Richard Stallman:
“Hey that thing is terrible. The government is using it to track and spy on you, and the software is evil. Can I borrow it for a second to make a call?”
[Heh. Not the only oddity of his lifestyle.]
Source: Daring Fireball
O’Keefe stings Rosen, Shirky: My thoughts: It’s okay to go undercover and publish the result if you actually caught someone doing something inappropriate. Based on what I know about journalism classes, and what Clay does (there’s only one quote from Jay in the 10-minute video) he did what guest lecturers do, give their opinions on the topics of the day. This kind of stuff goes on in J-schools everywhere, every day, with people of all political persuasions.
[The first problem I have with this is with the first few seconds of video where the word “caught” is used. Dave in his piece used the word “stings” which might be closer. But certainly the word caught implies that either one of the subjects of the piece were doing something wrong. That’s the kinda of crappy journalism we can expect from the next generation, who are busy trying to make a name for themselves pointing out the supposed flaws of the previous generation. It’s all a terrible loop.]
Source: Scripting News
Remembering @RoadBikeDave, David Hargrave: It was 48 degrees and rainy. But I knew Dave would be there. We had a great chat. He’s strong.
[A very powerful piece. Go read.]
[Interesting art. Check it out.]
Two less cables: Services like Hulu Plus and Netflix streaming have a huge problem getting content, and I continue to think that this is in no small part because they vastly underprice their services—which they do because consumers continue to decide how much they’re willing to pay for content based not on the content itself but on the delivery mechanism. If you watch a dozen shows and pay $120 a month for HD cable, you’re paying around $2.50 per episode. An iTunes season pass for a 24-episode show in HD is probably going to be about $45, or $1.88 an episode. Yet consumer behavior suggests we think iTunes is the service that’s priced unreasonably.*
I wrote a few months ago that I doubted you could do a streaming service that was really capable of supplanting cable or satellite unless it was at least $30 a month, and that’s probably including ads. I don’t think Netflix or Hulu could ask that kind of price and have a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding. I doubt even Amazon could.
[Lisa and I were discussing the math of cable just last night. Generally it doesn’t provide the value you think it does. It’s worth looking at what you use cable for… you might be able to drop it.]
Source: Coyote Tracks
Steve Jobs « The New Adventures of Stephen Fry: It was a large and popular conference and Tim was pretty much at the end of the line of black NeXt boxes. Each developer showed Steve Jobs their new word-processor, graphic programme and utility and he slowly walked along the line, like the judge at a flower show nodding his approval or frowning his distaste. Just before he reached Tim and the world wide web at the end of the row, an aide nudged Jobs and told him that they should go or he’d be in danger of missing his flight back to America. So Steve turned away and never saw the programme that Tim Berners-Lee had written which would change the world as completely as Gutenberg had in 1450. It was a meeting of the two most influential men of their time that never took place. Chatting to the newly knighted Sir Tim a few years ago he told me that he had still never actually met Steve Jobs.
[Incredible.]
He was also against adding apps to the iPhone.
Some behavior that describes Steve my family and friends would certainly say sounds like me at times (to my regret). And with (ahem) brilliant insight points out that Steve was wrong about certain things (duh). But I really understand that he was against adding apps to the iPhone.
Sure, there’s lots of reasons why allowing apps was a good thing (in retrospect). I’ve certainly benefited from it in the sense that there are apps on my phone that Apple would never have created and that I love for their special use. But for the most part the core apps Phone, Contact, Safari, Camera, Music, etc. are the ones that get the most use. While my phone is more useful with folks creating great native apps, it would not have been significantly less useful as a phone the other way.
There would have been negative side effects—it’s a less interesting device if there isn’t a near constant stream of of “content” in the form of apps. The iPad would not have been nearly as successful, even if the plan was to allow others to write apps for it, because the iPhone app market bootstrapped developer knowledge.
My wife’s recent use of iPhone is teaching me how much “regular” people don’t know about iPhones, iOS, and apps. My parents use of an iPad us kids bought for them teaches me similar lessons. If you ain’t from the world of tech, you ain’t from the world of tech. Even so, everyone muddles through, each in our own way. And hopefully without extensive use of terms like “bozo”.
Roboto is a Four-headed Frankenfont: I’m all for the strategy of developing a unique identity typeface, and I commend Google for employing type designers in house, but this is an unwieldy mishmash. Roboto indeed has a mixed heritage, but that mix doesn’t have anything to do with the gibberish from the press release. Its parents are a Grotesk sans (like a slightly condensed Helvetica) and a Humanist sans (like Frutiger or Myriad). There’s nothing wrong with combining elements of these two styles to create something new. The crime is in the way they were combined: grabbing letters — almost wholesale — from the Grotesk model, along with a Univers-inspired ‘a’ and ‘G’, welding them to letters from the Humanist model, and then bolting on three straight-sided caps à la DIN.
[Nice rant.]
Source: Typographica
GEX – The work of Genis Carreras… sweet. Loves the posters! Buy them here.
Managers work to get their employees to do what they did yesterday, but a little faster and a little cheaper.
Leaders, on the other hand, know where they’d like to go, but understand that they can’t get there without their tribe, without giving those they lead the tools to make something happen.
Managers want authority. Leaders take responsibility.
We need both. But we have to be careful not to confuse them. And it helps to remember that leaders are scarce and thus more valuable.
[And frankly the real trick is to balance both. Good one from Seth though.]
Source: Seth’s Blog
turnings :: daniel berlinger 