My wife and I were in Ireland for a week and now we’re back in New York.
A few notes:
– Dublin is awesome
– not having to tip in drinking and eating establishments was awesome
– I couldn’t taste a difference between Guinness from the Guinness Factory (or in any pubs) and Guinness in the States. Sorry, my palette is just not that sophisticated (and I love Guinness)
– There’s a Mulvey Park south of Dublin in a town called Dundrum, it’s next to an asylum (the old man who told me of it’s existence said the asylum residents are of the ‘cream of the crop’ or something to that effect)
– the Cliffs of Moher were beautiful
– many Irish believe in fairies. Uh, yeah.

John Paczkowski from All Things Digital:

The first analysts’ notes on Apple’s new iPhone 4 have begun rolling in and they sound a common theme: While not the revelation it might have been (for obvious reasons), the device may well be, as Steve Jobs claimed Monday, “the biggest leap since the original iPhone.”

There’s two things that keep popping in my head when I read posted like this.
First – fuck analysts. They produce nothing real and nothing of real value. They shit out guesses on what they think will do well in the market and what won’t. If all the analysts in the world disappeared tomorrow, things would be much better. I could give a shit if it’s not the “revelation” they wanted.
And second, to quote Louis CK, everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy. Whether you’re talking about the new iPhone 4, or hybrid cars or new vaccines and treatments for medical conditions, I constantly come across people who are underwhelmed. It’s unfortunate, because we really are living in amazing times.

NewTeeVee:

Did Apple’s iPhone 4 Just Kill the Flip?

Yes. It did.

True designers understand the design isn’t about how something looks, but how it works.
Every product that is designed is usually intended to be built and when it’s built, the look and style usually follow from the design. Of course this doesn’t always happen, as some companies merely apply a style to a product without thinking about the design.
The screenshots below are a great example of being able to tell how much design – not engineering – went into the software on each mobile operating system.
Android’s default media player:

iPhone OS’s media player:

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle:

In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states by precise inequalities that certain pairs of physical properties, like position and momentum, cannot simultaneously be known to arbitrary precision. That is, the more precisely one property is known, the less precisely the other can be known. In other words, the more you know the position of a particle, the less you know about its velocity, and the more you know about the velocity of a particle, the less you know about its instantaneous position.

This principle is like a woman, I don’t understand much of it, but it intrigues me.

Man do love the Beastie Boys and I always will (It’s like what Chris Rock said – whatever music you were listening to when you started getting laid, you’re gonna love that music for the rest of your life). I was sad when I heard Adam Yauch (MCA) has cancer.
Then I got pissed when I found out his moron plan to beat it:

“We are visualizing taking the energy away from the cancer, and then sending it back at the cancer as lightning bolts that will break apart the DNA and RNA of the cells,” he added. “If you have the time, please join us in whipping up this lightening storm. Mind over matter …”

Seriously MCA, what the fuck. I got news for you, meditation is not going to kill your cancer. Regardless, I wish you the best and I hope you prove me wrong.

From the Telegraph:

They set up a controlled experiment in Punjab earlier this year comparing the behavior and productivity of bees in two hives – one fitted with two mobile telephones which were powered on for two fifteen minute sessions per day for three months. The other had dummy models installed.

And:

After three months the researchers recorded a dramatic decline in the size of the hive fitted with the mobile phone, a significant reduction in the number of eggs laid by the queen bee. The bees also stopped producing honey.

Via Analogue

From ScienceDaily:

The stimulatory effects of caffeine may be nothing more than an illusion, according to new research that shows there is no real benefit to be gained from the habitual morning cup of coffee.

I’ve noticed when I’m out of my normal workday routine, like on a vacation, I get headaches from what seems to be coffee withdrawals. Then I find myself a cup of coffee and boom – headache is gone.

Via Creative Review:

The free app, called StreetMuseum, has been developed with creative agency Brothers and Sisters and makes use of geo tagging and Google Maps to guide users to various sites in London where, via the iPhone screen, various historical images of the city appear …

Awesome. It’s also a natural evolution of the Flickr group A Look Into the Past that was made it’s way around the blogs earlier this year (via Johnny Juice):

And according to Laughing Squid, A Look Into the Past was inspired by Michael Hughes’ “Souvenir” photoset on Flickr:

What a great chain of influence.

From the NY Post:

The term “walled gardens” refers to a service or technology that restricts access only to those using that service, as is the case with Apple’s iTunes, in which music can only be played on Apple devices or through iTunes itself.

What the hell are they talking about? Apple has been selling music as DRM-free MP3’s since April 2009. I can play my tracks on any computer I want.
A more accurate slam would have been Apple’s DRM-protected video content.