So Adobe bought Behance. It will be interesting to see how this acquisition goes.

It tastes a little bit like Comcast’s acquisition of NBCU, where the pipeline bought the content. In the case of Adobe, they make the content creation tools and now they’re buying the showcase holding the creations made with their tools.

I don’t have any positive or negative feels on the deal other than that (yet).

I signed up with Behance a few months ago and posted my updated portfolio after 6 years of procrastination (this was the last major update …in Flash). So far I really like the Behance Network.

I hope Adobe doesn’t mess it up.

Speaking of Notification Center in iOS, Alex Saretzky has some interesting ideas. The point isn’t if they’re perfect. The point is to at least start thinking about how Notification Center can be improved. And it can be.

You can’t know if an idea is good or shitty until you execute it, so points to Saretzky for walking the talk.

via The Loop

via FUCKING HOMEPAGE via thisisnthappiness

I think it’s funny and amazing to see Facebook’s new Poke app tanking in popularity in the Apple’s App Store.

At the tender age of 28, Mark Zuckerberg is already finding himself keeping up with what’s popular with the kids. Not too long ago, he was one of those kids, coding up thefacebook in his dorm room.

Moves like this and Twitter’s decision to make itself look more like Instagram with the inclusion of image filters just make both companies look dumb and out-of-touch.

Feature parity can been really boring and pointless without strategic thinking behind it.

Apple copied Android’s pull-down notifications when they launched Notification Center in iOS 5 in 2011. This is an example of gaining feature parity and giving people something that improved the overall experience of using an iPhone or an iPad.

You always have to ask yourself why you’re doing something. It doesn’t matter if it’s adding new features to your mobile app or buying a new pair of jeans. If you don’t truly believe in the decisions you make, you have no reason to follow through with them.

Saying, “I’m doing this because [fill in person or company name] is doing it.” isn’t enough.

My wife and I are staying at a friend’s apartment on 8th Street and Avenue B in Manhattan for the next few days while she’s in Ireland.

While signing onto her Wifi network, I couldn’t help but read the names of the other networks in the neighborhood, particularly the fifth one down:

I love you New York. You and your messed-up head.

Being home with my parents for the holidays reminds me to thank all customer support people troubleshooting and explaining the details of technology to all the parents and grandparents in the world. I know it can be hard.

Explaining things like:

—the differences between cookies and cache
—the differences between a web browser and Google (or Facebook)
—why iCloud can’t back-up what you’ve saved within a website

And for all you customer support people who suck at helping non-nerds through problems? Learn how to unsuck your people-helping skills. This computer shit isn’t as obvious as it seems to people like you and me.

Nilay Patel on Instagram’s terms of service reversal:

Last night Instagram announced that it was retracting a controversial terms of service change that was widely and inaccurately interpreted to mean that the company would be selling user photos. “Because of the feedback we have heard from you, we are reverting this advertising section to the original version that has been in effect since we launched the service in October 2010,” founder Kevin Systrom wrote in a blog post. “Instagram has no intention of selling your photos, and we never did.”

That certainly sounds like a win for consumers, but it’s actually a loss: the newly-reinstated terms of service clause is objectively worse for users than the new one, and it’s worded far more vaguely — the language feels familiar and comforting, but you’re giving up more rights to your photos. Instead of agreeing that Instagram may only “display” photos “in connection with” advertising, users will now continue to agree that Instagram may place advertising and promotions “on, about, or in conjunction with” their photos.

My images are still on Instagram, but I did use Instaport.me to download an archive of everything.

The recent uproar over Instagram’s terms of service changes got me thinking about paring back where I post my content around the web. I’m not upset about the direction Instagram is going. Maybe a little upset, but they are a company who offers a mobile photo sharing application for free, so this move should be obvious in heinsight, if it wasn’t already obvious in foresight. Remembering they’re owned by Facebook makes this advertising integration even more obvious.

It would be great if Instagram offered a version of their service I could pay for and avoid my images (potentially) being integrated into advertisements. This isn’t happening so I’ve stop posting photos to Instagram. For now.

I might go back to Flickr, but coincidentally I cancelled my Pro Account this past summer because Yahoo has neglected Flickr since they bought it in 2005. Very little has changed or improved upon. People are expecting great things from Yahoo’s new CEO, Marissa Mayer. We’ll see. Maybe she can return Flickr to glory and make it feel relevant again.

So, for now, I’m paring back my usage of other web services.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to create and post content on sites I control: Daily Exhaust & The Combustion Chamber.

Every time theres more bad news about Nokia, the more my ironic this 2009 cover from Fast Company becomes:

I originally posted this on 22 Oct 2009.

Below are a few shots of me at my Grandma’s house in Middle Village, Queens. Early 80’s. Yes, that’s my father’s blue Chevette behind me.

You can barely see it, but behind the Chevette is my Grandma’s ’63 Ford Fairlane in the garage.

My mom made me the Chewy costume by hand. I used to wear it to bed and even tried to wear it school but my mom shot that idea down.

Pretty amazing piece over on the NYTimes.com called Snow Fall.

I have Flash disabled on my machine but they’re using some beautiful, fullscreen animated GIF loops for motion.

I received an early invite to test-drive the new MySpace. Time will tell if they can make a comeback, but they’re definitely doing some interesting things from a UI/Design standpoint.

Hit me up on Twitter if you’d like an invite. I have 7 left.

I’m back in New York and New Jersey for the holidays and it feels good.

Although, it must have been a while since I’ve driven through the Holland Tunnel because this morning I paid $13 to go through.

Seriously, thirteen dollars?

I didn’t even get a cup of coffee or a cookie or anything.

I’ve been reading a lot of articles and blog posts about people leaving Twitter or Facebook, or switching from a smartphone to a ‘dumbphone’.

I like the general idea of hitting the reset button on social networks and technologies. Flushing out the old to make way for the new can be healthy in both your physical and virtual lives.

Earlier this week I decided to unsubscribe from all my RSS feeds. After a week without a healthy new supply of feeds, I’m definitely craving my tech, design and cultural news fixes but as I slowing begin to repopulate my Reeder app with new feeds, I’m realizing my original set of feeds was already pretty paired-down and healthy.

So while technological reset buttons and New Year’s Resolution Gym memberships can be great, what’s better is maintaining your health at closer intervals. Why wait until the end of the year to drop 10 pounds or drop 10 junky RSS feeds? Why not exercise once a day and examine the quality of your feeds once a week?

Maintaining a consistent regimen throughout the year makes any annual ‘check-ups’ must easier and full of less surprises. It also makes drastic measures at the end of the year unnecessary.