Linked List: January 2, 2013

Wednesday, 2 January 2013

The intersection of martinis and grammar nuances — ideal DF fodder, obviously.

Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish Going Independent ★

I predict success, given the size and (deserved) loyalty of his audience. But I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss advertising:

The decision on advertising was the hardest, because obviously it provides a vital revenue stream for almost all media products. But we know from your emails how distracting and intrusive it can be; and how it often slows down the page painfully. And we’re increasingly struck how advertising is dominated online by huge entities, and how compromising and time-consuming it could be for so few of us to try and lure big corporations to support us. We’re also mindful how online ads have created incentives for pageviews over quality content.

All true, given the advertising that is sold by sites like Time, The Atlantic, and The Dish’s current host publication, The Daily Beast. But that’s not the only way to sell advertising. DF, among other notable examples, is living proof that advertising can be quick-loading, noticeable but un-distracting, and unrelated to the corrupting influence of pageviews.

Let’s Have a Contest ★

Here’s the headline and sub-head from a new piece for CIO magazine:

Why 2013 Is RIM’s BlackBerry Year

The iPhone isn’t that great and the Android OS is woefully insecure. Come Jan. 30, if mobile users take a hard look at their devices and then look at the new BlackBerry 10, RIM could be in for a windfall.

See if you can guess the writer.

Bloomberg: ‘U.S. Internet Users Pay More for Slower Service’ ★

Susan Crawford, reporting for Bloomberg:

Also in 2011, six Time Warner lobbyists persuaded the North Carolina legislature to pass a “level playing field” bill making it impossible for cities in that state to create their own high-speed Internet access networks. Time Warner, which reported $26 billion in revenue in 2010, donated more than $6.3 million to North Carolina politicians over four years. Eighteen other states have laws that make it extremely difficult or impossible for cities to provide this service to their residents.

“Level playing field” — George Orwell must be proud.

Regarding Apple’s New Ad for Do Not Disturb ★

Opening sentence in Chris Matyszczyk’s piece for CNet, “New Apple Ad a Bit Disturbing, as Touted Feature Reportedly Has New Year’s Hiccups”:

However walled your garden, rodents still pad around, cockroaches still shuffle.

Something is disturbing here, all right.

Apple Says New Year’s Related ‘Do Not Disturb’ Bug to Resolve Itself on January 7 ★

Being forced to turn this off manually reminded me just how great a feature Do Not Disturb is. Rather quickly took it for granted, and haven’t given it much thought since iOS 6 shipped. (Seems like a New Year’s tradition for iOS to contain some sort of year-change-triggered date bug.)

Ubuntu for Phones Announced ★

Looks OK aesthetically, but the purely swipe-and-gesture based UI is a loser. It’s confusing. Swipe from the right takes you to the next most recently used app, but swipe from the left does something completely different (show a list of favorite apps). I’ve said before: gestures are the touchscreen equivalent of keyboard shortcuts: a convenient alternative, but almost never a good choice for the primary interface for a task. Ubuntu has designed a phone interface consisting entirely of gestures; it’s like a desktop interface with nothing but keyboard shortcuts.

I expect Ubuntu for Phones to be about as relevant as Ubuntu is on the desktop. Vlad Savov at The Verge has hands-on video of the system as it stands today, and — shocker — it’s laggy as hell.