Alex Heath @alexheath-blog - Tumblr Blog

Whatever happens, Walter White is doomed.

Essential reading for the premiere tonight.

So let us hope that this is what the sale signifies: the beginning of a phase in which this Gilded Age's major beneficiaries re-invest in the infrastructure of our public intelligence. We hope it marks a beginning, because we know it marks an end.

If I were working at The Washington Post right now, I would be excited.

Love this fascinating Reddit AMA with an unnamed editor for the Xinhua News Agency, China's state-owned news wire service that masquerades as a journalistic entity. The guy, who studied journalism in the USA, provides a lot of really interesting insight on Chinese censorship and the culture in general. The tone in his responses is very vulnerable and honest.

One of my favorite quotes:

I'm a huge hypocrite. Constantly. But I pay my rent and pay my taxes and have enough left over to get me through the day. Ask any journalist who works for a major news organization and see what they have to say about ethical conflicts.

Given how hard the company has worked to paint Glass in as positive a light as possible, to create an air of exploration and expression through Glass, it was more than a shock to hear the woman standing in front of me at the check-in desk this morning ask me to remove the computer from my face and store it until after the presentation.

Also, how many Googlers have you seen wearing Glass in public? I don't remember anyone wearing a headset during the last Android/Nexus 7 event.

Marissa Mayer is quickly establishing herself as tech's preeminent taxidermist: the company will acquire Rockmelt, AllThingsD reports, a social aggregation something something that no one else wanted. They're paying $60 million for a dud. There's a pattern here.

Sam Biddle has been killing it at Valleywag.

Don’t write something because you can. Write something because you should. Or don’t write anything at all.

Church.

I review djay 2. Also spoke the app's creators about the journey to today's release. What a great product.

Every Pixar movie is connected. I explain how, and possibly why.

Not gonna lie, most of this is quite a stretch. But it's just enticing enough to draw you in. Boo as the crux of everything? Brilliant.

I don't think that the people at Pixar have some mastermind universe that connects all of their movies. I think the people at Pixar are brilliant storytellers who love to include easter eggs (which are essentially just references) to link films together. The fact that people peel through the Pixar catalog is a testament to how incredible these movies are.

Potluck, a new social Web site, allows people to share links, and their friends, or friends of friends, then discuss why they like or dislike the offering.

Interesting concept from the people behind Branch. Tired it out, and I like the approach. It needs a good mobile app (which is coming I assume), and a lot of people using it before it can even hope to take off.

Beautiful, really hi-res photographs that are licensed under Creative Commons, so you can basically do whatever you want with them.

A lot of these look like great wallpapers.

A fantastic, important article by Polygon on the App Store and how Apple views it differently from books and music, or for lack of a better word, culture.

Apps can be art just like any other medium. You can have flashlight apps and incredibly provoking games. Apple shouldn't be limiting app developers by some arbitrary set of rules that try to stomp on controversial issues.

And this is also partly our fault because of the massive amount of authority we've given them as the sole curator of content on App Store.

#apple #tech #app store

I can totally relate to the findings from this research. They're saying that ambient noise in say, a coffee shop, actually helps spark creativity and the process of putting together abstract ideas. For more detail-oriented work, like filing your taxes or assembling something, total silence is best for the brain to accomplish the task at hand.

I'll frequently blog from a public place with tons of ambient noise and be very productive, but if I'm trying to calculate something specific and numbers-focused like an invoice, I need silence to focus.

The company that owns Wordpress has bought Poster, a fantastic iOS app for using Wordpress.

The developer behind Poster, Tom Witkin, is a great guy. I'm happy for him. I remember emailing him several months ago with a feature request. He promptly responded and said he was looking into it for a future update. It still hasn't been added. I wonder if the acquisition talks were going on back then.

The official Wordpress client has been pretty bad since its initial release. Apparently Poster's features will be implemented to make it better. I really hope that Poster itself doesn't disappear, because it has been my answer to blogging on the go for a long time.

#wordpress #poster #iOS

Six great Mac apps for a crazy price: $29.99. Normal value is $360.92. Even if there's only one or two apps you want in the list, it's worth purchasing at this insane of a discount.

(The above is an affiliate link that will help me buy coffee to survive. I know the guys at MacLegion, and they have been doing great stuff in the indie Mac dev community for years. Their bundles are always top notch and you get full customer support with your purchase. Thanks for your support.)

#mac #bundle

Getting in the mood for tonight.

#music #spotify

Kanye West hardly ever gives interviews, so that alone makes this piece notable. On top of that, you have golden nuggets like, "It’s only led me to complete awesomeness at all times. It’s only led me to awesome truth and awesomeness. Beauty, truth, awesomeness. That’s all it is."

That's a real quote. He actually said that out loud to a New York Times reporter.

He also thinks that he is the successor to Steve Jobs.

I still can't tell which is more gargantuan: Kanye's talent, or his ego.

#kanye west

In its efforts to show off features of its new mobile operating system software known as iOS 7, Apple has imagined a user to populate a virtual device with typical content. Apple calls that user Mieko Haire, and in marketing tutorials describes her as a young woman who has recently moved to Los Angeles...

Fascinating look at how Apple uses real employees in its promotional material.

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Alex Heath