Marco Arment on the FCC’s (and Obama for that matter) bullshit:
It’s ostensibly the FCC’s job to see through this bullshit language and do what’s right for the country and the people, but only the fool who believed that ISPs are trying to build something beneficial here would believe that the FCC gives a damn about what’s best for American citizens.
Kottke on this bullshit:
The hell with that.
Yep. Kottke has a good summary of what’s going on (as always).
Good keyboard shortcut tips for 1Password, didn't know a few of these.
Fantastic information.
The original Lytro was a cool gadget, but this looks like a cool camera. The distinction between the two is going to be huge.
Gene Marks:
Yes, it’s getting attention. But only as a creepy gimmick which, I’m sure, is not the kind of attention that Google intended when they initially introduced it. As cool as it is, let’s admit that Google Glass will go down in the annals of bad product launches. And it will do so because of these reasons.
I cannot believe the article went any further than saying: “Robert Scoble, because of Robert Scoble. In the shower. Scoble. Shower. Your Product. Marketing 101.”
Nate Barham on Checkmark 2:
Next is Checkmark’s most impressive feature. Location-based reminders. Regardless of the rest of the app, and the rest of this review, no other app I’ve used even comes close here. In fact, were Apple to add the same functionality to its own reminders app, I can think of no greater single way that they could improve it.
His thoughts are pretty spot on.
I’ve played this Baseball sim every year now, and it really is addictive. It’s all about making the trades and setting the rosters, love it.
Interesting tidbit in this Forbes article from Parmy Olson:
Crucial to Nest’s pitch to utilities: its thermostat learns a household’s activity over time through multiple sensors that detect things like temperature and movement, and automatically changes the temperature accordingly. Honeywell’s thermostats don’t detect movement, relying more on customer programming. Also, while Honeywell funnels all user data to utilities, Nest takes over the difficult job of parsing it and managing consumption.
“We don’t let utilities control the thermostat. We don’t share the data with the utility. We won’t work with them if they don’t agree,” says Nest cofounder Matt Rogers.
If I read this correctly Nest partners with utility companies to better help with load on power companies, and make things more energy efficient. They don’t seem to sell the user data to utilities, but they are certainly profiting directly from your personal data.
That’s a fine line to walk.
One of my favorite blogs on the web.
Jared Sinclair has a nice design review of Glassboard up today, but he misses the absolute worst part about Glassboard: knowing what is new. I only ever know when something is new by going into the notifications screen — otherwise I get lost.
That should be the first thing fixed.
To that end, Sinclair addresses the issue a little bit with his wireframe mockup by using tabs at the top to show unread stuff, which would be great.
I don’t agree with many of the other items, but they are items I file under “to each his own”.
More on this type of app in a bit.
To me, this Google blog post about their new camera app “bokeh” feature epitomizes why Google struggles with “taste”. You need not look any further than the piss poor looking images used in the post.
It doesn't even look like they tried to select decent images.
John Moltz:
Yet, the definition of the term when applied to Apple is delivering a product that completely redefines a market while with Samsung it’s providing the largest breadth of feature sets. These are not the same thing and if you’re an analyst who doesn’t know the difference then you’re not a very good analyst.
I’ll add: likewise you are not a very good analyst if you know this, but choose to ignore it.
Danny Sullivan:
In the years since Yahoo last did search, the amount of information to comb through on the web has increased — meaning much more noise to draw signal from. Meanwhile, potential employees serious about web search have long ago decamped to Google and Bing. Both those companies have huge teams involved in running mature search operations. Despite some Yahoo hires, there’s been no signs the company is drawing anywhere near the staffing that Google or Bing has.
Similarly, there’s been no signs that Yahoo is out busy crawling the web in order to build an index of all those pages — and that’s one of the things you want to do fairly soon, to ensure that you can not only store everything but also have good algorithms to pull the good stuff out in response to a search.
Count me in on thinking it’s not a likely pick for Apple. But we do know from Siri that Apple respects other search tools, and so I have to wonder: what if Yahoo’s going to acquire their way back into the search game.
What if Yahoo bought (or partnered with) Wolfram|Alpha and DuckDuckGo? What if the search tools Yahoo is building were meant to tie those to together instead of being a new search tool all together?
If you presented Apple with a hybrid of DDG and W|A, well I think you could make a strong case for being the default search provider. Or at the very least not be laughed out of the room.
Chris Bowler on planning his week with pen and paper:
Now, I realize this could all be done in OmniFocus. I could tinker with perspectives and get a view that is very similar. But I cherish the exercise and taking the time causes me to closely consider each task and whether it’s a good use of my time. Sometimes the slow way is the better way.
This jives well with my post yesterday about needing something to physically write on. I’ll admit that writing on the iPad is far less satisfying than writing on paper — but it’s easier to deal with in the long-run for me. And so the iPad wins out.
That said, another option is (as Chris pointed to) the Whitelines notebooks — which are just fantastic — they have a notebook series called ‘Whitelines Link‘ which uses a special iPhone app to snap a picture of the page. The page has details on it to get the skew and alignment just right. I have one and it works pretty well. (Super hard to find on Amazon though.)
Erik Pounds:
BitTorrent Sync already offers the safest and most efficient way to sync data between devices. We’re now introducing our support of network-attached storage (NAS) devices to offer BitTorrent-built Sync apps in vendor storefronts; creating a simple path to access and transfer your data from the NAS to a desktop, mobile or other NAS device, whenever and wherever you need it (and we mean all of your data, not some of it: without limits or storage fees).
They are already partnered with Netgear. This looks like a great solution for people without a server or always-on computer to sync with. The entry-level NAS is only $166 with no drives on Amazon. I've been using BitTorrent Sync for quite a while and have been extremely happy with it.
At first I was all like: my worst nightmare. And then I read this from Alyssa Bereznak:
The technology could potentially allow Google to shrink its wearable face computer — known as Google Glass — into the size of a single contact lens. Rather than be controlled by voice, those wearing the contacts would command their device through, as Patent Bolt analyzes it, “a sophisticated system” of “unique blinking patterns.” In other words, people wearing these contacts may look even weirder than people in Google Glass.
Ever wonder what could make you more stupid than the figure eight iPhone compass calibration dance? I’d argue “unique blinking patterns” pretty much takes the cake.
John Gruber on the latest idiocy:
That’s the extent of Nocera’s argument that iPad-like new products from Apple “seem unlikely”: Yukari Kane’s having written so in her book. Really.
Oh boy.
Thomas Brand has a nice find of a cheap “adjustable” height desk.
A great update to Screens 3 for Mac. I’ve been testing it out over the last week and it really is much better than built in screen sharing.