Each time the company does this, I feel a little older.
posts
‘All You Need is Simplenote’
So very true, Shawn.
I Blame Fox News
A substantial and growing number of Americans say that Barack Obama is a Muslim, while the proportion saying he is a Christian has declined. More than a year and a half into his presidency, a plurality of the public says they do not know what religion Obama follows.
[…]
The view that Obama is a Muslim is more widespread among his political opponents than among his backers.
‘We Have to be Really Clear’
Steve Jobs, in this video linked to by All Thing D’s John Paczkowski:
This is a very complicated world. This is a very noisy world and we’re not going to get a chance … to get people to remember much about us. No company is. And so we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us.
Dieter Rams
‘Wait Until Never’
Have I ever checked email, read incoming tweets or responded to a text message while behind the wheel of a car? Yes. I’m usually at a stoplight or stuck in motionless traffic when I actually use my phone’s virtual keyboard. That factor might make might my behavior slightly less risky, but it doesn’t make it any less stupid.
While I can imagine either sending or receiving a message so pressing that an action would have to be taken at that very moment, I’ve never actually experienced such a scenario. The urgency that drives me to check Twitter or read an email while in the car is entirely a creation of my own mind.
Five Years Ago
The Big Picture has posted a gallery of photos from Hurricane Katrina damage:
Five years ago, Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, centered on New Orleans, as a Category 3 hurricane with sustained winds of 125 mph (205 km/h). More than fifty levees were breached by its storm surge, causing massive flooding. Over 1,800 Gulf Coast residents lost their lives then, and damages totaled more than $80 billion - the costliest hurricane in U.S. history. Many intangible things were damaged then as well, communities were erased as their neighborhoods washed away, much of historic New Orleans was badly damaged, and frustration and anger remain towards an inadequate immediate response by the U.S. government.
Holy. Crap.
Janie Porter at WTSP Channel 10 News in Tampa Bay:
A woman in the Philadelphia area is recovering from “Blackberry thumb” surgery.
The mortgage banker spends 12 hours a day texting clients on her iPhone.
“I’m texted out,” she said.
The constant texting put so much pressure on her hands that the tendons in her thumb became inflamed. She had to undergo surgery to remove the tendons.
‘Promised too Much’
Dave Lawrence at Newton Poetry linked to the NYT’s original MessagePad review earlier this week. Here’s some of that review:
The bottom line on the Newton Message Pad is that Apple promised too much and failed to deliver a useful device for everyday executive chores. On the other hand, the Message Pad practically hums with untapped potential, and six months (or moths) to a year from now it is likely to be a popular executive tool.
Remember The Milk Free on iPhone
Nope, we’re not crazy… okay, maybe just a tiny bit (but shh, don’t tell anybody). From today, we’re making just about the entire iPhone app available free for everyone to use — yay!
What’s the catch? We’ve introduced a limit to the free app: you’ll be able to sync manually once every 24 hours with the Remember The Milk servers, which is great for backing up your tasks and notes online.
Pages Gets ePub Export
Update: Liza Daly picks apart the new feature, outlining its strengths and weaknesses.
On Sleep Indicators
John Gruber linked to this article on Flood Lite today:
In July 2002, Apple filed a patent for a “Breathing Status LED Indicator” (No. US 6,658,577 B2). They described it as a “blinking effect of the sleep-mode indicator in accordance with the present invention mimics the rhythm of breathing which is psychologically appealing.”
The average respiratory rate for adults is 12-20 breaths per minute, which is the rate that the sleep-indicator light fades in and out on most Apple laptops. Older models such as the Macintosh PowerBook, however, use a blinking LED indicator, with discrete pulses in one-second intervals.