posts
Facebook is Creepy
“This is not an e-mail killer. This is a messaging system that has e-mail as part of it.”
That’s how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the company’s revamped messaging system, introduced at a special press event in San Francisco today. The more-than-just-e-mail system is meant to consolidate all of a user’s interactions with other people—whether it’s via SMS, Facebook messages, or e-mail—into one spot. Of course, Facebook wants it all to live on its own servers.
‘Just Another Day’
Star Wars Weather Widgets
Nice and sunny in Aldera today, on beautiful Alderaan. Some showers are expected tomorrow. Unfortunately there seems to be a glitch about Tuesday’s high temperature and no readings from Wednesday on for some reason—we apologize for the technical difficulty. On the bright side, we have a new artificial moon called The Death Star and it’s crescent is clearly visible and awesome. Enjoy.
[ via Kottke]
Netflix, on Android
Greg Peters, from Netflix’s product development group, about the company’s forthcoming Android app:
The hurdle has been the lack of a generic and complete platform security and content protection mechanism available for Android. The same security issues that have led to piracy concerns on the Android platform have made it difficult for us to secure a common Digital Rights Management (DRM) system on these devices. Setting aside the debate around the value of content protection and DRM, they are requirements we must fulfill in order to obtain content from major studios for our subscribers to enjoy. Although we don’t have a common platform security mechanism and DRM, we are able to work with individual handset manufacturers to add content protection to their devices. Unfortunately, this is a much slower approach and leads to a fragmented experience on Android, in which some handsets will have access to Netflix and others won’t. This clearly is not the preferred solution, and we regret the confusion it might create for consumers. However, we believe that providing the service for some Android device owners is better than denying it to everyone.
Ted Koppel on the ‘Death of Real News’
We live now in a cable news universe that celebrates the opinions of Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly - individuals who hold up the twin pillars of political partisanship and who are encouraged to do so by their parent organizations because their brand of analysis and commentary is highly profitable.
The commercial success of both Fox News and MSNBC is a source of nonpartisan sadness for me. While I can appreciate the financial logic of drowning television viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their own biases, the trend is not good for the republic. It is, though, the natural outcome of a growing sense of national entitlement. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s oft-quoted observation that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts,” seems almost quaint in an environment that flaunts opinions as though they were facts.
iTunes 10.1 Adds Option to Disable Ping
On Delays
Dave Caolo, bringing some logic to the whole “iOS 4.2 is delayed” thing:
Here’s the thing. That November 12th release date was supplied by the rumor mill, not Apple. If iOS 4.2 fails to ship by then, it will still be on schedule.
Jobs said that iOS 4.2 will ship by November. Let’s not call the delivery “delayed” until it actually is.
A Life on Facebook
AirPrint Hacktivator
Oh, man. While this seems a little sketchy, it’s a lot better than torrenting a beta build of OS X.
Sadly, even this doesn’t let me print to my aging HP LaserJet 5200.
Simplenote and Classic Mac OS
Riccardo Mori at System Folder and Dave Lawrence at Newton Poetry have been playing with using Simplenote on old Macs. After trying several browsers, it seems that Classilla is the way to go.
Now you know, in case you find yourself needing your text notes while on an antique Mac. I just love this stuff.
From Newton to Evernote
Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, in an interview Richard MacManus:
The company was founded by Stepan Pachikov, who was kind of this brilliant mad scientist from Russia. He and his team were behind a lot of the pioneering work that went into the Apple Newton, fifteen years ago. The handwriting recognition engine was built by these guys. They had a company called ParaGraph, which Apple licensed.
So the original idea really started in the Newton days. Back then it was just a device, but it grew to be more of a service that would let you keep all of your memories. [It would] just remember everything.