November 2012
1 post
4 tags
Movember Momembership Month
There’s no beating around the bush: cancer sucks. Chances are you know about that first, second, or even third hand. So why not do something about it? Why not grow a mustache?
“Movember” is the name of the global campaign for raising awareness about prostate cancer and mental illness in men. From their official about page:
During November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of...
October 2012
2 posts
6 tags
The Galaxy Note II, as seen in Lebron James’s hands
Let’s get the snark out of the way. From the looks of it, it seems we’ve discovered who the Galaxy Note is designed for: the enormous hands of NBA superstars. In Lebron James’s palm, the Galaxy Note II seems like… a Galaxy S3. (Honestly, I couldn’t even tell until they showed the name at the end.) That aside, I...
3 tags
The Magazine
Marco Arment lifted the veil off his much anticipated new app, surprising many with an app-published magazine with a form-eponymous name that raises — and itself asks — lots of questions. The content of this inaugural issue is for the most part1 anodyne; subscribers to Read and Trust will feel right at home, as will anyone who’s browsed a decent blog in the last decade. My...
September 2012
8 posts
4 tags
The iPhone Will Elect Obama - The Impromptu Ep.34
This week on the show voted as Clipperton Island’s number 1 lovemaking podcast, the Techblock’s Abdel Ibrahim joins us to talk about whatever it is people are talking about this week when it comes to gadgets. Did a new MP3 player come out? I don’t remember. Can a phone save the economy? Not if it’s a Lumia.
Sponsored by...
5 tags
Gizmodo’s Review of the iPad and iPhone 4
As we brace for this week’s deluge, I thought I’d provide two samples—from Gizmodo no less—in contrast to my complaints from last week. Despite sharing a similar format and tone, both are among my favorite gadget reviews. What I like in particular is the way (which most reviews tend to do in reverse) both Chen and Lam use the experience...
5 tags
The Turn
You’ll have to excuse the forthcoming confusion but I think Siegler is using the wrong analogy to make his point. In any magic trick the purpose of the turn is to fool the audience into believing what’s happening on stage, to convince them that what’s unfolding before their eyes isn’t a magician’s simulacra but in fact reality. The prestige, where magic is concerned, is the byproduct of...
5 tags
The Impromptu Special no.7 - Confirmed Exclusively
Thanks to some scheduling magic, 70 Decibels noted celebrity Myke Hurley was kind enough to drop by The Impromptu to record a special Monday edition of the show with us. Topics include: An introduction to standard British introductions, the HP iMac, exclusive confirmation of Valve’s involvement in a next generation Apple TV, how Myke came...
3 tags
Roundup IV
I’m ethically—lazily, adverse to maintaining a linked list here, yet I do want to share stuff that’s caught my reading eye I think would catch yours too. To remedy this I’ve started creating Readlists to, like, roundup those eye catching articles and share them with you. I already know it’s good stuff but I, like, encourage you to make up your own mind.
3 tags
The Impromptu 33 - Diminishing Returns to Kabuki
This week on Estonia’s number 1 rated hour of television, we talk about the just announced Nokia 9xx and faking things that already work fine. We also dive into the also-just-announced new Kindle Fires XX HDs (Who can remember all those names anyways?) and what Amazon’s ascension to major tech force might mean in the grand scheme of...
5 tags
The Amazon Kindle Event
I’m starting to get behind Amazon’s efforts. If you’re looking for an alternative to the iPad, I don’t think you can - or should, look anywhere else.
I’m most excited by the new Paperwhite Kindle. I was close to getting last year’s Kindle Touch but the wait seems to have paid off: brighter display, a significant bump in resolution1, better contrast, and an...
4 tags
More Grey Stuff Please
This is going to sound strange, self-indulgent, and maybe redundant by the end of it, but I want to explain the elation I felt reading David Barnard’s breakdown of Sparrow’s sales1 in light of its acquisition. That is, I was elated at the existence of the article itself, not Sparrow’s acquisition or Barnard’s math. You see, it’s rare that the (I’m never sure...
August 2012
6 posts
3 tags
A Necessary Evil?
Mike Monterio doing his thing on Twitter1:
“We hate patents. They destroy innovation.”“Hurray. Apple won their patent lawsuit!”Tell me you see it.— Mike Monteiro (@Mike_FTW) August 25, 2012
The tweet may have Mike’s typical facetious cadence, but beneath that veneer his tweet speaks volumes2 about the dichotomy between the tech community’s dislike of...
4 tags
off the PC Treadmill - The Impromptu ep.30
This week on Greece’s most economically stable radio show — while the rest of us are away figuring out the future of platforms — Adam and Michael discuss On Live, streaming in the gaming industry, and the Browett era of Apple Retail. Sponsored by no one.
4 tags
Jumping to Conclusions
Various people, on changes to Twitter’s API.
Shawn Blanc:
What is sad is that as long-time and active users, we’re given no choice in the matter. We must suffer the official clients and we must suffer ads.
Ben Brooks:1
When you are focused on just making money you not only end up screwing people over, but you end up gutting your service. Twitter is gutting the soul from itself and that...
3 tags
ever deeper hipster waters - the impromptu ep.29
This week on Nepal’s best rated talk show, the gang sandwhich a dive into the soul of app.net between follow-up on that smartphone trial - with our resident legal expert to be Chris Martucci back in action, and the larger implications of Mat Honan’s brush with digital disintegration. Nate Boateng guests stars while I sit this one out,...
4 tags
The Hard Part
“Now I want you to start over.” I thought I’d heard wrong. My first semester in university as a photography major was coming to a close and I was wrapping up a portfolio review I thought had gone wonderfully. My teacher - herself finishing her masters degree, was effusive in her praise of the landscape series I’d spent weeks toiling over on train tracks and in the darkroom....
3 tags
The Impromptu 28: There isn’t a car fairy?
This week on Poland’s 7th best output of creativity: reader mail on our Readability episode, a Star Wars segue into app distribution, Youtube on iOS 6 beta 4 (or lack thereof), Dalton Caldwell’s candidacy for president of the Fancy Web, and our initial impressions of the Samsung vs Apple trial.
Brought to you by no one.
July 2012
7 posts
5 tags
The Bruce Wayne Who Almost Killed Joe Chill
a conversation on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight - part 2
With the impending release of the final chapter in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, I asked The Impromptu co-host Adam Hyland to indulge me and start a back and forth about the previous two installments. What follows is the long and spoiler filled (Although shame on you if you’ve seen neither at this point.) exchange...
4 tags
Shawn Blanc on the Nexus 7
I’m going to loathe myself afterwards, but in this case I can’t help myself. Here’s Shawn Blanc evaluating the Nexus 7 and everyone’s favorite tablet related C-word:
Well, if the iPad is not meant for content creation, then the Nexus 7 certainly is not. For two main reasons: its screen size (and, thus its keyboard size) and its app store.
...
3 tags
Retina Euphoria
The Impromptu Ep.25
Adam King was in Montreal this week, so I did the only reasonable thing I could think of: I offered him beer and duped him into appearing on this week’s show. Well the beer part is true. The thoughts were of his own volition. Adam joined Michael, Chris, and I as we talked the latest Twitter blog-amnation, how Apple made EPEAT spend the night on the couch, and why lazy...
4 tags
Funambulists
Anthony Kay on bloggers and credibility
There’s a growing credibility problem in the tech blogging world and it’s consistently getting worse. I’ll illustrate this point with a couple of examples that occurred to me recently.
Kay’s examples really resonated with me, specifically because I’ve had reservations about the exact same ones. Yet I can appreciate how difficult balancing friendships...
3 tags
A Prelude To Beatification
The Impromptu Ep.24
This week Adam and I tackle the fancy web’s intolerance for content recycling except when its called a linked list, why 7 and 200 will be important numbers in the tablet world going forward, and demonstrating how Android tablet failures aren’t directly related to favorable reviews from tech publications.
7 tags
Bat Shurikens & Consequences
A long conversation about Batman Begins and The Dark Knight - part 1
With the impending release of the final chapter in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, I asked The Impromptu co-host Adam Hyland to indulge me and start a back and forth about the previous two installments. What follows is the long and spoiler filled (Although shame on you if you’ve seen neither at this point.) exchange we’ve...
3 tags
Never His Mind on Where He Was
Marco Arment on retina web design
The tricky quandary is finding where the equilibrium in web design should be between future proofing content and making it useable in the present. Who’s to say that by correcting how websites appears on a retina display today we aren’t conversely making them worse on non retina ones? There’s also a question about how designing solely for retina might...
June 2012
7 posts
4 tags
What Future is the Surface From?
When Microsoft announced that Windows 8 would run on tablet devices this time last year, responses emerged that they’d either come up with a flawed response to iOS1, or that they’d deluded themselves into thinking that the future of Windows was more Windows. A year later, the announcement of the Microsoft Surface serves only to reinforce the arguments laid out by those responses.
...
4 tags
Re: Readability and Channels of Communication
In my Readability payments debriefing last week:
While I can certainly appreciate and empathize with the guilt and shame one might feel as they watch a dream crumble, I also recognize Readability’s missed opportunity to share, discuss, and take feedback from the community. There’s no reason they couldn’t have come out with those numbers earlier and use them not as proof that the project is...
5 tags
Tearing Metro
On the Microsoft Surface and Windows Phone 8
Microsoft took a stand this week, announcing both its entry into the disproportioned tablet market and a significant1 update to its fledgling Windows Phone platform. What stuck out most to me despite all the new morsels of technology/marketing2 terms designed to keep tech writers busy, or Microsoft’s discovery of the importance of designing...
3 tags
Glass Factory on Neptune
The Impromptu Ep.22
This week’s episode is probably my favorite to date. It was such a big week we manage to find not one (Readability) but two (two!) topics more pressing than last week’s WWDC announcements. Don’t worry, we cover that too and Adam does a fantastic job (I’m nearly jealous) of outlining Apple’s vision of the web in an iOS World.1
If you’ve...
3 tags
90 Percent
On Readability ending publisher payments
The really sobering part, the part that hits the hardest if like me you believe in this sort of stuff, starts halfway through paragraph 7:
As a result, most of the money we collected—over 90%—has gone unclaimed.
90 Percent. The actual dollar amount is irrelevant next to the abject failure of Readability’s original ambitions the percentage...
3 tags
A Parting Gift
When Steve Jobs unveiled the original MacBook Air in January 2008, part of me believed that what he was actually pulling out of his manila envelope was not the world’s lightest and thinnest notebook but a promise. The mystique surrounding the original Air was always about what it hinted at as opposed to what it actually was.1 Each subsequent improvement to the line chiseled and refined that...
3 tags
Why is Techcrunch so Fascinated by Gizmodo's...
Jordan Crook’s attempts to unravel Gizmodo’s motives for launching an amateur paparazzi contest centred around Mark Zuckerberg are largely - though she’d never admit it, rhetorical. Not because it’s obvious that Zuckerberg is mortal like the rest of us and thus underserving1 of the prank. Nor because it’s equally obvious to anyone in which closet Gizmodo’s...
May 2012
16 posts
3 tags
You Can't Leave iOS 6 on a Bar Stool
The Impromptu Ep.19
This week on the show we try something a little different and a little old fashioned: A two man show1. Adam and I try once again to navigate the bay of 4-inch iPhones in search of something - anything, worth anchoring ourselves to. We also discuss what the Facebook IPO might say about our generation’s definition of “entrepreneurship” and how finding...
4 tags
A Rocky Start For the New JC Penney
On the failure of the “Fair and Square” pricing scheme
Bob Sullivan does a good job of explaining exactly how and why one cannot simply prescribe the Apple Store formula as a remedy for the dire conditions of retail shopping today. However well intentioned Ron Johnson’s ambitions, the truth of it is that JC Penney cannot provide the same luxury Johnson found in Apple.
On...
4 tags
This Isn't Fun Anymore
Harry Marks’s Feelings About the 4” iPhone
This isn’t fun speculation anymore. This has mutated from harmless wondering and hoping for something new from Apple into “reports” and “confirmations” and other false truths about a product no one has even seen yet.
Reading Marks talk about it, I’m beginning to wonder if he can read into my mind.
The question I’ve yet to...
3 tags
Quotes From Paul Miller's Exile
On the ironic abuse of quotation marks.
2 May:
The whole day was really refreshing. All my internet-based social engagement the day before had been about how what I was doing was “brave” or “insane” or “inspirational” or a “publicity stunt” or “stupid” or “a waste of everyone’s time,” as if I was planning on going...
4 tags
Defining "Retina Display"
Retina display Macs, iPads, and HiDPI: Doing the Math
Hold a small-print book at arm’s length. Notice how it’s hard to read the text. Now bring the book up to a few inches from your nose. Notice how much easier it is to read now. Clearly, if Apple is defining a “Retina display” as “one where users can’t see the pixels” then any discussion of whether a...
5 tags
"Adam Doesn't Count": Now With Google + Hangouts
The Impromptu Episode 17
We tried something different for this week’s episode of The Impromptu, recording live using the new Google + Hangout feature “on Air”. We go over the Game of Thrones piracy news that made follow-up to last week’s show inevitable, our thoughts on subscription models and iTunes, why I think we should stop criticizing all those MacBook clones, my...
3 tags
Dropquest II
The future is now
I stumbled onto this puzzle adventure/scavenger hunt by the Dropbox team this evening and now I don’t know where the last 3 hours have gone. The top prizes for this year’s time-travelling inspired quest have already been claimed but there’s an extra gigabyte of storage waiting for anyone brave enough to finish all 23 puzzles. That was motivation enough for...
4 tags
Not One But Two
Movie Talk FM Episode 28 & 29
It’s a double bonanza affair this week on Movie Talk FM, with reviews of both The Invention of Lying and The People VS Larry Flynt. We also go over movie theatre experiences, what happened with the Halo movie, Batman costumes, Chris’s arbitrary movie rating system, and something relating to erections.
5 tags
Four Point Wishlist for the iOS Music App
Some of which will also inadvertently improve iTunes
Try as I might to find some, there’s little hope of iTunes getting any better in the foreseeable future. I’ve accepted this reality and for the most part, except when using the iTunes Store, I can ignore OS X’s media closet/abyss. Instead, I’m almost exclusively using the iOS Music app for music playback and while...
3 tags
On People on Ads
Re: This and that and this
The only thing that’s particularly striking to me: A bunch of writers - running Apple centric sites, placing blame on the status quo and waiting for change to come to them. Strange right?
I want things to be different. Maybe I’m crazy and maybe I’ll fail or never make enough for that yacht I’ve been eying. But at least I’ll have tried.
5 tags
Pick Your Upgrade Battle
Harry Marks on Instacast 2.0
Why do we drop $20+, $50+, $100+ on some software updates without flinching - software updates containing features we already paid for - but an independent developer is trying to stay alive in a niche category and suddenly we’re Norma Rae-ing over $2?
I’m all for giving apps my money, but I think Marks’ analogy to desktop software is skewed. The...
3 tags
The Neckbeard Development Hour
The Impromptu Episode 16
Hailed as one of the best podcasts on both coasts of Bouvet Island, this week’s episode of The Impromptu holds nothing back. Are Shigeru Miyamoto and Steve Jobs more alike than we think? What’s going on at 5by5 that’s got Adam all worked up? Who’s more stubborn: cable companies or the internet? Why did Paul Miller have to quit the internet, and...
5 tags
A Difference of Incentives
On Windows 8 DVD Playback
There’s added fun in considering that Microsoft’s decision to remove DVD playback from Windows 8 came not only from some cost-cutting measure but that it also emerged from a “Maybe DVDs aren’t the future?” epiphany that recently struck the Windows 8 team. The fun comes from such a scenario being ripe for comparisons.
Naturally - or so it...
5 tags
Notes with Launchwrite
Using Pop for iOS over the course of the last week, I started wishing for something similar I could use on my MacBook. Luckily, I didn’t have to search long to find what I was looking for: Pleasant and inviting, Launchwrite is a no-frills and accessible note taking app. It’s the newest addition to a shortlist of apps I enjoy using.
Invoked from your Dock, Launchwrite offers a text...
3 tags
The Audience
Soon after you confront the matter of preserving your identity, another question will occur to you: “Who am I writing for?”
It’s a fundamental question, and it has a fundamental answer: You are writing for yourself. Don’t try to visualize the great mass person. Don’t try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a...
3 tags
Even More Too Late
The Impromptu Episode 15
The number one podcast in the Paracel Islands is back! This week, Adam conceals his disappointment about missing out on WWDC tickets by theorizing about everyone else’s theories about what Apple can do to solve the issue next year, we put on our analyst caps on as we go over Apple’s, RIM’s, and Nintendo’s earnings reports and try to forecast...
April 2012
16 posts
3 tags
I'm Leaving the Internet for a Year
Paul Miller’s continued search for digital authenticity
Paul Miller, last seen contemplating the condescension of the modern operating system, is doing his best Honoré/Borsodi impersonation and “quitting” the internet. It’s nerdy authenticity-seeking taken to its logical extreme, made all the more ludicrous by his intent on continuing to write for The Verge during his...
3 tags
Another Case of Not Getting It
Olympics crack down on social media
Given the way social media and user generated content have unequivocally improved the way we experience sports and developed the relationship between fans, athletes, and broadcasters, it’s surprising to see the Olympic Committee being closed minded and old fashioned about it.
Oh wait…
4 tags
Monsoon Wedding
Movie Talk FM Episode 27
This week on MTFM, we go over Criterion Collection classic Monsoon Wedding. I share my lost in translation reaction to the movie and try to convince Brian and Chris that Peter Jackson is overrated. Because I can.
We also interview the Cifuentes sisters, who are crowdsourcing their first feature length film through a Kickstarter campaign. I’m told the Beach Body...
