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?

I shot on a roll of Slide Film. Got it back this morning. Looks insanely clear. I have to shoot with it more now. Costs so much to develop though. The world is insane. And I love it.

via ddo’s posterous

Last week I got into an argument with my mother. She asked me why I take forever to return her calls and also why I hang up on her. She begged me to get another phone. And because she loves me and knows I love Apple, she even offered to buy stock in AAPL.
First, I acknowledge my flakiness in regard to returning phone calls. This is something I have the power to fix.
As for the hang-ups, I had to explain to my mother that I never deliberately hang up on anyone, especially my own mother. I went into detail about the situation with my iPhone and its service in New York City. In short, it’s horrible. Ask anyone with an iPhone what they hate the most about it and they’ll most likely tell you their AT&T service (no, it’s not the lack of a removable battery). The majority of my friends and coworkers in New York City have iPhones and they all hate AT&T.
But momma’s question got me thinking, why do I put up with AT&T’s shit?
The answer is simple – because I don’t use the phone part of my iPhone very much, relative to all the other applications on it.
Below is a grab of my Home screen. Back in July I wrote a post on how I organize my icons based on orbits from my left hand thumb (Unless I’m typing, I usually operate it with one hand).

While you can see the phone icon is fairly close to the bottom left of the home screen, I’ve moved it out of the persistent tray it’s in by default. Compared to e-mail, web browsing, tweeting and reading cached articles on Instapaper, I don’t make phone calls that much.
Please AT&T, move some of that $65 million over to the east coast, I don’t want a upset mother anymore.

Beautiful set of long exposure experiments from Missiletest.

This is what’s wrong with our culture. There’s always an easy way out.
This ‘Maybe’ option is inherent in the structure of Microsoft Outlook, not my iPhone calendar (I’m synced with my company’s Exchange server). I’d like Microsoft remove it as an option.
Imagine you send out a meeting invite to 500 people, and 400 people reply ‘Maybe’. Are you just supposed to hope those 400 people are going to make it? Suppose a client’s going to be there, or you’re ordering food?
Have some balls in life and make concrete decisions, and if you see those three options, either Accept or Decline.

Allison Mossart from The Kills and the The Dead Weather