “turned out to be horrible fakes, with $17 of postage that I obviously didn’t see with beer goggles.”
Ah, modern life.
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“[Teddy] Roosevelt was a brilliant, vociferous, combustible man, not the type who...”
– Ian W. Toll, Pacific Crucible
maxistentialist:
BBC:
Volkswagen turns off Blackberry email after work hours
The carmaker confirmed it made the move earlier this year following complaints that staff’s work and home lives were becoming blurred.
Econ 101: If employers want email to be a valuable commodity to employees, it needs to have some scarcity.
Very interesting. I bet this will become an asset to woo top talent.
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Slave Labor Makes You Look Great →
My friend Ryan Bradford was fired from the Post Office for alluding to a small mailing list he maintained entitled, “Slave Labor Makes You Look Great.” The line made it into an interview with San Diego’s CityBeat after his photos of malicious dogs went internet big.
Sadly, Bradford didn’t win out and was recently handed his “Letter of Resignation.” So now,...
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On The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
I really like that David Fincher follows The Social Network with a heroine whose talent is the ability to unearth reams of information about anyone.
Gorgeously shot film.
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Debuzzing Buzzwords
Buzzwords are cheap. They’re vague and allow people to talk about things with an appearance of understanding.
This is both good and bad. Buzzwords are good because they help create momentum around a new idea or technology by allowing more people to participate than deeply understand the new concept. Eventually this benefit crosses a line: those who don’t understand concepts begin...
“R. Kelly needs funding — AND QUICK — because the singer tells TMZ...”
– TMZ.com
If there were ever a perfect, headline Kickstarter project, this is it.
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“Most people thought Blippy’s biggest challenge would be getting users to...”
– Philip Kaplan, co-founder of Blippy, which shared a stream of your credit card purchases. (Via Paul Boutin at Technology Review
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Facebook's Ceiling: It's Easy to Scale Sharing but... →
The ever excellent Paul Boutin nails it:
It’s not hard to explain why we seem eager to do our bit to maintain the march of Zuckerberg’s Law. Social sites are like Skinner boxes: we press the Like button and are rewarded with attention and interaction from our friends. It doesn’t take long to get conditioned to that reward. Frictionless sharing can now push the lever for us...
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“Indian cell phone subscribers, of which there are 900 million accounts, have a...”
– In India, the “missed call” as a means of communication and interaction has developed into a cultural and business norm.
Also:
Missed calls are being incorporated into mobile apps and services as a standard type of messaging like a text or an answered call itself. For example, an Indian cloud...
“For a small fee, tour guides will lead you through Moscow’s Vagankovskoye...”
– The FT examines the political and cultural influence of organized crime in Russia.
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“Facebook has threatened to sue Mark Zuckerberg, an Israeli entrepreneur who...”
– Mashable
Every party in this case is ridiculous.
However, it’s really interesting to see Facebook butt up against government regulations as they outgrow a state-based context. In the future, legally changing your name or other bureaucratic filings might be immaterial within a global,...
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On Internet Photography
The Hundreds: How do you think the Internet has changed the way people take pictures?
Alex Martinez: It’s the ideal way to share photos but a horrible way to experience them. The pendulum always swings to the extremes first, and I think we are experiencing that now with the internet and photography. With independent books and zines on the rise again I kind of feel a balancing out happening.
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“I work mostly at night so that limits my subject matter, but I have grown to...”
– Hamburger Eyes photographer Alex Martinez
If you believe Zynga is worth $7 billion I’ve got a Groupon IPO to sell you.
Looks like the market shares my concerns.
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USC Says Newspapers will be Gone in 5 Years
USC’s Anneberg School summarizes their 10 years of studies in the report. They write:
“Circulation of print newspapers continues to plummet, and we believe that the only print newspapers that will survive will be at the extremes of the medium – the largest and the smallest,” said Cole. It’s likely that only four major daily newspapers will continue in print form: The New York Times, USA...
“The aim of the update is to make Voice Actions more Siri-like, responding to...”
– Geek.com reports that Google is working on a ‘Siri’ competitor.
If Majel only responds to search queries how is this different from plugging speech recognition into an Ask Jeeves clone?
“Much of what made Twitter useful in the first place – Hashtags, @user and many...”
– Random Bytes (via thisistheverge)
This works if you assume no one is using the SMS interface anymore. If Twitter removed @’s and #’s they’d be cutting out non-smartphone users from the full experience.
Hell of a bottleneck.
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“People want iPads but they don’t want to pay for iPads.”
– Matt McKenna sums up the entire tablet market while we discuss Android tablet shoppers I’d overheard at J&R.
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“The ruling on whether she was a journalist in the eyes of the law turned out to...”
– David Carr, writing at NYTimes.com.
I vote we swap the term “citizen journalist” for simply “reporter.” Everyone can (and should) report. The word “journalist” should be reserved to imply rigorous verification, editorial abilities, and other diligence that...
Time's Non-People of the Year
The things, groups, and concepts that have won Time’s Person of the Year award:
1950: The American Fighting Man (representing Korean War troops)
1956: The Hungarian Freedom Fighter
1960: American Scientists
1966: Baby Boomers
1968: The Apollo 8 Astronauts
1969: The Middle Americans (Silent Majority)
1975: American Women
1982: The Computer
1988: The Endangered Earth
1993: The...
Louis CK on his $5 Comedy Special Experiment
He writes:
As of Today, we’ve sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an...
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Brent Simmons On the Tab Labels in the New Twitter... →
Well said:
Connect and Discover are the ones I like least, since they sound as if they weren’t decided upon by designers but by a murder of marketing executives perched around a big table. Both are too-abstract Latin words with the blood sucked out of them.
I would have gone with Mentions and Find. Those words may not encompass everything you can do on those tabs, but they’re close...
How long before we see Kindle-like pricing for cellular plans: a pricey option that doesn’t collect your data and a cheaper option that does? I give it two years.
Carrier IQ is being used for "Law Enforcement... →
From MuckRock:
A recent FOIA request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for “manuals, documents or other written guidance used to access or analyze data gathered by programs developed or deployed by Carrier IQ” was met with a telling denial. In it, the FBI stated it did have responsive documents - but they were exempt under a provision that covers materials that, if disclosed,...
“According to FBI data, the number of suspicious activity reports related to real...”
– An interesting sentence from “The King of All Vegas Real Estate Scams”, in BusinessWeek
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“You can work out to cool music instead of something stupid. If you’re an...”
– Dan Huiting, the director of a forthcoming Bon Iver workout DVD.
And to think I was annoyed by those lazy Bushmills’ ads in the subway… (Via Pitchfork)
Efficiency, then Speed →
The Economist gets mobile computing better than most dedicated gadget blogs:
The first thing to understand about all of Apple’s portable devices—whether iPods, iPads or iPhones—is that performance is subservient to efficiency.
Every decision considers the 12 hour battery life.
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“There’s no future tense in the Finnish language. The present tense is used...”
– Jeff Vandermeer lists 5 reasons Finnish is cooler than English. Finnish also lacks gender specific pronouns and every letter represents the same sound always, with one exception.
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Worst thing about the new Twitter app? The tableviews lag. The stream sputters each time it attempts to load an avatar.
The one feature Twitter should be focused on –– before all else –– is a speedy, well designed (why the inset?) main stream. (Which is a shame, because the unified Connect tab is rather nice) It is crystal clear Loren Brichter doesn’t work at Twitter anymore. Let’s...
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"Liberating Workers" →
Christina Cacioppo on why Cherry, an iPhone app that lets you order an an immediate car wash, is compelling:
Like Opez, Cherry enables car washers to become freelancers. They don’t need to work for a car-washing shop and so can retain more of the profits generated by their work.
Historically, one service provided by a car-washing shop has been finding, staying in touch with, and retaining...
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“Officials have directed that no-one should be allowed to visit the pigeon, which...”
– Last year Indian police held a pigeon under armed guard, because it was allegedly spying for Pakistan. (Via The Express Tribune)
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A Memory Platform →
TechCrunch, reporting from Le Web:
Evernote is debuting two new applications for iPhone and iPod touch devices. The first one is called Food, and is designed to help people easily save and ‘relive’ all of their favorite meals and food experiences.
The second app is dubbed Hello and basically wants it easier for users to remember people after meeting them, as well as recording thoughts...
“Fortune named Enron “America’s Most Innovative Company” for...”
– Wikipedia
Enron was only around for 16 years. It would be wise not to forget this fact.