Linked List: November 10, 2011

Thursday, 10 November 2011

Matt Gemmell Rewrites Adobe’s Mobile Flash Announcement ★

Matt Gemmell:

Confusing, marketing-voiced corporate communication is a terrible problem in this industry, and it’s damaging to the companies themselves. Adobe’s press release (that’s what it essentially is, even though it’s nominally a blog post) sounds sterile, aloof, disconnected and tentative — perhaps even with a note of desperation. I decided to rewrite it.

As I tweeted the other night, a lack of clear, concise, plainspoken communication is as sure a sign as any of poor leadership.

A List of Things That Web Browser Plugins Don’t Work With ★

Kroc Camen:

There is no job that plugins are the right tool for. Saying that plugins “have their place” is ignorant and complacent.

Mixel: Social Collage App for the iPad ★

New (and free) iPad social collage app, led by Khoi Vinh and with a pitch-perfect intro video by Adam Lisagor. Here’s Vinh on some of his thinking behind it. I’ve been playing with it for a week or so, and it’s a lot of fun. I love Mike Davidson’s description, that Mixel’s like a casual version of Layer Tennis.

My biggest gripe: that you need a Facebook account (or, as in my case, to be a friend of the people behind it) to use it.

Speaking of Kubrick ★

Amazon has the 10-disc Stanley Kubrick: Limited Edition Collection on sale at a 58 percent discount: Blu-ray for $63, DVD for $31.50.

Kubrick SFF ★

Danny Bowes is spending the week looking back at Kubrick’s “science fiction and fantasy” films. Interesting to me that Bowes is including Dr. Strangelove as science fiction, but not A Clockwork Orange. Oops: My bad, I skimmed the first bullet point; A Clockwork Orange is right there. Pshew.

‘Does “A VC” Have a Blind Spot for Apple?’ ★

You didn’t need the benefit of today’s hindsight to see how wrong Fred Wilson was about Apple and Flash back in 2009.

Claim Chowder: ‘Does Apple Have a Blind Spot About Flash?’ ★

Fred Wilson, “A VC”, February 2009:

I believe Apple is making a mistake by snubbing Adobe’s desire to get Flash on the iPhone. And I believe Apple doesn’t share in Adobe and Nokia’s vision of an open and consistent experience for web browsing and mobile apps. It seems to me that Apple is interested in replicating its iTunes/iPod strategy it used to dominate digital music to dominate the mobile web.

I don’t think that will work. In fact, I don’t think the iTunes/iPod strategy has much life left in it. […]

I think we’ll have to deduct a Being Right point or two here.

I don’t even think an app ecosystem is the long term solution for the mobile web. It’s a bridge environment that allows for rich experiences on devices that don’t have reliable high bandwidth connections yet.

But the mobile web will eventually just be the web. And a big part of getting it there is to get the tools that allow us to seamlessly consume rich media on the web onto mobile devices. To me that means Flash.

Ouch. Ten-point deduction.