Linked List: January 30, 2015

Friday, 30 January 2015

AOL Still Makes Most of Its Money Off Millions of Dial-Up Subscribers 

Hayley Tsukayama, reporting for The Washington Post back in August:

AOL considers itself an advertising and media company. But it still relies on 2.3 million dial-up subscription customers for the bulk of its profits.

The company’s latest earnings report on Wednesday showed that while the firm pulls in most of its revenue from advertising, it still makes the most money off the division that includes those old-fashioned dial-up subscribers.

They should have kept TUAW and shut down AOL. Jiminy. (Via Jim Lipsey.)

Andrew Sullivan Hangs It Up 

Andrew Sullivan, two days ago:

But when you write every day for readers for years and years, as I’ve done, there’s not much left to hide. And that’s why, before our annual auto-renewals, I want to let you know I’ve decided to stop blogging in the near future.

Why? Two reasons. The first is one I hope anyone can understand: although it has been the most rewarding experience in my writing career, I’ve now been blogging daily for fifteen years straight (well kinda straight). That’s long enough to do any single job. In some ways, it’s as simple as that. There comes a time when you have to move on to new things, shake your world up, or recognize before you crash that burn-out does happen.

I find this surprising, but only because Sullivan seemed so energized when he took The Dish independent two years ago. But there’s no way anyone could do this if they feel burned out.

I’ve mentioned before that my mom’s father was a coal miner. That was his career. He spent like 40 years going into dark dangerous coal mines to perform grueling manual labor every workday, and wound up dying of black lung disease. Blogging isn’t hard work in the way that coal mining is, but above all else it demands enthusiasm. There’s no other way to keep going — blogs cease when their authors run out of enthusiasm. For many people, the enthusiasm seems to run out after just a few months, maybe a few years. For Sullivan, it took a decade and a half. A good reminder that nothing lasts forever.

See also: Sullivan today, on the notion of The Dish continuing without him.

Vintage Logos From the 1970s 

Say what you want about the ’70s, but a surprising number of these marks stand the test of time. (Via Sebastiaan de With.)

Apple’s Accessibility Quality 

Marco Zehe:

In fact, with the release of both OS X 10.10 “Yosemite” and iOS 8, the quality of many accessibility features has reached a new all-time low. AppleVis has a great summary of current problems in iOS 8. But let me give you two examples.

The first problem is so obvious and easily reproducible that it is hard to imagine Apple’s quality assurance engineers didn’t catch this, and that is on the iPhone in Safari, when going back from one page to the previous one with the Back button. When VoiceOver is running, I haven’t found a single page where this simple action did not trigger a freeze in Safari and VoiceOver. This was in early betas of iOS 8, and it is still not fixed in the 8.1.3 release several months later.

The Verge: AOL Is Shutting Down TUAW 

Micah Singleton, reporting for The Verge:

There goes another one. AOL is shutting down The Unofficial Apple Weblog, better known as TUAW, sources familiar with the situation tell The Verge. The company — which is also shutting down its gaming site Joystiq — is in the midst of a major reorganization, and is cutting back on media properties it deems as underperforming. TUAW’s run comes to an end on February 2nd.

Things I learned today: AOL still exists.

File Under ‘Apple, the Camera Company’ 

Casey Newton, writing for The Verge:

Tangerine, a breakout hit from this year’s Sundance Film Festival, is full of surprises. There’s the subject matter: transgender prostitutes working in a not-so glamorous part of Hollywood. And there are the characters: flinty, funny, nobody’s victim. But the story behind the camera is as surprising as what’s in front of it. Particularly because the camera used to shoot Tangerine was the iPhone 5S.

Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel of Claim Chowder 

This year-ago piece by Galen Gruman for InfoWorld hasn’t aged well (headline: “No, a Phablet Version Will Not Save the iPhone”):

Everyone is telling Apple it needs a big-screen iPhone to rekindle sales — but a look at the data shows that won’t work. […]

If you want to grow smartphone sales dramatically, you need to have much cheaper models that appeal to the billions of people in poor countries who can’t afford high-end devices. That’s where the growth is — but not the profits, which is a whole other story.

iPhone sales were up 46 percent last quarter, year-over-year, and the average selling price went up, not down.