Amazon’s goal should be for Kindle typography to equal print typography. They’re not even close. They get a pass on this only because all their competitors are just as bad or worse. Amazon should hire a world-class book designer to serve as product manager for the Kindle.
[Still waiting for them to get this together. When they do I’m in…]
Source: Daring Fireball
Marveling at the existence of the greatest phone ever made:
If I tell you the greatest thing about the iPhone 5 is how it “feels,” you’ll accuse me of being a superficial aesthete who cares more for form than function. You don’t care how a phone was built or how it looks; you just want it to work. But I think that argument misses something important about what it means for a phone to “work well”: When you’re holding a device all the time, how it feels affects its functionality. Or, as Steve Jobs might say, how it feels is how it works.
[I know this to be true from objects I craft myself. If people are going to touch it, how it feels is a huge part of how it works. I recently built some objects that were “so nice” that the folks they were built for refused to use them as they were designed. In short, they put a cover on them. An utter failure.]
Pandora founder Tim Westergren:
For over two thousand artists Pandora will pay over $10,000
dollars each over the next 12 months (including one of my
favorites, the late jazz pianist Oscar Peterson), and for more
than 800 we’ll pay over $50,000, more than the income of the
average American household. For top earners like Coldplay, Adele,
Wiz Khalifa, Jason Aldean and others Pandora is already paying
over $1 million each. Drake and Lil Wayne are fast approaching a
$3 million annual rate each.It’s hard to look at these numbers and not see that internet radio
presents an incredible opportunity to build a better future for
artists. Not only is it bringing tens of millions of listeners
back to music, across hundreds of genres, but it is also enabling
musicians to earn a living. Since Pandora accounts for just 6.53%
of all radio listening in the U.S., it seems fundamentally unfair
that other forms of radio that represent much larger shares of
U.S. radio listening pay substantially less to artists.Hard to argue with that.
[I point to all the anti “new model” articles. Seemed like this ought to get some play as well.]
Source: Daring Fireball
Why We’ll Never Stop Talking About Steve Jobs:
Jobs, like the titans of industry before him, realized that when we think about how the world works, we are actually thinking about the way people have made it to work. And that means that if you don’t like the way the world works, you are free to change it. Which is exactly what he did.
[Forgetting that in combination with Alice Walker’s “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” explains why so little is done about so much.]
Disruptions: With a 3-D Printer, Building a Gun With the Push of a Button:
But monitoring whether people make their own guns on a 3-D printer is going to be impossible, barring sticking an A.T.F. agent in every home. It’s also hopeless to try to build a technology into these printers that prevents people from printing a gun. One project mentioned in Mr. Wilson’s video, called the RepRap printer, will be capable of replicating itself by printing other 3-D printers.
After committing a crime with a printed weapon, a person could simply melt down the plastic and reprint it as something as mundane as a statue of Buddha. And guns made of plastic might not be spotted by metal detectors in airports, courthouses or other government facilities.
“This becomes scary when you consider the fact that it could be yet another opportunity for people to evade background checks and get a gun,” said Daniel Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
[First of all, this is nothing new (people building their own firearms at home.) Certainly the “IED” commonly discussed in the last couple of wars shows that guns could well be overrated by Hollywood and the Press as the best means of causing harm. But anyway, while the above scenario is bound to happen, there’s a lot more good to come of 3D printing than bad. In the meantime this only proves how poor “banning” anything works as a system. The more try and do it, the worse we get at it.]
What are the minimum, indispensable functions of government? What functions are present in all human societies? Is it possible to name anything which obtains in one society which is not differently just the reverse in another? Or not done at all? Has there ever been a truly anarchistic society? The Eskimos, perhaps? We have an anarchist running a newspaper in this town, who is opposed to public roads, public schools, public anything—he maintains that it is not ethical for a majority to do anything collectively which each individual did not already have the right to do as an individual. This is an explosive notion; a corollary is that all taxation is wrong, all zoning laws are wrong, all compulsory education is wrong, all punishment by courts is wrong. In the mean time he lives in a well-policed society, his own considerable wealth protected by all these things he deplores. But one thing is sure: many of the things we take for granted are not necessary to a stable society, but we take them for granted. You could get a Campbell-style story out of doubting the most sacred of sacred cows—except big business, of course; John does not tolerate outright heresy.
[Genius. I was 13 when I read my first Heinlein book. And I read all I could get my hands on since. First? Obvious. Stranger in a Strange Land. Hardcover. Looked like the above. Introduced me to Rodin as well. ]
Source: Letters of Note
Do you know what it is to succumb under an insurmountable day-mare,—”a whoreson lethargy,” Falstaff calls it,—an indisposition to do anything, or to be anything,—a total deadness and distaste,—a suspension of vitality,—an indifference to locality,—a numb, soporifical, good-for-nothingness,—an ossification all over,—an oyster-like insensibility to the passing events,—a mind-stupor,—a brawny defiance to the needles of a thrusting-in conscience. Did you ever have a very bad cold, with a total irresolution to submit to water-gruel processes?
[To good to ignore.]
Source: Letters of Note
The habit of doing more than is necessary can only be earned through practice. And the habit is priceless.
[Everything you want in your life bears practice, repetition, rehearsal, and respect. That also includes using the best tools you can, respecting them through care, and respecting the craftspeople who created them.]
Source: Seth’s Blog
A simple market-based solution to Apple Maps vs. Google Maps:
Why would Google be so blasé? One big reason is that Apple’s users pay nothing for the app. And, because users pay nothing, Google can ignore those users’ suffering while relishing the sight of Apple embarrassing itself.
To fully understand what’s going on here, it is essentiall to understand the difference between customers and users (aka consumers). Customers pay. By not paying, and functioning only as a user, you have little if any economic leverage. Worse, you’re the product being sold to the actual customers, which are advertisers.
This Google vs. Apple thing reminds me of my days in commercial broadcasting. There too consumers and customers were different populations. Consumers were listeners and viewers whose ears and eyeballs were sold to advertisers, who were the real customers. Listeners and viewers had no leverage when a station or a network got in the mood to kill a format, or a show. We’re in the same spot here, at least in respect to Google.
[Doc… dead on as usual. “Data wants to be free, but value wants to be paid for. Let us pay. We’re the damed market. Let us help you work out the kinks in your products. Develop real relationships with us, and provide real customer support that’s worth what we pay for it.” Google has shown zero interest in this to date. And has had the worst customer experience from that perspective of almost any company.]
Source: Doc Searls Weblog
Video of That 2007 ‘Intel Inside’ Sticker Question:
Steve Jobs at his extemporaneous best. Dumb question but such a great answer. (Phil Schiller got a good jab in too.)
Update: Changed the link from an audio recording to this YouTube clip.
[Here’s the thing, I deal with this all the time. Well, not the Intel sticker, but stores that put sticky price tags (which are now usually barcodes that tell me nothing). I don’t want to spend time peeling stickers off of the new items I purchased, and I certainly don’t want to risk harming the item by having to use either chemicals or a razor blade to remove the price tag and residual glue. I’m not alone here either, I’ve often heard from my wife “don’t order from there, I hate the stickers they use…”]
Source: Daring Fireball
turnings :: daniel berlinger 