From the London Review of Books:
Taking the lower figure, that means that New York Times, if it stopped printing a physical edition of the paper, could afford to give every subscriber a free Kindle. Not the bog-standard Kindle, but the one with free global data access. And not just one Kindle, but four Kindles. And not just once, but every year. And that’s using the low estimate for the costs of printing.
I am incredibly sad to hear any public servant speak these words, much less a member of the House of Commons.
This is a great interview with Marco Arment, the sole developer of the incredible webapp Instapaper.
http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2011/01/25/interview_marco_arment.html
Hiding behind your Twitter avatar and telling the world how terrible everything is is pretty easy. It’s even funny sometimes. Putting yourself on the line and making something original is really hard work. Which one do you want to be. Which one deserves our respect and attention?
-37 Signals blog, Signal vs. Noise, on critiquing others’ work when you don’t know the contexts (yeah, I didn’t want to print the title).
GCN noted yesterday that the U.S. House of Representatives is moving to the open source Drupal content management system. The White House recently moved to Drupal also, which I have discussed here and here.
The founder of Drupal, Dries Buytaert, talked about the House move to Drupal and mentions the requirements:
- Accommodate hundreds of independent websites, each with different sets of features.
- Provide the ability to deploy new sites quickly and efficiently.
- Enable House Members to use the web designer or developer of their choice by leveraging the Drupal community.
A couple of examples of the new Drupal websites, which have initially been deployed for freshmen House members, are here and here.
Twitter beta-tested a spine (a look from Wired on the chilling subpoenas sent to Twitter).
The Daily Show has a hilarious segment on the recent investments in Facebook, and the irony that Facebook doesn’t want to be transparent.
Spacelog.org (on my birthday) released an incredible treasure trove. They have taken the transcripts from the Apollo and other space missions and added a little Web 2.0:
Read the stories of early space exploration from the original NASA transcripts. Now open to the public in a searchable, linkable format.
Not only is the spacelog searchable and linkable, it is tweetable. AND, and, they’ve interspersed pictures (taken by the Apollo 13 crew and others) to the time in the log in which they were taken (like this). This is incredible.
To accomplish this transcription, Spacelog posted the original transcripts, and then crowd-sourced the copy-and-pasting to their interface.
I love it. They link to some of the best parts, but I have to share my own.
First, the requisite quote:
Jack Swigert: I believe we’ve had a problem here.
Jim Lovell: Houston, we’ve had a problem.
Second, my favorite (watch the movie):
Houston, Capcom: Aquarius; Houston. We’ve got you both on VOX.
Lastly, a great picture and quote:
Jim Lovell: And there’s one whole side of that spacecraft missing.
I can’t say how much that I enjoy reading through this. Being able to relive history, in the first person, is an amazing experience. I might be a nerd, but I love this stuff.