December 2011
1 post
November 2011
1 post
Giving it Away: How Free Music Makes More Than... →
derekwebb:
(…) I actually prefer illegal downloading over Spotify because when you get music illegally it’s at least implicit in the transaction that what you’re doing is potentially harmful to the artist. But with Spotify, your conscience is clear because you’re either enduring ads or paying to use the service and access the music. But from the blue-collar artist’s perspective, they’re not...
October 2011
1 post
September 2011
2 posts
4 tags
Maniacal Rage: Gowalla 4 and Loss of Personal... →
maniacalrage:
I take for granted often how fleeting these services are. Whether they go out of business, get acquired, or simply change their feature set, any service you trust to hold your data is possibly temporary. The only real way to secure future access to your important moments is to keep them yourself, or at least back them up in a way you’ll be able to continue accessing.
What he...
March 2011
2 posts
The OCD Chef Cutting Board →
cameronmoll:
“Terrific for persnickety perfectionists.”
December 2010
5 posts
New Year's Resolutions Are Worthless
New year’s resolutions are worthless. Unless you lay out the plan for achieving your goals, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and frustration.
Truth is, setting up a solid plan for achieving your goals is not easy. I know that… very well. One of the main reasons that compelled me to write this was having that exact problem. Every year, I use this “socially...
“Sketchbooks are not about being a good artist, they’re about being a good...”
– Jason Santa Maria (via mmarfil)
The Pursuit of Education
Over. Done. Finito. My first semester back to school has ended today after taking my last final.
I can’t really express the kind of feelings that going back to school have given me: frustration, anger, excitement and enlightenment are just a few that come to mind.
There’s a lot wrong with the current institutional educational model. Promoting instructor satisfaction over discussion...
November 2010
6 posts
“If you’re in one of the non-Valley and non-Alley cities, your team will...”
– by Jason Calacanis in “The Trouble with Bubbles (talent, angel & incubators… oh my!)”
I usually don’t line up with Jason in a lot of his thinking but he’s a really smart and experienced guy I respect professionally. He really hit home on this one. I really hope a...
Is “Undesigned” the Next Great Web Trend? →
The only difference between these “undesigned” tools [Instapaper, Readability, etc…] and the Flash-addled screenjunk they replace is that one is optimized for what we want to do with text—read it—and the other isn’t. Neither is “less” or “more” designed. One is simply better designed for its function than the other.
Spot on!
October 2010
4 posts
Pop (Counter) Culture
Update: After some feedback, I realized I might’ve not made clear where my analogy is. It is not between design and music, but how popularity affects the value of each. Besides, there’s plenty of bad popular music and not so much popular bad design. But that sparks the centennial discussion: is design art or science? ;)
We all have the “hip” friend, right? The guy/gal who...
“Mischel argues that intelligence is largely at the mercy of self-control: even...”
– The secret of self-control : The New Yorker - Amazing article! (via Instapaper)
“Inbox Zero means I care more about the outbox than the inbox. It means I choose...”
– Inbox Zero – Shawn Blanc (via Instapaper)
“It used to be that pageviews did equate to impact and reader engagement. If...”
– Content Distribution, Metrics of Impact, and Advertising – Shawn Blanc (via Instapaper)
September 2010
6 posts
“I went to my boss and said to him, “You know, I’m going to go do...”
– Jeff Bezos, 2001 via Bijan.
“We took two trips to Lisbon over the course of writing this record […]...”
– Hamilton Leithauser, of The Walkmen speaking on their new album and its title.
(via Stereogum)
4 tags
Quality of Life
With the (now, apparently gone) recession and wild economic events, we hear a lot of fuss about income, buyer power and public spending. These terms, along with many others, get thrown in our faces all the time by supposed financial experts. Terms like those are used to define the financial state of the country and the overall well-being of citizens.
We were raised and educated into thinking...
“The Reality Distortion Field was a double-edged sword for us. I’m pretty sure it...”
– Where Realtime Worlds went wrong, part 3 | Luke Halliwell’s Weblog
And people wonder why bootstrapped startups are the way to go… I guess 37signals really was right on the money (pun intended).
“You would not believe how much I loved them all and I’ma let you finish...”
– automatically generated by Google Scribe (by doing what Shawn Blanc suggested and starting with the letter “O”). :)
August 2010
1 post
“The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making...”
– Tom Hanks in You’ve Got Mail
July 2010
2 posts
June 2010
6 posts
“Most of the stuff they study in school is completely useless. But some...”
– Steve Jobs on bureaucracy in US schools.
via Signal vs Noise
“We don’t realize how much our unexamined assumptions take us to radically...”
– Daniel Pink on intrinsic motivation and the cognitive surplus
SPOT ON!
via Signal vs Noise (37signals)
May 2010
7 posts
The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains
We crave the new even when we know it’s trivial.
And so we ask the Internet to keep interrupting us in ever more varied ways. We willingly accept the loss of concentration and focus, the fragmentation of our attention, and the thinning of our thoughts in return for the wealth of compelling, or at least diverting, information we receive. We rarely stop to think that it might actually make more...
“We’ve been hearing a lot about game piracy recently, with big developers...”
– David, one of the developers at Wolfire.
“Why is the Federal Trade Commission threatening Apple with a possible lawsuit...”
– Robert Reich: “Apple Isn’t the Problem; Wall Street’s Big Banks Are the Problem” (via Daring Fireball)
“When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a...”
– Steve Jobs on media, conspiracy, and giving people what they want.
Part of an interview Steve Jobs gave Wired in 1996.
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
Managing What To Get Done != GTD
First and foremost, this is a “call to arms” of sorts. It is primarily directed at myself but if you find it rings a bell with you, then great. I find writing really helps me solidify opinions and thoughts, so here goes it.
I’ll be honest: I’m sick and tired of being in a limbo in regards to a task/project manager. I’m not talking about a team tool (eg. GoPlan et...
5 tags
Hulu will never go international…
… unless they find a way to monetize it. And advertisement isn’t it.
PS: Want to skip the argument and go straight to my point? Jump here!
The Setting
Hulu is an awesome *free* TV viewing online service. It allows you to catch up on the last 5 episodes of most TV shows, some movies and plenty of clips extracted from past shows. It’s free, supported by short, in-place...
April 2010
10 posts
“The idea that humans, for all their technological might, could be put in their...”
– After the volcano: Earthly powers (via marco)
“Websites are looking like web applications that look like websites that look...”
– Naz Hamid, Stuck Between an App and a Website (via davidkaneda)
3 tags
Icebird for iPhone
Clearly inspired by Tweetie while winking at the heritage left by Birdfeed, Icebird is a smooth-looking Twitter client that you won’t be able to use without thinking “Oh, this looks like _______” about most UI details or UX options. But is that a bad thing? Here’s my take.
The Icon
Let’s start with the application’s icon. There’s no easy way to say it:...