It’s been said before, but when you have a lot of experience in a certain area, you generally think of solutions and approaches that have worked for you in the past. Sometimes this prevents you from taking a fresh approach which ultimately would work out better.

I’ve seen this so many times. People excusing off good ideas because it hasn’t worked in the past or it doesn’t seem to work for someone else. If you want to enjoy the upside of opportunity you have to be willing to try things that others may think impossible or stupid.

Impressive demo video as well as samples that include a video demonstration and code on Github for each one.

/via Shawn “I know a lot about keyboards” Blanc.

Countless well-meaning, tasteful, and respectable people have taken a swing at making friendly advertising that is both respectful of the viewer and valuable to the advertiser. The problem is that it very rarely works out in the long run because well-meaning, tasteful, and respectable people really do not like “the business” advertising. And viewer-friendly advertising is often of very little to no value to the advertiser.

The business of advertising is a numbers game. When well-meaning, tasteful, and respectable people start out trying to change the world of advertising they typically look at those numbers as they should – they look at them as people. People that don’t want to be swindled or bothered or nagged. People that are at the current web page they are viewing because they really like the blog post they are reading, the newspaper column they are reading, or the video they are watching. People that actually do not like advertising.

So the well-meaning, tasteful, and respectable people say to themselves “I’m one of those people. I don’t like ads. But people that write blogs for free and want to do it full-time need to make money somehow so let’s make a great ad network that sells unobtrusive advertising that people will love.”

Noble. But this business plan isn’t based in reality. This plan can only work if the ad network’s brand is as strong as the brand of the sites in its network. And even then it is questionable whether or not the network can sustain advertiser value longterm. The Deck seems to have success in this area because simply being an advertiser on The Deck comes with some credence. But in my experience this is the exception.

Once the initial novelty of the idea for a viewer-friendly ad network wears off everything comes down to the pageviews and the click-throughs. If the click-throughs are high the pageviews can be lower. If the pageviews are high – and they usually have to be very, very high – the click-throughs can sometimes be not as important since advertisers will typically hope to make up for them with brand recognition of some kind.

And then there is the repeat advertiser problem. If an ad network can bring in brand new advertisers every few months then they needn’t worry about having repeat advertisers. So they needn’t deliver on value. “Your campaign wasn’t all that great but thanks for trying.” And then they simply move onto the next company with $5,000 to spend. The problem is eventually the black books of the individuals running the network will run out of companies to call. Then they have to deliver. Every single month.

Viewer-friendly advertising can work in smaller numbers and with direct relationships with advertisers. However, once an entire “network” of brands are involved it slowly will move away from the relationship between website and brand and move towards the numbers.

Ad dollars will always move towards the latest and greatest thing. The thing the kids love. So newer ad networks with novel ideas on how to do advertising will all typically start off pretty well. Any company with a decent advertising budget will take a crack at whatever the latest fad is. Make no mistake, the same people that will buy your 120×120 pixel well-designed, well-meaning, tasteful, and respectable ad will buy a pop-under ad. They don’t really care about your high-brow morals in the world of advertising. They will go to where the value is. And when your network doesn’t produce value for them in a certain amount of time they’ll stop buying your inventory. Simple.

Patrick Dryburgh nails it in his post about leaving FusionAds:

I hold nothing against the guys running Fusion now. They’re in a tough business, and need to produce page views and sell those page views and then produce and sell some more. So, I get why they need to take money from companies or sign on publishers I don’t think represent the initial vision.

Fusion Ads has to compromise because in the world of advertising there is money in compromising. The more you’re willing to let go of the viewer as the customer and the more you’re willing to give up their experience the more money you’ll make.

Several times in my life where I’ve made the bulk of my income on advertising. Each time I always thought there was a new and better way to do it. A way that didn’t feel so icky. A way to make the viewer and advertiser the customer. It simply isn’t possible. If you’re thinking about starting an ad network of some kind I’d strongly suggest you reconsider.

• 1 cent: I don’t care whether we keep these. I’ll still keep them in a bowl and eventually bring them to a Coinstar machine for Amazon credit.
• 5 cents (5x previous denomination)
• 25 cents (5x)
• $1 (4x): I don’t care whether it’s a coin or a bill. Just pick one.
• $5 (5x)
• $20 (4x)
• $100 (5x)

My swing at this would involve the same number of currencies but would look slightly different. After spending a few weeks in Ireland last year I grew to love coin money over paper money. So I’d do it this way…

• 5c
• 25c
• $1 coin
• $2 coin
• $5 bill
• $20 bill
• $100 bill

This would mean that prices would have to change. Gone would be the days of prices that end in .99. I say good riddance to the penny and bring on the dollar and two dollar coins.

This brings something very interesting to light, I have gotten really good at processing information returned from Google searches. I can quickly determine what is a useful result and what isn’t.

After using DuckDuckGo for one week I can concur with most of Yusuf’s findings. I’ve gotten so well acquainted with Google’s search results, and various other products like Images search and Maps, that I find it hard to stick to DuckDuckGo for anything other than single result searches.

In other words, if I’m looking for a particular web page I can use DuckDuckGo to find it. It works. It is quick. And it is actually less distracting than Google’s search results for the plain reason that Google now has more ads than search results per page. However, if I’m doing a lot of research on a particular topic I’m always in need of something a little more powerful than DuckDuckGo. I’ll need images, calculations, and – more often than ever before – Maps. Google has all of that.

For any search engine to come in and usurp Google’s strangle hold is going to be a really, really steep hill to climb. No matter how much I think it is time for it to happen.

Generally speaking, there are two distinct audiences for this show: people who like to look at images of food and are interested in where it comes from and how it got to the plate—and people who like to travel—or like the idea of travel—and enjoy watching images of faraway places and cultures. Oh—and there’s also a smaller group who apparently enjoy watching me get falling down drunk and stupid.

I happen to fit all three.

Name your favorite guilty pleasure.
Cheez-Its.

I respect Jack quite a bit but this puts it over the top for me.

At MetaLab, everyone is responsible for their own schedule. No bunk beds in the office or ramen-fueled overnight programming melees. We usually clock between four and six hours a day, and most of us don’t even get to the office before noon. We believe in working smart, not hard, and having lives outside the office. It might sound wimpy, but it’s working.

I agree with Wilkinson here however I’m more of a work hard and smart kinda fella.

I believe there is a mixture of working smart and hard from which great things can be accomplished. People are at their best when they are happy and usually happiness stems from loving what you’re doing, being given the chance to do it well on tools you love to use in an environment you like being in, having a good life full of friends, family, some traveling, and a little bit of money. Combine all of that with a little sweat and you’ve got something.

I thought it would be a clever idea to do my 1976 high school journal as a blog but I never realized just how many people the world over could relate on so many levels to my general seventeen year old geekiness. The blog quickly became amazingly popular with coverage from major sites and write-ups from various different countries.

So, why is his campaign only at $127 of the $12,000 goal even after being featured on Boing Boing? My guess is because the rewards for pledging to the campaign aren’t worded correctly. At first read it looks as though you have to pledge at least $250 in order to get a copy of the book.

I think if Steven rewords the rewards and makes it clear at which point you get a copy of the book his campaign will get some traction. Awesome idea.

For any social networking service the single biggest reason they fail is lack of adoption. While Google+ has become the fastest growing site of-all-time that doesn’t mean that people are using it. In my Circles (get it?) Google+ has not yet been fully adopted. The people that have been most active are very early adopters, people that work at Google, and people that do not have accounts on Twitter or Facebook. Will this change? Will Google somehow convince people, as they did me, to use Google+ for a few days to see if it sticks? We’ll see.

It is now nearly 10-months later. How is Google+ doing? Not so well from my chair. They haven’t figured out a way, besides Circles, to differentiate themselves from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social networks that clearly have carved out their niche.

I think Google+ is a great product. It does a lot of things and does them fairly well (although their iPhone application is pretty unusable). If it was launched in February 2004 at the same moment Facebook was launched it would have given the now 900 million user network a run for its money.

So what’s the problem? Again, me, nearly 10 months ago:

Every social networking site was started with a particular purpose in mind. Over time those services typically find their niche (if they survive long enough to do so) whether or not it was the original reason for its inception or not.

[...]

Google+, however, goes against this “find the niche” convention. Rather than trying to fill a niche like Facebook or LinkedIn they’re taking on every level of human connection; professional, familial, social, voyeur, etc. and combining them all into one service. They do all of this by providing a different relationship model called Circles.

At the time I thought this approach would have a positive effect for Google+. I thought that nearly anyone could find a way to make Google+ useful. But it seems like it has been the opposite. Perhaps this lack of focus has made it so that Google+ doesn’t identify with very many people.

The only types of people that I see using Google+ on a regular basis are early adopter tech geeks, social media experts, and people that work at Google. Perhaps someday they’ll separate themselves from the pack somehow but until then it doesn’t seem like Google+ has caught on with any particular crowd in any meaningful way.

Taken: March 13, 2012 – Jermyn, PA.

Sadly the only photos I’ve been publishing are through Instagram of late. I haven’t had the time to post process any images but I heroically opened Aperture and managed to throw this one together. Hopefully I’ll find a little more time for photography and processing over the summer.

This little guy is sitting on the broken branch of a pine tree just outside our sunroom’s window that I hang a few bird feeders on. He had a particular penchant for sunflower seeds that I had on a plate laid on the ground.

The issue is that none of the services I’ve seen fit all my requirements. Instapaper is primarily a tool for reading later. Same for Readability. But I come across items on my iOS devices that require another look when I get back to my Mac. Items to archive (whether in Yojimbo, Pinboard or my bucket of choice, Gimme Bar). Designs to explore further. Videos to watch. Technical resources to investigate, then archive. Apps to purchase.

Bingo.

His post talks a lot about Pocket and since I haven’t had time to write much about Read It Later’s pivot (forgive my use of this buzzword), and his opinions align fairly closely to mine, I recommend giving his entire post a read.

My ideas for Nilai far outreach anything that Pocket is currently attempting to solve. But, like Bowler’s Pinbox, most of those are still on the drawing board.

His work is amazing.

Ben Welle of The City Fix:

Freeway removal is really about shifting priorities from moving cars to moving people. This can result in people being more physically active and healthier. Studies have begun to show that those who travel by mass transport, walking and biking as their main ways of getting around are more physically active than those who primarily use cars. Freeway tear downs not only encourage more active forms of travel, but can create signature recreational amenities for cities, as most of the documented examples have.

It is obviously still vitally important to allow for cars, trucks, trains to get in and out of a city  - but surely we can begin to think of better ways to do it that results in far less people with highways as their front yard.

/via Geoff “the nicest guy in Philly” Dimasi.

Today we’re rolling out a new and improved flow for creating repositories on GitHub.

Remember when I said this, shortly after GitHub released GitHub for Mac:

If Git is easy to use more people will use it and therefore more people will sign up and pay for GitHub.

It is just as important for Github to make git easier, so that its potential customer base expands beyond us geeks, as it is to promote best practices (like including a .gitignore file with one’s repo). This is why the GitHub website with its ease of use, documentation, training, etc. is really such a great business.

You see, GitHub isn’t just in the business of giving people access to git. They’re in the business of helping people to use git the right way. They’re creating some of the most loyal customers you’ll find anywhere online.

Got it.

/via The “I said hot when I meant warm” Verge.

Details have such little value to many people. No one wants to hear the whole story, they just want you to get right to the point. [...] In my mind it would be helpful to explain how I arrived at a certain problem…but all that they want to hear is the ending.

Sometimes the entire story is in the details. Context is everything. The fact that more and more people are getting used to getting entire stories from headlines, sound bites, and tweets means that people’s knowledge may very well be missing the most important parts. The details.

Abby continues:

Don’t get me wrong…I’m not sitting here disgruntled with all humans. It’s just my observation. Someone out there will listen to the details.

Sadly this is a number that is shrinking rather than growing and I’m unsure if the trend is possible to counteract. More and more people would rather understand complex concepts by being told or learn how to cook recipes in less and less time. Great things take time. If you’re one of the few that appreciate that and you see yourself slipping into this trend, slow down, relax, and look at the details.

Places on the web for sharing content and ideas often remind me of real life interactions. Facebook is the everlasting high school reunion. Twitter, which I love, is maybe half cocktail party, half party-line. Flickr & Instagram can be the best way to send a postcard, while LinkedIn is the best way to send a fax To me, there’s something sacred about reading a blog post on someone else’s site. It’s like visiting a friend’s house for a quick meal ‘round the breakfast table. It’s personal— you’re in their space, and the environment is uniquely suited for idea exchange and uninterrupted conversation. In many ways, we should be treating our blogs like our breakfast tables. Be welcoming & gracious when you host, and kind & respectful when visiting.

Twitter, for me is slightly more familial, professional, and often news breaking but otherwise I whole heartedly agree with this sentiment. If you have a blog you should feel it is your home online – everywhere else are places you go out to.

/via John “Loud Keyboard” Gruber.

I just unbuttoned the top two buttons on my shirt.

Light Table is based on a very simple idea: we need a real work surface to code on, not just an editor and a project explorer. We need to be able to move things around, keep clutter down, and bring information to the foreground in the places we need it most.

This project is inspired by Bret Victor’s presentation Inventing on Principal that I also mentioned Nilai is inspired by. Light Table makes for a very interesting demo. The most intriguing of the modes shown was the mode wherein you could see all of the related code while you were editing, say, a specific method in a class. This type of IDE wouldn’t just save time, it’d probably result in far better code.

It will be interesting to see what comes of this.

You see this kind of thing all over the Internet as well. People punctuate that way because, if they spoke these sentences, they’d pause after the conjunction (and because the extremely fanciful and undependable Microsoft Word grammar and style checker refrains from applying a squiggly green underline).

I’m no writer. I’m sure I get this wrong all the time. In fact, I know I do. (See what I did just then?) I do exactly as Yagoda suggests. I write commas based on how I would say or read the sentence.

He goes on about the use of the Oxford comma as well. Which I wholeheartedly agree with and strive to do myself though I’m sure if someone ripped through the catacombs of this here blog they’d find a million grievances.

Yagoda has a follow-up coming. Stay tuned.

/via John “I’m using Facebook by way of Instagram” Gruber.

4. Take people out for a “beer” test as part of interviews.
We would take every candidate to some social outing (typically dinner or beer after work).  In a startup, people work long hours and you want to make sure people fit in and the team and create an even awesomer [1] environment.

Intriguingly, in a “social” environment, the candidate would often show more of their “true colors”. Especially if beer was involved.  This often happened before any beer was drunken – I think it was just a shift to a more social context from a work one that triggered behavioral changes.

A great example is a candidate we rejected post beer test, who was one of the strongest engineers technically that we had ever interviewed.  However, once we made it to the bar he made a lot of really bad off-color jokes that crossed the line and made the team uncomfortable about him.

For many of the people we hired at Viddler we did exactly the same thing. And sometimes with a similar result. First and foremost I want someone I can work hard with. And it is tough to work hard with someone who creeps you out regardless of how good they are.

/via Dick “I’m the CEO at Twitter but really I shouldn’t have let Feedburner die” Costolo.

It’s easy to construct a narrative of victimhood; and a narrative of victimhood is as easily palatable as a Big Mac. Sure, you can argue that the modern condition is a finely jawed trap: bound by the chains of debt peonage, our horizons have been ineluctably delimited. But I’d say we’re equal parts victims and victimizers — preying not merely on one another, but our own better selves. When it comes to real human prosperity, in the crudest terms of political economy, “demand” is about what people have the impertinence to, well, demand — and perhaps the simple fact is that we’ve become a society that’s simply not demanding enough.

It was tough to pull a quote for this one so if you’ve got a few minutes I recommend reading the whole thing. I don’t know that I agree with it wholly, however, it is good to see someone rising above one’s normal 6-odd-foot perspective and seeing the world from a different angle.

/via Alex “One who knows HTML” Hillman.

This is my view of management as administration—as a service corps that helps the talented individuals that build and sell products do their jobs better. Attempting to see management as the ultimate decision makers demotivates the smart people in the organization who, without the authority to do what they know is right, will grow frustrated and leave. And if this happens, you won’t notice it, but you’ll be left with a bunch of yes-men, who don’t particularly care (or know) how things should work, and the company will only have one brain – the CEO’s. See what I mean about “it doesn’t scale?”

Precisely.

/via AOL TechCrunch.

/via Andy “$1B is a good deal” Baio.

After viewing videos and reading reviews I think Liquipel is a great idea that is just not quite there yet. I think it would be great for protecting your phone in the rain or from spills but a toilet or pool, no way! It’s clear that results will vary in every situation and with this being said I just could not feel confident enough to recommend or use Liquipel right now.

Some protection is better than no protection, I always say. However, one shouldn’t expect to go swimming with one’s iPhone either.

/via fellow-Viddler Thomas Kover (TKO).

The number one complaint that I hear from friends, family and random strangers complaining on the train is that their personal technology devices (mp3 player, phone, watch, etc.) are not waterproof. The number one enemy to their electric devices is water. Be it the humidity in the air, the sweat from a successful exercise session, or devices that just seem to be drawn to pools of standing water, there’s a huge disconnect between the number one feature people want, and the ever increasing feature list of things that don’t matter as much.

I’ve often thought that every single device which is meant to be used daily should also be waterproof. There is a huge benefit to the user even if that device never, ever gets completely submerged in water. I may have to look into Liquipel further.

Be sure to watch the video demonstration at the tail end of Danny’s blog post.

The company is also technologically weird. For example, much of the code that runs the site is written in a horrible computer language called PHP, which stands for nothing you care about. Millions of websites are built with PHP, because it works and it’s cheap to run, but PHP is a programming language like scrapple is a meat. Imagine eating two pounds of scrapple every day for the rest of your life — that’s what Facebook does, programming-wise. Which is just to say that Facebook has its own way of doing things that looks very suspect from the outside world — but man, does it work.

I use PHP. Which makes sense because man do I love scrapple.

It’s been almost two months since Apple released the Messages beta, the revamped version of iChat slated to arrive with Mountain Lion this summer. And, thanks to a lack of subsequent updates, I and at least a few of my colleagues have jumped ship back to our pre-Messages IM clients. Those who haven’t, well, I’ve noticed they seem to spend a lot of time cursing at Messages.

I knew what I was getting into with the Messages beta when I downloaded it. I knew there would be a few bugs and that, in general, it wouldn’t be the best experience. The Apple experience. But there hasn’t been a single update to make it better and, as it stood, Messages was a terrible, terrible experience.

I’ve since attempted to roll back to iChat which is supposed to be possible since Messages comes with an uninstall routine built-into the menu. But I’ve since not been able to get iChat to work. Even after trashing every file I can possibly find related to iChat.

So, I’m using Adium – which I think is also terrible – until Mountain Lion comes. What a mess!

“With Viddler within three days we were able to roll advertising. That’s ridiculous.”

Assuming you didn’t already share your Instagram photos to Facebook, Flickr, or Twitter and also assuming that you deleted all of the photos off of your iPhone without backing them up first – you could export your photos from Instagram using instaport.me.

I’m in no hurry to leave Instagram. But we’ll see what the next year or so means for the service.

I love this bit from his most recent blog entry:

After changing my insurance and paying the copay, I waited for the doctor, and eventually went into the exam room.  When the doctor arrived, I told him about everything I have been doing, including the fact I had lost nearly 15 lbs in 3 weeks, despite still posting a gain since my last visit 6 months ago.  I told him about my lifestyle changes, and he in turn told me my blood pressure was the lowest and most normal it had ever been on one of my visits:  115 over something.

After weighing both my history, and me promising I would continue my healthy ways, he agreed to let me discontinue the use of one of the blood pressure medicine’s aI had been taking since 2007 – Metroprolol.  This was great news for two reasons:  first, hey, I’m off one drug finally!  Second, a couple of months ago Metroprolol went from a tier 1 to a tier 3 medication, increasing my part of the payment from about $10 to $60.

Focusing on his health for just three weeks allowed him to come off of his medication. If that isn’t inspiration I don’t know what is. Troy, I’m with you buddy. My first goal? To run 10 miles this week.

One of my ideas was to create a video show about everything but the Internet or technology. For a long time there was a glut, and I’m sure there still is, of video podcasts about tech. I was going to call it “5 minutes about something else”. But, who has the time?

That’s why I’m happy to link to Made by Hand a series of short films (sounds much better than video podcast, doesn’t it?) about the people that make the stuff we use. Awesome.

Transits of Venus are among the rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena. They occur in a pattern that repeats every 243 years, with pairs of transits eight years apart separated by long gaps of 121.5 years and 105.5 years.

A transit of Venus took place on 8 June 2004 and the next will be on 6 June 2012. The previous pair of transits were in December 1874 and December 1882. After 2012, the next transits of Venus will be in December 2117 and December 2125.

Suffice to say you’ll be alive for the next transit – in June – but you may not be alive for the next one.

I know where I’ll be in June. Watching Venus move across the Sun.

For more information take a look at TransitOfVenus.org

One of the small changes I made was to stop using post titles for posting to Twitter. I had hoped that using more descriptive text would make the tweets more easily retweetable…look at this tweet for example and compare to the title of the post it links to. This hasn’t really happened, which is surprising and disappointing.

And, this about Tumblr.

That big Tumblr increase was due to kottke.org’s new Tumblr blog. Having kottke.org posts be properly rebloggable is paying off. In addition, it’s got over 800 followers that are reading along in the dashboard. I’d like to see that number increase, but I’d probably need to engage a bit more on Tumblr for that to happen.

I don’t know what Jason is trying to gain by having a Tumblr blog for Kottke.org – besides the same benefits of having a Twitter stream or RSS feed – but as most of you probably know I gave up on getting engagement on Tumblr.

For the most part the Tumblr crowd seems a click-happy bunch. If they can’t click a single button to engage (like, retweet) they won’t do much else. So long as you can figure out a model that works within those constraints I suppose it could end up paying off.

Last night, after a whirlwind trip to New York City on business and just before crashing like a rocket into bed, I pulled up Tweetbot to see what was going on the in world. It turns out Instagram for Android came out and some people were going a little crazy.

I thought some of the tweets were pretty funny so I thought I’d respond to them here. Here are my responses in no particular order.

If u ain’t following me on instagram ya mama **** **** n u ***

— Courtney Hooper (@SelfMade_Smasha) April 4, 2012

Fair enough. I’m so glad people that have Android devices can now use Instagram.

BTW, on Instagram it’s not a place where you constantly post pictures of yourself without a hashtag! #getwithit

— Victoria Ann Valdez (@victoriaannv) April 4, 2012

Yes, Victoria, the most important parts about Instagram are photos of yourself and hashtags. You’ve got it all figured out.

So now whats so great about the iphone? Yall exclusive temple run and instagram is now wit android.

— Marissa Na’Sha (@SweetAs_Honeey) April 4, 2012

You know, back in 2007 when I bought the first iPhone I thought to myself: “Why am I buying this phone? It doesn’t have Temple Run or Instagram on it.”

House phones bouta come out wit one next month #instagram

— Rodney(@RodneyRaJaan) April 4, 2012

The next logical step for Instagram is to work on house phones, yes. I realize Rodney was being sarcastic. And I appreciate his snarkiness. Good on ya Rodney.

I’m glad @instagram finally came to Android, so I can stop using my iPod for it (apple cams suck!!!!) but wtf is up with “image too small?”

— Ashlee Pahmiyer (@ZombieAshlee) April 4, 2012

Oh Ashlee, you make this too easy. So, Apple’s cameras suck but your Android device takes a photo so small that Instagram can not use it? Got it.

Instagram ain’t nun but a way to cover up all dem bumps on ya face to make it look like ya face all clear, ***** plzzzz

— Yung Trill (@YungTrillOG) April 4, 2012

Yung is onto something here. Girls, be sure to use Instagram’s bokeh effect tool to “cover up all dem bumps on ya face”.

Keep tweet grams off of instagram. It’s annoying as **** and we already have 2 social networks that tell us about things we don’t care about

— Alexandra Juarez (@alexxxjuarez) April 4, 2012

As she tweets about things we don’t care about on a social network that tells us things we don’t care about.

Just got instagram and I have no idea how to use it

— Timmy Mucklow (@TimmysToNice) April 4, 2012

Hey Timmy, THE BIG YELLOW ONES THE SUN!

Am I the only one who doesn’t know how to work instagram?!

— Mollie Gillman (@ayomollieee) April 4, 2012

Hey Mollie, meet Timmy, and THE BIG YELLOW ONES THE SUN!

Now Instagram is released for android, kinda make it less exclusive photo app.

— Lukas Ardian (@LukasArdian) April 4, 2012

Something being less exclusive is like something being more unique. But you knew that right?

dont know how to work this instagram **** im finna delete it

— Savage Los (@losbaabyy) April 4, 2012

The best part about “Savage”‘s tweet is that he somehow managed to type this on a computer on the web. The shift and apostrophe keys are notoriously hard to find on computer keyboards.

Dang all these droid followers on instagram…..this is dang near Facebook ???? Ewwww

— Christin (@ChrisNikole) April 4, 2012

Exactly the same as Facebook. Zuckerberg is probably furious.

I just made an Instagram account only for the effects. I could care less about posting them, that’s what Twitter is for…

— Chet Seeram (@chetseeram) April 4, 2012

Twitter was definitely built specifically for the purpose of sharing photos, yes. Actually, Chet, while I’m responding to you, you may want to check out my post Instagram is a network, not a camera.

Bunch ah hood *** ****** adding me on instagram . . . Lol uh oh #AndroidSeason

— ?Gøld?£™ (@YellowBoneRyda) April 4, 2012

I love hashtags.

These New Instagram ******* thuggin it…No profile pics and ****……????????????????????

— LiMar Tuttle (@LiMarLK) April 4, 2012

Straight thuggin.

Totally gonna sound like a ***** but instagram not so cool anymore

— Patty Rudawski (@Pattyatty) April 4, 2012

I agree Patty. It went from like 25,000,0000 people using it to like 30,000,000 people using it. Totally not cool anymore.

All these useless android users on instagram… Remainder small black burry will have too

— CaroLyna (@CallMeChoKolate) April 4, 2012

Wow. “Useless Android users” Carolyna? You sent this tweet using an iPhone. An iPhone has spell check. And you chose to type in “Remainder” instead of remember and you called a Blackberry a “black burry”. Maybe you need an Android-powered phone?

iPhone’s words of wisdom to the New Android Instagram users: “You dumb babies!”

— jessie maria (@allThtJass) April 4, 2012

Wisdom indeed.

Instagram Gonna be a flop like temple run cause androids got it

— AsierraC?? (@Naturally_Lexie) April 4, 2012

You called it Asierra. Instagram is dead in the water.

Nilai has quickly morphed from being a simple list of links to many lists of links each with their own purpose. Using Smart Labels, which are getting smarter with each release, members of Nilai can save links into these lists with a single click.

Sometimes the purpose of saving these links is to watch a video, listen to a bit of audio, or save a link to do something with at a later time. Starting today it is easier than ever to accomplish some of these tasks without ever having to leave Nilai. Previews make it simple to preview links to video, audio, photos, products, or even code. By simply saving a bookmark to the more than 12 supported services Nilai will automatically identify what the link is to and prepare a preview for you.

Let me give you some examples. The most obvious example is video. If you’re like me you don’t have time during your work day to watch YouTube videos that are being circulated throughout the web via Twitter or from my friends via instant messages. So I save these bookmarks to Nilai to watch later. Now, with Previews, Nilai will let me watch the video on my iPad, iPhone, or my Mac without needing to open the YouTube application or website. It looks like this.

For me audio works much the same way. Sometimes I have time to listen to a bit of audio – like on my 90-mile drive to work. For those occasions I prefer to subscribe to a podcast powered by Huffduffer. But, what if I want to listen to a bit of audio in a few hours on my computer or perhaps on my iPad at night in bed? Using Previews Nilai makes it possible to listen to audio from services like Huffduffer and others without needing to subscribe to a podcast or sync with iTunes. Quick, simple.

Video, audio, and photos is just the beginning. Here is a list of the services that Previews supports today: YouTube, Viddler, Flickr, Vimeo, Speaker Deck, Dribbble, Instagram, Twitpic, Skitch, Github’s Gists, Huffduffer. With many, many more on the way. In fact, I’ll tell you straight away that all of the popular recipe sites are next.

I hope you enjoy the new site and Previews.

During a recent trip to a nearby observatory the presentation highlighted this little number, a comet that streaked across the sky in early August 1972 over the Tetons.

Notice the trajectory. They don’t call this thing an earthgrazer for nothing. This small bit of space rock (about 9′ in diameter or so) actually flew through the Earth’s atmosphere for about thirty seconds before heading back out into space! Impressive rock.

What’s more is that before the days of pocket-sized cameras and phones with built-in high definition video recorders the wife of the guy that took the above, stunning photograph – Linda Baker – managed to capture most of the earthgrazing on video.

Photo credit: James M. Baker. Also featured on NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day in March 2009.

A boring old machined-steel-fits-in-my-hand-scrolls-at-60-fps-with-proper-physics-glorious-retina-none-of-this-crap-pentile-display black iPhone 4S.

And then this on whether or not to build an app.

Anyway, I say make an app if it’s better as an app. If you’re not sure, then don’t bother. The folks working on WebKit are more talented than the average app developer. Just embrace the constraints of web technology — don’t make your site act like an app. Or chop down a tree with a herring. You’d think that was obvious.

He’s a quotable dude.

I love the idea. And, as I’ve said before, I really, really want these types of systems to take off and to be able to get rid of the credit card as quickly as possible.

However, the video for this new app first shows off the ability to tell your friend that you’re going to an ice cream shop. I’m not so sure that should have been highlighted first and foremost. I think it is fine they have that part of the system but I’d much rather show how quickly and easily it can be to get in and get out without dealing with cash or cards.

/via The Verge.