I read the Christian Science Monitor’s story on “What’s behind Chicago’s high-crime summer?” & curiously found no mention of the Foot Clan. ★2010/08/31
Using low-level acidic substance to simulate rash from laundry detergent in order to get girlfriend to do my laundry. #lifehack★2010/08/27
@greghaerling — We paved the way for these spoiled shits. "We" being slightly less-spoiled shits. ★2010/08/24
The folks over at Teehan+Lax plan to make my iPhone a lot more useful. They’re in the process of working with the Cydia folks to release a new lock screen for the iPhone entitled Element. I’ve spent a fair amount of time with the Android, and the single feature that always stood out as heads and shoulders above the iPhone is their notifications system. Hopefully, as soon as next week, that will no longer be a problem. Take a look at some more screenshots.
I admittedly have a soft spot for Jon Stewart (who, thank goodness, now has a key to Bellingham, WA) and Stephen Colbert, and not so much of a soft spot (a hard spot?) for Christopher Hitchens. I first became skeptical of Hitchens after reading about his stance on the Iraq War. And that feeling only increased after he attempted to join Richard Dawkins at the head of the Atheist movement by trying to mask his lack of scientific background with an even larger combative ego than Dawkins.
Hitchens uses the fact that Stewart was ranked as the #1 trusted newscastor in an online popularity pool to whine and complain that he is no Mark Twain (Is anyone really arguing that point?). His evidence seems to be Al Franken’s books (I’m still trying to figure out what that has to do with the Daily Show). My best guess is that either Hitchens is still bitter 4 years later that Stewart didn’t promote his Jefferson book well enough, or is formally applying for Andy Rooney’s position as Old Crank Laureate.
What?! That is enough basis for the foundation of a television show? My pops might not be that cranky, but give him 5 years. He’s on his way; and soon I’ll be rich.
PS: I love that the one person he follows is Levar Burton.
Lots to take away from this. For me, most of all is that I’ve been in this employee’s shoes and this story reaffirms that I will make sure to never be wearing shoes like his in a company like that again. It sounds clear that AA is a seriously messed up company, and, as folks have said, the original critique is a little naive of the situation: A little screenshot does not a website make.
You’ve committed your life to Jesus. You know you’re saved. But when the Rapture comes what’s to become of your loving pets who are left behind? Eternal Earth-Bound Pets takes that burden off your mind.
I am dying to know how much $$ they’ve pulled in from this…
Someone took “A New Hope” and cut it up into 15 sec. segments, then set up a site that assigns users to “swede” chunks of Star Wars. Once completed, this will be a surreal mishmash of glorious proportions.
Speaking of collaborations: Over 40 DeviantARTists picked a Mario Kart Character and rendered them in their own style. Make sure to check it out in its full size.
Interesting design concept for grocery receipts to drive the point home about the thousands of miles your food travels to get to you and the result it has on global warming. I bet this would have a dramatic effect on people’s food choices. They’d either shop locally or stop buying fruit and vegetables.
Speaking of food: Take the shittiest food possible, and make it look convincing enough that you might eat it until you realize that you’re about to loose a couple years of your life. Great idea for a website.
I’ve been designing for a little side project for Google Android mobile phones, and have been regularly caught needing user interface elements to design with. After searching around, there doesn’t seem to be much attention paid to the Android GUI by the community in the same way I’ve seen from the iPhone or Pre, so I had to create the PSD elements from scratch.
Well, no reason to keep it all for myself. Inspired by teehan+lax’s iPhone PSD, here are the basic GUI elements, built using vectors to scale, for the Android. It’s far from complete, but I’m willing to expand it. If you’re interested in other elements, let me know.
I highly recommend this quick addictive little puzzle game. It used to be a $3 download, but now the first half of the game is available for free online. It’s beautifully designed and worth every penny.
I got a deal on a Nintendo DS a few years ago because I was curious about New Super Mario Bros., but I haven’t really touched it since. Now I better find it, because this game looks amazing. You have to lead your character toward the star within every level through solving puzzles. But to do it, you have at your arsenal any object in the living world you can think of. They did it by sitting down 5 people for 6 months and scour the Dictionary and Wikipedia. Comes out in September.
Also, somehow KCRW was able to coax Sly out of hiding for his first on-air interview in over a decade. Interesting bits in the interview: If You Want Me To Stay is a literal edict to fans that he’ll stick around as long as people want him around; and that he used to get into arguments with Charles Manson at Doris Day’s place around the time he recorded Que Sera Sera. Listen below:
Great six-page article on my favorite stand-up comedian. He single-handedly made a poor movie watchable. Good call on Todd Phillips’ part on letting Zach be Zach for this film, which is more than can be said for this piece of shit.
Someone posted this unreleased re-recording and also somehow came across a great cover that John Lennon did of I Want You To Want Me around 1980 that is a touch more minimal (w/ clarinet!):
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It’s just like Dougie Bendle in reverse! In ’86, his parents took him at the age of 14 months to see the Dalai Lama. He was enthroned as the reincarnation Lama Yeshe, the reincarnated lama of a spiritual Buddhist leader. Now he’s 18 and has escaped. Now wants to use his Kiss tickets and make out with Patty Matthews.
Twitter seems to be on the front page of everything but, curiously, has done nothing functionally interesting. They’re just sitting there keeping the lights on.
Not everyone is just sitting there. Some are wondering, “What’s next?”
That’s exactly what I’ve been wondering. The market is being flooded with innovative features by thirdpartyclients and the only innovation that Twitter has added to the fold — search — wasn’t even theirs: it was an acquisition. In fact, according to their blog they’ve only hadfiveuserfacingupdates in the past year, none of which would be deemed as “lighting the barn on fire” by a user.
So what gives? You could make the argument that their growth is because of their lack of innovation, rather than in spite of it. Keeping it simple allows users to focus explicitly on Twitter’s core value instead of unnecessary bloat, and allows the owners to focus on being swooned by the big boys. Even VIPs within the company want new features but seem unwilling to build them.
I get the impression that Twitter knows that the money is in search and is putting all their eggs in that basket. And they’ve done a good job of it: their search implementation is pretty damn slick. But that doesn’t stop me from pining like the biggest geek ever for something new out of them. I want a “groups” feature integrated into Twitter.com. I want drafts. I want threaded replies in my timeline.
But the feature I’d like the most is data interpreters. I’d love it if a link to a TwitPic is not counted against my 140 character count and is called out after my tweet. If a URL is from an approved source, strip out the link and treat the data appropriately. This would work great for video, audio, pictures, and locations. I’m dying to post a tweet from foursquare and not have half of my 140 characters taken up by the venue’s address.
Twitter could keep it simple and just provide a link to the appropriate data; but with the right API calls, third party clients could take the ball and run with this type of info. Maps, audio, video, and photos could be displayed inline or expanded with a click. In fact, Tweetiealready visually indicates when a tweet includes a link to a photo.
And don’t worry about the redheaded stepchild in this discussion — SMS. This wouldn’t (and frankly, couldn’t) make that experience any worse for the 5% who still txt than it already is. Twitter could simply append the tweet with a “See More” link that routes the reader to the status’s page. People who get their tweets over SMS aren’t going to be clicking to view a TwitPic anyway, so a status link is just as efficient.
A feature like this would help bring the focus back to the message instead of the message being a URL. I have a hard time imagining the folks at Twitter doing anything close to standing still. The company seems to have the understanding that the premise of “140-character-messages” has a ton of milage and doesn’t need new features, so why change something that’s not broken? But features like this will reaffirm that in this medium, Twitter is the message. As Marshall McLuhan once said:
You should totally bake these features into Twitter.com. Now give me a massage…
So Twitter could continue to sit on their ass and they’ll still be the startup darling that’s perfect for many a company’s portfolio. But a little attention to the users might help with this retention problem that people are suddenly talking about. …actually, it probably won’t, but I’ll go ahead and try to convince you otherwise…
