I really like my iPhone, but in some ways it’s souring my relationship with Apple. Yesterday I watched Apple’s video introducing new iPhone features. Most of the new features are yawners, but I can’t help but notice that it seems like all of the big features in this release are just ways to make it easier for Apple to get customers to give them more money. I’d like an IM client, what I get instead is the opportunity to buy DRM-infested music tracks on my iPhone. Great. ...
In troubling times, it’s hard not to pin all of your hopes on the Judicial Branch of the government. My brain knows that the best way to achieve lasting change is to build political support for policies you agree with and then get them passed as laws in Congress. When judges overrule the popular will, it creates a political rift that often causes problems down the road. That said, the judiciary is often the best hope of the sane and enlightened. ...
If you liked Blogging the Bible, you’ll love James Kugel’s How to Read the Bible, or so it seems. I’m also delighted to read that David Plotz is writing a book based on Blogging the Bible.
This morning I heard on the BBC World Service that the Burmese military dictatorship has started cracking down on the Burmese monks (and the supporters who have joined them) in peaceful marches demanding democratic leadership. Soldiers attempting to suppress the protests have started beating the protesters, firing tear gas, and firing live ammunition over the marching crowds. I’m not really sure what one blogger can do for the people of Burma beyond trying to make sure people know what’s going on there. The thugs who rule Burma, in addition to stealing as much money as they possibly can from their people, do everything they can to keep news of what’s going on in the country from reaching the outside world. We’ve all grown accustomed to be able to follow breaking events in photos by searching Flickr, but that doesn’t work with countries like Burma. ...
Jon Gruber reviews Amazon.com’s new online music store. Same track prices as the iTunes Music Store, 256kpbs MP3s, no DRM. Sounds like a good deal to me. I just installed the download software and bought an album. The album cost $7.99 and the purchase process was simple. The only problem I ran into was that the download didn’t kick off on the download page. I navigated around to see if there was an alternate means to get the files, but it turned out that there wasn’t. When I used the back button a few times to get back to the download page, the download started automatically as expected. ...
The San Francisco garbage dump has an artist in residence program. They give the artist studio space and first pick of all of the junk that arrives at the dump. The current resident is sculptor Nemo Gould – Telstar Logistics has a report on his art show this weekend.
I wanted to write about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Donovan McNabb, and didn’t feel like writing separate posts for each, so they’re both getting tossed in together. Today Ahmadinejad, in town for a United Nations summit for world leaders, took questions at Columbia University in front of an audience that he had no hand in selecting. I think that plenty of the things he said are outlandish and some are offensive, but I think you have to give him credit for coming here and taking that questioning. It amazes me that there are people who didn’t even want to give him that opportunity. Is there anything more basic to democracy than a leader standing before a free forum and engaging with critics? (One wonders whether Ahmadinejad is willing to grant Iranians the same opportunity.) ...
Tim Bray proposes a new business model to expand innovation in the mobile industry. Seems economically sound, and so sensible and yet radically different than today’s models that it almost certainly will never be adopted. Here’s what I wish my phone would do that it doesn’t, right now. I think that Tim Bray’s model would probably accelerate the availability of all of these features: Load Web sites faster Allow me to delete more than one email at the same time Allow me to archive email from Gmail in my Gmail in box so that if I read it on my mobile phone I don’t have to file it later via the Web interface Know where I’m located so that looking things up on the map is easier Support instant messaging
I found Derek Sivers’ post on ditching Rails interesting. He spent two years trying to reimplement the code for CD Baby in Rails, abandoning PHP, and then abandoned the Rails project and rewrote his old PHP application in PHP (its original language) instead. From his list of reasons, it sounds like he made the right choice. Perhaps he should have read Joel Spolsky’s essay on the dangers of rewrites before getting started. Interestingly, you’d have to say that Joel was wrong in chastising Netscape for rewriting Mozilla from scratch. Nothing as good as Firefox could have been written using the existing Netscape Navigator code. ...
Everybody knows that the trend is toward applications that run in a browser as opposed to desktop applications. What I’m starting to see is an emerging trend toward specialized Web browsers customized to make it easy to deal with specific applications. The proximate cause for this post is MailPlane, an OS X desktop application built strictly to interact with Gmail, based on Safari. In other words, it’s a Web browser that only works with one Web site. ...