Linked List: May 5, 2011

Thursday, 5 May 2011

Jon Stewart on the Photos of Osama bin Laden ★

Jon Stewart:

Maybe we should always show pictures. Bin Laden, pictures of our wounded service people, pictures of maimed innocent civilians. We can only make decisions about war if we see what war actually is — and not as a video game where bodies quickly disappear leaving behind a shiny gold coin.

What Are They Selling? ★

Rene Ritchie is not a fan of Google’s new “Dear Sophie” ad:

Apple’s latest ad wants you to buy a $500+ tablet computer to run App Store apps on. Apple wants to sell you shiny things to make money.

Google’s latest ad wants you to store personal details about your child’s life, from birth, on their servers. Google wants your data so they can sell it (aggregated and anonymized, of course) to others to make money.

Taken in that context, Apple’s ad might be obnoxious and highly commercial, but Google’s is downright creepy.

Text Editor Intervention ★

Watts Martin:

We first started hearing about TextMate 2 in early 2006, and as people will always respond if you point out that it’s now 2011, the author never gave an ETA other than “after Leopard.” All well and good, but if your dad walks out one Thanksgiving saying he’ll be back “sometime after Christmas” and it’s now five years later, when your little sister tells you “he didn’t say how long after Christmas” she’s maybe not facing reality. If your dad pops up to make a blog post once a year saying he’s still working on it, he is just possibly not facing reality, either.

Fabrice Taylor: ‘Why Microsoft Should Buy RIM: To Take on Apple’ ★

Expect to see a lot more articles like this in the coming months. But it’s not going to happen. RIM has nothing Microsoft would want. Microsoft’s bet in mobile is Windows Phone 7.

What might happen, though, is RIM going the way of Palm, circa 2002 or 2003. Remember when Palm started making devices based on Windows Mobile? I could see RIM going that route out of desperation. There’s plenty of room in that Nokia hot tub.

MG Siegler on Mashable’s Vacuous Bin Laden ‘Coverage’ ★

Can’t believe he reads Mashable.