Month: July 2013

[Alan Henry][1]:

> In a blog post today, Twitter announced that they’re “experimenting with new ways of targeting ads,” which is their way of saying they’re planning to track you around the web—even when you leave Twitter—and relay that information to advertisers to craft better ads. Here’s how to opt out.

Just another pain in the ass step you have to take, with no assurances they are being honest about those checkboxes, all to use a service for *free*. Yay.

[1]: http://lifehacker.com/twitter-wants-to-start-tracking-you-on-the-web-heres-661569459?utm_source=recirculation&utm_medium=recirculation&utm_campaign=afternoon

There’s a ton of apps that I have been playing with, but that I simply won’t have the time to write up full thoughts on. Here’s a few that I really want to mention to you.

## Sunstroke 1.5

Anthony Drendel launched version 1.5 of his fantastic Fever° client, [Sunstroke][1]. The biggest change to this version is the UI — as it has been refreshed and looks quite nice. This is an app I am keeping a close eye on to see how it is adapted to iOS 7.

[Drendel wrote up his thoughts][2] on the change here, worth a read if you are interested in the back story of apps.

## First Years

This is a [neat little app][3], like the Everyday app, for snapping photos. Except instead of snapping photos of yourself, you get a much cuter target: your child. It’s a neat app, but I’m not sure how long the habit will last — or the value of using it over something like Day One.

## Dispatch

[This might be][4] the first third-party email client for iOS that sticks — hell not just for iOS, for any computing platform. I like the snippets, I like the design. I like the Instapaper and OmniFocus integration and many many other things. I *just* started using it, expect more later, but I am happy with it so far. ((It doesn’t hurt that it feels very iOS 7 too.))

## Supr — Slim

That rubber band KickStarter wallet, no link provided on purpose? Been using it for a while, sucks balls. Just thought I’d get that out there.

[1]: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id488564806
[2]: http://anthonydrendel.com/blog/2013/6/22/sunstroke-past-and-present.html
[3]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/first-years/id545230312?mt=8
[4]: http://www.dispatchapp.net

[Some good rules to email by][1]:

> You don’t need to reply to every email, especially not those that are themselves clear responses. An email saying “Thanks for your note. I’m in.” does not need you to reply “Great.” That just cost someone another 30 seconds.

[1]: http://emailcharter.org/index.html

[Fascinating post from David Pell][1], talking about how digital photography (among other things) is potentially (read: likely) changing the way we remember ourselves:

> Snapping and sharing photos from meaningful events is nothing new. But the frequency with which we take pictures and the immediacy with which we view them will clearly have a deep impact on the way we remember.

I distinctly remember *not* seeing many pictures of myself when I was a kid. I know there are a ton of them out there, I have albums full from my parents and grandparents, but I don’t ever remember *looking* at them. I really wonder what the long term effect will be, or if there is a long term effect of this immediacy with which kids view photos.

It’s also interesting to me that, perhaps because of the time I grew up, I don’t feel an immediate need to review photos. I often snap pictures on my iPhone, and then put my phone away. No editing, not reviewing, just snap-snap, and go about my day.

[1]: https://medium.com/click-the-shutter/d76bf316c4dc

Today the United States celebrates Independence Day. We celebrate our freedom by exploding small dangerous things with our kids — there is no better holiday.

This year feels a bit bittersweet to me.

I don’t blame the NSA, CIA, or any of the government contractors for the massive privacy invasions revealed through Edward Snowden — in my opinion these agencies were doing their jobs and operating inside the law — or so they are/were told by those that hired them (the ones that make the law). That’s not criminal in my book.

Lying in front of Congress is a different story, but the directors of these agencies are politicians installed by the White House — they aren’t the people following orders of the powers that be, slaving to protect a nation they so very much believe in.

I blame the politicians. I blame Congress for not investigating when they should have. I blame President Obama for not living up to the message that he sold the country on when he ran and won the election. These are tough problems, but the way that these problems were handled are the way that a parent handles a small child. “We know better, it’s not open for debate or discussion, go back to playing with your friends.”

Of course *we* put these people in power, and I still believe they did a good job [making this program in the image of Internet users][1].

It’s hard to think that today we celebrate freedom, when we now know:

– Our emails are being tracked, traced, trapped, and recorded by our own government and shared with foreign governments.
– Ditto our text messages, phone calls, etc…
– We will get scrutinized *more* if we try to be more private by using readily available methods to protect ourselves from our governments spying on us.
– [Our snail mail is even being monitored and copied][2].
– Cellular carriers and mobile OS makers our making money off of us by [selling our data][3].

We may, yet again, need to fight for our freedoms that we won long ago. This time we aren’t trying to wrest control from foreign rulers, we are trying to right our own ship, we won’t need guns, but we will need sharp tongues.

For now, I’m going to go shoot off a cannon, and get dangerously close to dubiously made “entertainment explosives”.

[1]: https://brooksreview.net/2013/06/privacy-secrecy-the-web-and-ads/
[2]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html?hp&_r=2&
[3]: http://gigaom.com/2013/07/03/heres-a-big-shock-att-will-start-selling-customers-usage-data/

[Matthew J.X. Malady][1]:

> “Damn, hell, shit, and fuck are not what an anthropologist observing us would classify as ‘taboo,’ ” says linguist John McWhorter, author of What Language Is: And What It Isn’t and What It Could Be, among other books. “We all say them all the time. Those words are not profane in what our modern culture is—they are, rather, salty. That’s all. Anyone who objects would be surprised to go back 50 years and try to use those words as casually as we do now and ever be asked again to parties.”

No *shit* — that’s *fucking* great news.

[1]: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2013/07/swear_words_old_and_new_sexual_and_religious_profanity_giving_way_to_sociological.single.html%23pagebreak_anchor_2

[Jon Vlachogiannis took a stab at estimating the cost of building][1] PRISM on commercial hardware:

> Total Hardware & Personnel Costs: €12M Per Month (€144M Per Year) = $187M Per Year

That’s not even a blip on the “defense” budget — though I would triple that number to figure out what the government would actually pay to make such a system.

[1]: http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/7/1/prism-the-amazingly-low-cost-of-using-bigdata-to-know-more-a.html

[I’ve been seeing this OmniFocus for iPhone redesign float around this morning][1] (done by Chris Sauvé). I must be the only one that thinks it doesn’t look great. I like the layout of the new task sheet, as I think it streamlines a rather cumbersome process for OmniFocus. That’s about the one of the few points of the design that I like.

The action bars look crappy, and the overall iconography of the design looks silly to me. Most of all, this app doesn’t look like it would fit well with iOS 7, and given that OmniFocus *is* made by an Apple only development company, I figure they are interested in looking more native that unique.

Sauvé has some great ideas surrounding things like notes and templates (and the input sheet mentioned above) but the overall look isn’t much improved.

[1]: http://cmsauve.com/projects/omnifocus/

[Ben Lincoln did some digging on his Motorola phone][1] and found that it was calling home. Worse yet, the wholly owned Google subsidiary is sending your usernames and passwords to Motorola/Google servers. Now what would Google want with all this non-metadata?

Gee, why would Google/Motorola care what apps are on your Home screen, what percentage of contacts come from which service — I mean why would any of that be valuable to the largest and most ruthless advertising company? *It’ll come to me…*

[1]: http://www.beneaththewaves.net/Projects/Motorola_Is_Listening.html?source=hn

Thomas Brand on Apple's choice of wallpapers:

You don’t have to be a Mac user to appreciate a good desktops pattern, but the attention to detail Apple takes towards choosing a default wallpaper means excitement for Mavericks will build long before it hits the shore.

What I like best about the Mavericks Wave photo is not the photo itself, but that the photo is bright. The space photos were gorgeous, but dark. I like bright images because they feel light — they feel happy — and this Wave photo does just that.

(Of course I change my wallpaper automatically based on the time of day, so that my eyes aren't seared by blinding brightness late at night.)