‘Engineers are Retarded’

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2eDKB_BuhQ]

 

To Apple purists, documentary “Welcome to Macintosh” is surely nothing new. But to little `ol Joe, flipping channels on a Friday night, the documentary was a surprise airing on CNBC. By far, former Apple development engineer Jim Reekes gave the most acerbic commentary about the company—not so much what he said but how he said it.

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AP Should Not Credit Bloggers

I don’t share some bloggers’ enthusiasm for Associated Press’ new policy crediting them. On September 1st, the wire service issued advisory: “AP announces guidelines for credit and attribution,” which includes bloggers. AP shouldn’t credit bloggers because it opens way for lazy reporting and undermines the news organization’s reputation and credibility (well, outside the blogging community).

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Mama Knows Where to Get the Goods

What a simply smart idea—set up outside the grocery store and collect food donations for the needy. September 5, 2010, I spotted Mama’s Pantry in front of Ralph’s supermarket in San Diego, Calif.’s Hillcrest neighborhood. on. The concept of fundraising food shoppers is so mind-boggling sensible, it’s stunning more charities don’t go to the food source—the local market. 

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'Can Ping Be Saved?' is the Wrong Question

Apple’s social music discovery service isn’t even a week old and Fortune blogger Philip Elmer-DeWitt asks: “Can Ping be saved?” Oh yeah? One million signups in 48 hours is such a failure. There are thousands of CEOs or product line managers who would say: “Gimme that problem. I’ll suffer through the failure of gaining 1 million customers in just two days.”

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The Case for Curating Comments

Five days ago, I quietly turned on commenting two months after turning it off. Comments are temporarily back at my personal website. Perhaps this second stage of experimentation will lead to my making comments a permanent fixture or instead giving John Gruber the apology I promised should the commenting feature be permanently removed. I’m still wondering if John’s approach might be right.

Before my mid-June post “Be a Man, John Gruber,” his blog had no commenting system, while mine offered Disqus. I insisted that “his no-comments approach is out of place in an era when so many Websites or services provide discussion tools and encourage readers/viewers to use them.” There was much more to the reasoning. Read the post to get it all.

Mundo Secreto

[vimeo https://vimeo.com/2006845]

 

Americans really are musically deprived. Even I’ll admit that Katy Perry’s smash hit “California Gurls” is a catchy tune, but there’s better music pretty much everywhere else. We just don’t get to hear it much. Mundo Secreto’s “PÕE A MÃO NO AR” is one example. I discovered the song while watching music videos on the now, sadly defunct International Music Feed. I loved the video channel and chose my cable/IPTV provider based on IMF’s availablity.

Les Voisines

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-L4jPVoNAE]   While browsing hats at the local Urban Outfitters last week, I Shazamed a French song playing over the store speakers. Shazam is among my three most-used smartphone applications—to discover music everywhere. If […]