December 2009
19 posts
Say hello to youtu.be links →
The ShortUrl invasion continues, now YouTube has its own version:
To use youtu.be manually, simply take a URL like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdeioVndUhs and replace the “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=” with “http://youtu.be/” to get: http://youtu.be/FdeioVndUhs Plug that shorter URL into a browser, and you’ll see it redirects to that video.
Doesn’t...
Na'vi is the new Klingon
After watching Avatar, I was particularly interested by the language spoken by the alien beings. Turns out that they created a whole language for it. Its creator even posted some of the rules.
Mag+ digital magazines concept from Berg →
Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.
The Mag+ digital magazines concept from Berg, above, is the most radical -yet elegant- of the recent magazine concepts I’ve seen. It takes the biggest leap in reinventing the interface, but with objective of recreating the current experience.
They also take into account the magazines creation process, saying:
The design has an eye to how paper magazines...
Flashless. Safari Mac plug-in to minimize the use... →
Flashless lets you block Flash but still be able to preview an image of the video. It’s surprising how much resources this saves. It can also play the video without Flash if Quicktime supports it.
When Turbo is enabled in Opera, it also blocks Flash. Maybe we should allow this feature at all times.
Droplr is a quick and easy way to share files on the Mac.
I’m a little perplexed with this app. It really doesn’t do anything revolutionary. For that matter, 99% of its features are easily reproduced with either one or a few apps already installed.
However, it makes it extremely easy to share, and it does it well. Just grab a file, picture, text or Url and drop in on its icon, and...
Morgan Stanley: mobile internet is going to be... →
Morgan Stanley has published The Mobile Internet Report. It uses more than 770 slides and 424 pages to say:
New and surviving players in the mobile stage will be big winners
The mobile internet is going to be bigger than the desktop internet
3G, social networks, video, VoIP, and cool mobile devices are the new thing
Apple and Facebook have huge platforms
If you look back at desktop internet...
Sh.rt Ur.ls are the new thi.ng
With this post I’m trying out Google’s new URL shortening service http://goo.gl/. It currently only works with the Google Toolbar and Feedburner service, but surely they will soon make it available for everybody.
In my case, it’s substituting Twitterfeed, a service that grabs a RSS feed and can post it to twitter or Facebook. Since I already use Feedburner to handle my feed, I...
Deconstructing the Publishing Houses stupidity
This week the WSJ reported (here and here) that Simon & Schuster, Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group and HarperCollins are going to delay eBooks releases for a few months after the hardcover comes out.
Needless to say I believe this is a terrible idea. But as I read some of the executive’s comments, I found myself talking back to the computer screen just like I do when I...
Media Firms to Unveil Joint Venture for Digital... →
Shira Ovide and Russell Adams on WSJ.com:
The message from many print-industry executives is that they don’t want to end up like the music industry, which they say lost control of the business amid the explosive growth of Apple’s iTunes and iPod music players.
Apple took a stubborn music industry by surprise and redefined music with the iPod. The movie and TV industry hedged...
Namebench - DNS Benchmark Utility →
With the release of the Google Public DNS service, I’ve been wondering how big of deal DNS servers really are.
Namebench is a Google 20% project that finds and benchmarks that fastest DNS providers for your location. It’s free and cross-platform.
If you don’t know what Domain Name System is, don’t worry about it for now.
Kindle Fantasies Are Running Wild. But, For Now,... →
Rory Maher and Henry Blodget on a TBI Research report. As always with any report that guestimates numbers (Amazon doesn’t publish any Kindle sales info), it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. But if their sources are right, it paints an interesting picture:
Book publishers are standing their ground on wholesales prices – selling books at about $12 to distributors regardless of if...
Barnes & Noble Nook eBook reader review roundup
Overall it looks like very solid hardware on software that’s not ready. I imagine this has a lot to do with why it missed the holiday season.
Engadget:
the Nook is an intriguing product launched by a powerful force in the world of booksellers, but the initial offering feels long on promises and short on delivery. With the right software revisions, the Nook could be a tsunami, but as it...
George Carlin's son Amazon review of his dad's... →
K. Carlin review of Last Words: A Memoir,
Okay, so I AM biased. BUT! I even learned things about my dad that I didn’t know. So imagine, if you are a fan, how fun it will be for you. My dad kept his inner life pretty close to his chest, and in this book he shows his hand fully.
Huge George Carlin fan. Added to my wish list.
Times Skimmer by The New York Times →
The Times Skimmer puts NYTimes stories into a grid-like layout. From the press release:
The application is designed to fit and move for optimal viewing on different screen sizes and browsers. Readers can select from seven different display options to choose the layout that best meets their interests and preferences.
The normal web site is still easier to “skim” while browsing,...
The setup: tools used by famous geeks →
I’ve love reading how other people Setup their computers. I specially enjoy the corner cases: those who have everything meticulously arranged to their liking (my camp), while many others do amazing things without even changing the desktop background.
The Sports Illustrated Tablet Demo is something... →
Recent concepts like this Sports Illustrated tablet demo and Wired’s iTablet, makes it very hard for me to imagine the current eBook devices being part of the future of magazines.
Unlike concerns and denials of the music and movie industry when their digital day of reckoning came, the magazine industry seems to be eagerly awaiting the new devices to place their content.
Five million words in 50 years on an Olivetti... →
Patricia Cohen on the NYTimes.com:
Cormac McCarthy has written more than a dozen novels, several screenplays, two plays, two short stories, countless drafts, letters and more — and nearly every one of them was tapped out on a portable Olivetti manual typewriter he bought in a Knoxville, Tenn., pawnshop around 1963 for $50.
This makes me look at all the tools I use to write: WriteRoom,...
Start-up Visas Can Jump-Start the Economy →
Paul Kedrosky and Brad Feld on the WSJ.com:
Immigrants have not only founded big, well-known companies. Foreign-born residents made up just 12.5% of the U.S. population in 2008. But nearly 40% of technology company founders and 52% of founders of companies in Silicon Valley.
I think jump-start the economy is a tall order, but a jump in innovation on the services economy seems very likely. I...
Square: CC processing from any device. This is... →
With a card reader that connects to your device via the audio input jack, Square has the potential to disrupt an industry with very high entrance costs.