May 24, 2013 • 29 notes • dwineman

dwineman:

Last night during my regular 4 a.m. bout of insomnia I decided to look up where the Skagit River Bridge was. Turns out it spans the Skagit River — or used to span, anyway, from 1955 until about nine hours prior — between Mount Vernon and the tiny town of Burlington, WA.

When I searched for “Burlington, WA,” Apple Maps gave me a random address fifteen miles away on NW Burlington Drive, Portland, OR. Not even the right state. I had to pan and zoom manually to find the crossing, which was tricky because in Apple Maps the entire Skagit River is unlabeled.

Google Maps just rolled its eyes, reached out with white-gloved hands to catch its top hat and cane, and found the spot instantly, already showing the missing section of I-5.

I don’t expect Apple to finish first in the maps race, but goddamn it, I wish they’d at least jog.

May 19, 2013 • 2 notes

Tumblr and Yahoo!

This is the best news I’ve heard in years. My god, do you know how much it will work out per blog? 1.1 Billion is enough to go around, folks. We’ve made it! We’re rich!

May 18, 2013
The compiler is the entity the programmer must talk to, the creature he or she must make understand the intentions embodied in the code. But this compiler-creature is error-intolerent to a fault; it demands a degree of exactness that is exhausting, painful for an intelligent human being. Leave out a comma, and the compiler halts, affronted at the slightest whiff of an error. Fix the comma, run the compiler again, then it halts again, this time at a typo. Puns, I would say, represented a human being’s pent-up need for ambiguity. That a word could signify two things at once! And these double meanings could be simultaneously understood! What a relief from the flat-line understanding of a programmer’s conversation with the machine!
Ellen Ullman, The Bug
May 18, 2013
It had begun with an innocent remark — as it always does, of course. These punners prey on the innocent, the earnest, the one with serious intent.
Ellen Ullman, The Bug
May 16, 2013 • 51 notes
May 8, 2013 • 105 notes • jimray

jimray: There’s something so boringly obvious about Kara Swisher’s...

The indomitable Jim Ray picks at the popular breathless narrative of the startup culture dream. Horatio, Horatio, where for art thou Hortio (Alger)?

jimray:

There’s something so boringly obvious about Kara Swisher’s behind-the-scenes look at how Facebook came to own Instagram. To fans of Silicon Valley drama (amongst whom Swisher seems to count herself), it’s a breathless tale of luck, determination, and picking the decisive moment to pivot. From a…

May 4, 2013 • 112 notes • jasonweinberger
jasonweinberger: Marcel Duchamp – Avoir l’Apprenti dans le Soleil, 1914

jasonweinberger:

Marcel Duchamp – Avoir l’Apprenti dans le Soleil, 1914

(via finethankyouandyou)

May 3, 2013 • 13 notes • shaneguiter

How @breakingnews keeps news junkies current in a crisis | The Verge

shaneguiter:

Lots of people follow @breakingnews on Twitter — the account and the breakingnews.com website and mobile apps have become indispensable resources for news junkies who need to stay up-to-the-minute on the biggest news of the moment.

But few people know that Breaking News is actually owned by NBC, and operated as what general manager Cory Bergman calls an “internal startup.” I spoke to Cory about how that works, how his team runs @breakingnews, and how the site managed to be both fast and accurate as the chaos of the Boston Marathon bombing story unfolded.

(via journo-geekery)

April 30, 2013 • 562 notes • natgeofound
natgeofound: A couple rides in a motorboat on Lake Villarrica in Chile, July 1941.Photograph by W. Robert Moore, National Geographic

natgeofound:

A couple rides in a motorboat on Lake Villarrica in Chile, July 1941.
Photograph by W. Robert Moore, National Geographic

April 29, 2013 • irondavy.quora.com
Looking back at the ideas espoused by the UX community, I find their relevance to my work winnowing by the year. Many of the practices seem forged in the fires of consultancy. Advocacy is a repeat theme in UX writing, but is borderline irrelevant when working for a product- and design-centric organization. Similarly, when you have internal stakeholders who understand the design process, you don’t need to worry about constantly building consensus. Deliverables like lengthy specs, comprehensive wireframes, and pixel-perfect PSDs are all artifacts from a time when risk-averse clients needed to enforce progress and limit variability. Inside of a product company, these efforts waste time, create politics, and mask responsibility.
The Rise of Product Design, by David Cole