January 2012
21 posts
3 tags
Reading on the Web Needs Its iPhone →
Wherein Rian Van Der Merwe disparages, or rather describes how advertising is disparaging, the current state of reading on the Web. These certainly aren’t new thoughts to web designers, developers, or just plain-old lovers, but they remain as important as ever.
1 tag
'Exact Nonsense' →
Penn Jillette, in his book God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales:
There is no god and that’s the simple truth. If every trace of any single religion died out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would...
4 tags
'How Much Do Music and Movie Piracy Really Hurt... →
Answer: No one has any idea.
That PIPA and SOPA can get as much traction as they did without an answer to this, the most basic question, is frightening.
(Via MG Siegler.)
2 tags
'Perspective' →
Farhad Manjoo:
Apple’s profits ($13 billion) exceeded Google’s entire revenue ($10.6 billion).
(Via John Gruber.)
2 tags
Yep →
Jonathan Coulton:
Make good stuff, then make it easy for people to buy it. There’s your anti-piracy plan.
(Via Merlin Mann.)
1 tag
'Don't Cry. Disney Owns The Right to That... →
Hitler reacts to SOPA.
3 tags
EFF's 2011 in Review: The Year Secrecy Jumped the... →
This is my concerned face.
2 tags
Nothing Good Gets Away →
Such a beautiful letter from John Steinbeck to his son Thom, who needed advice when he believed himself to have fallen in love with a young girl named Susan at his boarding school.
(Via Frank Chimero.)
1 tag
Does Culture Matter for Product Design? →
Don Norman ruminates on Human-Centered Design vs. (what he calls) Activity-Centered design and the value/quantity of instilling culture when designing products. Classic, thought-provoking Norman.
4 tags
Kill Your Ego, Be Happy →
Wisdom.
(Via egomaniac Amanda Nudelman.)
3 tags
Fred Wilson: 'Pseudonyms Drive Community' →
Fred Wilson was kind enough to write up a little summary on our recently-released pseudonym research. A lot of people have raised valid points since we published the data and we’re keeping in that in mind as we continue our newfound love for research.
In the meantime though, the value of pseudonyms remains personified on Fred’s blog, A VC. A top-notch community filled with classy,...
2 tags
61 Percent Of Disqus Comments Are Made With... →
Fun fact of the day.
2 tags
Just Because Something Is The Way It Is Doesn't... →
Clay Johnson, on SOPA and how/why Internet defenders should also take the time to get to know how Congress works:
Right now, if you want effective legislation around your industry, then you need to pay the right lobbyists, make the right campaign contributions, and write the right legislation at the right time in order to get it out of Washington. If you had to objectively pick the winning...
3 tags
Sickening. →
Lakhdar Boumediene on his wrongful arrest and incarceration in Guantánamo:
The fact that the United States had made a mistake was clear from the beginning. Bosnia’s highest court investigated the American claim, found that there was no evidence against me and ordered my release. But instead, the moment I was released American agents seized me and the five others. We were tied up like animals...
Nordstrom's Employee Handbook →
This has made the rounds numerous times. I love it but I’ve never formally shared it. Enjoy:
Welcome to Nordstrom
We’re glad to have you with our Company. Our number one goal is to provide outstanding customer service. Set both your personal and professional goals high. We have great confidence in your ability to achieve them.
Nordstrom Rules: Rule #1: Use best judgment in all...
4 tags
Steve Jobs' Vision of the World →
Steve Jobs:
When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and you’re life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money.
That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by...
1 tag
Time Lapse View of Earth Taken from the... →
Should have sent a poet.
(Via Jason Major for Discovery News.)
2 tags
Don’t Be a Free User →
Maciej Ceglowski on the pattern of free-of-charge web services getting popular and then cashing out and shutting down:
What if a little site you love doesn’t have a business model? Yell at the developers! Explain that you are tired of good projects folding and are willing to pay cash American dollar to prevent that from happening. It doesn’t take prohibitive per-user revenue to put a project...
2 tags
Brilliant →
George Vaillant:
It is all too common for caterpillars to become butterflies and then to maintain that in their youth they had been little butterflies. Maturation makes liars of us all.
Added to Quotes.
3 tags
Nick Bilton Interviews Scott Harrison →
Bilton:
What have you learned that can help other nonprofits?
Harrison:
Simplicity is key. Be able to tell your story simply. I can’t tell you how many nonprofits I meet and after three minutes talking to them, I still have no idea what they do. Show. Don’t tell. And do it visually. Use the Web to tell people where their money has gone and let them see what it has done.
1 tag
'Portal 2 Is The Best Movie Of 2011.' →
Neven Mrgan recounts his favorite things in 2011.
December 2011
8 posts
2 tags
How Netflix gets out of the way of innovation →
Netflix’s Adrian Cockcroft:
But when I talk to other large companies about what we have done, they seem to have a lot of reasons why they couldn’t or didn’t do what we did, even if they wanted to.
(Via Scott Smith.)
3 tags
Think Long, Think Wrong →
MG Siegler, on Google removing his Google+ profile picture without warning because he was flipping the bird:
Google continues to walk this oddly vague line when it comes to Google+. At first it was all about real identity, like Facebook, but then when people complained, they backtracked from that. Now it’s all about “sharing in real life” — but it’s not real life. It’s some sterile...
3 tags
So The Real Question Is: Are We Still A... →
Ford Fox:
The EU is now blocking importation of technology into the United States that we cannot be trusted to use properly. As widely reported yesterday, the EU is cutting off our supply to the drugs we use for lethal injections […]
2 tags
'Remix Culture Is The New Prohibition' →
Andy Baio studies the use of the phrase “No copyright intended” on Youtube videos.
(Via John Gruber.)
3 tags
Siri and The Parent Test
My mom, in a recent email:
btw, we both used Siri for the first time last night. I asked it today what time the post office closed;). It didn’t know, and apologized.
The fact that my parents are using ‘btw’ is big. The fact that they finally bought iPhones (their first non-clamshell feature phone) is huge. The fact that they’re using Siri and then emailing me about...
2 tags
'Don’t buy this product.' →
Garrett Murray reviews the UP, Jawbone’s new “app-powered wrist band that inspires you to feel better and live healthier” competitor to the FitBit. Ravaging.
2 tags
Correlation or Causation? →
Or, answer the following question: There is a high degree of [correlation or causation?] between ice cream sales and murder rates.
(Via Oliver Reichenstein.)
2 tags
Dan Frommer's 10 Steps to Better Blogging →
Spot-on.
November 2011
7 posts
2 tags
Sega Sagan →
My life in a nutshell.
(Via Jonathan Jacques-Belletête.)
3 tags
Disqus on SOPA and Internet Censorship →
Today, we censor the Disqus logo. Screenshot for posterity.
1 tag
'That our bodies atoms are traceable to supernova... →
Neil Tyson’s doing an AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) on Reddit right now.
UPDATE: Finished. Q&A summary.
4 tags
Nokia HumanForm Uses Nanotechnology and Blah,... →
This is a step up from Microsoft’s Productivity Future Vision in terms of showing something that at least appears to be a physical device (even though it isn’t).
That said, all the gestures are complete shit. Whose vision is this and what are they smoking?
2 tags
Beautiful People →
Pictory asks 32 people, “What is it like, day-to-day, to be remarkably attractive?”
1 tag
The Humble Bundle, Pay What You Want for Awesome... →
I put this on my linked list back in April and somehow never shared it. Now I’m glad I forgot because six months later and it’s still going strong. Neat concept, I hope to see more of it.
New iPhone 4S Commercials →
I just want to :)
(Via John Gruber.)
October 2011
7 posts
2 tags
Mona Simpson's Eulogy for Steve Jobs →
Damn these human emotions.
1 tag
Juggling
Working at a startup is like juggling.
Every day you take a deep breath and throw a whole bunch of new balls in the air and pray to god they just don’t come back down on fire.
Mind you, they do all come back down one way or another. And then you throw them back up the next day, slightly more sure that they won’t come back down on fire than you were the previous day.
After a...
The Limits of Human Rationality →
Jonah Lehrer, writing for The New Yorker on Daniel Kahneman’s new book, Thinking, Fast and Slow:
It’s impossible to overstate the influence of Kahneman and Tversky. Like Darwin, they helped to dismantle a longstanding myth of human exceptionalism. Although we’d always seen ourselves as rational creatures — this was our Promethean gift — it turns out that human reason is rather feeble, easily...
Be Yourself and Work As Hard As You Can to Bring... →
John Lilly on Steve Jobs’ Legacy:
That’s it, I think — that’s the biggest message from Jobs’ life. Don’t try to be like Steve. Don’t try to be like anyone.
Reminds me of Bruce Lee:
Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.
3 tags
Dan Frommer on The Apple-fication Of Everything →
Prescient.
Font Hipsters →
John Gruber:
We criticize Android for being poorly designed because it’s poorly designed. We favor iOS because it’s better designed. That’s it.
1 tag
'29 Years Old And Hearing Myself for The 1st... →
This video. I’m speechless.
September 2011
7 posts
SEO for Non-dicks →
Matt Gemmell:
So, shockingly, you should try to make your site’s content trustworthy, genuine and relevant. … Good SEO is a by-product of not being a dick on the internet.
Blasphemy.
Who Killed Videogames? (A Ghost Story) →
Tim Rogers — designer of Ziggurat — spills some beans:
This time, I put my white iPhone 4 to sleep, lay it face down on the board table, fold my hands, and say, “It’s all math. It’s all math and psychology. By which you might say, it’s all economics.” I clear my throat. “Economics and philosophy. By which you might say it’s modern video game design.”
(Via Whitney Hills.)
1 tag
Disqus Ranks
We launched Ranks today. Disqus Ranks allow you to reward active and loyal users of your site.
This is a first glimpse at what I hope will become something much bigger.
I’m excited.
Needless to say, I’ve already enabled them here and will be playing around with them to see what feels right. Join me.
UPDATE: Forgot to mention Fred Wilson’s 500+-comments Disqus Ranks post....
2 tags
TSA Creator Says Dismantle, Privatize the Agency →
Increasingly it’s becoming easier to target the TSA for stupidity, thievery, and molestation. There’s been no shortage of ass-hattery and, even worse, broad incompetence:
In 2006, screeners at Los Angeles and Chicago O’Hare airports failed to find more than 60% of fake explosives during checkpoint security tests.
Yikes.
Audrey Hudson, talking with Rep. John Mica...
3 tags
Views Differ on Shape of Earth, Climate Edition →
I don’t even.
(Via Daring Fireball.)
And don’t miss John Gruber’s follow-up analysis, including a classic Paul Krugman quote that I won’t spoil for you.
Bottom line: 100% of climate scientists believe global warming is happening and 98% believe it’s mostly caused by humans.
Mike Lofgren: 'The Republican Party Is Becoming... →
Mike Lofgren, for Trouthout:
John P. Judis sums up the modern GOP this way:
“Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. It is the party of Watergate and Iran-Contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995...
1 tag
'Leaders Are People Who Go Their Own Way Without... →
John Holt, in Teach Your Own:
Leaders are not what many people think–people with huge crowds following them. Leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see whether anyone is following them. “Leadership qualities” are not the qualities that enable people to attract followers, but those that enable them to do without them. The include, at the very least, courage,...