Linked List: February 9, 2009

Monday, 9 February 2009

Sony Releases New Stupid Piece of Shit That Doesn’t Fucking Work ★

“We listened hard to what our customers said they wanted most out of their home entertainment system, and then we pumped out this impossible-to-use piece of shit.”

Everything Buckets ★

Buzz Andersen’s retort to Alex Payne’s “The Case Against Everything Buckets”:

Maybe Alex is right that I can even approximate tags and VoodoPad’s multifarious connections among documents using UNIX-ey constructs like symlinks, but why, when apps exist that do that in a more natural way? Isn’t this just making the Finder another “everything bucket” that has more obscure UI?

The Talk Show, Episode 29 ★

Kaboom.

Steven Heller on the New Tropicana Branding ★

One of the worst redesigns in memory. The plastic jugs look even worse than the cartons. The overall aesthetic is that of a cut-rate generic brand. (Via Kottke.)

Tog: ‘Apple’s Flatland Aesthetic’ ★

Bruce Tognazzini on the scaling limitations of the Dock, iPhoto, and Safari’s bookmarking features. I agree with him that none of these apps scale to handle the needs of advanced users, but I disagree that it’s necessarily a problem. By his own admission he’s worked around these shortcomings with third-party software. To me Apple’s unstated policy this decade has been that they’re going to knock themselves out making outstanding software that does the simple things for typical users very well. Software meant for advanced users is where the third-party opportunities are.

One Free Interaction ★

Chris Noessel on “free interactions”: little do-nothing actions you can take with software or hardware just because they feel satisfying. I do the page-snapback thing with iPhone apps all the time. (Via Buzz Andersen.)

‘A Twitter Decision’ ★

Rands:

Twitter spam. Really? Are you even paying attention? I’ll say it again, you choose who you follow. If you’re following a newsbot, you’re going to get news spam. If you follow a good friend who can’t stop RTing, you’re going to get retweet spam, but complaining about it is like standing the middle of a freeway asking, “Why do these cars keep hitting me?”

(Speaking of Rands, some of his luxurious t-shirts remain available. They’re printed on fabric that’s 70 percent bamboo, 30 percent cotton.)

The Sopranos, Uncensored ★

“This is every single curse, from every single episode of the sopranos, ever.” (Via Chris Long.)

Canon 5D Mark II Available at Amazon ★

Speaking of Amazon, they’re finally taking orders for the Canon 5D Mark II digital SLR, at list price. Granted, list price is $2700, but, hey, you get free shipping.

For additional make-me-rich Amazon kickback referral money fun, the DF Paraphernalia store remains open.

Kindle 2 ★

Looks like a nice improvement over the original: thinner, lighter, more storage, better display, and better button placement. $359. Here’s Engadget’s live coverage from the announcement event earlier today.

Jeff Bezos sums it up: “Our vision is every book ever printed, in any language, all available in less than 60 seconds.”