Busy Monday, just links:
Despite the sorry state of the (print) magazine industry, Dan Frommer thinks its a great time for magazines.
Jason Fried has a piece in the NYTimes Opinions section and over at his company blog he connects the dots on how it happened.
Speaking of print, Graphic-ExchanGE always features some gourmet shit. Why do they insist on not deep-linking to their posts? All I have are their RSS pages. I love you, GE, but I hate you too.
Evan Williams (co-founder of Blogger, Twitter) is up to something new.
The Great Discontent has a profile up of Seth Godin. I’m loving their responsive layout too.
Social Print Studio has a great site and some great projects.
The history of revolutionary interfaces. (via The Loop)
This seems to be the year of video game-related Kickstarter projects. Panetary Annihilation looks incredible.
Steven Heller has what looks to be an awesome new book out on Comics Sketchbooks.

The work of Nathan Fox (via Imprint)

Over at Ars Technica, Peter Bright goes hands-on with WIndows 8 RTM (RTM? WTF?):

Because without those apps, the Windows 8 experience is incomplete. The design decisions Microsoft made have no rationale. We need an app ecosystem to give them context; to see whether Microsoft’s vision really plays out when used day-in, day-out, and whether Metro is a productive, fluent environment.

There’s also a question of hardware. Many OEMs are preparing to release a range of new machines with better, gesture-supporting trackpads, 10-point multitouch screens, lightweight tablets, and all manner of hybrids, but this “Designed for Windows 8” hardware isn’t out yet. Good trackpads with gesture support make a world of difference to the Windows 8 experience, but at the moment, driver and hardware availability is too limited.

What’s that Alan Kay? No, no. They haven’t gotten your memo from 1982 yet.

Engadget: HP creates Mobility division to focus on consumer tablets, taps ex-MeeGo maven Alberto Torres to run it
Hey HP, you’re a little late to the tablet computing party. Like getting-close-to-3-years-late (I’m not counting that fling with the TouchPad). The bouncers are turning the house lights on and the bartenders are announcing last call.
You might be able to find someone to go home with your tablet, but almost everyone has found one already and they’re getting in their cars to go home.

I’m having a lot of fun with my new venture, Stay Vigilant. It’s really gratifying making things by hand.
I just added 2 new 11″ x 14″ posters: Cards and Camera.

US State Department cancels no-bid Kindle contract

Prior to payment and delivery, the US State Department has torpedoed its $16.5 million contract with Amazon, proposed in June, for Kindle e-book readers. The contract is headed to a normal Request for Information process, rather than the no-bid award that Amazon was initially selected to fulfill. The program was intended for use in overseas language programs, and any device chosen would have to support wireless connectivity, central management, text-to-speech, long battery life and a number of other requirements.

Translation: the US State Department realized the Kindle sucks.
Next time, Amazon. Next time.

CNet: Judge says Apple’s ‘smoking crack’ with giant witness list

“I mean come on. 75 pages! 75 pages! You want me to do an order on 75 pages, (and) unless you’re smoking crack, you know these witnesses aren’t going to be called when you have less than four hours,” Koh said.
“Your honor, I can assure you, I’m not smoking crack,” Lee replied matter-of-factly.

This might sound bizarre and fake to those of you who have never served jury duty in a United States court, but I can assure you, it’s not. I served on 2 juries in the 11 years I lived in Manhattan and some crazy things happen in the courtroom. I’ve seen lawyers act just dramatically as they do on TV. They do everything they can to piss of the other side’s people so they trip up, make mistakes and admit to things they didn’t intend to admit to.
I’ve seen jurors hold back laughter at ‘antics’ by lawyers (myself included) and I’ve seen judges scold lawyers multiple times for things they’re not supposed to do.
Oh, and if you think Apple has this in the bag, think again. Anything is possible once jurors enter the deliberation room. Logic and decisions based on evidence go out the window. It’s sad but true.

Analogue, meet Digital. Digital, meet Analogue.

via thisisnthappiness

MoMA: Century of the Child
Great to see what’s possible with HTML & JS these days.
via @ryanquigley

In reaction to my last post, I was just wondering:
How many Samsung employees does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
1,000: One to hold a laptop playing a video of an Apple engineer screwing in a lightbulb, One to screw in the lightbulb and 998 others to redesign the bulb and socket to look like Apple’s.

Ben Brooks ponders:

Why does it take a 1,000 designers to rip-off an Apple design that only took 15-16 people to make?

Again, because they’re copying artifacts, not process.
Remember how many guys it took to reverse-engineer Tony Stark’s Iron Man suit in the first movie?