512 Pixels

John Carey at Fifty Foot Shadows, on Instagram and Flickr:

Instagram is built for casual, mass consumption and sharing mostly lifestyle photos. The reactions to these shots of day to day life and “look what I’m doing now” moments are decidedly more quick, friendly, ah ha! sorts of moments. Those using it to share more serious work simply have to come to terms that its a mixed bag of educated reactions within the service (same goes for using Tumblr as a means to share photographic work).

Flickr and other similar services, on the other hand, were built for and perused by a community of fellow photographers, both pro and amateur, and is not as much of a hangout for casual users. While there is still some of the same casual favoriting that happens on Instagram, you can expect your audience to be at least a bit more critical of what they are seeing simply because they are also photographers and in some subtle way, your competition.

Apple:

Podcasts on iTunes launched in the summer of 2005 and since then, we’ve seen countless episodes downloaded and streamed. But the heart of podcasting is finding your favorite voices in this exciting field and subscribing to the best ones. To celebrate 1 billion podcast subscriptions, we’re highlighting some of the most popular podcasts of all times, as well as a collection of captivating new shows.

Lex Friedman at Macworld has more:

Apple says that those billion subscriptions are spread across 250,000 unique podcasts in more than 100 languages, and that more than 8 million episodes have been published in the iTunes Store to date.

After looking at what Apple’s chosen to feature with this promotion, I was surprised that the majority of the shows listed are from mainstream news providers. In addition to being a “new media” outlet for radio and TV news providers, it helps account for the fact that podcasting is much bigger than I thought it was.

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Liz Gannes at All Things D:

The company just sent developers an email explanation, after pushing them off for the past three days with notices that the site was down for maintenance.

Apple says developers’ “sensitive personal information” was encrypted, so it has not been accessed.

Before it reopens the developer site, Apple is “completely overhauling our developer systems, updating our server software, and rebuilding our entire database,” the email said.

Good on Apple for being transparent on this matter. My guess is the company is taking their time to get the right fixes put in place. It’ll be interesting to hear more details if they leak out, but it seems that credit card and password information is safe.

Nicholas Kristof at The New York Times:

It is now 10 years since the Darfur genocide began, and we in the news media have mostly tired of the issue. It’s no longer news that the Sudanese government is slaughtering its people.

Yet our silence empowers Sudan’s leaders to pick up where they left off in Darfur. Indeed, survivors say that one of the leaders in this year’s attacks was Ali Kushayb, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes committed in Darfur a decade ago.

This is why my brother’s work — and the work of others in this field — is so important. We’ve become numb to Darfur and mass atrocities like it.

Kevin Poulsen is the plaintiff in a case concerning the government surveillance of the late Aaron Swartz.

Earlier this year, the Secret Service denied requests to thousands of pages of government notes on Swartz, citing a Freedom of Information Act exemption that can apply to on-going police investigations.

Over at Wired, Poulsen writes:

When the agency ignored my administrative appeal, I enlisted David Sobel, a top DC-based FOIA litigator, and we filed suit. Two weeks ago U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered the government to “promptly” begin releasing Swartz’ records. The government told my lawyer that it would release the first batch tomorrow. But minutes ago, Kollar-Kotelly suspended that order at MIT’s urging, to give the university time to make an argument against the release of some of the material.

In short, MIT — not the Secret Service — stepped in to stop the release of papers that should be released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Here’s Poulsen again:

I have never, in fifteen years of reporting, seen a non-governmental party argue for the right to interfere in a Freedom of Information Act release of government documents. My lawyer has been litigating FOIA for decades, and he’s never encountered it either. It’s saddening to see an academic institution set this precedent.

While I have issues with the exemptions already built in to the laws surrounding FOIA, they should only be applied by a government or police agency, not an institution.

MIT should be ashamed of itself, and the U.S. district court shouldn’t listen to the school’s argument to keep this material private.

via Daring Fireball

After a two-year hiatus, the free video player is back as a universal app. In addition to being the best way to play .mkv files on iOS, the new version brings features like pass code locking videos, Wi-Fi sync from desktop computers, the ability to stream from Dropbox and more.

Ok, fine. I know FeedBurner isn’t dead. But I can’t imagine it will last forever, and as a general rule I don’t like having business-critical things running on Google’s services.

When I moved away from Feedburner, I ended up replacing it with FeedPress, a paid service that gives publishers lots of tools to deal with their RSS feed, including statistics, custom host names, newsletters, and social media posting.

The last was especially important to me.

For years, 512 Pixels has had a Twitter account, which was recently joined by an account on App.net.

While I do tweet and update using these accounts, they primarily exist for readers who want to see my headlines via social media.

For years, I used a WordPress plugin to publish my headlines to Twitter automatically. Most options out there require a developer account at Twitter, but aren’t all that difficult to set up. Many plugins on the market don’t support linked list items, which ruled them out right away.

Recently, App.net launched PourOver, a tool that parses an RSS feed and posts articles as links to the service. It’s simple, easy to set up and supports linked list items. While I’m not using it, PourOver seems like a great option for people not using FeedPress.

I’m happy with FeedPress. They’ve been great to work with, and helped troubleshoot some issues I was seeing with my linked list items. Best of all, FeedPress is a real company with real income, and that makes me feel better about using it. And — thanks to how they re-direct feeds — if I need to make a change in the future, I can keep using my own URL and not have to ask readers to re-subscribe to a new one.

My lawn mower suddenly feels so … inadequate.

This week on The Prompt, we discussed Nokia, Logic Pro X, tinkering, and re-evaluating workflows in light of new OS releases.

Roni Caryn Rabin and Reed Abelson:

State insurance regulators say they have approved rates for 2014 that are at least 50 percent lower on average than those currently available in New York. Beginning in October, individuals in New York City who now pay $1,000 a month or more for coverage will be able to shop for health insurance for as little as $308 monthly. With federal subsidies, the cost will be even lower.

Supporters of the new health care law, the Affordable Care Act, credited the drop in rates to the online purchasing exchanges the law created, which they say are spurring competition among insurers that are anticipating an influx of new customers. The law requires that an exchange be started in every state.

Boom.