Month: July 2014

Mike Johnston:

But why is that? I can’t quite put my finger on it. I don’t quite get why a Fuji X-T1 is “more fun” than a full-frame DSLR. Yet somehow…it is. The Panasonic GX7 is even more fun than that. Why?

Is it possible that a premium fixed-lens compact—Sony RX1, Ricoh GR, Nikon Coolpix A, or Fuji X100s—is even more fun? Somehow, it seems so.

David Cain:

The ultimate tool for corporations to sustain a culture of this sort is to develop the 40-hour workweek as the normal lifestyle. Under these working conditions people have to build a life in the evenings and on weekends. This arrangement makes us naturally more inclined to spend heavily on entertainment and conveniences because our free time is so scarce.

Fascinating read, looking at how our lack of free time leads us to spend more freely.

Brian S Hall:

Last week, I praised Nadella for his bold, borderline revolutionary statements. A few days later he morphs into a parody of his predecessor.

The Editors at The New Yorker:

On a desktop, on a tablet, on a phone, the site has become, we believe, much easier to navigate and read, much richer in its offerings, and a great deal more attractive. For months, our editorial and tech teams have been sardined into a boiler room, subsisting only on stale cheese sandwiches and a rationed supply of tap water, working without complaint on intricate questions of design, functionality, access, and what is so clinically called “the user experience.”

What you notice is that they are aware of what is key to their business success: the content. So when you scroll down into the story a bit your eye just sees the story. It’s lovely in that there are very few bullshit distractions.

Kuba Baran has a nice post on his Speedtest.net Keyboard Maestro macro and he uses sed to strip out some of the unneeded crap that my macro spits out. Nice work.

Smart work from Second Gear, as Glassboard is a really fantastic service.

If you do even one presentation in your life, you owe it to those you are presenting to read this book. I have immense respect and trust for David Sparks, and this book is fantastic.

As I write this he is already topping the iBooks charts — so you don’t have to just take my word for it.

Just remember that a presentation isn’t just something conference speakers do, most of us have to present information all time, this will make you better. And maybe that lands you a better job. Maybe

Lee Hutchinson:

Nadella’s e-mail stretches to almost 600 words in six paragraphs—too long by at least half considering the content. It’s bloated by stock corporate phrases totally devoid of meaning—Microsoft will “drive greater accountability” and will have “more productive, impactful teams.” The company will “accelerate the flow of information.” The e-mail even manages to drop in hyper-double-super buzzwords like “agile” and “lean.” I heard and read the same words at Boeing, and the same phrases show up in every big company's layoff notices. They're the corporate version of the “Oh, it's not you, it's me” break-up response.

This is a great analysis of why Nadellas Microsoft is the same Microsoft it always has been. In other words another out of touch CEO.

Mark Taylor:

Verizon has confirmed that everything between that router in their network and their subscribers is uncongested – in fact has plenty of capacity sitting there waiting to be used. Above, I confirmed exactly the same thing for the Level 3 network. So in fact, we could fix this congestion in about five minutes simply by connecting up more 10Gbps ports on those routers. Simple. Something we’ve been asking Verizon to do for many, many months, and something other providers regularly do in similar circumstances. But Verizon has refused. So Verizon, not Level 3 or Netflix, causes the congestion. Why is that? Maybe they can’t afford a new port card because they’ve run out – even though these cards are very cheap, just a few thousand dollars for each 10 Gbps card which could support 5,000 streams or more. If that’s the case, we’ll buy one for them. Maybe they can’t afford the small piece of cable between our two ports. If that’s the case, we’ll provide it. Heck, we’ll even install it.

The only people shocked by this are Verizon PR reps.

Stefan Constantinescu:

Here’s the Amazon Fire Phone’s first 30 second television commercial. It’s frankly terrible, but interestingly enough, none of the phone’s key features (Firefly and BS 3D) are demoed.

That’s an understatement.

Bradley Chambers:

Because of that, I always use a VPN when I am using WiFi other than at my house, my work, or my inlaws. While I am using OpenVPN with a 3rd party VPN service, I don’t recommend that for most people because it is a lot more complicated to setup. I highly recommend Cloak for folks wanting a really easy to use VPN service for Mac and iOS.

Yep, Cloak is a great service.

I like his ‘hisender’ macro, that’s clever.

Om Malik on the nightmare leadership at Microsoft:

And Nokia, the once haloed and peerless brand when it came to phones was sold to Microsoft for relative pittance. Elop heads up Microsoft’s Devices Group. Think of it this way — since Elop took over as Nokia CEO, the company has cut over 50,000 jobs (if you include today’s announcement.) That is just mind boggling. That bumbling strategy which was the hallmark of Elop’s Nokia tenure still continues — in other words, Microsoft doesn’t really have a Nokia strategy.