512 Pixels

David Chartier:

Dropbox continues to improve and innovate, making the service more accessible, faster, and even more secure. As part of this progress, Dropbox will disable its legacy API—the bridge that lets apps talk to Dropbox—in favor of its next-generation API on September 1st.

As we all know, sync and innovating are hard work, so we sympathize with Dropbox’s need to retire an old API that’s done its bit for king and country. If you use 1Password 3 for iOS and sync through Dropbox, you need to take action before September 1. If you use any other 1Password apps, they are already built for Dropbox’s next-generation API; you don’t need to do anything.

If you haven’t upgraded to 1Password 4 for iOS, the universal app is currently on sale for $7.99.

I have some downloading to do.

This week, Myke, Federico and I review rap records, customer service at electronic stories and Italian car advertisements. Federico then yells about Apple’s cloud services, and we discuss passwords in Chrome and the iPad’s interface.

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Matt Alexander, on the muting ability of certain social media platforms and apps:

On the surface, it sounds perfectly acceptable. You grow tired of a certain topic or the exhaustive sharing habits of certain friends, and, without going all the way to remove them from your day-to-day experience, you simply quiet the portions of noise that bother you the most.

In a world of highly-curated opinions, deeply polarizing and heavily-politicized views, and rampant tribalism in the consumer sphere, however, the ability to simply remove certain opinions that are not adherent with your own is irrefutably dangerous.

The problem really isn’t with muting, despite Matt’s headline.

Here’s some more:

For all of this I mean to simply argue that when you’re next confronted with an opinion you disagree with on Twitter, a website, or another such outlet, do not simply tune it out. Equally, do not reflexively attempt to counter. Instead, simply absorb and consider. Keep it in mind.

Like I said, the problem isn’t with muting. The feature is what keeps me in Tweetbot. The ability to ban tweets all tied to a certain event or conference which I give zero craps about keeps my timeline nice and neat.

Muting is for nerds; tuning out others is mainstream. The problem Matt writes about is a huge one.

Here in the United States, most political issues split the country right up the middle. People hang out in their camps, ignoring the other side. It’s easy to change the channel and think everyone agrees with you.

For example, I think most know that I tend to vote left of center on most subjects. I can ignore Fox News and my mostly Republican family on Facebook. I can subscribe to subreddits where people think “Obamacare” is a good thing, and avoid those with GOP in the title.

That’s not a good thing, but at the same time, I really don’t care enough to do anything about it.

I’m not alone in that.

In closing, Matt wrote:

We have more power than ever in terms of shaping the way we comprehend our world — business, media, politics, or otherwise — and, although it might take more work, I’d say opening yourself up to opinions outside of your own is of the utmost importance.

That ain’t a problem caused — or solved by — a Twitter client.

I love me some Stephen Colbert.

Late last year, LEGO announced that the company would be moving forward with a Back To The Future DeLorean after fans at LEGO’s CUUSOO community went crazy for the design. ¹

Last week, it went on sale in the US. Here’s mine.

The DeLorean can be configured in three different modes:

• The original, from the first movie, complete with the “OUTATIME” license plate and lead-lined plutonium tank.
• The flying version from the second film. In this setup, the car is equipped with its futuristic barcode license plate and Mr. Fusion reactor for powering the time circuits.
• The somewhat-rigged version found in the third film, complete with 1950s-era Doc engineering strapped to the hood and red rims. Sadly, LEGO didn’t include whitewall tires.

After building all three, I reverted to the original, 1985 configuration, but the “Old West” version is my second-favorite of the the three.

The car isn’t very big. In fact, it’s just a touch longer than the iPhone 5 is tall. The wheels look a little out of place on all three models, and the whole thing is much more fragile than other LEGO projects I’ve built recently. The doors are especially flimsy; I knock them off almost every time I move the thing, as that’s where my hand goes naturally to pick it up.

Those niggles aside, it’s a great model. While I may be a few years too young to have really enjoyed Back to the Future, the trilogy holds a special place in my heart — and now on my desk.

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My friend Shawn’s new project is now for sale:

This book does not include any step-by-step design guides or product development runsheets that would apply to a specific project or trade — the scope of our creative industry is so broad, encompassing print design, web design, development, music, photography, and writing to name a few. Rather, the focus is on addressing the finest goal a person in our industry can have: to create substantive work that delights and excites our audience.

I spent some time listening to it last night, and boy, is it good. Drop the extra nine dollars for the audio. If you work in the creative field as a designer, editor or even manager, this is an investment you need to make.

MG Siegler:

Here’s the thing that most people, and certainly many in the tech press, don’t seem to understand about Amazon, and by extension, Bezos: when it comes to business, there’s a game being played almost flawlessly.

The goal is actually to not make a huge profit too early, and Bezos manages it perfectly. You want to avoid showing your cards too early as you continue to lay the groundwork for an ever-larger business. Occasionally, you’ll have to show those cards and win a hand to prove that you can. But the rest of the time you call and fold, as you await the monster to take the entire pot.

Jack Shafer at Reuters:

In acquiring the Washington Post, Bezos enters a business that is not radically different from the ones he already owns. Reporters and editors like to think their literary arts are central to newspapering. But it’s better to think of a newspaper as a coordination problem that manufacturing and distribution solves daily: Copy, art, and advertising is beamed from newsroom to printing plant, bundled newspapers flow from the plant to trucks, are transferred to carriers, and are delivered to your front door. Nobody knows more about deadline deliveries and distribution than Bezos’s Amazon, which has spoiled several nations with its reliable service. I can’t imagine what plans Bezos has for the print edition of the paper—if I did, I’d be worth $25.2 billion—but I’m confident that he will maximize the value of the existing Post delivery system in novel ways. It would not surprise me to see him use the Post network of trucks and carriers to enter the local delivery business as a pilot project. Obviously, he’s learned a lot from same-day delivery he could share with the paper.

Paul Farhi:

The Washington Post Co. has agreed to sell its flagship newspaper to Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos, ending the Graham family’s stewardship of one of America’s leading news organizations after four generations.

Bezos, whose entrepreneurship has made him one of the world’s richest men, will pay $250 million in cash for The Post and affiliated publications to the Washington Post Co., which owns the newspaper and other businesses.

It’s important to note that this transaction will take place separate from Amazon, a fact Bezos mentioned in his memo to WaPo staffers:

I won’t be leading The Washington Post day-to-day. I am happily living in “the other Washington” where I have a day job that I love. Besides that, The Post already has an excellent leadership team that knows much more about the news business than I do, and I’m extremely grateful to them for agreeing to stay on.

Bezos goes on to write that “the Internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs.”

Famously, newspapers have not faired well in the age on instant — and free — news. Bezos surely knows this, and hints that “experiments” will be taking place in the future to address this.

All in all, I really don’t know what to think about this. It’s really weird, but if anyone is crazy enough to try to save print journalism, maybe it’s Jeff Bezos.

Of course, maybe Bezos doesn’t care about the word print in that phrase…

Wired takes a look at the Cult of Newton.

In college, I used an upgraded MessagePad 2000 to take notes in class. I had the official hardware keyboard, and synced it all back to my PowerBook. This article makes me want to pick one up again.