512 Pixels

While these guys may have too much free time, I’d totally buy the next iPhone¹ if it looked like that.

Google’s Larry Page, via Claire Cain Miller at the New York Times:

I see this as our responsibility to some extent, trying to improve media. If you ask anyone about how that information’s going to be propagated, what you’re going to focus on, I think it could work a lot better than it does now.

We as an Internet community, we have a responsibility to make those things work a lot better and get people focused on what are the real issues, what should you be thinking about. And I think we as a whole are not doing a good job of that at all.

I think most people’s response¹ to this would be something along this line:

Why should a corporation like Google control the news I see? I don’t like that.

Of course, almost all news comes from big corporations. Fox,² AOL, NBC, Gannett and countless others are all giant corporations. As such, they have — whether or not they admit it — competing interests between delivering the news and making piles and piles of cash.

If Google were to use its weight to lean the news it delivers one way or another, I wouldn’t be happy. But it wouldn’t be anything new.

Michael Laccheo:

The Kindle will let me have a cheap device that won’t heat up in the blistering summer sun, is light enough to hold and read one handed, won’t be affected by glare from the sun, and I won’t mind reading while standing in the pool because for 80 bucks it’s relatively replaceable.

I pre-ordered the Kindle Touch yesterday, but today, canceled that order and got the basic Kindle.

The only reason I went with the Touch was the … well, touch. But the lack of physical page-turn buttons and my lingering doubts on how good the touch might be kept bugging me.

The big potential con of going this route is the lack of a physical or touch-screen keyboard. Moving around the digital keyboard with Amazon’s d-pad is probably going to be a pain, but I don’t ever type on my wife’s 3rd-generation Kindle.

via Shawn Blanc

I’m happy to announce that Myke Hurley and I have started a new project together. A podcast, naturally, given Myke’s awesome gifts.

The show’s name is Ungeniused, and it isn’t a technology podcast, like you might expect.

Ungeniused is a podcast dedicated to exploring how far down the rabbit hole one can go on Wikipedia. This often means talking about things no one should know anything about.

We just launched the first episode. In it, Myke and I discuss reality TV’s history, and some simply terrible examples of what can happen when it all goes wrong.

Give it a listen, and let us know what you think. You can also hit the show up on Twitter.

Direct Download (.mp3) Subscribe via iTunes  |  Subscribe via RSS  |  Subscribe via Instacast

I’m so glad Android is open.

John Brownlee at Cult of Mac:

Get to it: if you don’t have a tablet, this is the best you’re going to find for the price. If you do have an iPad already, this’ll make an excellent second tablet.

Not only do I disagree with Brownlee’s headline, but this statement just makes me want to smash something.

via @benjaminbrooks

I think Amazon just built a giant web scraping service. I’m curious to see how this will work in the real world.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos:

We are excited to announce four new products: the all-new Kindle for only $79, two new touch Kindles – Kindle Touch and Kindle Touch 3G – for $99 and $149, and a new class of Kindle – Kindle Fire – a beautiful full color Kindle for movies, TV shows, music, books, magazines, apps, games, web browsing and more, for only $199.

I think it’s clear that the Kindle Fire is not meant to be an iPad competitor. It’s a Kindle for media.

Amazon may not be competing with the iPad yet, but it is spending more and more time and energy fighting iTunes. Put another way, the Kindle Fire’s biggest problem isn’t the iPad — it is iTunes itself.

(Of course, as many have pointed out on Twitter, the big loser here is Barnes and Noble’s Nook reader.)

It’s amazing just how familiar these things look.

Victor Agreda, Jr. at TUAW:

We’ve been sitting on a tip for a while until things came into greater focus, but now that the speculation meter has exploded, it’s a good time to tell you all what we’ve heard. It seems that the “product transition” Apple mentioned on the last earnings call could very well be within the iPod line. Specifically, if you want to buy an iPod shuffle or iPod classic from Apple, you should do it sooner rather than later. We’ve heard those two iPods are getting the axe this year.

This makes sense. The iPod touch is by far the most popular member of the iPod family. If anything, I bet the iPod shuffle gets killed before the Classic.

Jamie Hyneman, in an interview with USA Today:

Why is our show successful? It’s not like you’re going to get a Ph.D. by watching us, but if you’re sitting on a couch with a beer, you might as well learn something.

I can’t wait for the ninth season to start tomorrow.

Iain’s revamped site not only looks great, but as always, is full of good links and articles about the art of writing.

It seems this fall is the time for site redesigns.