Recent Articles

Marco Arment in summary of his post on declining blog traffic across the board:

If we want it to get better, we need to start pushing back against the trend, modernizing blogs, and building what we want to come next.

This makes no sense. ‘Modernizing blogs’ and ‘building what we want to come next’? I don’t even know what he is meaning here.

Blog traffic only matters if you have an ad on your site. If you have members paying, well traffic doesn’t matter any more.

When members pay you, all that matters is the one part that should matter: content.

Mike Bates:

Since then I’ve realized that, at least for me, there’s something slightly magical about putting pen to paper. I’m able to get my thoughts out by hand so much more easily than if I’m typing them. Somehow pressing a key is so much less organic, creative, and romantic than writing out the letters with one’s pen. The visceral reaction I get from looking over a handwritten outline now is very different from looking at the same result in a typed form.

Wu:

I have a folder on my hard drive with letters from dozens and dozens of women who’ve abandoned their dream of becoming game developers due to Gamergate, some as young as 12.

Fair warning, all members of the group see this. But it is amazing.

Josh Ginter:

The Panasonic Lumix 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens is the best lens to buy for any new Micro 4/3 user. There, I said it.

Yep. In fact it’s the biggest hole in the lens lineup of every other camera system that I have looked at. Sony, Fuji, Canon, Nikon — none of them have a lens comparable to this little guy.

I’ve had the privilege to test this game, and man is it fun. Also this trailer makes me really want to go and play it.

Federico Viticci:

The larger screen was, for me, the biggest concern in switching back from the iPad mini to the iPad Air. After an initial period of shock where every iPad app looked unreasonably large and spacious, three months of daily usage have rewired my perception of the Air's screen size. I prefer the Air's bigger screen to the mini one now, but only because the design changes in the latest model make it as comfortable and painless as the mini to hold with one or two hands. The iPad is, after all, a screen that you keep in your hands, and the practical consequences of that screen are a product of the comfort you find in holding the device.

I could quote damn near his entire post. The iPad I near perfect, it just needs to be a touch bigger.

Salim Virani on why you must get off Facebook:

According to the FTC settlement from a few years ago, after Facebook was sued by the US goverment for its privacy practices, Facebook is “required to prevent anyone from accessing a user’s material more than 30 days after the user has deleted his or her account;”

There are different interpretations of this. Some say you need to delete each post separately, others say delete your account, and some say they’ll still keep your data anyway — that all you can do is stop giving them more data.

I’m going to do both as a precaution. There are a few helpful browser add-ons that will delete your posts individually, which I’m running now but needs some baby-sitting to keep running. And some great instructions on actually deleting your account while Facebook tries to trick you into deactivating it instead.

He does a far better job verbalizing why this is important than I can, but the above quote is very telling if you ask me. Facebook makes it so hard to clean your data off their servers that people make tools to help you.

Good list from Casey Liss. And that Sleep Pillow app he mentions, yeah we use that too and it is fantastic.