Two years after Pinch Media released their iTunes App Store Secrets report, I still see this iconic curve on a regular basis: It doesn’t matter whether it’s a game or a productivity app, free or paid, the typical mobile app is dumped like a cheerleader after prom night. Most are all but abandoned within a…
The ongoing BP / Deepwater Horizon oil disaster is a sickening object lesson in the evils of oil. Of course it’s just the latest in an ugly line of spills that have occurred over the years. BP itself has a long track record of safety and environmental violations. I still have vivid tv memories of…
The House recently passed a major financial reform bill, and the Senate will vote on it as soon as there’s enough Republican support to push it through. By most accounts, the Republicans are mostly on board, which is probably why we’re not hearing a whole lot about it from the media. There’s not enough conflict…
Things are ugly right now. After the healthcare bill passed, we all heard how a few so-called tea baggers hurled racial slurs and other insults at Democratic lawmakers, broke windows of party offices and engaged in other such foolery. Yesterday, I saw Mitt Romney’s new book on display in Borders. It’s called “No Apology: The…
I feel like the media constantly bombards us with two completely opposite visions of the future: In future #1 I can talk to my home appliances and have virtual sex with supermodels while my hydrogen-powered biodegradable car drives me to work. In future #2 I’m learning to make fire and trying to defend my survival…
Today I walked down to Cafe Dolci to grab a banh mi (I always order a combo of grilled pork and paté incidentally), and there was a guy inside the place taking pictures. Cafe Dolci is busy at lunchtime and only has room inside for one person, so while the photographer and his tripod monopolized…
When future archaeologists unearth the cities of what was once the great empire called America, and they sift through the remains of our civilization looking for the causes of our collapse, this commercial will tell them all they need to know… We had lots of opportunities to save ourselves, but we preferred to party.
“[The writer] does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there.” – J.G. Ballard I’ve been on a kind of media fast since around Christmas of last year. It started accidentally; I was so busy with holiday madness and projects at work that I didn’t check in to Twitter or Facebook for…
Meetings without a specific agenda are evil. A vague agenda isn’t good enough. It’s a waste of everyone’s time. Know exactly what you want to accomplish, and know exactly who needs to be there and why. Exception: if you haven’t had a 1:1 conversation with your boss or a particular underling in weeks, then you should…
One of the things that stood out for me amongst all the hype around the Motorola Droid before the device hit the market was the screen resolution: a whopping 480 x 854 pixels. At first I thought it was a misprint. Once I verified the specs, I started making my design templates for the Droid…