It’s gotta suck to have nothing and still lose.

Jim Dalrymple, in reference to Microsoft’s mobile marketshare,
Amplified, Episode 23

Better Book Titles (via Laughing Squid)

Check out the bookshelf. Books on symbols, graphic design and type.
Nice.
via Retronaut

There’s 8 days to go on this Kickstarter:

SunVolt is a portable charging platform which will efficiently convert the sun’s rays into powerful charging current for your mobile electronic devices. On a clear day, a SunVolt Solar Power Station can charge multiple devices with the same speed as if they were plugged in and charged from the wall. A custom designed carrying case which is light, stylish, and functional, enables the system to be highly portable. In mere seconds, users can easily set up the panel, plug in their devices, and start the charging process. When charging is complete, the panel quickly and safely stores for future use.

I’m really into solar power—what I’m hesitant about is having my gadgets out in the sun with this charger. Even if I could place them in the shade, I live in the San Fernando Valley were it’s currently getting up to 105 degrees by noon.
If I were to use this at home, I’d need a long enough cable so I could keep my iPad and iPhone on the kitchen counter.
First world problems.

CNN: ‘Queen of Cocaine’ killed in Colombia:

An elderly woman who was known as Colombia’s “Queen of Cocaine” was gunned down in the northwestern city of Medellin, police said Tuesday.

Griselda Blanco, 69, was killed by two bullets at close range — a violent end not unlike the ones that authorities say she ordered during her prime in the 1970s and 1980s.

If you love documentaries like I do, I highly recommend Cocaine Cowboys. Griselda Blanco is obviously featured prominently in it. Movies like Scarface and video games like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City were inspired by the real stories you’ll hear in this flick.

The Atlantic has a write-up on Outgrow.me:

Many of the products on Kickstarter live their lives in the conditional tense. “This would be cool,” we say to ourselves when we see an especially nifty gadget being pitched on the site. “Oh, wow, that could be awesome.”

But what happens when funded projects make their move from potential to actual? Where do you go to explore — and maybe buy — the Kickstarter projects that have actually been kickstarted?

Great idea. Inevitable, really.

There it is. The iPhone 5 is coming September 12 (nice shadow).
via Fortune
Update: I just realized this is also 5 years since the iPhone launched. The ‘5’ in the shadow could mean a few things.

There it is. The iPhone 5 is coming September 12 (nice shadow).

via Fortune

Update: I just realized this is also 5 years since the iPhone launched. The ‘5’ in the shadow could mean a few things.

Microsoft, just dive already.

This new video from The Verge shows Windows RT and Office 2013 RT aren’t optimized for touch (yet?).
Microsoft is the kid at the dock who’s afraid to jump in the water to learn how to swim. Every time the operating system jumps back into ‘classic’ X86 mode in that video, I see Microsoft grabbing onto one of the poles on the dock because they’re afraid they’ll drown.
Windows 8 could be pretty badass if Microsoft just strapped a set of balls on and dove in.
via Jim Dalrymple

Right now I have my LG LCD television on.

…which is hooked up to the Apple TV on the shelf below it.

…which is streaming Sherlock Holmes from a 5-year-old (white) MacBook running iTunes upstairs from my wife’s iTunes account via WiFi.

…which stores iTunes content on a external, Western Digital Passport hard drive.

…which I’m controlling via the Remote app on my iPhone 4.

If I were to go back in time and explain this to my 15-year-old self, this would have sounded not only impossible, but incredibly inefficient. But to my 35-year-old self right now? It makes perfect sense. And it’s all working seamlessly.

The latest update (3.2) to the iOS Kindle app is out, and it is steadily improving on the iPad, although in incremental steps. The most significant change iPad users will see is the introduction of changeable margins, mirroring a feature already present for Android users. Users can now select between three different options, illustrated below:

The first option, on the left, is close to the margins in the regressed update I covered in June, but there is a more comfortable amount of white space above and below the text. It’s a little crowded, but much easier on the eye than the blocky mess from the end of spring, which caused howls of protest on the app’s store page.
The best readability comes with the other two options. The second option is identical in width to the July update, with the text moved up slightly, while the third has left and right margins identical to that which was banished in the June update, with the leading opened up some. All in all, these three represent fine options for a user to choose from. In the future, it would be nice to see the app incorporate different fonts. The iBooks app, Apple’s answer to Kindle, lets a user choose from seven different fonts, while Stanza, the now unsupported reader app that Amazon owns, lets the user choose from all the system fonts that were available at the time of its final update in 2011. Once again, it boggles the mind that Amazon has a readily available reader app that is better designed and continues to draw nothing from it, that a user can see, at least.
Another feature from Stanza that I love is the ability to change the brightness of the screen with a finger swipe, rather than having to go into the options menu. It’s great for maintaining flow while reading. Curiously, the new Kindle update touts improved brightness controls, but what they seem to have done is lock the brightness with the iPad. That is, if a user changes the brightness controls within the Kindle app, it changes the brightness across the entire iPad, not just within the app. This is very odd.
Still, Kindle version 3.2 for the iPad is keeping pace with reader apps in general, as they go through the long process of becoming viable alternatives to printed books. Presentation is key. As soon as all reader apps figure this out, users will benefit greatly.

“I could hear everything, together with the hum of my hotel neon. I never felt sadder in my life. LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; New York gets godawful cold in the winter but there’s a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets. LA is a jungle.”

— Jack Kerouac, On the Road

via thisisnthappiness

I don’t think anyone has argued this yet, but the creation of an e-book will never be as beautiful as this.
via Laughing Squid