Posts

First, my position: ceteris paribus, view-source was necessary (but not sufficient) to make HTML the dominant application platform of our times. I also hold that it is under attack — not least of all from within — and that losing view-source poses a significant danger to the overall health of the web. Alex Russell in View-Source Is Good? Discuss. In the early days of the Web, we all learned with view source. The essential piece that got the Web off the runway was that all you needed to create a Web site was a browser, a text editor, and a server that was connected to the Internet. ...

It’s funny these days to watch Apple brag about the number of applications for the iPhone, and to see Android fans defensively argue that the number of applications for a platform doesn’t really matter, as long as it has the applications you want. Fifteen years ago, it was Windows advocates who derided the Mac because it had so few apps, and Mac users who were forced to respond with the argument that quality, not quantity mattered. That argument has died on the desktop, probably because what’s really important is the ability to access the Web, unless you have a very specific unmet requirement. ...

You may be one of those people who thinks Twitter is a needless diversion, that Facebook is a total waste of time, and that blogs are kind of silly. Given that you’re reading this, I really doubt it, but maybe someone you know is in this camp. Things that are useless to some are vital for others. Between the just linked essay and the passing of Brad Graham, this week has been a powerful series of reminders of just how real and important virtual relationships are. ...

Retailers like Wal-Mart and H&M feel that excess inventory should be in a landfill rather than on the backs of poor. And to make sure that people desperate and industrious enough to rummage through the trash for clothing can’t get anything for free, they cut up the garments before tossing them out. I know that these companies are operating completely within their legal rights, but either it’s morally acceptable to toss out brand new clothes in a city where people can use them, or it isn’t. As far as I’m concerned, it is not. ...

Tim Bray’s post, Doing It Wrong is a great summary of the overall problem with large IT projects, contrasting the traditional practices of corporate IT with the more iterative, more realistic approaches used by Internet companies. Having worked on dozens of projects over the years, this is a topic about which I have some thoughts. Years ago it occurred to me that Amazon.com was a software company. That’s not news to anybody any more now that they’ve turned pieces of their infrastructure into cloud computing products that they lease out, but I realized it long before Amazon announced their Web services products, and even before they started outsourcing their online store and logistics to other retailers like Borders and Toys R Us. Early on, Amazon was thought of as a retailer, but their retail strategy was based on building the best software for running an online retailer. My guess is that Amazon.com knew from the beginning that they were in the software business, but a lot of companies that expend a large share of their resources building software don’t. ...

Anil Dash has been presenting some really interesting information about the results of being on Twitter’s infamous suggested user list. He’s found that while it does drive up your follower count very rapidly, those followers don’t seem to be active in any way, in terms of responding, retweeting, or otherwise interacting with you. And other accounts on the list are confirming his experience. Today he follows up with the logical conclusion, which is that large follower counts are meaningless. ...

Last March, I pointed to an article about the dangers of giving investment advice. Then I followed up a few days later advising people to avoid giving advice at all. In that post I wrote: Advice is cheap and rarely productive, and nobody ought to be taking it without understanding the thought process of the person giving it. Today Tyler Cowen wrote the following in a post about the economics of advice: ...

That doesn’t just make James “Titanic” Cameron the first man to direct two billion-dollar movies. It also sends a clear message to all those industries getting remade from top to bottom by the pressures exerted by the Internet and associated computer technologies: Keep innovating, and you will keep finding customers. Andrew Leonard on what the news business could stand to learn from James Cameron.

Today I learned that a member of the really old school blog tribe passed away – Brad Graham. I never got to meet him face to face, and that’s my fault, but I appreciated his writing very much over the past decade, and I appreciated the sensibility and good humor he brought to things. Matt Haughey, another tribe member, dug up an interview with Brad from 2001 in which he talks about his dad, and himself. You could do a lot worse than to be remembered this way. ...

My favorite commercial on TV is for some kind of kitchen gadget. I don’t remember what it’s supposed to do, but it features a woman sticking a knife into an orange and wincing as citrus juice shoots into her eye. The point: performing some seemingly simple task is in fact difficult and dangerous, and you should purchase whatever gadget it is they’re selling to make your life easier. Michael Ruhlman makes the argument that a huge portion of the food industry is built around convincing people that they’re too stupid to cook. Or that cooking is too hard to bother with. ...