Great new app for your Mac to use Pinboard natively. I actually don’t care if I use a service on the web or as a native app, but the important thing here is that Pinboard looks like absolute hell. Spillo, looks great in comparison.
Haven’t used it much, but it seems to be fast and looks better — which really is key here.
This is great work from GQ. I hate stupid movie plots like this.
Cool new NAS offerings that have native BitTorrent Sync functionality baked in. Now we just need a Macminicolo.net like service for these.
The description:
Climatology gives you climate information for anywhere on Earth: temperature, rain and sunniness. Whether finding where are the warm, dry places to go on holiday in December, or avoiding rain for your wedding, to finding out what the climate is like in Kazakhstan in April, > Climatology allows you to discover the information you want.
Sounds pretty neat, and looks nice too.
It’s made by Microsoft, which is the biggest surprise of it all. (Kind of like Forecast.io’s Time Machine feature.)
A while back I posted about how likely people are to interrupt each other given the device/thing that person is using. Richard Koopmann analyzed the survey data and together we put out this post.
A loyal reader pointed out that Koopmann’s data analysis had a few flaws, all minor, and none that effected the conclusion. This, however was not ok with Mr. Koopmann, who has spent considerable time to re-write and calculate his analysis. It’s so robust I gave it it’s own page.
Dan Lewis in his daily email newsletter:
Somehow, we learned on a subconscious level to treat the emoticon as if the person who typed it was actually smiling at us.
Fascinating, I wonder how emoji effects this. Does it further entrench the ‘smile’?
In 2004 customers took an average of 8 minutes to order, but ten years later they take an average of 21 minutes. All because they are dicking around on their phones. Overall eating times increased by 50 minutes and it's mostly related to time spent on phones. Amazing and sad.
My new podcast has over 2,500 listeners now, so if you have a product to promote now is the time. Click through for the details and pricing.
Dave Wiskus:
Design is how it works. If you were only hiring a designer to make your app pretty, you were already focused on the wrong problem.
Jamie Condliffe:
In a research paper published to arXiv, Daniele Quercia from Yahoo Labs explains how a new algorithm could optimize directions for beauty. “The goal of this work is to automatically suggest routes that are not only short but also emotionally pleasant,” he writes.
Personally I would love this.
Justin Williams:
To do pretty much all of the things I actually want to do with this thing on my wrist, I don’t need a big honking screen. I just need a lot of sensors. The same sensors that are in your phone, just crammed into a tiny bracelet.
Pairs well with the latest episode of the podcast.
I run a small business in addition to the business that is this website, and Shawn’s advice is spot on. Read the entire thing if you work for ourself.
Amy Schatz:
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia asked the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday to look into whether Facebook’s experiment on the ability to manipulate emotions on Facebook using the data of 700,000 unwitting users may have violated the company’s privacy agreement with the federal government.
Finally, but really go look at the Facebook response. They are practically flipping everyone off with that statement.
Very cool little set of data. I’m all for the Kurt Vonnegut schedule.
Every summer I run into the same problem with every backpack I use: the backpack wrinkles up my shirt and makes my back sweat. My shirt gets wrinkled not just on the back, but on the shoulders and anywhere else the straps touch. And these wrinkles set because they are effectively being steamed in from the sweat off my body.
So I end up carrying a backpack that I love, but it making me look like a sweaty disheveled guy. That’s just not ok with me. I like looking put together, and that doesn’t seem possible on hot days with a backpack.
The thing about this is that it’s not really something that can be solved or designed around. Trust me, the lightest and meshy-est of hiking daypacks cause the same issues. It’s just a fact of backpack life it seems.
There are none, except to do what I do on hot days: use a shoulder/briefcase. It’s not ideal, but when I know the weather is getting up there I simply switch bags (to the Founder’s Briefcase right now). I’d rather use a bag that doesn’t make me look disheveled than one that can’t help but make me look disheveled.
Still, it drives me nuts.
Om Malik:
While many of the technologies will indeed make it easier for us to live in the future, but what about the side effects and the impacts of these technologies on our society, it’s fabric and the economy at large. It is rather irresponsible that we are not pushing back by asking tougher questions from companies that are likely to dominate our future, because if we don’t, we will fail to have a proper public discourse, and will deserve the bleak future we fear the most.
This week I am joined by Stephen Hackett of 512pixels.net, and The Prompt. We discuss wearables and how fashion is going to make this a tough market to crack, and diving into the unknown waters of what Apple may offer.
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This post has been making the rounds, and why not? It’s a very detailed and beautiful look at the creation of what looks to be a lovely bag. It’s nerd heaven.
What struck me was the fact that no one actually talked about the bag itself, which doesn’t look all that great to me. I haven’t used it, so I can only comment on what I see.
I did manage to hear from one person who owns the bag, and loves it.
Thomas Verschoren says of the bag:
I ordered this bag the day it became available and after using it for few months now, I have to say, it’s one of the best bags I ever bought.
I still see major flaws, and for the money I think there are better messenger bag options, but it does look nice on the outside.
Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain:
In one 2005 document, intelligence community personnel are instructed how to properly format internal memos to justify FISA surveillance. In the place where the target’s real name would go, the memo offers a fake name as a placeholder: “Mohammed Raghead.”
See, this is why the US is hated. This bullshit right here.
Interesting thoughts from Mathis on the Surface Pro 3 and why he likes it. I personally find the Surface Pro 3 to be very compelling because the software my company uses is Windows only. I almost bought the Surface Pro 2, and I came very close to the Surface Pro 3.
Mathis may like the device, but the bad he pointed out turns me off from it completely. My biggest fears about trying to use something like the Surface Pro 3 are:
The iPad is an outstanding device, as is my MacBook Pro. So then the only use I would have for a Surface is as a secondary device to remove the need for VMware running Windows.
But then we are talking about $799 for a base model machine and I still have to buy the type cover. So really $928 all in. All that for a device I may not even like.
For less money I can buy an 11″ MacBook Air and install Windows on it (I already own Windows) in a native Bootcamp partition. Even if it turns out I don’t use Windows on the MacBook Air, I still have a MacBook Air. And I know the MacBook Air is outstanding with excellent battery life and something I will use with or without Windows on it.
And this is the problem Microsoft faces: I am someone that should buy the Surface, and yet every time I go to buy one I stop and think about it. Every time I come to the same conclusion: buying another Apple laptop makes more sense as it is better and cheaper than buying a Surface Pro. Until Microsoft can solve that for people like me, the device will continue to struggle.