“There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.”

—Marissa Mayer, December 2005, Official Google Blog

Times change.
via parislemon

It’s easy to eat stuff. Pizza. Coffee with cream and sugar. Donuts. Beer. Cocktails. Those insanely awesome opera slices I used to get at Balthazar on Spring Street in SoHo (while you’re in the area, go over a few blocks to CeciCela for one of their ham and cheese croissants).
What’s hard is burning off all that food to get fit. It takes more than a few hours in the gym. It takes consistent effort over a extended period of time.
Artistic creation is the same.
It’s easy for me to consume online media. To read my Twitter feed, and my RSS feed and the links people send me over IM and the backlog of longreads I have in my Instapaper account.
What’s hard is creating my own content. It can be hard writing posts for this site. It’s also hard coming up with new t-shirt and poster designs for Stay Vigilant. Creating new blog posts and designs takes consistent effort over an extended period of time.
I need to eat less and create more.

Via GigaOm:

The Federal Aviation Administration is asking for opinions on the use of portable electronic devices on flights — including during an airplane’s take off and landing. The agency released a document today asking the public and other interested parties to comment on the use of devices that might include iPads, Kindles (a amzn) and other gadgets — a topic that has become more pressing as more people rely on such devices while traveling.

They want my opinion? They got it.

via Instagram

via GIF Movie

Neil Armstrong died this past weekend. First man on the moon. Amazing stuff.
But he is human, and therefore bound to make mistakes. Like the one in his legendary speech. Larrick was kind enough to bring this to my attention this morning.
I found a BBC article from 2009 talking about this lunar mess-up:

Neil Armstrong missed out an “a” and did not say “one small step for a man” when he set foot on the Moon in 1969, a linguistic analysis has confirmed.

The researchers show for the first time that he intended to say “a man” and that the “a” may have been lost because he was under pressure.

They say that although the phrase was not strictly correct, it was poetic.

Yeah, yeah. He messed up. I’ll let it slide given the circumstances.

Over at AllThingsD, John Paczkowski has Samsung’s response to the verdict in the Samsung-Apple patent trial:

Today’s verdict should not be viewed as a win for Apple, but as a loss for the American consumer,” Samsung said in a statement. “It will lead to fewer choices, less innovation, and potentially higher prices. It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies. Consumers have the right to choices, and they know what they are buying when they purchase Samsung products. This is not the final word in this case or in battles being waged in courts and tribunals around the world, some of which have already rejected many of Apple’s claims. Samsung will continue to innovate and offer choices for the consumer.

This shows Samsung still doesn’t get it.
“It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners“
Because that’s all an iPhone is, some rounded rectangles. And a Ferarri is just a fast, red car. And Whole Lotta Love is just a song by Led Zeppelin. And The Sirens of Titan is just some book by Kurt Vonnegut.
Apple doesn’t and shouldn’t have a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, but that’s not this trial was about. Apple didn’t sue Samsung for copying them, they sued Samsung for the degree to which they copied them.
Samsung didn’t just take a few paperclips and and some pens from Apple’s supply closet. They emptied out the whole damn closet. Maybe that’s a little too antiquated an analogy. Samsung didn’t just torrent the latest pop music single, they torrented every album released in last 5 years.
Samsung could have easily avoided this whole messy trial if they hadn’t copied as much as they did from Apple, but they got greedy and when you get greedy there’s a good chance you’ll get caught.

By now every knows about the elderly parishioner in Spain who ruined a 19th century fresco.
To my eyes, it looks like Modigliani was hit in the head with a bat, drank a bottle of Jameson and then decided to paint an Ewok:

I love how the woman blames the priest for letting her “fix” the fresco. Nice, lady. Real classy. Jesus is going to remember that.

I lived in New York City for 11 years so I know about great pizza. You need 2 things: great dough and great sauce*. Sounds simple, but it’s not.
It’s the same with gadgets. You need great hardware and great software. You take away one of those and it ruins the whole thing.
* For simplicity’s sake, yes, I left out cheese in this equation.

Back in June I thought Windows 8 looked half-baked.
Tim Edwards just reviewed it for PCGamesN (via DF):

The email app is horrendous. It is the worst email client I have ever used. It’s a full-screen Metro abomination that hides or is missing basic and vital functionality (search, column sorting, filtering). It’s full-screen, but only shows a small sample of your messages – so the screen real-estate is massively wasted. If you have multiple email accounts, there’s no combined inbox view. It’s slow to check and sync your email – unless you force a manual refresh. And the first time you use it, you will struggle to find the ‘send email’ button. Pro-tip – it’s the (+) in the top right.

Yep. Still not baked.

Why you make that sound?!