Devastating Explosions.
Probably the best Flash site ever made.

via YouTube

via kristjan

The Editorial Board of the Washington Post has weighed in on ICANN’s upcoming push to create more top-level domains. The Post is wondering what, exactly, is the point?

“A potential disaster,” declared Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz during a congressional hearing last week. An invitation to extortion, cried a coalition of businesses. A crippling blow, warned a group of nonprofits.

Who knows? It will definitely be a change, and it’s going to cost some coin. But for regular people, not corporations (although some consider them people, apparently), it remains to be seen whether it will matter all that much.

I don’t think Kickstarter is a great service because my project is up there. There’s some amazing projects up there. Lots of them.
I’ve already backed PenMoto, which is magnetic ring to hold your Wacom pen. If you use a Wacom tablet and pen, you need this. Just watch the video if you don’t believe me. The project successfully ended, but I have feeling they won’t turn you down if you try to buy one.
This morning I also backed Typestache Playing Cards. Some of the nicest playing cards I’ve seen. The creators claim these cards are being made to help promote their Typestache iPhone app. It’s ironic because I think the cards are the real product. While I know I’ll use playing cards over and over, I’m not sure how many times I’ll put typographic mustaches on people with my iPhone.
Twine also looks super cool. They say, “Twine is the simplest possible way to get the objects in your life texting, tweeting or emailing.” And they’re already over 800% funded. Insane.
I wrote about Kickstarter around this time last year and I’m just as excited about it now.
I think about Kickstarter like I think about iOS. They’re both strong, well-designed platforms that attract the best talent. There aren’t just a few great applications on iOS and there aren’t just a few great projects on Kickstarter. There’s great work in every category on each platform.
Welcome to the new economy.

via

Instagram is one of the most used applications on my iPhone. So I was happy to see Apple pick them as iPhone App Of The Year for 2011.
Nate Bolt at TechCrunch boils down Instagram’s popularity to quality, audience and constraints (via Working Title).
So it pained me to read news like this one at CNet (via The Brooks Review):

“I think the advertising experience is going to be extremely engaging,” Systrom said. “It’s much harder with text,” but Instagram offers photos, and brand names such as Audi, Kate Spade, and Burberry have joined Instagram.

The optimistic and delusional side of my brain read the CNet article in the context of the Android version of Instagram they’re working on. Having advertisements on Android is a natural thing – it’s how Google pays the bills. And it’s how Google encourages developers to pay their bills. But there’s other ways to pay the bills.
Right now Instagram is free. Maybe hindsight tells us even just charging $.99 would have been better than giving it away. Maybe charging for Instagram would have also prevented it’s rise in popularity. Maybe not.
My hope is that Instagram will figure out a classy way to integrate advertising that doesn’t disrupt the experience. Even better, offer a premium, ad-free version. I’d be willing to pay and I bet many others would be too.

via Letterology

via mds

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