Year: 2012

The Tools & Toys Christmas Catalog →

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It’s almost Christmas Shopping Season, and you should know what that means — the Tools & Toys Christmas Catalog is back. If you’re shopping for the pickiest of gadget geeks, software aficionados, snowboard junkies, music lovers, writers, coffee nuts, or all around collectors of fine paraphernalia, save yourself some hassle and check out what Shawn’s put together.

If you aren’t subscribed to the RSS feed, you should be. Each day, Shawn and I work to pick out awesome items for sale on the Internet. There’s a little something for everyone.

Sinofsky Out →

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Sam Byford:

Steven Sinofsky, the Microsoft executive in charge of Windows, has left the company. Julie Larson-Green is to assume control of Windows software and hardware engineering, and CFO Tami Reller will be in charge of the Windows business. The changes are effective immediately, and no reason was given for Sinofsky’s departure.

A couple of things come to mind.

First, is this a sign that Ballmer is unhappy with Windows 8? If so, why didn’t he step in sooner.

Secondly, putting the CFO in charge of your biggest product doesn’t seem like the best idea. If Microsoft is unhappy with Windows 8, why not put someone who can execute some changes in charge?

When Apple let Forstall go a couple of weeks ago, we all felt relieved when we saw who had been put in charge of iOS and its design. Maybe Reller can do it, but on the surface of it, I’m not impressed with this change.

All this aside, there sure is some big talent on the market for hire.

‘Siri Isn’t A Sexy Librarian’ →

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Kontra:

Obviously, no new platform as far-reaching as Siri comes without issues and risks. It also doesn’t help that the two commercial online successes Apple has had, iTunes and App Store, were done in another era of technology and still contain vestiges of many operational shortcomings. More recent efforts such as MobileMe, Ping, Game Center, iCloud, iTunes Match, Passbook, etc., have been less than stellar. Regardless, Siri stands as a monumental opportunity both for Apple as a transactional money machine and for its users as a new paradigm of discovery and task completion more approachable than any we’ve seen to date. In the end, Siri is Apple’s game to lose.

The Damage →

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My buddy PJ just got some good news:

So, the cancer seems to be gone. For now, at least, it looks like we’ve won the battle. It caught us off-guard with its first sneak attack, and took a part of my body as a trophy, but we fought back hard.

PJ — like my son — will undergo regular scans and blood work for the rest of his life. Once cancer is present, it can come back meaner and uglier than before. We’ve had many of Josiah’s “little friends” lose the second or third round to the disease.

PJ continues:

I think most people will think my fight is over, now that the CT scans are clean…as long as we can keep the cancer from re-invading my body, of course. I don’t blame them for thinking that. It’s the kind of thing I would’ve thought, in my past life.

Unfortunately, that’s simply not the case. The damage the cancer inflicted upon me is done–and it’s not just physical.

I have no idea how deep that damage goes, but I have to start examining it.

He’s right. Cancer is a real bastard, and it climbs its way in to ever facet of life not only of its victims, but of their families and friends, too. I am a different man today than I was the day we got the news of Josiah’s cancer. It broke me in ways that can never be repaired, but I’d like to think that if I ever come out on the other end I won’t only be a stronger man, but a better one, too.

He closes:

It’s strange—in a way, receiving the news that I’m cancer free felt a lot like receiving the news that I had cancer. It’s massive news. So massive, it’s hard for me to comprehend. So massive, it still feels like it’s happening to someone else.

Three and a half years in to this thing, and it still feels alien and foreign. Just like the disease itself.

Truly Asking →

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Sam Biddle:

The web is great for volume, but for the deep touch, you still need to act like an actual human being. You need to actually hear someone’s voice—or at least pull a long, private email out of them. We’re all insecure, finite monkeys who don’t want to admit weakness and fragility in a place where thousands of people can read it. That’s normal. It’s not normal to expect someone to put forth their panic, storm anxiety, fear, and general angst on Facebook. We put the people we want to be on Facebook, not the people we are. And sometimes those people are generally terrified of a storm—or something else—and not doing fine. You’ll never know unless you truly ask.

I’ve come to realize that just because a friendship mainly takes place on the Internet doesn’t make it less real. However, real communication, in person or on the phone is invaluable to keep our connections alive.

Back to the Moon →

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Sean Hollister:

50 years ago, President John F. Kennedy told the United States that man would go to the moon. Soon, another American president may announce that the same celestial body will serve as a waypoint for manned space exploration. The Verge has learned that NASA intends to deploy a robotic lunar rover on the Moon in 2017 to search for water and other resources necessary for space travel, and that NASA may have secured support from the White House for an actual manned outpost — a space station — floating above the far side of the moon.

I’m excited about this. It’s a real shame we spent so much time on the shuttle program while the moon was well within our reach.

A Toxic Compulsion →

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Robin Sloan:

For me, the iPhone had become a toxic compulsion. It had completed its invasion and occupation of my interstitial time — all those minutes riding the train, waiting in line, that used to be such fertile territory for daydreaming and storymaking. So I canceled my AT&T plan and switched to a bare-bones Nokia on a pay-as-you-go plan.

And sure enough: in the months since the liberation of my interstitial time, I’ve been daydreaming more, jotting down scraps of stories again.

Newsonomics →

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Ken Doctor:

The Romney crowd was overwhelmingly white and older. The Obama crowd was mixed in color and younger in age.

[…]
Around noon Wednesday, I started hearing a voice inside my election-addled head: Where else had I seen numbers like these? Where had I heard that Politico description? Who else was getting a really good market share of a smaller and smaller slice of the population?

Ah, yes: the newspaper industry.

Ouch.