Linked List: March 11, 2011

Friday, 11 March 2011

The Talk Show, Episode 33 

Everything you want to know about the iPad 2, plus, You Only Live Twice, a classic Bond movie. Brought to you by two fine sponsors: FreshBooks and Rackspace.

Instapaper 3.0 

Marco Arment:

This is the biggest update Instapaper has ever had in one version, and I’m proud to finally show it to you.

I like Instapaper on my iPhone, but I love it on my iPad.

Speaking of Shawn Blanc 

He’s gone full-time with his eponymous weblog, and he’s doing a membership drive with a slew of nice prizes to get it off the ground. His site is one of my favorites, and certainly ought to appeal to most DF readers. I know first-hand that it’s hard to turn this sort of thing into a full-time gig, but I truly would love to see more writers find a way to make it work.

It’s Been Quite a Year 

Shawn Blanc:

So I remember this time last year when all the pre-launch reviews of the original iPad were coming out and John was posting up links to them all and in his comments there was this slight tone of being bummed out that all these guys had gotten review units from Apple and he didn’t. But now he does and call me sentimental but I’m really glad for John.

It’s nice to have a review unit in advance, it really is. But it’s not just me — Apple has significantly expanded the number of venues that get prerelease access to the new devices. Engadget, TechCrunch, Macworld, and Slashgear all got iPad 2 review units, too, and I think this allows anyone who takes their gadgets seriously to make a much more informed decision.

eReaderJoy Interview With Adam Engst on iPad and E-Readers 

Adam Engst:

Seriously, I can’t say that working with Amazon has ever been easy for publishers (and we haven’t done much with it), but working with the iBookstore has been the most amazingly horrible, opaque, and frustrating experience I’ve had. Apple’s software is terrible, the iTunes Connect Web site is lousy, and support questions often aren’t answered for - and I’m not kidding here - months. It’s gotten a little better over time, but mostly it makes my stomach hurt.

Lanyrd: The Social Conference Directory 

I hadn’t tuned in to Lanyrd for a while, but I just started using it again this week, in advance of SXSW. What a great site. Their SXSW session guide is so much better than SXSW’s own it isn’t funny.