My favorite thing to do after an Apple event is read the coverage. It’s usually a mixture of disappointment and “this will never work” followed by Apple making billions of dollars off it. Mashable provides my favorite example of a group covering all their bases today so they’ll have been right from the beginning in the future.
I don’t understand how people are supposed to navigate the Android handset market. How do you know which AnDroidMaxxRAZRLTE900 you’re supposed to get?
Follow along, friends.
Those are your options. Not this.
There’s a story making its rounds about Amazon’s new app that lets you scan bar codes in stores. Amazon had a promotion that let users take a percentage off their purchase if they went to a store and scanned an item. Apparently, because this happened on the Internet it’s evil in comparison to my going into two brick-and-mortar stores and purchasing the cheaper product using a coupon.
The problem, which this story alludes to, is books as a product and books as culture. I frame this debate on the Internet vs. brick-and-mortar as two people fighting over the right to sell something with one person trying to piggy back on the idea that they’re a cultural guard and that if they should fail, we’ll lose a part of who we are. Any guesses about who is on which side?
I’m supposed to divorce myself from the reality of book stores and think of them on a higher level.
No.
Books are packaged, promoted and sold as a mass-market item. Book signings and book tours are press and marketing. We’re kidding ourselves if we think John Q. Local isn’t tracking traffic and conversion in his book store at signing events. He wants you in the door so he can sell something else. If not, the signing would have been someplace that fit more than 10 people.
Industrial design is art, but no one (well, there are probably a few) is complaining that Jony Ive isn’t signing iPads at Grand Central. Fashion is art, but I’m not upset that Simon Kneen isn’t signing my Banana Republic sweater.
I completely agree that books are works of art to celebrate. I just think cramped, musty book stores are an insulting place to celebrate them. Don’t get on your high horse and chastise me as a “scorched-earth capitalist” over your lack of a business model.
If you want to support literacy and books in your community, volunteer in schools or attend a book festival.
If you’ve been on the Internet these last few months you’ll have heard that Netflix raised its prices. Then, in a move that can only be described as insane Netflix decided to split their streaming and DVD services into two companies.
To teach Netflix a lesson, customers began to cancel their subscription so they could go nowhere else and get a better deal. Netflix announced today they’d keep their services together after all. Critics don’t seem satisfied.
Since Oct. 1 I’ve had two movies sent to my house that would have cost $10 at Blockbuster. And I’ve streamed 10-15 TV episodes from seasons I would have otherwise had to buy for more than $50.
Is it time for Reed Hasting’s to go? Is Netflix over?
No. Calm the fuck down. It costs $16 for both services.
My interest of late has turned to something I’ve always wanted to do. I’m going to learn Objective-C. It’s the programming language used by developers of Mac OS X and iOS. I’m going to make an app mostly just to prove that I can and to put to rest a childhood fascination with the ways computers work. I have some ideas for an app, but I’d like to hear yours.
Oh, and lest you think I’m kidding. Behold, a certification of my attention paid to this matter.
Renowned paleontologist Jack Horner discusses the possibility of making a Chickenosaurus, thereby taking the first step in realizing my dream of visiting Jurassic Park.
I often read through the Starcraft 2 Mac Technical Support forum to see what the state of things are for the Mac. Today I came across this post in a topic on OS 10.6.7. I haven’t updated to 10.6.7 because I’d read elsewhere that the update caused Starcraft 2 to become unplayable on some machines. Why I check to see if my Macbook Pro can play SC2 when I play it on my PC anyway is a post for another day.
The very first line by AtomicBanana struck me. “TL;DR: Mac OS X 10.6.7 update makes SC2 unplayable on MacBook Air.” After reading “TL;DR” for probably the thousandth time, it occurred to me that in old media we’d call what came after “TL;DR” a headline.
This image serves no purpose other than to show a piece of cool artwork.
The evolution of writing on the Web amuses me. We consolidated our writing styles to make things move quickly and get right to the point. Efficiency is key. We dropped all the rules and now we’re realizing some of them were important. We inefficiently add “TL;DR” wherever we need a head or subhead because we didn’t design a special place for headlines in comments or forums. The only improvement is that this special type of Web headline can go at the beginning or end.
Of course this isn’t really meant to be a headline. It’s the product of a certain segment of Generation Y hellbent on making the rest of us look bad. “Too long; didn’t read” is there to summarize a post so someone can guess what was said and reply with their own opinion without having to read.
I hope bringing grammar rules back even if in a broken roundabout way catches on. We might be able start using punctuation again. Until then:
TL;DR blogger realized TL;DR are headlines at the top or bottom of text.
Some people have asked me what I’m writing my book with. Here goes:
WriteRoom bills itself as “distraction free writing.” I can guarantee this is the case. It’s a Mac-only, full screen app that doesn’t have many formatting options. In fact, you can only change the background and text colors (I’m not a fan of green and black, for example, mine is shades of gray) and the default font. There are also some spacing options for how much of the screen the text takes up. Don’t expect to underline or bold anything. As a Windows user, you might substitute WriteRoom for DarkRoom, a free clone of WriteRoom. I got WriteRoom on sale, but the regular price is $24.99.
Writer for iPad is much the same as WriteRoom. Except here there are no options. What you see in that screenshot is what you get. It lets you skip whole words, or move between characters with some on-screen buttons. And it puts the most frequent punctuation right at the top so you don’t have to switch between keyboards. It’s all I write with on my iPad. Writer is available for $0.99 on the App Store.
To easily write on two devices I use Dropbox. This service syncs between many devices. It doesn’t offer needless features that over complicate the process. There is a folder on my Mac that I can drop files into and an app on my iPad. I use Writer because it has Dropbox functionality built-in. Whenever I’m done writing on my iPad I press the sync button and can then pick right up on my Mac. Dropbox is also available on Windows machines. A 2 GB Dropbox account is free, or there are 50 and 100 GB upgrades available for $10 and $20 a month, respectively.
