512 Pixels

John Gruber:

I worry that it’s toxic to combine advertising sales with an exclusive app for playback. Advertisers want tracking? You got it — in Stitcher. The end goal here is lock-in, and so I think it’s worth fighting right from the start, even at the expense of a few thousand additional listeners for my show. Maybe they’ll never become dominant. Maybe even if they do, they won’t do anything to promote lock-in. But now is the only time to resist the possibility that they’ll grow dominant and abuse their position. It’s too late once it happens.

I’m not as worried with services that re-host files — like Google Play — as Gruber is, but I agree that locking advertising to a select platform is bad for the industry.

Steven Perlberg at the WSJ:

Media company E.W. Scripps Co. has continued its push into podcasting with the acquisition of Stitcher for $4.5 million in cash.

Stitcher is a free app that streams more than 65,000 podcasts from publishers ranging from NPR to MSNBC to The Wall Street Journal. It will operate under Midroll Media, the podcast advertising company that Scripps acquired last year for $50 million, plus $10 million more over three years if the company hits certain milestones.

Adam Symson, chief digital officer at Scripps is quoted as saying:

We certainly have the ad sales force and the connections that make us a leader in the space, but today we depend almost exclusively on distribution into other channels. This puts in place, with a very strong brand, another piece of the puzzle in the ecosystem play.

In many ways, this seems like a pretty simple thing to understand. Having a distribution platform gives Midroll some space to play. I can see a future in which all shows on Stitcher are “powered” by Midroll ads. While I’m sure that’s good business for E.W. Scripps, it sure doesn’t seem the open future I think podcasting deserves.¹

Totes doomed.

If you do any work with audio on your Mac, Audio Hijack is for you. With it, you can record any application’s audio and get an audio file for use wherever you like.

If you can hear it, Audio Hijack can record it.

Podcasters the world over use Audio Hijack to record their shows. Whether it’s simply capturing their own mic and applying audio effects, or record Skype conversations, Audio Hijack is a podcaster’s best friend. Of course, you don’t need to be creating content to make good use of Audio Hijack. You can save a Skype conversation with an elderly relative, record a web stream from Safari, and so much more.

If you’ve ever wanted to record audio on your Mac, Audio Hijack is here to assist. Learn more and download the free trial.

Mark Bergen has a look at Nest’s new CEO. It’ll be interesting to see if his past roles in the security sector help Nest move to what seems inevitable — making home security systems a lot smarter.

In an interview with Ashlee Vance at Bloomberg:

Bloomberg: The internet says you might be a tyrant. Are you a tyrant?

Fadell: You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. That style may not be for everyone. But, you know, there are people that worked with me years ago at General Magic, and they have their kids working for me now. If it was true, it would get around like crazy. The Valley’s a small place. I’ve been here 25 years, right?

To me, it’s truly, what’s your mindset? Are you coming to work? Are you truly respecting the mission we’re on? Yes, things are going to go up and down. But because we have a true respect for the people, because they respect what we’re trying to do, we’ll get through anything together. And that’s what counts, right?

Bloomberg: What do you wish you had done differently at Nest?

Fadell: I don’t know of any regrets that I have.

I can understand getting stuff done at the cost of other things, but it’s easy to argue that Nest isn’t actually getting stuff done. That aside, no project or product is worth being a dick.

Tony Fadell:

While there is never a perfect time to transition, we’ve grown Nest to much more than a thermostat company. We’ve created a hardware + software + services ecosystem, which is still in the early growth stage and will continue to evolve to move further into the mainstream over the coming years. The future of Nest is equally as bright given the strong and experienced leadership team in place, as well as the two-year product roadmap we’ve developed together to ensure the right future direction.

Although this news may feel sudden to some, this transition has been in progress since late last year and while I won’t be present day to day at Nest, I’ll remain involved in my new capacity as an advisor to Alphabet and Larry Page. This will give me the time and flexibility to pursue new opportunities to create and disrupt other industries – and to support others who want to do the same – just as we’ve done at Nest. We should all be disrupters!

Given all the drama that’s been leaking out of Nest, this isn’t shocking news. I’ve got several Nest products, and I really do like the company. I think this is probably the right move.

The Tribune Publishing Company, owner of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and more is rebranding:

Tribune Publishing Co. today announced that the Company will change its name to tronc, Inc., a content curation and monetization company focused on creating and distributing premium, verified content across all channels. tronc, or tribune online content, captures the essence of the Company’s mission. tronc pools the Company’s leading media brands and leverages innovative technology to deliver personalized and interactive experiences to its 60 million monthly users.

[…]

Chairman Michael Ferro said, “Our industry requires an innovative approach and a fundamentally different way of operating. Our transformation strategy – which has attracted over $114 million in growth capital – is focused on leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve the user experience and better monetize our world-class content in order to deliver personalized content to our 60 million monthly users and drive value for all of our stakeholders. Our rebranding to tronc represents the manner in which we will pool our technology and content resources to execute on our strategy.”

I sorta passed out there in the middle of that blockquote, but I’m sure this will save newspapers.

Long before Jony Ive would be locked in his all-white room, Apple used product videos to show off new products. Here’s the iMac’s:

This isn’t great. iCloud Music Library/iTunes Match/Whatever The Hell It Is Called has been up and down for a couple of days now.

Update: It’s now way worse.

Apple loves a good television ad. Here are a bunch from the iMac G3 era:

This is going to take a lot of getting used to, AP Stylebook. Standing here today, I’m not a fan of the change.

Of course, I can’t buy a digital copy of the 2016 AP Stylebook in iBooks, for the Kindle or even as a PDF yet. The 2015 version is still the newest on digital shelves, but all the AP is currently offering is a spiral-bound book or an online subscription.

Sigh.