04.08.12 |
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A.O. Scott, The New York Times:
As she sprints through the forest, Katniss is carrying the burden of multiple symbolic identities. She’s an athlete, a media celebrity and a warrior as well as a sister, a daughter, a loyal friend and (potential) girlfriend. In genre terms she is a western hero, an action hero, a romantic heroine and a tween idol. She is Natty Bumppo, Diana the chaste huntress of classical myth, and also the synthesis of Harry Potter and Bella Swan — the Boy Who Lived and the Girl Who Must Choose.
As is clear from the above, A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis go through some pretty deep analysis of why Katniss is such a hot character in this lengthy Times piece. To its credit, it touches on a lot of social and psychological issues from The Hunger Games I've generally dismissed up till now.
04.08.12 |
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Great small film websites can die, but that doesn't stop great writing from continuing on. Screened was one such site, with a wiki like interface and a lot of personality. But last week the site was sold off to new management with all the writing staff disbanded.
Nevertheless, Screened's head writer Matt Rorie is now setting up temporary residence over at his Tumblr blog. The guy is an excellent writer so check him out; not a lot there yet, but it shows a lot of promise with a kick ass review of The Raid and some commentary on Netflix.
04.07.12 |
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There’s taking notes at a typography lecture, and then there’s
drawing notes. Really cool looking work, along with some useful design pointers by designer Oliver Reichenstein (iAWriter)
04.06.12 |
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Great idea. I see this really being useful for getting some of my Paper shots quickly sent to my Mac with minimal fuss. (h/t Ben Brooks)
04.06.12 |
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There’s been of takes on the Lumia 900 this week, yet I’m fascinated most by Ars Technica’s Casey Johnston’s analysis on the shortcomings of the Metro UI:
[At times] the large fonts that characterize the OS take up too much valuable screen real estate.
The headers in the Outlook app, for instance, have a lot of breathing room. It makes the layout look nice, and choosing to display your contacts’ names in the largest font, twice the height of the rest, rather than the subject or snippets of content presumably makes you feel popular and keeps it people-centric. But I generally care just as much, if not more, about the subject and content preview than the sender, which are grayed out compared to the sender’s name.
In Mail on iOS, you can customize the font and the number of lines of the message preview, but Windows Phone provides no such options. Because of all the white space and large font, and the inability to fix that through settings, I can skim less of my e-mail at once, requiring more scrolling to go through it all. These information-sparse design cues extend to many of the third-party apps we tried, including Yelp and Twitter, where screen real estate often seems wasted by big fonts and white space.
I’m generally critical of the opposite problem on the web: a lot of websites, especially those on the arts/fashion side of things tend to emphasize small, 10 or 11px font as a primary body font. Yet in the process of going big, you can go too far – it looks like Metro fell down that trap.
04.06.12 |
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There’s several Apple vs. Nokia camera mashups to pick from, but I prefer this one from Tested. Bottom line, it reinforces what was apparent in other reviews: the Nokia stacks up the to the iPhone in great lighting conditions but falls apart in low light situations. Given how often people shoot later in the day or indoors, I’d argue that in practical use, this is a deal killer for the Nokia.
04.06.12 |
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Slate writer Patrick Radden Keefe:
Betty, the writers tend to deny us those redeeming, sympathetic moments. As an artistic matter, this may be unassailable; in real life, some adults really are vapid children with few redeeming qualities. But on a show where each character possesses a distinctive ratio of vinegar to sugar, Betty feels out of proportion to me. She’s almost all vinegar, and that strikes me as cruel.
It’s late in the week for Mad Men commentary on Sunday’s episode, yet Patrick nails it. Something about episode 503 felt very off – I think Betty’s storyline had a lot to do with that.
04.05.12 |
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Just when you thought the Final Fantasy series couldn’t get any more irrelevant…
04.05.12 |
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When you see a free, 50 minute set of Vimeo essays on The Wire popup online, it’s pretty much a no brainer.
04.05.12 |
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In app browser, send and archive, and more.
Best of all:
Thanks to your amazing support, we feel confident that Apple might revise its position on the Push API. We’ll submit a first version of Sparrow 1.2 including it. This might delay Sparrow 1.2 validation but we’re already working with some partners to include Push in future versions of Sparrow without needing Apple clearance.
Push is coming. If Apple can’t help us yet, we have other ideas.
Hell yes.