IT Director for a non-profit in Washington, DC. Man About Internet.
Chris Prillo, incensed that Microsoft's design for Windows 8 is hostile to new or novice users, tries to prove a point by videoing this father trying to use Windows 8 for the first time. Prior to this, he had only used Windows XP. A day later, he videoed this father doing the same, but for OS X. His dad is an iPhone and iPad user, but had never used an actual Mac. Watch:
Internet friend Ted Severson made one gem of an audio clip.
On a recent 5by5 AD, Dan and Merlin were throwing around the idea of a 5by5 Morning Zoo. Here’s what I think should be the first promo for said show. If like me you are a huge fan of 5by5.tv, and specifically Dan and Merlin's riffs on a hypothetical morning zoo show, you need to go listen to this.
Nick Bilton, at The New York Times' Bits blog:
We skitter around the world with our smartphone cameras, taking pictures of leaves and sugar cubes and sunsets, then applying filters and making even the mundane look beautiful. Clearly, design is becoming increasingly more relevant to people. Google Plus doesn’t seem to understand that. Google’s iPhone app, for example, looks like a sketch that was never finished. And if you think the iPhone isn’t important for a good social network, just ask Instagram, an iPhone-only photo app that has more than 27 million users. That’s a quarter of Google Plus’s users, and Instagram didn’t need the Google homepage to get there.
Peter Cohen, at The Loop:
At long last, Blizzard game fans will be able to get their hands on the latest installment of the Diablo series. The company has announced a launch date for Diablo III: May 15th. The game is coming simultaneously to OS X and Windows. The game launches simultaneously in the US and other countries, and is also available for pre-order through the Battle.net Web site; users can buy the game, pre-load it and start playing it as soon as it’s released on May 15th. Have been waiting for this to come out for about 8 years now. Can't wait.
Andy Baio, writing for Wired:
Yahoo's lawsuit against Facebook is an insult to the talented engineers who filed patents with the understanding they wouldn't be used for evil. Betraying that trust won't be forgotten, but I doubt it matters anymore. Nobody I know wants to work for a company like that. I'm embarrassed by the patents I filed, but I've learned from my mistake. I'll never file a software patent again, and I urge you to do the same. For years, Yahoo was mostly harmless. Management foibles and executive shuffles only hurt shareholders and employee morale. But in the last few years, the company's incompetence has begun to hurt the rest of us. First, with the wholesale destruction of internet history, and now by attacking younger, smarter companies. Yahoo tried and failed, over and over again, to build a social network that people would love and use. Unable to innovate, Yahoo is falling back to the last resort of a desperate, dying company: litigation as a business model. Yahoo is now a patent troll. This fact makes my worry about the future of Flickr grow greater still.
We are excited to announce the release of Tweetbot 2.1. As of this post, the iPhone version is still waiting for review in the App Store queue, but the iPad version has been approved and here’s what’s new: * iPad graphics optimized for the new iPad’s retina display * Streaming (when on WiFi with settings to disable it) * The “new tweets” sound is now limited to mentions, DM’s, and new tweets via pull-to-refresh * Double-tapping on the timeline tab button takes you to last read tweet before going to the top * Improvements to the Tweetmarker service * Camera+ 3.0 Capturing/Editing Support * Bug fixes related to direct messages * Many other bug fixes Loving the update so far. Can't wait for the desktop client to be released. Best Twitter app, by far.
Mike Scarcella in The Legal Times writes about The Justice Department defending the government's refusal to discuss, or acknowledge the existence of, "any cooperative research and development agreement between Google and the National Security Agency."
The Washington based advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center sued in federal district court here to obtain documents about any such agreement between the Internet search giant and the security agency. The NSA responded to the suit with a so-called “Glomar” response in which the agency said it could neither confirm nor deny whether any responsive records exist. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington sided with the government last July. via Boing Boing. I think Google has changed their motto. They've removed the "don't" from the rest of the "be evil" phrase.
Andy Kroll & Tim Murphy, writing for Mother Jones:
Rick Santorum wants the government out of every aspect of Americans' lives—especially the housing market. He pledges to eliminate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the twin government housing giants that help guarantee 90 percent of all new mortgages in America. He wants to "let capitalism work" and allow the housing market to "find its bottom." Only then, he says, will the recovery begin. It's a plan that would make Adam Smith proud. Yet Santorum wasn't always so opposed to government intervention in housing. In a deal that's gone unreported during his presidential run, Santorum bought his first house in 1983 with a cut-rate government-backed mortgage, according to records compiled by the campaign of Sen. Harris Wofford (D-Penn.), who Santorum defeated in 1994. He received his loan through a state program to boost homeownership among low- and middle-income families. Santorum, in other words, benefited from a program whose mission mirrored that of Fannie and Freddie, the companies he now rails against and wants to dissolve. (Santorum spokesman Hogan Gidley did not respond to a request for comment.) I'm pleased that Rick Santorum was able to take advantage of the benefits that so many other families have been able to take advantage of as well to help in home ownership. Advantages that he wants to strip away now that he no longer needs them himself.