via Twitter

I was wrong, I’m not 6 months ahead of my time, I’m 10 months ahead.
TechCrunch posted this today:
The Second Screen Becomes The First Screen: Hulu Says 50% Of Its 5M Subscribers Use Devices Exclusively
And this was me back in February:

Television, cable and game console people, I have some news for you.

That “second screen” you refer to all the time? It’s going to be the television, not the smartphone or tablet.

That is, if it’s not already.
If you’re looking for a short term crystal ball, it’s name is Mike Mulvey.

Fortune looks at the legacy (if you can call it that) that Steve Ballmer leaves on Microsoft.
My favorite part isn’t the bullshit ego stroking the article gives Ballmer.
No, my favorite part is Jean-Louis Gassée in the comments:

No mention whatsoever of Ballmer’s many misses: music, search, maps, phones, tablets, windows 8, king of browsers Internet Explorer dethroned by Google, social networks.
Whatever, those are just little details.
Nothing to see here.

Speaking of people who are great at writing, Clay Shirky’s post on the failure of Healthcare.gov is spot-on.
I could blockquote the whole thing, but here’s just a few nuggets I loved:

It’s certainly true that Federal IT is chronically challenged by its own processes. But the biggest problem with Healthcare.gov was not timeline or budget. The biggest problem was that the site did not work, and the administration decided to launch it anyway.
And:
The idea that “failure is not an option” is a fantasy version of how non-engineers should motivate engineers. That sentiment was invented by a screenwriter, riffing on an after-the-fact observation about Apollo 13; no one said it at the time. (If you ever say it, wash your mouth out with soap. If anyone ever says it to you, run.) Even NASA’s vaunted moonshot, so often referred to as the best of government innovation, tested with dozens of unmanned missions first, several of which failed outright.

Failure is always an option. Engineers work as hard as they do because they understand the risk of failure. And for anything it might have meant in its screenplay version, here that sentiment means the opposite; the unnamed executives were saying “Addressing the possibility of failure is not an option.”
And one more:
An effective test is an exercise in humility; it’s only useful in a culture where desirability is not confused with likelihood.
The launch of Healthcare.gov has been an embarrassing mess.

Forbes contributor Mark Fidelman says Microsoft will overtake Apple in 3 years.
And that, my friends, is the comedy to start your weekend.

John Gruber is confused:

I still don’t get what Medium is. These new features certainly look pretty, but they make me more confused than ever regarding what Medium, as a whole, is.
Just read Ev Williams’ blurb at the bottom of his Medium page:
I make systems that encourage typing and thinking (Blogger, Twitter, Medium).
Medium is a blogging platform in my eyes (Blogger ‘2.0’). Yeah, I know their goal is to redefine what a magazine is, and I think becoming blog-like is part of it. There’s also a lot of semantical things happening. People saying the same thing with different words.

via Yimmy’s Yayo

BGR: Even Android users want iPads instead of Android tablets

The iPad was a top Black Friday seller, even among Android users. According to a report by InfoScout, about 40% of Black Friday iPad purchases were by Android users. These numbers are certainly good news for Apple. They suggest that Android users are not particularly loyal to their platform and are willing to try out iOS, at least on the tablet. While Amazon, Microsoft and Google tout their tablets, the iPad continues to be the most used device by a long shot, with 84.3% usage.
None of the reports about the discrepancy between Android devices sold and Android devices used surprise me based on what I see in the “real” world. Every time I travel, I always see a majority of iPads and iPhones to a minority of Android tablets and phones.
I’ll admit to seeing more Samsung Galaxy phones than I used to, but the Android tablets must be hiding, because I don’t see them.

via M.A.D. Gallery via The Verge

So says MG Siegler after reading the review of the Sony Smartwatch 2.
I can’t disagree with him, the thing looks craptastic.
It sounds like it’s slightly better than the first version.

Over at the Guardian, Liz Bury wrote an article about a survey finding 62% of 16 to 24-year-olds prefer traditional books over their digital equivalents.
I was instant messaging with DE contributor Bryan Larrick about this and he made a great point: the real story is that 38% of young adults prefer e-books. The Guardian has the headline backwards.
Bryan had more exhaust: “So in about 10 years, e-books have eroded the print market to the point that 38% of teens prefer them? That is a massive disruption that hasn’t been seen, ever.”
We used to call Blackberries and Palm Treos, ‘smartphones’. Now? Not so much.
What we call ‘e-books’ today will be different years from now and so too will peoples’ preferences for or against them.

Virgin America now lets you use electronics during takeoff and landing
About fucking time.
For the record I never turn off my electronics during takeoff and landing, nor do I put my iPhone into Sleep Mode because I know it’s all a bunch of bullshit.
Happy to see I’m right. I love being right.
As comedian Tom Green said recently in his stand-up act (I’m paraphrasing), “You make us go through security checkpoints with X-ray scanners, but you’re using the ‘honor system’ and trusting I turned off my phone?”

The Verge: AOL reportedly wants to sell Winamp to Microsoft
AOL? Winamp? Microsoft?
Am I back in college?

Hat tip to my brother for pointing out the new Compose icon in Twitter for iOS:

Seriously, Twitter, this isn’t the era of Sherlock Holmes. The magnifying glass is ok, everyone uses that.
The quill? Now we’re pushing it.