February 2011
“He (Maier) insisted that Bottega’s goods were not beyond the reach of...”
– John Colapinto on Tomas Maier, creative director and head designer for Bottega Veneta. (via the NewYorker)
Japan Learns to Live with Deflation - BusinessWeek →
Deflation—the steady drop in prices of goods, wages, and services—has many ill effects. Households are stuck paying off mortgages, car loans, and other debt even as their take-home pay has declined. Also, as housing values fall, consumers have smaller nest eggs for retirement. Companies, meanwhile, are unable to raise prices, which puts pressure on profits.
Yet the Japanese have discovered the...
How Wired Are Egyptians? | The Rundown News Blog |... →
With social media helping organize the throngs of protesters taking to the streets of Egypt, we spoke with Mohammed el-Naway of North Carolina’s Queens University of Charlotte, author of “Islam Dot Com,” for some insight on social media and Internet use in Egypt:
About 19 percent of Egypt’s 80 million people have Internet access | Roughly 15 million Egyptians are...
The Ticking U.S. Debt-Limit Clock - Council on... →
Danger of hitting the debt limit—which could force the country to default on its loans—comes amid mounting domestic and international pressure for the government to produce a credible deficit-reduction strategy. The Republican House is threatening to vote against raising the debt ceiling (NYT) unless Democratic lawmakers and the White House agree to serious spending cuts. Helping its...
“After boasting last fall that sales of its Galaxy Tab were “faster than...”
– Samsung admits its iPad-rival Galaxy Tab sales were actually “quite small”
January 2011
Rands In Repose: Interview: Marco Arment →
RANDS: Where did the idea for Instapaper originate and how long until you had a usable product?
MARCO: In the fall of 2007, I had just switched to the iPhone, and I had a long train commute every day. I never knew what to read on the train, but I’d find stuff all day at work that I didn’t have time to read, so I made Instapaper as a simple, one-click link-saving service for myself to...
Nick Kristof turns to Facebook to report from... →
There are a couple things to note here, I think. First, the commentary Kristof’s reporting has inspired. It’s often said that Facebook makes for a much better commenting platform than news outlets’ websites do — Lois, quoting NPR’s social media guru, Andy Carvin, noted something to that effect last week — and Kristof’s page certainly suggests that. It’s partly that Facebook is, implicitly, a...
“To me, Apple exists in the spirit of the people that work there, and the sort of...”
– Steve Jobs on Apple’s priorities (A quote from just after Jobs was fired in 1985)
“PBS’s commitment to ‘Need to Know’ runs through June 2011. As with any renewal...”
– PBS Show’s Future in Doubt
Austin American Statesman: Is Interstate 35-Texas... →
The 122 pages from the I-35 Corridor Advisory Committee, the fruit of months of hearings and other discussion up and down the interstate corridor, suggest that the federal interstate designation be stripped from I-35 from north of Georgetown to Buda. Give it to Texas 130 instead, taking away the tolls from that road. And call what is now I-35 … well, the report doesn’t say. East...
Cairo protesters stand their ground - Al Jazeera →
Egyptian air force fighter planes buzzed low over Cairo, helicopters hovered above and extra troop trucks appeared in a central square where protesters were demanding an end to President Hosni Mubarak’s rule.
State television said that a curfew has been imposed in the capital and the military urged the protesters to go home.
But the thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square choosed to...
“Reporters Without Borders condemns information minister Anas el-Fekki’s decision...”
– Reporters Without Borders
“And if you’re the one who’s hoping to be interviewed one day, it seems as though...”
– Seth Godin
Texas Study Stresses Economic Progress Through Art... →
“The Art of Economic Development,” as it is called, looks at five arts-driven economies in Texas. Austin’s many music festivals, Houston’s thriving theater scene and the Dallas Arts District are not among them. Instead, to provide models that any locality can follow no matter its size, the report features more unlikely communities like Amarillo, El Paso, Rockport, Texarkana and a tiny town in...
iPad Mags Need A New Blueprint - TechCrunch →
Ever since the iPad came out, print media companies have been feeling their way in this new medium, but so far they’ve just been stumbling over themselves. They are latching onto the iPad as a new walled garden where people will somehow magically pay for articles they can get for free in their browsers. But if they want people to pay, the experience has to be better than on the Web, and usually...
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At Apple, the Platform Is the Engine of Growth -... →
The more people buy iPhones and iPads, the more software developers and media companies want to write applications for them, as various as games and digital magazines. And consumers are more likely to buy iPhones and iPads when more entertainment and information applications are available on them. The combination of hardware, software and services is what corporate executives, economists and...
The Talk Show #27: Macworld Update - 5by5 →
John Gruber reports in from the field with a Macworld update. Dan and John also discuss the bizarre nature of the impending Verizon iPhone release.
“But by cutting off Egypt’s Internet and wireless service late last week in the...”
– Spotlight Again Falls on Web Tools and Change
“What we’re doing when we are paying taxes is buying a product. So the...”
– In Norway, Start-ups Say Ja to Socialism
David Karp: “Tumblr Is Growing By A Quarter... →
Tumblr is growing like a weed, but “the last four or five months totally overshadow everything that came before it,” founder David Karp tells Chris Dixon in a taping today for TCTV (watch the video above). “We are growing by a quarter billion impressions every week,” he revealed. Last weekTumblr did 1.2 billion impressions, or pageviews, and it is adding 250 million every week. Just think about...
Communicate if Your Government Shuts Off Your... →
Scenario: Your government is displeased with the communication going on in your location and pulls the plug on your internet access, most likely by telling the major ISPs to turn off service.
This is what happened in Egypt January 25 prompted by citizen protests, with sources estimating that the Egyptian government has cut off approximately 88 percent of the country’s internet access....
Al Jazeera Releases Egypt Coverage Under Creative... →
Qatar-based news service Al Jazeera has a long relationship withCreative Commons licensing. Now, for its coverage of the Egyptian uprising, it has released photographs via Flickr and video on a CC license.
Available photographs and video are available for free use so long as the user gives attribution and does not alter the products. For the record, all the photographs and video in this post...
Egypt Protests Continue as Military Stands By -... →
In Ramses Square in central Cairo at midday, protesters commandeered a flatbed army truck. One protester was driving the truck around the square while a dozen others on the back were chanting for President Mubarak to leave office. Nearby, soldiers relaxed around their tanks and armored vehicles and chatted with protesters. There were no policemen in sight.
In another central Cairo square on...
