- Don Norman: Google doesn’t get people, it sells them – “But in fact the advertisers are the users and you are the product.”
- The Problem With Online Ads – This is why I tend to buy apps I like, even those with free versions. I prefer being a customer to being a target for advertisers.
Category: Links
- Gallery: Iron Man, Other Pop Icons Become My Little Pony Sculptures – My Little Pony has a dark side too.
- What they’re “protecting” us from – “Every single person who’d attack Steve Jobs on any of these grounds is, demonstrably, worse at business than Jobs. They’re unqualified to assert that liberal values are bad for business, when the demonstrable, factual, obvious evidence contradicts those assertions.”
- Open Finder folder in Terminal – Ooh, neat. Almost worth upgrading to Lion for this alone. (Warning: not in the least bit true for most people.)
- Losing the HP Way – “In today’s world of MBA-managed companies, R&D is perceived as not being a good use of money.” And HP used to be a great engineering company. Sad.
- The IBM PC is 30 today – Look how far we’ve come in thirty years…
- photoshoplooter – I think this is a typically British response to the rioting currently going on around the UK this week.
- Social Media Propaganda Posters – “Be brief! The enemy might be listening in!”
- Norway attacks: Oslo hit by bomb explosion and youths shot at camp – Shocking. Both because it’s Norway and because it’s a city that I’ve spent a lot of time in.
- The Rise and Fall of the Independent Developer – “My fear is that It’s only a matter of time before developers find the risks and expenses prohibitive and retreat to the safety of a larger organization. We’ll be going back to square one.”
- The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s choice is beyond belief – “But what these cases illustrate is that in certain areas compromise is not possible because the rights of different minorities are mutually exclusive. When one group refuses to fulfil its job description because it disapproves of another group, there is no middle ground, no give and take.”
- Turnabout is fair play – “This is so wonderfully, evilly devious. Superficially, it seems to support creationist methods—but what it actually is is a grand reductio ad absurdam.”
- Google’s Business Model – Who is the customer and what is the product? (via @daringfireball)
- Björk: ‘Manchester is the prototype’ – “Biophilia is the Icelandic singer’s new project – the word means ’love of living things’ – and promises to push the envelope so far you’ll need the Hubble telescope to see it.”
- Apple Engineer Fashions Computer Out of Legos – I never quite got this advanced with technical lego…
- United Kingdom and Ireland as seen from ISS – Wow.
- Enough Is Enough – “The whole [Lodsys] thing is nuts. I can’t understand why our goverment allows this shit to go on. "
- Android App Removals Cast Doubt on Google’s ‘Openness’ – “It’s certainly more open than Apple’s platform. But really, that’s like being a taller midget.”
- iCloud’s real purpose is to kill Windows – “What this requires from Apple is a bold move that Microsoft would never make: Jobs is going to sacrifice the Macintosh in order to kill Windows. He isn’t beating Windows, he’s making Windows inconsequential.”
- Microsoft joins pre-emptive patent protection program – Software patents are not really popular, even with companies that (in theory) should benefit from them…