I didn’t bother with Facebook (or facebook, as it is properly named) until grad school, at the urging of my classmates. Since then I’ve had on-and-off periods. But for the past month, I haven’t spent more than five minutes there. Why? The redesign is horrible.
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Kevin Purdy over at Lifehacker has posted a piece about the Periodic Table of Typefaces. For a freelance writer and editor, this is nothing short of invaluable. For anyone else who has touched a keyboard at least once, it is nothing short of invaluable. I see typefaces mixed and poorly chosen often, and I have pined for quick comparison of assorted typefaces arranged in some meaningful way. (The WYSIWYG display in the latest editions of programs such as Microsoft Word is nice, but it’s arranged alphabetically, which is about as useful as arranging hundreds of books alphabetically by title.)
Print this table out and plaster it on your desk. Better yet, make it your desktop wallpaper.
Share this Post[?] Apple has released a new version of the iPod Shuffle, and while it is smaller, the lack of onboard controls has many consumers upset. MacWorld’s Dan Moren calls it “a step back in both the usability and compatibility departments.” The Industry Standard’s Paul Bolin (who seems surprised that Apple consumers know how to revolt at all) suggests that costs related to the remote-control headphones are problematic.
On the other hand, as Tom Reestman writes, mastering the new Shuffle still requires only three basic functions, it’s the most feature-rich Shuffle yet, and being able to store the 3G Shuffle on your person without having to keep pulling it out for control is a handy thing.
Rob Beschizza hints at the hesitation I share about the new 3G Shuffle: “…for today’s show, the part of Sony will be played by Apple.” When Sony introduced the MemoryStick, I worried about the proprietary technology. It’s turned out reasonably well, but isn’t it frustrating that you can’t use a MemoryStick in all digital cameras, and you can’t always use a XD/SD card in Sony digital cameras?
The bottom line here is that, like a Sony camera and MemoryStick, your iPod will be forever paired with a set of headphones to control it. Forget using your custom headphones, and if you lose the pair that came with the Shuffle, it’s not like you can just grab a spare set from another device. Further, the comparisons to the other iPod models that have headphone remotes don’t fly, because if you lost the headphone remote, you could still control the iPod by the buttons on the device.
Share this Post[?] Marisa Taylor has a great piece about a rather enterprising (if not unimaginable) project by Virgil Griffith, which takes very public data and puts it together in a way you wouldn’t expect. Very interesting in terms of Facebook trends and data mining.
Says Virgil:
On weekends, I use data-mining to make the Internet a better and more interesting place.
True, true. Just look at what WikiScanner did to expose so-called anonymous Wikipedia edits.
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