When I first read this Mashable post on Rupert Murdoch wanting pulling his online properties from Google’s indexes I immediately went on the defensive, laughing at how these old media guys don’t get the Internet.
But being the devil’s advocate that I am, I played devil’s advocate to my own opinion. Who’s to say you can’t pull your site from Google’s indexes? Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. I mean, in order for Google to ignore your site content, it’s just a matter of changing a META tag in your source code to say “NOFOLLOW”.
So I was both pissed at Murdoch for having the audacity to suggest pulling his properties from Google results and simultaneously exciting that someone was (thinking of) going up against a company that is making it’s way into more and more aspects of our lives and finding it increasingly hard to stay true to their ‘do no evil‘ matra.
Now it’s great if you have the balls to suggest making your content un-indexable, but you better have an amazing fucking plan in place to maintain relevance and profitability. NBC, CBS, Fox and other TV networks were able to pull their content from Youtube by banding together and forming Hulu. Perhaps the news media will do something similar.
…but part of Murdoch’s closing of the Google Juice hose also involves charging for content.
Good luck with that.

From The Huffington Post:

Amid throngs of bankers arguing that new regulations should not impede on financial “innovation,” Volcker pushed back, blasting Wall Street’s increasingly complex financial products as useless to economic growth. In what seems to have been a shot at exotic securities, he named the ATM cash machine as the most successful financial innovation in the past 20 years, the Times reported.

Youtube launched a trimmed down version of their site a few days ago called Feather (currently in Beta).
It works for me because I’m by no means any sort of power Youtube user, so I don’t mind tossing out any bells and whistles that JavaScript and CSS can provide.
I could tell from the layout that there was fat trimmed, but I wanted to see how much actual code was cut so I cracked open Safari’s developer panel (*note that the majority of the grey ‘Other’ category is the actual video being loaded, so that’s going to be the same size in both modes).
normal page size:

Feather page size:

And here are the layout comparisons.
normal page layout:

Feather page layout:

Photography doesn’t always have to be deep and conceptual.
Sometimes when I’m out shooting, I’m just looking at colors and textures.
Here’s a few abstract, deliberately unfocused shots I took that are making for great wallpapers.
UPDATE: I remembered the quote that belongs to the reasons behind these non-conceptual photos, from the movie High Fidelity:

I don’t wanna hear old sad bastard music, Barry, I just want something I can ignore.

Click on the images below to download and ignore the full-size versions.

While Apple continues to dominate high-end laptop market, their strategy with the iPhone has been to be as competitive as possible by selling the iPhone 3G for $99 (with AT&T contract) and the 3GS for $199 & $299.
This pricing has screwed up everyone else in the smart/touchphone market. It’s no longer a matter of deciding if you want to invest $300+ on an iPhone or one of a myriad of $99 touchscreen phones that look like an iPhone, but have none of the gaming, video, music, application, mapping or full web browsing capabilities.
Case-in-point as noted in this Palm Pixi review at Engadget:

As some commenters have pointed out, the Pixi is showing up for $29.99 (after an instant discount) at Walmart online right now. Let’s be very clear here — one of our major issues with this phone was that it doesn’t offer enough differentiation from the Pre, a point which is particularly important when there is only a $50 difference between the two. Without question, this phone for $30 is an incredible value and without compare in the world of smartphones. If that kind of price becomes the norm with this device, it would be hard not to recommend it to buyers.

So when I say Apple is ‘screwing everyone else up’ what I mean is other mobile phone producers used to create and exaggerate price tiers for the different versions of their phone – price tiers that don’t have the additional features to warrant them. The main difference between a Palm Treo and a Pixi is that one has a touchscreen keyboard and the other has a touchscreen keyboard and a full QWERTY. Come again?
So while I’ve heard the critics say that Apple needs a ‘nano’ version of the iPhone and they need to expand the range of models, we’re seeing how having one iPhone (the 3G and the 3GS run the same OS, have the same dimensions) gives Apple a huge advantage against competitors who love to offer dozens of different models with negligible differences.

I found the website for interactive agency Hook a (surprising) joy to navigate.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been an iPhone user for 2 years and I’m used to everything being draggable, but it seems just as useful (if implemented correctly) on interfaces that aren’t multitouch, like my good old MacBook & mouse/WACOM tablet.

In the end this gets back to Fitt’s Law – Hook is effectively eliminating the distance you have to move to grab a scrollbar. Your scrollbar is everywhere.
So obvious, yet, I haven’t seen anyone else doing it.
Thanks Hook.

Great and obvious post by Jesus Diaz (that everyone is doing) on how all the big dogs misjudged the iPhone.
My favorite quote is still from Ed Colligan, Ex-Palm CEO (I liked this one way back in 2006):

We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.

Mr. Diaz’s response is delicious:

Apparently, Ed, they walked right in, stole your lunch, your dinner, your wife, your car, your horse, and all your pudding. And then they ate it. And pooped it out.

if you don’t have power, act powerfully.

-???
I dig this quote but I don’t know know where I got it from. If anyone has a clue, can you email me?