Blog
Writing helps me think more clearly. This archive is longer posts; quick updates now live in notes.
Topics: AI, blogging, photography, programming, projects, Signboard
Tim Cook: We launched Maps initially with the first version of iOS. As time progressed, we wanted to provide our customers with even better Maps including features such as turn-by-turn directions, voice integration, Flyover and vector-based maps. In order to do this, we had to create a new version of Maps from the ground up. This reads as…
Tapbots is on App.net. If Tweetbot worked with ADN it'd, quite simply, change everything for ADN. /via Steve Streza on Twitter (which says something, I think).
This was eluded to in Kara Swisher's aforelinked piece but it wasn't spelled out quite as well as this, by Nicolas Carlson at Business Insider: Mayer's rule: If a new product can't be shipped in six months, and if it doesn't have a realistic shot of reaching 100 million users or generate $100 million toward the company's top…
Scott McNulty flies across country using the new Passbook app in iOS 6: It seems to me that Passbook is a clever idea, but honestly having my eTicket with the QR code emailed to me (or just using the one displayed in the United app) would have been simpler. Once you get the ticket into Passbook it is…
Matt Van Hoven: Bottom line, flat structures create confusion about where power lies, because eventually someone has to be in charge – whether because a client demands it or a job won't get done unless someone takes charge. Van Hoven leaves off an important point; it really depends on the type of start-up whether or not a flat…
Bret Victor: Because my work was cited as an inspiration for the Khan system, I felt I should respond with two thoughts about learning: How could I possibly avoid linking to this? See also: Inventing on Principle.
Alexandar Safonov's bull shark photos are awesome. All of his work is.
Giancarlo Ditrapano in an interview with Casey Neistat (aforementioned) regarding advertising on his very popular YouTube channel: In April, YouTube began allowing all of its the users the option of earning ad revenue from their uploads, a seemingly ideal situation for a guy like Neistat, who self-finances the vast majority of his films and has already logged more…
Tom Mylan for Gilt Taste: In the game of food dork one-upsmanship, the rarer you order your steak, the more of a real gastronome you are—it means you like your meat good and a little dangerous, like it was meant to be. That is why I like to order my steak "still mooing with the hooves on".
Ben Brooks: I haven’t noticed the lack of simultaneous data, as I figured I would rarely notice it. I have yet to not have LTE coverage in the areas I have roamed around in. The family plan thing was a piece of cake. Ditto. Ditto. Ditto.
Chris Dixon has a good post about the shift from sales-driven software efforts to product-driven software efforts. Thus enterprise software went from being about sales (one-to-one) to being about marketing (one-to-many). Marketing requires crafting a compelling message, figuring out the right channels and then optimizing. But the most effective marketing isa compelling product that can be easily tried….
From the backyard. I'm looking forward to shooting a lot more this fall with the iPhone 5.
Marissa Mayer held a company-wide meeting today at Yahoo. The purpose of the meeting was stated, in a memo to the company, as being "radically transparent" about the plans to turn Yahoo around. It turns out much of the meeting was rather nebulous and more broad than specific or transparent. Perhaps that is because Yahoo clearly has a…
People make budgets for everything. Vacations, new cars, gas, a new home, gym memberships, etc. Some even budget in a morning coffee from their favorite barista everyday before work. Why is it, then, that some still have an issue with paying for an album on iTunes? Most applications on the App Store are only a few dollars. The…
If you use Instagram and you updated to iOS 6 or bought an iPhone 5; you may now update. Seeing the first few comments in addition to the likes on a photo in Instagram is actually a palpable upgrade in experience. Addendum: Something I didn't notice, because I literally have never used this feature, is that Instagram is…
In September 2011 I jotted down a few guesses about what an iPhone 5 could be. What we ended up with was the iPhone 4s being announced. Well, I thought I'd look back at this list and see where my thoughts stack up now that we actually have the iPhone 5. How did I do? The camera lens…
Jean-Louis Gasse on Apple Maps: The ridicule that Apple has suffered following the introduction of the Maps application in iOS 6 is largely self-inflicted. The demo was flawless, 2D and 3D maps, turn-by-turn navigation, spectacular flyovers…but not a word from the stage about the app’s limitations, no self-deprecating wink, no admission that iOS Maps is an infant that needs…
Speaking of Duncan… James Duncan Davidson on Maps in iOS 6: I might be in the minority here given the raised pitchforks in many quarters, but I like the new maps in iOS 6. Yes, a lot of people are running into holes in the data set. Others are finding that the queries that they used to use…
Dustin Curtis: The results are pretty amazing – the iPhone takes worse photos but it certainly stacks up against a $4,000 professional camera. And, although the photos from the iPhone are significantly noisier, it has fantastic automatic metering. The best camera is the one you have with you.
YouTube user TechisGeek has a video showing how to put Apple EarPods back in the case. You'll only need to watch the first 45 seconds before you say "I got it." I struggled with this all weekend. Not anymore.
Glenn Fleishman for TidBITS on how to turn on Messages for your phone number on your Mac: The Messages app in Mountain Lion can now send and receive iMessages using an iPhone’s number as the identifier with a combination of iOS 6 and the recent OS X 10.8.2 update. Good tip. /via James Duncan Davidson.
Chad Williams has a great list of features in iOS 6 that are new that you may not have heard about: The auto-dim feature got significantly improved in iOS 6. The best improvement is brightness adjustment in the lock screen. Before, in a dark room, I would be blasted with the iPad or iPhone’s default brightness before sliding…
You'll have to forgive me for wanting to quote Brandice's entire post about the iPhone 5 since I totally agree with everything she says but I'll do my best to take out a few key snippets: I read comments online about how it’s so light it almost feels too insubstantial or breakable. I think it might be a…
Kontra: Mapping is indeed one of the hardest of mobile services, involving physical terrestrial and aerial surveying, data acquisition, correction, tile making and layer upon layer of contextual info married to underlying data, all optimized to serve often under trying network conditions. Unfortunately, like dialect recognition or speech synthesis (think Siri), mapping is one of those technologies that…