512 Pixels

That’s one hell of a chart.

I guess we’ll all be hanging out online at 3AM EDT next Friday.

Honestly, it’s a lot simplier inside than I thought it would be.

This week, with Myke on the road, Federico and I were joined by David Smith to talk about Tim Cook and WatchKit apps.

It was made possible by:

• lynda.com: An easy and affordable way to help individuals and organizations learn. Free 10-day trial.
• Screens: Access your computers from wherever you are.
• Wealthfront: The automated investment service that makes it easy to invest your money the right way.

I can’t decide if this is genius, if society as we know it is over or if Amazon is getting started on April 1 early.

If you want to support 512 Pixels and share your product, app or service with a bunch of good-looking people, I’ve got some openings over the next 8 weeks.

With Mad Men’s final run starting a week from today, The New York Times has published an interview with John Hamm, focusing on some key moments in his character’s time on screen. The first story is about one of the best moments in the show:

Here’s what Hamm says about it:

It’s an important moment in the development of the character, where people go, ‘Oh, this guy’s not just a sweet-talking guy in a fancy suit. He’s a soulful person.’ It was beautifully shot. We didn’t really want to use a working slide projector, they’re crazy noisy, so we had some digital thing. But the slides looked wrong somehow. We had to fix that and make them smudgy. At some point we ended up just running the slide projector in the room. I don’t know [how people were reacting to the speech]. I wasn’t exactly running back to the monitors, seeing how every line was landing. I was pretty focused on myself.

That attention to detail is what makes Mad Men so special, and scenes like this so damn powerful. I’m excited to see how it ends.

Adam Lashinsky’s piece on Tim Cook is worth reading, even if there’s not a ton of new information about Apple’s CEO shared in it. ¹

There, is however, a good bit about how Cook is handling his wealth that, as far as I know, is new:

He plans to give away all his wealth, after providing for the college education of his 10-year-old nephew. There should be plenty left over to fund philanthropic projects. Cook’s net worth, based on his holdings of Apple stock, is currently about $120 million. He also holds restricted stock worth $665 million if it were to be fully vested. Cook says that he has already begun donating money quietly, but that he plans to take time to develop a systematic approach to philanthropy rather than simply writing checks.

It’s unclear from this article if Cook’s move is part of the well-known Giving Project, but either way, it’s a clear extension of what Cook’s been talking about from taking the reigns of Apple: using technology (and the wealth created by it) to impact the world for good.

I love it.

In a post titled “My Work Here is Done:”

So, I’m doing to focus on my family and friends, drop the demands of writing and get back to what it was before—just fun. I won’t be writing new stories, but will attempt to keep up with some of the list-type material on this Web site for reference.

I’ll miss Gary’s insight into Apple, as well as his obsessive love of detail. Over the years, we have traded emails several times, and he’s always been very kind and very helpful. Best of luck, friend.

My buddy Thomas Brand has put together a nice set of links to celebrate the 18th birthday of the Newton MessagePad 2000.

I owned a 2000 for several years in college, complete with Wi-Fi card, keyboard and carrying case. It synced contacts, calendars and more with my PowerBook G4 via an ADB/USB adaptor. I could send and receive email, take class notes and more all on the little green machine.

While some of my classmates would use laptops, no one was using anything like the Newton. This was around 2005 — two years before the iPhone would be announced. Needless to say, I got some looks, but I didn’t care. The Newton was fast, easy to use and offered a lot of things that just weren’t possible at the time without a laptop.

I ended up selling my MessagePad to pay off my wife’s engagement ring, but every once in a while, I cruise eBay looking for a replacement. One of these days, I’ll pull the trigger.

We’ve got some limited-run tshirts for the podcast up on Teespring. If you want to help support Connected directly, now’s the chance.

The current batch of Field Notes is one of my favorites in a long time. I can’t wait to finish out the Pitch Black that is in my pocket and crack one of these open.