Categories
Technology

Relying on Bad

Brad Frost is worried about what an iPad 3 with a “Retina Display” will mean for the web. Here is the opening paragraph:

The iPad3’s Retina display is causing problems for apps who have to deal with Apple’s 20MB limit on app size. You know the web is in trouble when even the native apps are struggling with the gigantic Retina screen.

He has many good points in the rest of the article so go and read it. My first thought, however, was … we’ve been relying on bad technology to keep the web going for too long. Low dpi screens have allowed the web to continue to use low dpi images and now the day of reckoning is upon us.

Things are changing fast in technology and especially the web. I haven’t been able to keep up, but we are going to need to increase the pace of advancement in order to keep things afloat.

Just don’t add more JavaScript.

Categories
Technology

Speaking of Readability and Instapaper

Ben Brooks has some thoughts on Readability that I found fascinating. I’m just not sold on “free” services anymore and their net benefit. I found myself nodding along with what he was writing.

However, Marco Arment released an update to the Instapaper bookmarklet today and I stumbled upon it even before he announced it. Much better.

Categories
Life

Readability or Instapaper

Readability is now available on the App Store. I’ve been an Instapaper user for a while now and I was entertaining the idea of trying out Readability just to see what all of the “hubbub” might be about.

However, I’m sticking with Instapaper, and the reason is simple.

  • Instapaper is not free

I’m not talking about the website, I’m talking about the iOS apps. By not being free, I have some “skin in the game”, a sense that it is going to be around and going to treat me better.

In the future I might try out Readability, but for now, Instapaper is still it.

Categories
Technology

Books and Stores

Seth Godin’s latest manifesto was rejected from the iBookstore because he had links to Amazon within the pages of the book.

While I am sympathetic to what he says, I think there are many differences between the “traditional bookstore” and what he is running into at the moment.

  • Traditional bookstores have had a LONG time to get their policies in place
  • Authors did not submit their books to the bookstores … but the publishers
  • The iBookstore acts not just as a store but also a publisher in this case … does every book from every author get published?
  • Traditional books did not link directly to a competitor’s storefront

Also not mentioned is whether a book would get rejected from other e-bookstores if they had explicit links to competitors. Here are some other general thoughts about his entire predicament:

  • He has a generic ePub available online that is easily loaded into iBooks
  • Why are you linking to a 3rd party page that could always change without you knowing?
  • The Domino Project, where he posted his thoughts, is “powered by Amazon” … conflict of interest?

Is Apple wrong here? It’s probably leaning toward probably, but there are always problems in trying to draw direct lines between the physical world and the electronic one. Yes, we would all love it if we could do whatever we want wherever we want and people would just let us do it … and to an extent Apple is! You can load that ePub into iBooks simply by clicking a link on a website, and in many ways it is easier to do that than find something in the iBookstore.

Right now EVERYONE is trying to see how much control they can keep on their independent stores and trying to lessen the number of people you need to interact with in order to get in front of people, but that also means that some traditional roles are being mashed together.

In this case we see bookstore and publisher get smashed into one and it is causing people some headaches. With the App Store Apple mashed together the software publisher and big box retailer. As we consolidate in this way, the method of control (the publishing level) is being moved closer to the customer so we hear about it more.

No one likes seeing sausage being made.

UPDATE: Brian Ford has some thoughts about this whole thing over at Me & Her and I found it enlightening. Sounds like laziness to me.

Categories
Life Technology

Classroom Seating for Today

Thanks to Nate Beran for pointing me at this video.

It is node by Steelcase and it is just about exactly what I would wish for seating in a classroom today. Flexible, designed with technology in mind, it moves, and you can store stuff below the seat and it comes with you. SUCH A GREAT IDEA!