Linked List: March 22, 2010

Monday, 22 March 2010

Well-Placed Pixels 

“A visual record of beautiful software.”

Now Software, R.I.P. 

“In March 2010, Now Software, Inc. suspended its day-to-day operations.”

The Ten Things Harry McCracken Likes Best About the Droid, After Switching From an iPhone 

Numbers 1-3: Verizon’s network, Facebook integration, and Google Voice.

Update: I missed his second page (I generally don’t click through to split pages any more), where he lists the ten things that are driving him crazy. Numbers 1-3: Quirkiness/misbehavior, tapping trouble, and maddening usability mistakes. I.e. it’s just not designed well.

USA Today Animation Showing the Expansion of the International Space Station From 1998-2010 (Flash) 

But where’s the Hilton?

Nathaniel Irons on CrashPlan 

Nathaniel Irons reviews CrashPlan for Cool Tools:

It’ll back you up to external hard drives, or computers on your network, or flat-rate cloud storage, but its great innovation is the ability to back up over the internet, with permission, to another CrashPlan user. This is terrific for maintaining your own automatic offsite backups between work and home, or spreading backup religion to friends and family. All you need is broadband and spare disk space.

Regular off-site backup is the biggest hole in my current system. CrashPlan sounds great.

Chris Glass’s Photo Log 

So great.

App Store Now Allows Giving Apps as Gifts 

Sorry, can’t bring myself to use it as a verb.

An Update on Google’s New Approach to China 

David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer:

So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services — Google Search, Google News, and Google Images — on Google.cn.

The Story of Bottled Water 

Manufactured demand.

Nominee for 404 Page of the Year 

Lovely animation created using CSS3 transforms and transitions. Works fine in MobileSafari, too. (Via WebKitBits.)

Google’s Status Board for Services Available in China 

This, now that Google is redirecting web search traffic from its Chinese domain to its Hong Kong domain.

The Impossible Project Succeeds, Relaunches Polaroid Film 

Great news for Polaroid fans (not to mention fans of outstanding packaging design).

Update: The site is down. Here’s a cached copy from Google.

David Frum on the ‘Conservative Entertainment Industry’ 

David Frum is my favorite conservative writer:

When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say — but what is equally true — is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed — if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office — Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry.

Two New Sites in The Deck 

Two of my favorite sites — Dave Pell’s Tweetage Wasteland and Scott Beale’s Laughing Squid — join the web’s best ad network.

Soft in the Middle 

James Surowiecki on how the action, in markets ranging from gadgets to cars to clothes, is at the high and low ends of the market, not the middle:

The companies there — Sony, Dell, General Motors, and the like — find themselves squeezed from both sides (just as, in a way, middle-class workers do in a time of growing income inequality). The products made by midrange companies are neither exceptional enough to justify premium prices nor cheap enough to win over value-conscious consumers. Furthermore, the squeeze is getting tighter every day.

The middle is boring, and I think one could argue that our culture is about the elimination of boredom. (Via Kottke.)

Steve Jobs Lauds New California Organ Donor Bill 

Coming up on the one-year anniversary of his life-saving liver transplant.

One More 

James Fallows:

There are countless areas in which America does it one way and everyone else does it another, and I say: I prefer the American way. Our practice on medical coverage is not one of these.

Health Care Reform Reactions 

Andrew Sullivan has a good roundup of reactions from a variety of perspectives.

House Approves Health Overhaul, Sending Landmark Bill to Obama 

The New York Times:

Congress gave final approval on Sunday to legislation that would provide medical coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans and remake the nation’s health care system along the lines proposed by President Obama.

Change, baby. Change.