Last Friday Michael Sippey released a statement from Twitter, explaining how they’re reigning in their API and how developers can use it:

These efforts highlight the increasing importance of us providing the core Twitter consumption experience through a consistent set of products and tools. Back in March of 2011, my colleague Ryan Sarver said that developers should not “build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience.” That guidance continues to apply as much as ever today. Related to that, we’ve already begun to more thoroughly enforce our Developer Rules of the Road with partners, for example with branding, and in the coming weeks, we will be introducing stricter guidelines around how the Twitter API is used.

One of the bigger websites affected by this move was LinkedIn, where you will no longer see tweets showing up in the activity stream on your homepage.
Some developers reacted by resurrecting ideas for a decentralized Twitter.
So rage-against-the-machine. I love it. You gotta take the powah back! C’mon, C’MON!!!
Pardon me if I come across as a bit abrasive, but while Twitter’s move might throw a monkey wrench in some developers’ plans, can’t Twitter do whatever the fuck it pleases? Maybe, because, well, it’s their product?
These calls to create a decentralized, Twitter-like platform are funny. Services/platforms like Twitter (or Facebook or LinkedIn or AIM) rise to prominence because of people with vision. Now maybe some of these people who are proposing this new decentralized platform have that vision, but I’m not holding my breath.
Platforms, even decentralized ones require money and resources. “Free and open” platforms are rarely free and open. Just ask anyone who gets paid to develop for PHP or Red Hat Linux.
So, Twitter’s move. Bold? Douchey? Yes, but it’s their prerogative.

Vanity Fair has a sneak peak (via DF) of the new article on ‘Microsoft’s Lost Decade’. The next 5-10 years are not going to be a fun time for Microsoft fans. Check out Horace Dediu’s charts of Windows lead over Macs steadily deteriorating since it’s peak in 2004.
This statistic from the VF article slapped me in the face pretty hard:

Today, a single Apple product–the iPhone–generates more revenue than all of Microsoft’s wares combined.

As MG Siegler noted, there’s a lot of smoke around the supposed iPad ‘mini’. Things are only going to get harder for Microsoft as it gets up to speed and merges onto the tablet highway. I have plenty of popcorn in my cabinet. This is going to be a fun show.

I pass this sign often. It’s one of the best ads I’ve ever seen.

You think you’re past it. You no longer sit bolt upright at 2:00 AM, asking yourself what you could have done to save the marriage. You no longer worry that your kid will become a junkie because her parents divorced. You no longer imagine the neighbors finding your dead, naked body in a room full of flies, cats, and pizza boxes. You no longer dread your lawyer’s call.

Zeldman has a lot of guts writing so openly about his divorce.

Sorry, but I love the fact that Clayton Christensen, the guy who introduced us to “disruptive innovation” and “asymmetrical competition” (Yes, he was Horace Dediu’s Jedi master and where Horace got the name for his website, Asymco) was dead wrong about Apple’s iPhone:

So music on the mobile phone is going to disrupt the iPod? But Apple’s just about to launch the iPhone. The iPhone is a sustaining technology relative to Nokia. In other words, Apple is leaping ahead on the sustaining curve [by building a better phone]. But the prediction of the theory would be that Apple won’t succeed with the iPhone. They’ve launched an innovation that the existing players in the industry are heavily motivated to beat: It’s not [truly] disruptive. History speaks pretty loudly on that, that the probability of success is going to be limited.

Just goes to show you even smart people get shit wrong.
Let me take a little sip of this schädenfreude. Mmmmmm.
via DF

The 99 Percent on careers:

We’re at an interesting crossroads in terms of careers. We still want them, but they don’t exist anymore. In the US, the typical job tenure is now 4 years, with most workers cycling through about 11 jobs in their lifetime.*

This post is full of great advice. Obvious to some, but all great none-the-less.
For those of us in ‘creative’ fields, I think ability to cycle through jobs is more common than in other fields. As a web designer, I used to bounce around a lot, from design studio to design studio. Probably more than I should have. I remember telling a good friend I started at a new company and he remarked, “So when’s your last day?”
But back to non-creatives. I think they’re the ones being most affected by the shrinking of job tenure. They’re not as nimble on their toes. They learn a skill, get a job and go on autopilot. Not anymore. Now everyone has to be nimble, responding to changes in the workforce and technology.
The article brings to mind my favorite Charles Darwin quote: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

Surely, this is the sign of maturity: we are finally admitting to ourselves that our appetites are not nearly as ravenous as we thought, our bellies not quite so deep. We’ve realized that the way to make sense of this meal may not be to stay seated at the table, but rather to step away for a while and come back. More than this, these anthologies finally make good on the purpose of all our automated archiving and collecting: that we would actually go back to the library, look at the stuff again, and, god forbid, do something with it.

—Frank Chimero

Awesome stop-motion video of a Triumph Spitfire engine rebuild.
via Laughing Squid

My friend Quigga first introduced to to John Gruber’s site, Daring Fireball around 2005 or 2006. I’ll always associate a 5-point star with his site, as it’s his way of providing links to individual posts on his site (a quick search on archive.org reveals he started DF in 2002, but only began using the 5-point star for post links in 2006). He also uses the star at the beginning of a post title to indicate long form entries, entries warranting more attention than his quick, day-to-day reactions to tech news.
The star derives directly from his logo, a circumscribed star. When I’m scanning through my RSS feeds, the star placement in the favicon, post titles and entry links tells me immediately it’s Daring Fireball.
So why then, all of a sudden, is Ben Brooks using the 5-point star to denote links to posts on his site in his RSS feed? I’ve been following Mr. Brooks loosely for a year or so and I’ve never seen him use the star before. Mr. Brooks started using the star on 28 June 2012. Prior to that, he used an infinity sign (it should be noted he seems to just be using the star on his RSS feed, not his site).
Gruber by no means ‘owns’ the star, but it’s a core part of his brand, and the fact that Ben Brooks also writes about Apple-related news and is a somewhat prominent blogger makes this move feel very douchey.
Below are screen grabs from my iPad Reeder application.
Influencer: Daring Fireball (RSS feed), introduced 2006

Influenced, Brooks Review (RSS feed), introduced 28 June 2012

Scathing review of Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine by Isaac Chotiner:

IMAGINE is really a pop-science book, which these days usually means that it is an exercise in laboratory-approved self-help. Like Malcolm Gladwell and David Brooks, Lehrer writes self-help for people who would be embarrassed to be seen reading it. For this reason, their chestnuts must be roasted in “studies” and given a scientific gloss. The surrender to brain science is particularly zeitgeisty. Their sponging off science is what gives these writers the authority that their readers impute to them, and makes their simplicities seem very weighty. Of course, Gladwell and Brooks and Lehrer rarely challenge the findings that they report, not least because they lack the expertise to make such a challenge.

I’m still reading Imagine, and it’s somewhat interesting, but isn’t grabbing me nearly as much as Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation.

via Drewbot

Ever go to a ball game and forgot where you parked? Yeah, me too. Do you carry an iPhone? Want to know how to never lose your car again?

Here’s how:

1. Drive to destination – mall, sporting event, concert

2. Open Maps application on iPhone and tap bottom left button to locate yourself.

3. Tap bottom right button to reveal Map options and select Drop Pin and walk to your destination

4. When you’re ready to return to your car, open the Maps application again and click on the bottom left location button until the compass is enabled.

5. Walk in the direction of your Dropped Pin (your car) and never feel like a dumbass again