Year: 2012
Fifty Foot Shadows: Something Old
John’s photo of this classic Mac is my new wallpaper. As with all of his work, this image is stunning.
‘Flicking Around the Metro’
This week, on America’s favorite techno-music-infused podcast, Myke and I talk about Windows 8.
On Readability and Income
I’m with Ben — I really don’t like the sound of this.
The sad truth is that:
- Most users don’t like paying for things.
- Running a service costs money.
So, Readability, Instagram and other startups offer free services, and try to make money on the back end of things. Often, this means ads get inserted in to placed they weren’t previously. With Readability, does this mean ads in an Unread List?
I’d much rather pay Marco $5 and know that Instapaper will stay around — and stay good — for a long time to come.
University of Memphis Launches ‘Social Commerce’ Minor
This fall the University of Memphis will launch a degree minor in social commerce through the Department of Marketing & Supply Chain Management in the Fogelman College of Business & Economics. Using core and emerging social technologies built on established marketing and communications principles, students will learn how to engage consumers effectively through technology-centric channels.
[…]
“We developed this minor because so many businesses of all sizes and from different industries were looking for help in the area of social media,” said Dr. Marla Royne Stafford, First Tennessee Professor of Marketing and chair of the Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management. “By developing a minor, we are able to create a program that covers a unique set of skills that can be utilized in a wide range of businesses. We believe that this minor will prepare students for effectively utilizing social media in their careers.”
‘Competing With Free’
On his podcast this week, Marco Arment talked about Instapaper’s newly-revived rival, Readability. He is very open about his history with the other company, and talks about how he works in the ever-growing market for “Read it later” apps. It’s the best episode of any podcast I’ve heard in several weeks — be sure to check it out.
The 2S
The new iPad is going to have almost identical specs to the iPad 2, just with a new display. Yes, it is a big, important feature, but it’s only one feature. Siri is a huge feature — the ability to literally speak with your phone — but it only earned the iPhone 4S status as an “evolutionary” product.
That’s a good point, but I think Apple is going to make a huge deal out of the Retina Display. I’d be surprised if the new iPad gains the “2S” title.
On Linked Lists
This morning, I posted a survey, asking readers what they thought about linked lists, and the lack of a true, DF-Style list here on 512 Pixels. Here are the results:
I’m in the group that likes things they way they are. I have switched the RSS sponsor links to link-style posts, and will be thinking this subject over in the coming weeks. As always, thanks for reading, no matter how I have things set up.
Adobe Launches Lightroom 4 [Updated]
The new version adds basic video editing and playing, integrated maps that support GPS data, new content-aware auto-fix, more localized adjustment brushes, and integrate book creation tools. Upgraders from any previous version will only pay $79.
The full retail price is now $149.
I switched to Lightroom 3 about 4 months ago, after using Aperture for some time. I mainly did so because Lightroom allows users to keep their photos in simple folders in Finder, while Aperture (and iPhoto) put everything in to a database, making data portability (and possible corruption) a real issue.
Even on my Core i7 MacBook Pro with 8 GB RAM, Aperture 3 was a dog. With a 100 GB database, it was almost unusable at points. Lightroom, however, never feels slow, with the same number of photos.
The first complaint people cite when talking about Lightroom is the lack of an easy way to export photos for iOS. However, since iTunes can sync photos from a folder (or set of folders, to be more accurate), syncing photos isn’t as hard as some people might claim.
In ~/Pictures, I keep a “For iOS” folder, with sub-folders for all by albums. You can unpack this .zip file to see screenshots of my export settings.
Lastly, Adobe offers fantastic RAW support. They’ve has led the way on this, in my opinion, for some time. While I don’t always shoot in RAW (especially as my iPhone 4S is my main camera these days), I know that when I do, I have full control of my files with Lightroom.
Update: Holy cow. It totally seems that Aperture doesn’t require users to store items in the database anymore. Thanks everyone who emailed me — I appreciate the information, but I still don’t think I’ll be switching back.
On iPad 3 Liveblogs
I’ve already got The Verge’s bookmarked.
Sponsor: Denso →
Thanks to Denso for sponsoring the 512 Pixels RSS feed this week.
Denso is a video app for people who don’t know what to watch.
Create personalized video channels by connecting your Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and Google Reader accounts.
Connect your Instapaper, Readability and Evernote accounts to Denso so you can bookmark videos from around the web to Watch Later.
Browse from our carefully curated list of channels which have an eclectic mix of interesting videos.
See what all the fuss is about. It’s Free on the App Store and the Android Market.
Growing iCloud →
Neven Mrgan doesn’t think 5 GB will be enough for iPad 3 users.