ℹ️ This is an archived legacy site for link purposes only.
Jim Dalrymple on the iPhone 6 Plus:
Despite my initial reaction, three months in and I’m happily using the iPhone 6 Plus. The larger screen is glorious for my aging eyes and I find I’m able to get more done on a phone than ever before.
Nice piece. I’ll have my own piece on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, which I’m still swapping between, up in the near future.
Gawker Media CEO Nick Denton has published a mammoth memo for 2015, where he announces changes in leadership and other important stuff for people working on any of the company’s properties, or with an interest in media. But as always when Denton writes, there’s more, and this stood out.
We all understand how this works. Editorial traffic was lifted but often by viral stories that we would rather mock. We – the freest journalists on the planet – were slaves to the Facebook algorithm. The story of the year – the one story where we were truly at the epicenter – was one that caused dangerous internal dissension. We were nowhere on the Edward Snowden affair. We wrote nothing particularly memorable about NSA surveillance. Gadgets felt unexciting. Celebrity gossip was emptier than usual.
We pushed for conversations in Kinja, but forgot that every good conversation begins with a story. Getting the stories should have come first, because without them we have nothing to talk about.
Salomé Jones have written down the Starbucks name game, as told by yours truly.
When you go to Starbucks and the barista writes your name on your paper coffee cup, that is your name until you are assigned a new name.
Example: Your name is Alice. The barista writes Ally. You are now Ally until you get more coffee in a new cup with a different name on it.
Full rules here. It’s crazy what powers the baristas have these days…
Bluebox tested sub-$99 Android tablets, and – shocker! – found them to be security nightmares.
Bluebox Labs purchased over a dozen of these Black Friday “bargain” Android tablets from big name retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Kmart, Kohl’s and Staples, and reviewed each of them for security. What we found was shocking: most of the devices ship with vulnerabilities and security misconfigurations; a few even include security backdoors. What seemed like great bargains turned out to be big security concerns. Unfortunately, unsuspecting consumers who purchase and use these devices will be putting their mobile data & passwords at risk.
Jim Bankoff, CEO of Vox Media, publishers of The Verge and Vox.com, among other things, at Code/Media:
“There are companies that have been built on lists,” Bankoff said of the slate of new publishers that have cropped up in the last few years, without naming a specific site. “When you’re a company that’s all lists, or all slideshows, or all quizzes, then that’s a problem because you’re trying to game something.”
There’s certainly some truth to that, however it’s also a type of content that a lot of people seem to enjoy. While I want to believe that the listicle’s days are numbered, I seriously doubt it, since it’s basically just a take on an old format anyway. All these things are, so it would be more relevant to say that the titles used on sites today, the You Won’t Believe What Happened Next nonsense, is trying to game something.
I, and the kind of people who spend time thinking about these issues, tend to assume that, well, maps and calendars and email and so on are very important, because we use them all day, and that the tight integration of Google services is a good reason to buy an Android phone and their absence would make it unsalable.
But most people do not have that kind of job. One thing that always bothers me about a certain kind of product demo is the moment when the product magically tells you that your flight is late or the gate has changed. But most people don’t fly enough ever to have this problem – that’s not actually a real, mass market use case.
Thoughtful piece, and an astute observation. Thing is, a lot of these feature that we make a big deal of, as, if not tech-savvy so at least tech-interested users, are barely icing on the cake for most people. Take the Apple Maps debacle back on iOS 7. Not only was it completely blown out of proportion in the tech press (if we can call it that), it was also such a small thing in the larger scope of things, and yet we whined about it. Some people are still whining about Apple Maps, despite the fact that it’s been good enough for a (relatively) long time now, so called power-user or not.
Want to blow a tech-head’s mind? Tell them that Gmail isn’t the largest webmail service. It’s not because it’s not better than most, if not all, of the competition. It’s because the other alternatives, no matter if it’s Hotmail-come-Outlook.com, or Yahoo Mail, or Fastmail, or whatever, are all good enough for most people. That’s it, plain and simple.
But take apart a 60-year old calculator and you’ll find hundreds of parts that include gears, axels, rods and levers all working together like a fine-oiled machine. Capturing these old gadgets is photographer Kevin Twomey, who “delights in raising the most mundane of objects to an iconic level.”
Having trouble with the sleep button on your iPhone 5? Apple might fix it for free:
Apple has determined that the sleep/wake button mechanism on a small percentage of iPhone 5 models may stop working or work intermittently. iPhone 5 models manufactured through March 2013 may be affected by this issue.
Apple will replace the sleep/wake button mechanism, free of charge, on iPhone 5 models that exhibit this issue and have a qualifying serial number.
Verizon’s foray into tech publishing, SugarString, is shuttered. They left this statement to DSL Reports:
SugarString is a pilot project from Verizon Wireless’ marketing group, designed to address tech trends, especially those of interest to our customers. Unlike the characterization by its new editor, SugarString is open to all topics that fit its mission and elevate the conversation around technology.
SugarString was obviously doomed from the start. It’s never a good idea to limit what journalists are allowed to cover. A company in Verizon’s position has nothing to gain from a publication like this, unless they’re prepared to lie and cheat, which has a tendency to get out in the open in the end. Just look at the long list of dirt Samsung stunts over the years…
Hat tip: The Verge.
CDON byter (tydligen) betalningsleverantör för fakturor, lagom till julhandeln. Så här skriver de i ett nyhetsbrev:
Observera att vi per den 1 december har bytt fakturaleverantör till Qliro. Har du en faktura och lagt en order före den 1 december ska du betala till Klarna. Har du en faktura och lagt en order 1 december eller senare ska du betala till Qliro. Vi ber dig att noga kontrollera fakturan, där det tydligt framkommer vem som är betalningsmottagare, när du betalar. Tänk också på att uppdatera uppgifterna om du har sparat Klarna/CDON.COM som betalningsmottagare i din internetbank.
För det första, mitt i julhandeln? Verkligen? Måste varit stora pengar inblandade här. Och ja, det var det: Qliro är ett CDON-företag, och därmed får de mer pengar per försäljning. Tack @olssonm.
För det andra, om ni behöver informera så här i ett nyhetsbrev är betalflödet, galet trasigt. Kund beställer, och får tydliga betalinstruktioner. Under en övergångsperiod behöver kanske dessa flagga för att det är nya betalrutiner för de som lagt till Klarna i internetbanken, men det är inte svårare än så. Tydligt formulerat och självklar design i flödet löser detta.
För det tredje, att toppnyheten i ett nyhetsbrev – som inte skickas ofta – är att CDON bytt en leverantör är bara tokigt. Information är bra, men det här är antingen egotrippat, eller bevis på den dåliga tajmingen som bytet från Klarna faktiskt har.
Crowdfunding platform Indiegogo is doing a one campaign trial of crowdfunding insurance. Gizmodo:
The new “Optional Insurance,” which was first discovered by TechCrunch, appears to only be available on a single project thus far, the Olive stress-management wearable. When you go to preemptively secure your Olive band, you’re given the option to purchase the Indiegogo-provided insurance for the relatively reasonable price of $15. Then, if the Olive doesn’t materialize within three months of when it’s supposed to, its Indiegogo’s responsibility to give you your money back.
You can see it in action on the Olive wearable. This is an interesting move, and something that you might want to consider given the amount of duds and delays out there, should the insurance become a standard feature.
Semi-related plug: Never miss a great crowdfunding campaign again, thanks to Daily Crowdfunder. Yes, that’s a project of mine, go figure…
Steam is joining the games broadcasting, err, game, with Steam Broadcasting. Anyone using the Steam beta client (an opt-in thing) can both watch and broadcast their game. This is a big business, something Amazon’s acquisition of Twitch is a testament to, and Steam is late to the game. They have tremendous reach though, so this might take off fast.
You’re reading this, so I’m assuming you have a device of some sort. The statistics tells me it’s a smartphone, possibly a tablet, but it might just as well be the crappy library PC. It matters little, you can read this site, access the web as it were, and that’s where all your excuses end.
If you can do all that, then you can write.
It’s so very easy to find excuses not to write. I don’t feel like it, I’m not inspired today, I can’t write here, my computer’s old and slow, it’s too noisy, I’ll write when I’ve saved up for a new Macbook, I’m out of whisky… All those things might be true for you, but they’re not actual hurdles. You’re the one who needs to sit down and write. A new Mac won’t make you a better writer, nor will that distraction free writing artifact you’ve been reading so much about. In the end, you’re the writer, and all those things are just tools. If you lack them, find a pen and some paper. That works too, it’s been proven. And no, you don’t need a Moleskine notebook and a fancy pen to write, anything with a blank papery surface will do.
Vox Media closes $46.5 million investment round. Jim Bankoff had this to say, courtesy of Recode:
Bankoff says the money is a sign investors are buying his pitch: He says Vox represents a new breed of content company, which can take advantage of the tech-inflected turmoil established companies are going through. “Things are starting to unbundle,” he says. “Magazines and newspapers are starting to be disrupted. Cable networks are next. I think a lot of investors look around and say ‘This is a new opportunity.’”
It’s interesting given that Say Media just stepped out of the “content and tech” game. Meanwhile, Vox Media is closing in on turning a profit next year. The difference is clearly the editorial products and if not their quality, so at least their profitability.