IT Director for a non-profit in Washington, DC. Man About Internet.
Lawrence Lessig, writing a special column for CNN:
Since at least Adam Smith we have known that markets with good morals are more efficient than markets without. But we cannot rely upon the gossamer threads of being good when having more money than God is the reward for being bad. Good law is needed, if good culture is to have a chance of return. As expected, Lessig's piece is worth the read.
The embargo from Apple to the writers who had been given review units was lifted last night. At 9:00 pm last night, my Twitter feed was flooded by authors posting their reviews. I spent most of my evening reading a great many of them. I wanted to share the few that I thought were best. * John Gruber: iPad (3) * Jim Dalrymple: Review: iPad third generation * Jason Snell: Review: The third-generation iPad * MG Siegler: The New iPad Makes Apple’s Tablet Domination Clearer Than Ever * Joshua Topolsky: iPad review (2012) The consensus: The retina display is a sight to see.
The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus. [...] Suddenly, 20% meant half-assed. Google Labs was shut down. App Engine fees were raised. APIs that had been free for years were deprecated or provided for a fee. As the trappings of entrepreneurship were dismantled, derisive talk of the "old Google" and its feeble attempts at competing with Facebook surfaced to justify a "new Google" that promised "more wood behind fewer arrows." The days of old Google hiring smart people and empowering them to invent the future was gone. The new Google knew beyond doubt what the future should look like. Employees had gotten it wrong and corporate intervention would set it right again. If you read anything this week, read this. When I tell people that I dislike Google as a company and have made the decision to quit using their products, they often ask me why. This is why. On the outside it has been apparent to me, as well as other folks, that these changes have been happening at Google in the last 3-4 years beginning with Google's backstabbing Apple and releasing Android. Whittaker's posts reinforces, from someone who has been on the inside, what I've seen happening from the outside perspective.
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.
Ryan Paul, at Ars Technica:
Google’s major investment in advancing its unencumbered VP8 codec gave open Web advocates hope that H.264 could still be displaced, but it hasn’t happened. The lack of follow-through from Google on its promise to remove H.264 from Chrome has eroded faith in the search giant’s ability to popularize VP8. Gal says that it’s no longer feasible to wait for the open codec to gain additional traction. “Google pledged many things they didn’t follow through with and our users and our project are paying the price,” he wrote. “H.264 wont go away. Holding out just a little longer buys us exactly nothing.” John Gruber commented on this article in a post today: “Idealism vs. Pragmatism” is exactly what’s going on here. Because as time goes on, the practical arguments in favor of supporting WebM exclusively over H.264 are looking worse and worse. No one is serving WebM. Everyone is serving H.264. And while Mozilla is both talking the talk and walking the walk with regard to their ideals regarding open video, their supposed partner Google is merely talking the talk, shipping a wildly popular browser (Chrome) and mobile platform (Android) that fully support H.264.