February 2011
17 posts
January 2011
14 posts
Herman Melville Likes Your Beard
I’ve been cultivating my suburbs of the chin for about a year now.
Or as he calls them, in order, in two chapters of White Jacket:
- beards
- the crop
- suburbs of the chin
- homeward-bounders
- fly-brushes
- long, trailing moss hanging from the bough of some aged oak
- love-curls
- Winnebago locks
- carroty bunches
- rebellious bristles
- redundant mops
- yellow bamboos
- long whiskers
- thrice-noble beards
- plantations of hair
- whiskerandoes
- nodding harvests
- viny locks
- the fleece
- fine tassels
- goatees
- imperials
- sacred things
- admiral’s pennant
- manhood
- muzzle-lashings
“Faced with both a public health crisis and a public relations disaster, Portugal’s elected officials took a bold step. They decided to decriminalize the possession of all illicit drugs — from marijuana to heroin — but continue to impose criminal sanctions on distribution and trafficking. The goal: easing the burden on the nation’s criminal justice system and improving the people’s overall health by treating addiction as an illness, not a crime. […] nearly a decade later, there’s evidence that Portugal’s great drug experiment not only didn’t blow up in its face; it may have actually worked. More addicts are in treatment. Drug use among youths has declined in recent years. […] And new research […] report[s] a 63 percent increase in the number of Portuguese drug users in treatment and […] a 499 percent increase in the amount of drugs seized”
—
The Boston Globe: Drug experiment
Who knows whether this early success will last or if the new study is even accurate. What I know is that stories like this raise a great question about the extent to which our drug policies create a “war on addicts” instead of a “war on drugs.” I see what I hope would be middle ground (though I fear it will never happen) in this analysis from later in the article:
Many believe that Portugal’s new focus on treatment — and prevention — may have had as much, if not more, to do with its success than its policy of decriminalization.
Hat tip: Kottke.
“[P]eople gravitate towards the products with the best overall user experience. It’s very hard for something developed in a cross-platform, lowest-common-denominator technology to provide as nice an experience as a similar native app. As the CEO of a software company, I wish this weren’t true. I’d love to build one version of our App that could work everywhere. Instead, we develop separate native versions for Windows, Mac, Desktop Web, iOS, Android, BlackBerry, HP WebOS and (coming soon) Windows Phone 7. We do it because the results are better and, frankly, that’s all-important. We could probably save 70% of our development budget by switching to a single, cross-platform client, but we would probably lose 80% of our users. And we’d be shut out of most app stores and go back to worrying about distribution.”
—
TechCrunch: Four Lessons From Evernote’s First Week On The Mac App Store
A great piece from Evernote’s CEO. I particularly liked this tidbit, since I’m often asked why we don’t use third party tools to develop on multiple platforms at once. The answer is clear in the trade-offs highlighted here.
RWW: Report: Top 10 App Trends of 2011 →
readwriteweb.com
Nothing terribly surprising here, though I particularly see this trend emerging more by the day:
3. In-App Purchasing Enabling a New EconomySelling apps is no longer the only way to make money, some developers have discovered. In October, Flurry released data that showed in-app purchases were earning developers in certain categories (games, social) more money than ads. Another report forecasted an increase in in-app revenue by 600% in 2011. And Farmville, as a high-profile example of this trend, earns 90% of its revenue from in-app purchases[…]
Mobclix cites data from Jupiter Research which says that in-game purchases are expected to surpass $11 billion by 2015. The industry is watching Android expectantly in 2011 to see if it will soon offer an officially supported feature for allowing these types of transactions.
Free Online MIT Course: Introduction to Computer Science and Programming →
ocw.mit.edu
Following Brad Feld’s lead, I’m determined to learn some basic programming skills this year. I’m looking for someone of an equal knowledge level (low, but not Luddite) to work through this online course offered through MIT with me. Any takers? My usual wing man has his hands tied studying “the law” or some such nonsense.
You can download all of the lectures for free through iTunes.
Music vs. Misery: 20 Albums I Couldn't Quit in 2010 →
musicvsmisery.tumblr.com
There’s a lot of great music in this post. Click through to find a song from each album.
If I sat down to write precisely why all of these albums especially resonated with me this past year, I’d probably be here till 2012. So, to save myself some time, I’m just going to share a favourite track from each and let you go from there. Here’s to another great year of music!
RWW: New Daytum iPhone App Makes Beautiful Charts & Graphs About Your Life →
readwriteweb.com
I used Daytum pretty religiously a year or more ago, and I gradually stopped updating my statistics (I was tracking the vegetarian meals I ate, hours I slept, and hours of exercise among other things) exactly because a mobile app did not exist. I’m excited to try this free app out.
NPR: First Listen: The Decemberists, 'The King Is Dead' →
npr.org
Hot damn this is good. January 18th can’t come fast enough.
inhabitat: All European Cell Phones To Have USB Chargers By 2012 →
inhabitat.com
This is such a no-brainer win for European consumers. Here’s hoping we benefit in the US as well:
Apple, Nokia, Qualcomm, RIM, LG, Motorola, and Samsung are all on board, and they have said they will all start selling the same basic micro-USB chargers starting next year.
