March 2010
1 post
I'm the Mayor of Nerdtown
Three reasons location-based “check in” apps suck and need to die.
They exalt the mundane. Are you a globetrotting adventurer exploring temples in Bali? No, you’re not. You’re a web developer checking in at fucking Starbucks. Why are you highlighting how boring your life is?*
The payoff is dubious. What do you get for all of your check-in efforts? A 15% discount. Who...
November 2009
3 posts
ChromeOS is the future. Oh shit.
I absolutely believe that Google’s ChromeOS, with its the-browser-is-the-OS model, represents where we’re headed in computing. Within a relatively short period of time, most users will do the majority of their work and play within the bounds of their browsers. It’s a return to the dumb clients of the past (which have been pegged as “the future of computing” a few...
October 2009
7 posts
Bushy Einstein is a lie.
I see that Disney is now offering refunds to parents who bought Baby Einstein tapes thinking that a DVD would turn their children into geniuses. First of all: those parents didn’t do their homework and paid the stupid tax as a result. No refund necessary. Second: this is old news. In Bush’s 2007 State of the Union speech, he presented company founder Julie Aigner-Clark as an American...
Really simple, really good.
A few days ago, I complained on Twitter about Grasshopper’s website being painfully slow. (Grasshopper is a service that provides a sort of virtual PBX for small businesses; think Google Voice with a call tree.)
Now, I complain about all kinds of things on Twitter, because I am an asshole. But it isn’t often that I get a response. Even less often do I receive a follow-up phone call...
July 2009
1 post
Can someone please explain the Safari 4 UI to me?
I didn’t download the beta. I live in Safari, so I had no intention of downloading something less stable than the already extraordinarily unstable version 3. So I waited.
I did finally install it a few weeks ago. And, again, I spend most of my workday in Safari. So I want to know why Apple’s made so many weird, inexplicable tweaks to the software to reduce my productivity.
Note:...
April 2009
1 post
Things I dislike about Apple's latest MacBook Pro
I was at the Apple Store last night, purchasing yet another fucking battery for my 1.4 year old MacBook Pro. (I’ve had a lot of Macs, and a lot of batteries.)
While I was there, I took a moment to look at the latest unibody MBP. It’s just a matter of time before I end up buying one, so I wanted to take a minute to think through what I would like and - let’s be serious - hate...