Category: Technology

Pocket 5.0 Update

After being an Instapaper user and fan for so long, I held out on Pocket for as long as possible. However, over the past year, Pocket has become one of my most-used apps and a go-to place for my workflow.

While I’ve been using Feedly for something close to this new functionality, it will be a nice addition to an already slick experience…

Pocket is releasing an update to its app today that puts a new focus on helping you discover the best of the items you have saved, using algorithms to surface content likely to interest you the most. Pocket 5.0 searches through your saves to find articles that are trending, longform content, and items that you’re likely to enjoy based on your interests.

via Pocket update highlights the saves you’re most likely to enjoy | The Verge.

HP Chromebook 11 Now Unavailable

Weird.

Just bought Merianna one on Monday night and was planning to go pick one up for myself today…

Retailers everywhere have stopped selling the new HP Chromebook 11, effective immediately. Best Buy store managers were sent a memo which read, in part, “Stores should stop selling the HP Chromebook 11 effective immediately”. This removal from the retail space is widespread, with Amazon and other retailers also pulling the item from their product listings.

via HP Chromebook 11 now unavailable for purchase, no reason given – Android Community.

Bill Gates on Catalytic Philanthropy

Reads like one of those quotes that you’ll eventually see in the authorized auto/biography of Gates in a couple of decades (if he doesn’t cure death first)…

We work to draw in not just governments but also businesses, because that’s where most innovation comes from. I’ve heard some people describe the economy of the future as “post-corporatist and post-capitalist”—one in which large corporations crumble and all innovation happens from the bottom up. What nonsense. People who say things like that never have a convincing explanation for who will make drugs or low-cost carbon-free energy. Catalytic philanthropy doesn’t replace businesses. It helps more of their innovations benefit the poor.

via Bill Gates: Here’s My Plan to Improve Our World — And How You Can Help | Wired Business | Wired.com.

The iPod is 12

Still amazing to watch all these years later (start at min 24 for a glimpse of pure joy if you don’t have time to watch the whole thing):

I can’t believe the iPod is twice the age of my oldest child, but I’m glad she’s growing up in a world of music sharing and discovery made more possible by that device.

The iPod first went on sale 12 years ago | TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

Now I need to go dig up my Gen 1 and Gen 2 iPods from whatever drawer they may be haunting…

What’s After Web 2.0?

My pal Wayne Porter and I got into a fun spat almost seven years ago about what web 2.0 meant for marketers. We had a similar “what’s next” private convo on Facebook a couple of nights ago regarding Twitter’s very successful IPO.

Seeing Twitter hit the mainstream over the last few years and now being a big public company has been weird to say the least. Not to compare, but I imagine the apostles felt the same kind of bittersweet “what now?” moment after seeing the early Jesus movement take off under Paul etc (yes, grossly simplified).

But what’s next?

Is there a web 3.0? Wearables like Google Glass?

I don’t know… it’s a strange world and we need new descriptive science fiction to point the way.

Here’s Dave Winer on the topic:

New models for communication can develop, independent of the needs of the companies that run the Web 2.0 servers. I don’t think Web 2.0 will go away, but a new net can take its place beside it. And that’s all that’s needed to boot up a new layer.

via Why the Web 2.0 model is obsolete.

Writing on the Wall

I definitely just ordered Writing on the Wall as it combines two of my favorite things… the social internet and anthropological archaeology…

Papyrus rolls and Twitter have much in common: They were their generation’s signature means of “instant” communication. Indeed, as Tom Standage reveals in his scintillating new book, social media is anything but a new phenomenon. Cicero’s web is just one of many historical antecedents of today’s social media. Other prominent examples include the circulation of letters and other documents in the early Christian church; the torrent of printed tracts which circulated in 16th-century Germany, triggering the Reformation; the passing from hand to hand of gossip-laden poetry in the Tudor and Stuart courts; the duelling political pamphlets with which Royalists and Parliamentarians courted public opinion during the English Civil War; the first scientific journals and correspondence societies, which enabled far-flung scientists to discuss and build upon each other’s work; the handwritten poems and newsletters of pre-Revolutionary France, which spread gossip from Paris throughout the country; and the revolutionary pamphlets and local papers that rallied support for American independence. Such social-media systems arose frequently because, for most of human history, social networks were the dominant means by which information spread, in either spoken or written form.

via Writing on the Wall | tomstandage.com.

Wow.

How To Setup Nexus 5 Stock Notifications

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Yes, it’s all come to this… python scripts (or you can follow @n5stock on Twitter but that’s too easy).

We’re a desperate lot.

Nevertheless, this is pretty awesome if you as excited about the hopefully imminent Nexus 5 launch as I am (my beloved Nexus 4 is long in the tooth and pretty smashed up).

Howto: Setup Nexus 5 Stock Notifications

via Howto: Setup Nexus 5 Stock Notifications : Android.

R.I.P. Lou Reed

“Oh, it’s such a perfect day
I’m glad I spend it with you
Oh, such a perfect day
You just keep me hanging on”

Lou Reed, a massively influential songwriter and guitarist who helped shape nearly fifty years of rock music, died today. The cause of his death has not yet been released, but Reed underwent a liver transplant in May.

via Lou Reed, Velvet Underground Leader and Rock Pioneer, Dead at 71 | Rolling Stone.