Reader is Dead by mihaip is a little python program that will authorize with google and archive pretty much everything from your Google Reader account. A great thing if you’re still behind in getting a new system up and ready and synced now that Google Reader’s demise is only a day away.
In Money well spent John Moltz takes a couple of minutes to look at the source of the information that the new Apple ad flopping. Hint: they are a new client of Samsung.
I’m sure that’s just a coincidence though.
Thanks to Gruber for pointing this out.
Someone help is an incredibly succinct overview of where your (well, the authors, but most likely a similar look at you as well) stuff is. Documents, images, videos, etc. Anyone living in the “modern age” will be able to relate :)
Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded For PC And Mac Now Available for $19.99.
Ah, memories….
Also launching on iOS and Android tomorrow (June 28).
A but behind here, but after watching this E3 2013 Watch Dogs Gameplay Demo I’m thinking I need to get myself a console…
There’s a New Trailer For Guillermo Del Toro’s ‘Pacific Rim’ that looks pretty fantastic. Say what you will about the movie, but the sound design for this trailer is fantastic.
Windows 8.1: a first look at what Microsoft is changing over at The Verge. Lots of pretty pictures, a new (lame, but better than nothing) start button, multi-monitor improvements, finally some (hopefully) less confusing differentiation between system settings (desktop control panel) and user settings (metro user settings), and a bunch of other bits.
Wonder if this’ll be enough to stem the Windows8 Hate?
Feedspot launched today a public beta of their feed reader. As Google Readers days draw to a close, the alternatives will be popping up more and more.
Feedspot has standard features that you’d expect:
9-5 Mac says that the Facebook phone experiment is over as AT&T clears stock and nobody else steps forward.
AT&T had earlier denied that any plans had been made to discontinue the handset, but there had seemed little doubt about the handset’s future after the carrier dropped the price from $99 to 99 cents. Even Facebook itself went as far as telling users that the front-end could be switched off …
Hardly shocking, if it’s true.
The Sony SmartWatch 2 has been unveiled:
[…] The Sony Smartwatch 2 has officially been unveiled, sporting a new design, new interface and a cornucopia of new features. Specs include a 1.6-inch (220 x 176) touch display, NFC for easy pairing with your Android phone, Bluetooth 3.0 wrapped inside a dust and water resistant (IP57) aluminum body with a design reminiscent of the Sony Xperia Z. Sony will also include a stainless steel wrist band with the Smartwatch 2, but users will be able to personalize the device with any standard 24mm strap.
John over on Venture Beat writes that Google has added a stunning ‘Street View’ of the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa:
At 2,717 feet, 160 floors, and almost a kilometer in height, the Burj Khalifa is the tallest manmade structure in the world. Now you and I can tour it without ever visiting Dubai, courtesy of Google Street View. But with heights like these revealing the city of Dubai, the sea, the interior passages of the building, and the highest pool in the world, Google is going to have to find a new name for “Street View.”
I think that if you click on this link you can start the street view journey. Or just search for “Burj Khalifa” on google and go in through the normal maps interface.
The First Trailer for Ashton Kutcher’s ‘Jobs’ has been Released. After the disastrous first peek in January, I have to say this looks… pretty awesome. Of course, the movie will never live up to the expectations (and deep knowledge) of the Apple faithful, but, other than the fact all I can see is Ashton Kutcher, it looks pretty good.
Let us be 100% clear: Content promoting or glorifying violence against women or anyone else has always been prohibited from Kickstarter. If a project page contains hateful or abusive material we don’t approve it in the first place. If we had seen this material when the project was submitted to Kickstarter (we didn’t), it never would have been approved. Kickstarter is committed to a culture of respect.
Fourth, today Kickstarter will donate $25,000 to an anti-sexual violence organization called RAINN. It’s an excellent organization that combats exactly the sort of problems our inaction may have encouraged.
Well worth the full read, and good on Kickstarter for coming out and laying it on the table. Sucks they didn’t act fast enough to stop the funding for this project, but they have done what they can I think.
How to Make a Vesper is a very cool look at what it took in terms of design, animations, layout, typology, and a ton of other things, to make a successful app. The app itself is relatively simple, which makes the number of iterations and attention to detail that much more impressive.
If you’re interested in app design at all, and want to go above and beyond the native widgets, this is a must read to see how others have done it.
Pretty fascinating story of Inside Digg’s Race to Build the New Google Reader.
Geeks of Doom say that the First Trailer For ‘The LEGO Movie’ Is Better Than You Might Expect, but I disagree, it looks well done, but terrible. What do you think?
Sounds like the wild internet outrage over some of the new features from the Xbox One are going to be updated based on “user feedback”. Microsoft posted their update saying:
So, today I am announcing the following changes to Xbox One and how you can play, share, lend, and resell your games exactly as you do today on Xbox 360. Here is what that means:
An internet connection will not be required to play offline Xbox One games - After a one-time system set-up with a new Xbox One, you can play any disc based game without ever connecting online again. There is no 24 hour connection requirement and you can take your Xbox One anywhere you want and play your games, just like on Xbox 360.
Trade-in, lend, resell, gift, and rent disc based games just like you do today - There will be no limitations to using and sharing games, it will work just as it does today on Xbox 360.
11 Times Jay-Z Used A Phone That Wasn’t A Samsung Galaxy is just one (well, eleven) times in hundreds when someone endorsed something as the best thing ever (case in point) from a completely different device.
A Great Article about legacy code.
How To Spot The Legacy Code Writer In Your Company
Remember how Google is killing Google Reader at the end of this month? Well, there haven’t been a huge number of updates on alternatives yet. Feedly updated to use their own cloud recently, and today Digg posted a Digg Reader Update:
Over the last 90 days, the Digg engineering team — all 5 of them — has been heads-down building an updated take on the RSS reader. For our first public release, in time to (just) beat the shutdown of Google Reader, our aim has been to nail the basics: a web and mobile reading experience that is clean, simple, functional, and fast. We’re also introducing a tool that allows users to elevate the most important stories to the top.
The biggest challenge in getting a “new” Google Reader alternative is not a good web interface. It’s important, but it’s getting that and a backend interface that’s supported by all the third party clients. IE: Reeder, Mr. Reader, and the tons of other iOS and Android feed readers that need a backend. For example I use Reeder on the iPhone and Mr. Reader on the iPad, and both have to use the same backend system or I’m screwed in my daily feed reading.
Sigh. I’m still hoping that Google will change their mind and keep Google Reader around for another few years.
Saw this morning that IFTTT has launched a 500px channel. This lets you add 500px as a source or target for any If This Then That recipes that you have.
A Quick Rundown of Microsoft’s Office Mobile for iPhone over at MacStories.
I can’t say I’m terribly excited about what Microsoft is offering in Office Mobile, but it’s a start. Now available on the iPhone, Office Mobile requires an Office 365 subscription, which will give you access to all of Microsoft’s Office apps on up to 5 PCs or Macs, 20 GB of SkyDrive storage, and 60 minutes of Skype calls for $9.99 per month or $99.99 a year for Home Premium.
Honestly, they waited too long. I honestly can’t remember a time in the last 2 years when I’ve thought “I need excel” or “I need word”. Of course, I’m not an “office” guy anyway, but I really think they should have done this years ago. We’ll see what happens I guess.
Passed on via facebook: Free Lynda.com Course: Black & White with Photoshop and Lightroom
Lynda.com has a free post-processing course, Black and White with Photoshop and Lightroom, now through June 21 from Photoshop Product Manager Bryan O’Neil Hughes.
Designers Complaining is a Tumblr dedicated to designers bitching about iOS7.
Venturebeat reports that password manager PasswordBox has offered one million free-for-life memberships
425,000 beta users later, social password manager PasswordBox is going live. And it’s offering free-for-life memberships to the first million users who sign up.
I’m personally a lastpass user, but will check it out (around 80,000 people ahead of me). I’m a bit nervous though to trust this app with all my passwords and information without hearing some sort of third party security audit (like Steve Gibson did on Lastpass). Still, it’s nice to have options.
When my buddy cthulhu sent over this article, I thought [Message Deleted] : Microsoft, Rape Jokes, and the Next Gen of Gamer Culture was about comments or how a live comment feed made it into a demo in the key note (or a twitter feed or something) where of course the dumbasses are going to be spewing hate and stupidity (what is it about fuckwads and anominity?). Turns out not so much, seems that during the keynote demo someone made a great rape (note: this is sarcasm) joke.
Normally this would be chalked up to an embarrassing gaff by a big company, apologies would be issued, etc. However it is (in theory anyway) elevated because of the stereotype of “hard core” online gaming (ie: XBox) being full of hate speech, threats, racial slurs, and pretty much anything in between. When this is the norm for your gaming platform not only should you be doing something about it, you sure as hell don’t egg it on by doing the same thing on possibly the most important (or at least most watched) keynote for your company in the decade. Seriously, someone needs a bit of Jobs-like attention to detail here, or hell, anyone with a bit of sense to look over this stuff.
In the embedded video, the Tropes of Women in Video games is examined, the “Damsel in Distress” in particular.
The Brilliant Insanity Behind the New Mac Pro’s Design. Great bit about how the new “trashcan” Mac Pro is really an evolution of the original G4 cube, and how it’s a game changing design by a nutso company. This quote hit it well
Let me just say this about the Mac Pro: this type of design can only be produced by a company that is first, truly led by its industrial design team, and second, completely nuts. No sane engineer would ever let this leave the design stage because it goes against everything you’re supposed to do with electronics. You’re supposed to arrange boards parallel to each other to maximize space efficiency. You’re supposed to have I/O ports that attach to the board in parallel, not perpendicularly. You’re supposed to end up with something that is roughly the shape of a box, because that’s the easiest and most efficient way to manufacture a device.
Word from the Official Google Blog: Google Maps and Waze, outsmarting traffic together
To help you outsmart traffic, today we’re excited to announce we’ve closed the acquisition of Waze. This fast-growing community of traffic-obsessed drivers is working together to find the best routes from home to work, every day.
Everything I’ve heard is that Waze will remain as they are, independent and doing what they currently do. I assume that Google will be using Waze’s data to feed into their own systems (and possibly vice versa?) until another inevitable google product cleanup. Hopefully not for a while now
A few highlights from the Apple WWDC keynote this morning:
Of course depending on what side of the internet arguing fence you’re on, you’ll be saying this is an amazing / boring list of things and the keynote was full of lies / cool statistics. My quick thoughts on the above items:
iOS 7 is a great looking update with some new and sexy things. The fact that a lot of the functionality already exists in either third party apps or Android is completely irrelevant. People have been complaining “it looks the same as it did in 2007” for the last 5 years, now they can complain that “it looks too different / too much like Android / etc”.
OS/X looks like it’s a fairly boring update, with some nice new stuff, but nothing groundbreaking. Also a horrible name. Sea Lion would have been better.
New Mac Pro will maybe make the pro’s happy. Not a lot of expandability (outside of Thunderbolt, where there’s not a lot of peripherals for yet). And while the form factor is sexy and new (thinking the G4 Cube), it’s not really stackable and seems like it’s different to be different. Still, I’m sure it’ll be an amazingly powerful computer that I can’t afford.
New MacBook Air is all about the battery life (9/12 hours for the 11” / 13”) and not much else. A few bits here and there (802.11ac for example), but mostly it’s a bigger / better tuned for the battery (assuming their battery life stats work out as being true). Maxes out at 8G ram and 512G SSD and a bump in the CPU, for $1849. Pretty pricey still, but starting at $999 is still pretty nice.
Today will be a great day of presents from the Internet. Lightroom folks you’ll be happy to see that Lightroom 5 is out!
No big surprises from the beta (sadly), but still a lot if nice changes for us to dig our teeth into!
The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald
Amazing song.
Google Explains Why They Killed Their RSS Reader: It’s Your Fault. I disagree. I’ve been reading in Google Reader since it came out. Consistently. Daily. Hourly.
Google wants people to move away from the old “passive” model of sitting down and reading nows. Instead they’d like us to take an “active” approach, such as having artificial intelligence services such as Google Now tailer news and alerts based on our search preferences.
I read this as “we need to push people to Google Plus, and if they don’t have an RSS reader maybe they’ll use it more.”
:(
Final Man Of Steel Trailer Takes Flight over at CinemaBlend.com.
Interactive Apple iPhone 5S & iOS 7 Concept. Super impressive, especially considering it’s done completely in JavaScript and CSS (no images!)
Hit the Vesper Review over at macstories.net
If you take into account the apps that I have reviewed over the past two years, Vesper may seem anachronistic and uncharacteristically simple: it’s a general-purpose note-taking app with no sync, no URL scheme, no iPad version, and no Markdown integration. When I first tried Vesper a couple of weeks ago, I was skeptical in regard to the app’s reason of existence. But now, in spite of its 1.0 nature and many missing features, I see one - and, more importantly, I believe Vesper gets several things right.
I got it, and have to admit it looks and feels gorgeous, but I suspect it may be a bit limited for my needs. I’ll replace Drafts for a week though and see how it does. Kudos to John, Brent, and Dave for the great looking app!
Windows 8.1 Preview. Over half of the video is about how you can customize the start menu with colors or images.
Feedly is listening and posts about their next moves in the Google Reader issue.
But we still have a long way to go. We have been turning to the community to finalize the roadmap for the rest of this year - thanks for the 3,500+ ideas and the tens of thousands of votes you casted on uservoice. This is what it looks like:
[…]
We have been working behind the curtains with the developers of Reeder,Press, Nextgen Reader, Newsify and gReader as design partners for our Normandy project[1]. Today we are excited to announce that you will be able to access your feedly from all these apps before Google Reader retires and that the access to feedly API will be free. More details soon.
Honestly I’ve still got my head in the sand about Google Reader going away in less than a month, hoping that they’ll change their mind. I’ve played with a few alternate feed readers, but the issue is that without a single dominant backend to sync everything. I use Reeder and Mr. Reader on my iOS devices, and the web, all backed by Google Reader. I’ve played with Feedly but it looks (to me) too…. “magazine-y” for my taste. My big worry is that feed readers will adopt a backend that had a crappy web experience, and as a user of multiple Operating Systems, I’ll end up getting a crappy experience when I’m not on Mac or iOS.
13 minutes of this ‘Man Of Steel’ Publicity Special give a great deal of new info and footage from the next Superman movie. No huge spoilers, but if you want to be really surprised, you’ll want to leave this one alone. Great discussion of why certain decisions were made though, the “S”, the new suit design, and so on.
In less than two weeks the moviegoing world will behold Man of Steel, and we will finally see if the very enthusiastic hype that has been building around Zack Snyder’s much-anticipated reboot of the Superman movie franchise is worth believing.
One of the most successful iOS games has just gotten an announcement trailer for the new version: Plants Vs. Zombies 2
PopCap Games, the creators of Plants vs. Zombies, announced today with an all-new trailer when Plants vs. Zombies 2 would be released for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. The trailer also teases some new plants and new worlds that you can expect to see in the highly anticipated sequel.