Linked List: May 10, 2013

Friday, 10 May 2013

NYT on Bloomberg Data Terminal Privacy Breach ★

Amy Chozick and Ben Protess, reporting for the NYT:

The news gathering technique appears more widespread than the Goldman incident, which was first reported by The New York Post. A preliminary analysis at Bloomberg revealed that “several hundred” reporters had used the technique, a person briefed on the analysis said. (Bloomberg employs more than 2,400 journalists worldwide. A spokesman declined to comment on the analysis and said no reporters had been fired.)

There are also fears that the monitoring may have gone beyond Wall Street. Banking regulators at the Federal Reserve are examining whether their own employees were subject to tracking by Bloomberg reporters, according to people briefed on the matter. A spokeswoman for the Fed declined to comment.

This is a serious scandal.

Not All Wine Experts Are Full of Shit ★

Pretty amazing. (Thanks to Tom Lane.)

Facebook Home Is Looking Like a Flop ★

The HTC First (with Facebook Home pre-installed) has already been dropped from $99 to $0.99, and the app is sinking in popularity in the Google Play store rankings.

It’s a well-designed implementation of an idea no one wants.

Squarespace ★

My thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. Squarespace provides everything you need to create a great website for you or your business, all within a single platform. Beautiful templates, an easy-to-use interface, and a free domain name — all backed up with award-winning 24/7 customer support.

It’s almost ridiculous how easy Squarespace has made it to have a fully-customizable website that looks great across all devices. Try Squarespace for free at squarespace.com.

Not Sure Why Anyone Would Spend So Much Time and Effort on an iOS 7 ‘Concept’ Redesign, But Here You Go ★

There are a lot of clever ideas and nice designs in this iOS 7 “concept” by Philip Joyce of design firm Simply Zesty. But they’re only clever and nice in the abstract, as possible designs for a touchscreen phone interface. Nice and clever though they are, this would be a disaster as a new design for the actual iPhone. A new look is one thing (and we’re going to get it), but when you’re well established and have a large user base, as iOS does, you need to maintain familiarity. If users are asking “What is this? Where am I? Where’s all the stuff I’m used to?” it’s going to be a disaster. (Mac OS X 10.0 was just such a radical do-over, and it was successful in the long term. But the first few years were a slow and painful transition for existing Mac users. iOS doesn’t need that sort of jolt.)

And certain of Joyce’s details are oddly tone-deaf branding-wise. The shape of app icons is not going to change from round-cornered squares to sharp-cornered ones (or any other shape for that matter). Apple owns this shape; this shape says “iOS app” in everyone’s mind. It’s even printed right on the hardware home button of every iOS device. In fact it’s the only thing printed on the front face of every iOS device. And just look at the WWDC 2013 logo. (I’ve long thought we won’t see apps and an App Store for Apple TV until some future hardware revision of the product with a much-better remote control; it occurs to me now that that remote will surely have a home button with the universal empty app icon on it.) And his font choices — yikes. Frutiger (or whatever Frutiger-like typeface he’s using) makes the whole thing look more like a Windows Phone 9 concept than an iOS one. It’s like iOS re-imagined by someone who doesn’t like iOS. Hard for me to see how this is getting praised like this.

His animations and transitions do show how going “flatter” doesn’t necessarily mean eliminating playfulness, though.

Bloomberg Reporters Snooping on Wall Street Via Bloomberg Financial Terminals ★

Mark DeCambre, reporting for the NY Post:

In one instance, a Bloomberg reporter asked a Goldman executive if a partner at the bank had recently left the firm — noting casually that he hadn’t logged into his Bloomberg terminal in some time, sources added.

Goldman later learned that Bloomberg staffers could determine not only which of its employees had logged into Bloomberg’s proprietary terminals but how many times they had used particular functions, insiders said.

(Via The Verge.)

The Loop Magazine ★

New iOS subscription-based magazine, from Jim Dalrymple and The Loop:

All of the articles published in The Loop magazine are exclusive to the publication and written by some great writers. For instance, the first issue includes articles from Matt Gemmell, Dream Theater’s Jordan Rudess, Michael Simmons, Holly Winewell, Peter Cohen and long time Apple analyst Ben Bajarin.

Good first issue. It’s fascinating to me to see magazine publishing emerge as a medium for small independents.

Peter Shankman: ‘If Google Glass Fails, It’s Robert Scoble’s Fault’ ★

Bizarre, but telling argument by Peter Shankman:

See, it’s people like Scoble who ruin it for regular people, the masses who will determine whether Glass succeeds or winds up in the land of the Apple Newton. His review was so over the top, so up Google’s ass, so “I’m taking a freaking shower while wearing them” (complete with photos,) that no normal, non-over-the-edge Geek will want to come within a hundred miles of them.

So much for mass adoption. It’s the Segway effect. I was the first person in NYC to own a Segway back in 2003. It. Was. Awesome. But I was also on the damn thing every minute of every single day. I’m not proud of that. I did back then to the Segway, what Scoble is doing to Glass, today, and he should have learned from my mistakes.

This is almost comically misguided. Glass will succeed or fail on its own merits, just as most mass market products do. The problem with Segway wasn’t that Peter Shankman drew attention to himself by riding it all over New York. The problem with Segway is that almost no one wanted a $4000 scooter, and the only people that Segway did appeal to were socially-maladjusted, self-centered, self-important, “Hey everybody, look at me! I’m using this ostentatious expensive new gadget!” blowhards like Peter Shankman.

But so, yes, I do think Glass is headed for the same fate as Segway.

Beware of Quotes That Aren’t Inside Quotation Marks ★

Yesterday, Bloomberg reporter Tim Culpan wrote this paragraph:

A decline in revenue from the iPad Mini “is more on demand, while price has been stable,” Pegatron Chief Executive Officer Jason Cheng said. “Not just tablets, also e-books and games consoles, almost every item is moving in a negative direction.”

Philip Elmer-DeWitt was curious about the placement of those quotation marks, and asked Cheng if he actually said that demand for the iPad Mini is down. He did not.

‘This Is Water’ ★

The Glossary:

In 2005, author David Foster Wallace was asked to give the commencement address to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College. However, the resulting speech didn’t become widely known until 3 years later, after his tragic death. It is, without a doubt, some of the best life advice we’ve ever come across, and perhaps the most simple and elegant explanation of the real value of education.

We made this video, built around an abridged version of the original audio recording, with the hopes that the core message of the speech could reach a wider audience who might not have otherwise been interested.

Really well done. I miss Wallace so very much.