When I first heard about this listening to an episode of The Industry podcast my first reaction was “wait, another to-do list app?”. This one looks pretty cool though: full syncing on iPhone, iPad and web with a streamlined interface and it apparently will be free.
It’s not out yet but I’m keeping my eye on this one once it reaches the App Store.
The Atlantic‘s Daniel Snyder makes an excellent point about one key Black Widow scene in The Avengers (warning, spoilers ahead):
During an attack on the heli-carrier in the second act, Romanoff becomes trapped in the lower engine decks with Bruce Banner, who loses control and becomes his unstoppable raging alter-ego, the Hulk. Her attempts to reason with him fail, and soon she is running for her life through the bowels of the ship, chased by the unthinking green mass of rage. The Hulk swats her against the wall like a mere insect before the Norse God of Thunder, Thor, intervenes. When next we see her, the Black Widow is cowering in the corner. The look on her face is that of a woman utterly broken.
When I watched the film last weekend I didn’t consider this scene at all; it felt lost in the midst of all the bombast. If Hawkeye and or Black Widow eventually get their own movie – being the weaker “mortal side” of The Avengers squad – this human vulnerability could be a really interesting angle to explore.
There’s a lot of discussion on tech and gaming circles regarding Microsoft’s subsidized XBox 360, and I liked Ars Technica’s breakdown the most. I’m disappointed and puzzled by Microsoft’s shift; if you want really want to move console economics, you’ve got to do better than this.
If you like podcasts, Instacast is an essential app. It’s one of my most used apps and has been on my home screen for almost a year. The app manages and organizes podcasts extremely well, to the point where I’ve abandoned iTunes podcast management completely. Today marks its 2.0 release with a bunch of enhancements; I can’t wait to dive in to see what changed.
An inspiration for Mondays.
Henry Blodget writing for New York Magazine:
“Mark has done two things in his twenties,” a colleague of Zuckerberg says. “He has built a global company, and he has grown up.” The second one made the first possible. When early mistakes risked an employee mutiny, Zuckerberg knuckled down and learned how to lead. He made himself the pupil of some of the best bosses in business but had the maturity never to let outsiders sway his overall vision. He got adept at hiring the right people, and, more important, firing senior employees whom the company had outgrown.
Zuckerberg is clearly a very smart guy and has evolved on some things. Yet there’s other aspects, mostly centered around privacy and design, that he has far to go. Also Blodget credits too much to Zuckerberg directly; engineering, PR and other groups have really helped solidify Facebook’s social lead.
I think we’ll find Zuckerberg’s state several years from now a more interesting question. Will growth slow? Will there be a “next big thing” that will force Facebook to address competition?
The Denzel Washington as Malcom X and Anna Paquin in the club are my favorites of this set.
Fixie is a helper JS file that interprets HTML5 tags and automatically adds the right kind of content – paragraphs, images, links and so on – in the right place. As someone who spends a lot of their day job adding in sample or filler content, this looks really helpful.
Web developer/designer Jonathan Christopher:
We can’t help but to be influenced by headlines like Instagram getting bought for $1B. As ridiculous as that is, as much of an outlying circumstance it is, we can’t help but to want something like that to happen to us. Seeing something that ridiculous happen almost makes it seem like “small” dreams of one day getting a $1M payout that much more realistic, almost deserved in some way.
Ultimately it seems to me that big payouts have become the definition of success in our industry, and to be blunt I think that sucks.
Gamers With Jobs‘ Cory Banks dives through analysis on GameStop’s used game market. It’s clearly huge; Gamestop sold $2.6 billion of used inventory during fiscal year 2011.
Having seen many indie game stores close in the past few years, I found Banks’ conclusion sobering:
No matter what, used games aren’t going away anytime soon. Gamers will continue to trade in old titles, while publishers will continue to develop more reasons to buy new. You’ll think of GameStop as the place next to the Orange Julius in the mall. EA will think of them as the big brother with the baseball bat and a bad attitude.
And either way, GameStop wins.