May 20th, 2013
ᔥ io9:
Nina Katchadourian borrows the words she uses for her unusual poetry from the spines of books. She arranges those spines, book upon book, so that they form brief poems that are often insightful and surprising.
Funny and profound.
May 20th, 2013
ᔥ Agent Savant:
But, in a retro move, King has announced that his next novel, Joyland, will be available in print only! That’s right. I never saw that coming. Independent publisher, Hard Case Crime, the company that published King’s The Colorado Kid in 2005 (the basis for the SyFy channel television series “Haven”), will publish Joyland on June 4th in print only.
Hard Case Crime publishes a lot of contemporary pulp novels, including ones written by my favorite author, Lawrence Block.
I love this idea. E-book readers and tablets don’t capture the fun, retro, “throw-away” feel of a dime store paperback. And this cover is a true gem.
Can’t wait to pick this up next month.
May 20th, 2013
ᔥ Marissa Mayer’s Tumblr blog:
We promise not to screw it up. Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going. We will operate Tumblr independently. David Karp will remain CEO. The product roadmap, their team, their wit and irreverence will all remain the same as will their mission to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve. Yahoo! will help Tumblr get even better, faster.
Using Tumblr to get the official message out - nice touch.
May 20th, 2013
A catalog of 49 drinks culled from great works of film and literature, depicting everything from Philip Marlowe’s Gin Gimlet to Fredo Corleone’s Banana Daiquiri to the simple yet effective Buttermaker Boilermaker.
May 19th, 2013
Jeff Hunsberger took a long look at the state of instant messaging across various platforms. It’s a nice overview of things, but the article lacks some history and ignores the 800-pound chat gorilla in the room:
Apple’s iMessage was the warning shot that things were changing. Some embraced it and didn’t look back. Some didn’t know they were embracing it — for them it was just a matter of having a blue text bubble versus a green one. Others saw it as a way to get out from under the thumb of greedy cellular carriers who charged outrageous prices for text messages.
I’d argue that while Apple was certainly bigger than BlackBerry at the time iMessage (or Messages) was announced, it was originally BlackBerry neé RIM that hit back at greedy cell carriers.
Back when the BlackBerry was the smartphone to get, you couldn’t pry people away from their BBM. In fact, it wasn’t until Apple released iMessage for iOS when BBM holdouts took a good, hard look at the state of their precious messaging platform.
We laugh at BlackBerry’s position in the market now, but for a long time it was the definitive smartphone messaging service for millions of users across the world.
Then there’s this piece that made me sit back and go, “Huh?” (emphasis mine)
There are a lot of choices out there. I’m only going to list the good ones. I am not going to waste time on things that are platform-dependent. I am also not going to waste time on the “text message replacement” apps like What’s App, HeyTell or Kik because making a friend pay a dollar to talk to you seems like a bad idea. I’m definitely not wasting my time on anything with the word “Facebook” in the title.
I know we all get skittish around any mention of Facebook, but Hunsberger devoted paragraphs to Google’s Hangouts and had no problem discussing the creepy aspects.
The fact is Facebook Messenger is probably the best text-based chat solution on any platform. It’s fast, consistent, available almost everywhere, and works incredibly well even on the mobile Web. The phone apps lack video capabilities, but there is voice messaging and the desktop version has video chat functionality. It’s only a matter of time before the mobile applications get video, as well.
By willfully ignoring Facebook Messenger, Hunsberger is proving his thesis by process of elimination:
There is no clear winner here. As I mentioned before, the user is the real loser because the pitched battle for users and a lock-in model serve to create a wide range of favorites with each user deciding on what is their most important feature and then trying to convince all of their friends that their solution is the best.
If Hunsberger had come out and said, “I closed my Facebook account, so I can’t comment on the status of its messaging service,” I would’ve let it slide, but there’s no explanation given. All that’s implied is “Facebook is icky/evil, so for the purposes of this article it doesn’t exist.”
I understand why some people may not trust Facebook - I don’t even trust Facebook - but I know a great service when I see one, and the best cross-platform messaging service I’ve seen is Facebook Messenger.