Whether App.net will succeed will still likely depend on their ability to make people abandon Twitter for it, but as a developer, I like their initiatives in this regard. Acknowledging third party value, and having that be the founding principle, is something I can only believe will lead to great experiences.
Of course, this is only possible because App.net get money from the users directly, no matter what clients they use. Twitter are leaving money on the table by allowing third party apps to not show ads.
Jeremy Keith on Apple’s non-existant developer relations with regards to Safari. I agree wholeheartedly – having an evangelist who isn’t allowed to speak at external conferences seems… odd. (What does she do the rest of the year, when not preparing for WWDC?)
Now might be the right time to push back at Apple, since they claim they’re doing things differently, but this is something that should be done at any time.
Matt Drance on the iPhone 5 not having NFC, and how that is not really a problem in the world today.
This point is exactly right. Sure, the iPhone 5 could have NFC. It would probably require a thicker design, might impact battery life, but certainly it could be in there. So could a toaster.
Don’t get me wrong: I think the promise of NFC is a good one, one I’m excited to see. But it’s just a prospect for now.
Sometimes Apple push the envelope for this sort of stuff, what with the non-Floppy iMacs and such. But when they do, it’s because they believe it serves a purpose for their customers (or themselves), not to check off a box in a comparison chart. Currently, NFC serves no practical purpose, only the hope that it someday will.
Interesting (and lengthy) interview with comedian Louis C.K.
Louis C.K. is an extraordinary comedian, but what I find most fascinating about him is his approach to the things surrounding his comedy. He obviously rose to some prominence with the radically different business model he tried when selling his show Live at the Beacon Theater, an approach they also discuss in the interview, and in general he seems very set on trying to improve comedy, in the way it is produced and watched.
One particular comment I think encapsulates this brilliantly:
I like to give [employees] a little more than they want, and I like to ask [viewers] for a little less than they’re willing to give.
A Kickstarter project (of course) proposed by Chris Granger, which is a radically new editor (inspired by Bret Victor‘s principle from his much-praised talk Inventing on Principle). If this project is funded, and it’s looking good, the resulting product could revolutionise the way we develop software, and make it much better.
Over five years ago (phew), I wrote What I don’t like about PHP. This is like that, only infinitely more detailed. (Including a lot of oddities that I knew about, but hadn’t considered serious flaws.)
(Via Marco, who concedes that PHP does suck.)
As Voltaire put it: I disagree strongly with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Part of allowing free speech is also allowing people to say things that you do not agree with. Then you attack their opinion, not their right to say it.
Atwood describes the technique for programmers, but it’s an almost universally applicable technique.
I think every blogger (or anyone else who has written for their own pleasure rather than to perform some task) has fired up the editor to write something (usually posed as a question in some way) only to discover that describing the problems often leads to a discovery of the solution.
I know I do this all the time at work. I work remotely, so I usually Skype chat with my boss, and I constantly find myself describing potential problems/questions with what I’m about to implement, only to have the solution pop up to me before I need to hit ‘send’.
Short summary: they’re a glorified ad company. An interesting (if heart-breaking) story about the realisation that Google isn’t about interesting tech as much as they’re about showing ads to people.
Using Google Web Fonts as his case study, Matthew Butterick makes a great explanation of what is and what isn’t open source.
