Tumbling down

newsweek:

Watch

(via the Awl)

The entire Senate isn’t unconscionable, which is a surprise to me.

24 notes · Reblogged from newsweek

I haven’t been keeping track in a couple days. (Actually, I went all the way back to Page 29, but this was more a more convenient screenshot.)

(I’d heart all Nicky’s photos if I thought it wouldn’t seem creepy. I swear she can’t take a bad photo.)

9 notes

Time’s website is hostile, and they hate the oughts.

madmenfootnotes:

Mad Men Playlist: the haunting theme music from season three, episode five, “The Fog”. This is played during Betty’s surreal dream sequences — to complement the surrealism, this track is a Spanish one! From the Sex and Lucia soundtrack, composed by Alberto Iglesias, it is called Me Voy a Morir de Tanto Amor (I am going to die of too much love). Enjoy these late night jams.

This reminds me a lot of the soundtrack from UP, but in a good way. (I honestly can’t listen to that music without getting misty-eyed.)

73 notes · Reblogged from madmenfootnotes

I ♥ inadvertently inappropriate reappropriations of classic slogans.

GPOYW: Going to War (with Used Car Salesmen) Edition.

The iPhone for mobile publishing

I’ve been waiting for almost two months to write an article on the state of iPhone applications, specifically as it deals with iPhone maturing as a mobile publishing platform. (I’d been hoping for the release of the long-anticipated Tumblr application update.)

It had been a glowing state of affairs. Facebook’s latest update, despite a further, shameful degradation of their icon, is a dream to use. It literally feels better than the website, although I know absolutely I am not the first person to say any of this.

Tweetie is an even more fantastic display of the ingenuity developers show in making a polished app experience. The UI treats, like swipe-to-reveal or pull-to-refresh, are so inspired that it feels like the advent of ever more heuristic touch-based interfaces.

NetNewsWire impressed me because literally hours after I nearly gave up on mobile feed reading, the new version ignited that love once more. NNW’s integration of Instapaper has made the software even more addicting.

Sidenote: Instapaper, while great, is not without its own issues. The most glaring of these is the lack of a WebKit view within the application. However, the new (experimental) text parser is the business, and the long-form reading experience has been bolstered thanks to Instapaper. Merlin’s well-placed endorsement probably explains it better than I ever could.

There are some NNW issues. I’ve been surprised at the lack of rabble-rousing regarding the collapse arrows, which I feel are easily hit while browsing lefty. Brent Simmons’s decision to forego “Mark as Unread” for starring is also pretty flummoxing. But when you compare this to the previous version of the software, it’s a fantastic improvement; in my opinion, this is now the reader to beat on the iPhone.

Other applications are in the fray, too. Photoshop’s mobile tool is a solid field assistant for quick and dirty photo editing, even as 1.0 software. I’ve used Dropbox in a pinch to upload photos (though I think Flickr will become the standard), and I’ve even written and edited long pieces using Simplenote. (N.B.: This started as several pieces on Simplenote.)

But let’s talk about Tumblr for a few.

I am somewhat surprised with the trouble I’ve had with Tumblr, especially comparing it Marco Ament’s other service and application, Instapaper, which has a much more pleasant experience on the iPhone.

Tumblr lacks a feeling of adherence to the timeline. Whereas applications like Twitterrific take pains to ensure you pick up where you left off, Tumblr defaults at the most recent post. Another Tumblr application I tried, Tumblr Gear, fixes this behavior (after first run), but lacks the actual timeline aspect, making the little scrolling you do feel like a chore.

Browsing in general is a shitstorm and nothing has changed in the newest version — see Dan Wineman’s excellent analysis on this. The most appalling has to be with regard to text: it looks like amateur hour when text blows up six sizes too large and wraps right off the screen without a chance to read it.

Somewhere in a previous design of the website, it felt just as natural on the iPhone as a desktop browser. But once sidebars appeared, it became a disappointing and unnatural experience on the iPhone. I know there’s an iPhone-specific dashboard, but that’s the same as the application dashboard. I don’t see the point.

The worst part is easily the new default behavior on posting to Twitter.

I’m calling Clark’s Law on this one. What makes this decision particularly criminal is its willful disregard of the configuration set up by users on the Tumblr website. It also flies in the face of my feelings on context-appropriate messages.

I actually enjoy the native editor, but must defer to TJ for posting issues, of which I’m sure there are plenty.

The web-based service is, of course, a trying experience on the iPhone. It’s troublesome to load, a hassle when editing, and impossible if you want to upload images or audio. Yet, reblogging inexplicably uses the Web interface. It’s hell, particularly if you’re trying to edit snippets of quoted text. (You can use TJ’s tip on how to reblog on iPhone, but it’s still like chewing glass.)

Though Tumblr still lags, these applications have changed my expectations about what I can do on the road. I’ve been considering a new machine (after my laptop was unwittingly stolen), and am seriously considering switching to a desktop after five-and-a-half years with notebooks. That’s how powerful the platform is to me.

I won’t claim that mobile publishing is dead-simple on a phone, but the reality is still mind-blowing. These are the days it feels like we’re living in the future.

1 note · ¶

TiVo Remote

funsizebytes:

[…]

I’d like to talk to you about two buttons on my DirecTV remote, specially the “Live TV” button (top right) and the “Enter/Last” button (bottom right).

[…]

If I want “Live” with no memory then I ought to use the “Live TV” button, but the “Live TV” button gives me a 30-minute memory on both channels.

First world problem? Yeah, no shit, but setting that aside, how do people who design this stuff for a living let something like that slip past them?

I mean, if you have the feature to be able to remember 30 minutes on two channels, why not use it for both buttons? Or if you are going to make it work for only one of the two, why not make it the one that logically fits by the label that you’ve assigned it?

The good news is that I finally figured out why it “sometimes” seems to work and sometimes doesn’t — apparently my muscle memory knew to use the “Live TV” button, but when I actually thought about it, I kept using the “Enter/Last” button and wondered why it wasn’t working as I expected.

I’ve never thought about it the way TJ wrote. Rather, I’ve always thought of the two recording pieces as literal different tuners — as though I had different TiVos controlled by the same remote. (When I first set up my TiVo, I was expecting to use two CableCARDs, so it made the metaphor a little stronger for me.)

Because of that, I’ve always known that if I hit the “Last” button, it’s going to send me to the last channel I surfed on that tuner, and wipe out that buffer. But if I hit “Live TV,” I’ll go to whatever I was watching on the other tuner, with the buffer.

I appreciate the way TJ thinks about this, because it is a logical conclusion to draw from swapping channels, but I don’t think it’s as flabbergasting as he put it.

6 notes · Reblogged from funsizebytes · ¶

Latte (with Foam)

Starbucks, I do no think that word means what you think it means.

luckyshirt:

HOLY CRAP LOOK AT THIS AIRFARE SALE.

I’m currently doing this thing where I don’t plan a trip across the country, but it’s really hard.

14 notes · Reblogged from luckyshirt