Linked List: March 13, 2012

Tuesday, 13 March 2012

After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses ★

They took the credit for your second symphony
Rewritten by machine on new technology
And now I understand the problems you could see.

Chris Pirillo’s Dad Tries Windows 8 ★

Could be this has no predictive value regarding how regular people will think about Windows 8, but it’s an eye-opener regarding the risk Microsoft is taking by making essential UI navigation elements hidden until you hover the mouse in the right spots. People navigate with their eyes, not by scrubbing the screen with the mouse. It’s a few minutes long but worth watching for the payoff at the end.

Why James Whittaker Left Google ★

James Whittaker:

The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus.

Technically I suppose Google has always been an advertising company, but for the better part of the last three years, it didn’t feel like one. Google was an ad company only in the sense that a good TV show is an ad company: having great content attracts advertisers.

InstaGamer ★

Speaking of pals, my friends and former colleagues Bryan Bell and Chris Morris have just released an excellent free game for the iPhone: Instagram meets Memory. Really fun way to do Instagram, and retro Polaroid-inspired UI is just exquisitely well done.

What Could Go Wrong? ★

Reuters:

CNN is in talks to buy social media news site Mashable for more than $200 million, according to a source familiar with the discussion.

Going to be hard for anyone to beat my pal Mike Monteiro’s take on this.

Hacking Is Important ★

Michael Lopp:

Reasonable people are often scared by the new. This is because reasonable people are not Barbarians and they are not hackers. They appreciate the predictable, profitable, and knowable world that comes with a well-defined process, and I would like to thank each and everyone of them because these people keep the trains running and on time. No one likes Barbarians because the Barbarian strategy is one at odds with civilization. By definition, a Barbarian, a hacker, is building on a strategy that is at odds with the majority.

It’s awesome.

4G ★

Brad McCarty, TheNextWeb:

It’s true, today I’m disappointed in Apple. Not because of the iPad thing. I’m pretty impressed with what the company announced today. My disappointment is a matter of something deeper – a sign that Apple gave in to a carrier, rather than standing up for the customers. Anyone with iOS 5.1 and an AT&T iPhone 4S will now see a 4G symbol in certain areas. The only problem? It’s not really 4G, it’s marketing BS from AT&T.

It is bullshit, but when a new iPad is connected via LTE, it says “LTE” up in the status bar, not “4G”, so it’s not like Apple is pretending “4G” and “LTE” are the same thing.

Via ★

Marco Arment:

Codifying “via” links with confusing symbols is solving the wrong problem.