May 2013
25 posts
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Tumblr Being Acquired by Yahoo!?
The news just hit the WSJ, which displays one simple banner: the Yahoo! board has approved the purchase - in cash - of Tumblr for $1.1B. I’m sure we will know more tomorrow during the press conference of Marisa Mayer, but for now:
in your face, Facebook!
Marisa Mayer seems to be completely turning around the company, which was sorely needed
for a billion, I’d rather purchase Tumblr...
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At Google Conference, Cameras Even in the Bathroom... →
A well chosen extract from John Gruber’s Daringfireball, the last sentence from the piece: “There they were, a handful of people wearing Google Glass, now standing next to me at their own urinals, peering their head from side to side, blinking or winking, as they relieved themselves.” got me giggling. A look at the comments was even better.
I don’t think I have discussed...
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Amazon & Google dodging taxes in the UK →
Zeljka Marosevic reporting on the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) hearings on tax avoidances. Apparently Amazon would have taken more in benefits than they paid taxes. Hmmm. For once I’m not sceptic. Extract selected:
“We can only cross our fingers that Hodge does decide to bring Amazon in front of PAC. Her dressing down of Google’s Vice-president Matt Brittin yesterday was a...
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Author Marks - Matt Gemmell →
Matt Gemmell is at it again, doing this thing he does at least once a year, making you wonder “why didn’t anyone think about this before?” And here comes Author Marks, a good way to highlight (or not, that’s why this addition is so clever) the parts of your posts you feel are worth citing or extracting from your posts.
Great use of the HTML5 mark tag, and a bonus...
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Our School In A Box - First Deployment in...
Yesterday (May 14), we deployed our first school-in-a-box (SIAB) project in a small village north of Java, Indonesia: Mauk, in the Tangerang province. SIAB is a very ambitious program we’re putting in place to evaluate the potential impact of tablet technologies on education in developing countries. It means a lot to us, and we are willing to share what we’ve learnt along the way. As...
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Animal Facing Extinction In 2003 Fucks Its Way... →
“But just when we thought they couldn’t fuck any more, they dug deep and, with whatever they had left in the tank, began fucking each other’s brains out harder and faster than ever before.”
Well done, turtles!
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Parse announces web hosting →
Well after they did the JavaScript implementation of their SDK, who else is surprised that this one comes up? I still believe that FaceBook made a great acquisition.
From a tech point of view, this may be worth checking. The solution seems elegant aplenty. And a really useful add-on to the Parse family. Goodbye static pages for apps…
May 8th, 1945
Just a quick word. I was listening to the French radio earlier and most of the young people asked in the street didn’t know what May 8th stands for. Quite saddening.
My great grandfather fought two world wars, and came back twice. In my family we have always celebrated both armistice… I can’t understand how or why people can forget this. At the very least, honor your dead. And...
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Old Town
Back in Lyon for a day or two and the feeling is strange. In the sense I can’t feel anything, except maybe being annoyed. Things haven’t changed much, which is the cause of much despair for inhabitants - why did they re-elect their officials?
No, can’t feel anything. It is strange as the last time I came back I was full of hope and wanted to contribute to the town I was born in...
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Explore – The history of typography, in a... →
Must watch stop motion movie, very creative and well executed. Really enjoyed it this morning.
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Nabucco - Hebrew Slaves Chorus - YouTube →
Good music gets under your skin. My classic moment this week-end does so, in spectacular fashion. You will see that the singers feel the power of the piece they are performing. That’s one of the beauties of the opera. It’s what I call the “greater total”, when the total is greater than the sum of its constituents. This seldom happens when all elements fit together: the...
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Thought Strumpet on ADN dev incentive →
I voluntarily edited the title which is a bit offensive, yet Scott Spencer makes some valid remarks and suggestions. I’m a but biased because I do really enjoy Riposte. If there was a strategic error from the devs, it was to price the IAP too high, in my opinion. Yet, this asks the question: how do you succeed in a market where the reach is maximum 100’000 users? Not so evident to...
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ACT 4 APPS | What We Know Now: COPPA and 3rd Party... →
All right this sucks. Or not. Here’s a practical case I am facing: I released as a third party a toddler game which, against my (documented) advice, has a field to capture email. The client wanted that to do marketing stuff, and I’m patting myself on the back for not letting more shit in (think UDID, phone number, etc - they generally want it all). Under that new COPPA thing I am now...
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Meanwhile, in France
Well, I am going back soon for a short trip. And in which state will I find my mother land? Things are gloomy…
In tech, a deal between Yahoo! and Dailymotion was broken by A. Montebourg, minister of the most useless and ill-names ministry ever created in France (the ministry of straightening up productivity, not kidding - I’m still laughing about this one, since the Socialists are...
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IBM makes movie moving atoms | The Loop →
This is so cool. Jim said it all.
Funny, I thought IBM had given up on atom assembly. At least the knowledge is still there.
April 2013
54 posts
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Samsung admits its phones may contain tin from... →
Kudos to our PR team, we were coerced into admitting we are knowingly using child labor in Bangka island, and… we just put it on the back of Apple’s. I mean, it’s not like they’ve been controlling their supply chains in China and other countries for years, right? They do? Well, doesn’t matter, we’re shameless anyway. If the paper doesn’t detail which...
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Facebook deserted by millions of users in biggest... →
“As Facebook prepares to update investors on its performance in the first three months of the year, with analysts forecasting revenues up 36% on last year, studies suggest that its expansion in the US, UK and other major European countries has peaked.
In the last month, the world’s largest social network has lost 6m US visitors, a 4% fall, according to analysis firm SocialBakers. In...
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If MBAs are useless, we’re all in big trouble →
“That’s because building a real business requires not just creating things, but also getting people to pay for them; and to pay more than they cost. To do that, though, you need to do more than define a vision and discover a viable value proposition. You also need to secure scarce resources, develop cohesive teams, assemble collaborative networks and build lasting customer...
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66 Behind the Scenes Pics from THE EMPIRE STRIKES... →
Great find by John Gruber. Some of the black and white stills are really nice.
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Parse Acquired By Facebook
And post # 301 was not really the one I expected to write. I got the news by email while I was sleeping, here’s the message:
“Hi there,
I’m writing to tell you of some important news regarding the future of Parse.
Parse has come a long way. In just under two years, we’ve gone from a rough prototype to powering tens of thousands of apps for a very broad spectrum of customers.
...
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Easily Curating the App Store →
A great discussion from Federico Viticci about the various attempts at playing the system we have seen in the App Store these past 2-3 years.
While reading it, it simply occurred to me that we’ve been missing the easiest possible characterization of how good an app is. I’ve been wondering for a long time why I don’t like the staring system - and remain convinced it is a bad...
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The Scottish Breakfast - The Daily WTF →
“The whole United Kingdom was happy”
Having lived in England, I have attended meetings in truly amazing places, in the middle of deserted areas, where you would only find a B&B 25 miles away. The people at the B&B and at the location I was visiting were always welcoming, warm, no-bullshit takers, and optimists. I do miss the Northerners there. And that story rings so true it is worth a...
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6'823 Days, Rob
Enderle, the idiot provocateur, returns with an infamous piece on Apple (Rob likes to write about Apple, he believes - he’s the only one - that he is knowledgeable on the subject). Let’s link to daringfireball instead of giving Rob a page view freely. Rob’s piece asserts that Tim Cook has lost $300b over the past 3 months, and therefore he should be removed and the board should...
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A Cigar-Smoker’s Worst Nightmare: Tobacco Beetles... →
Creepy story. Fortunately my Siglo IV are safe. That said, I would never attempt to smoke a beetle, even if I were sure it’s been completely frozen.
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Amour (Love) Gender
While the issue of gay marriage is bringing great discomfort to the French society (I discussed that ealier here - in short, let people marry whoever they want, who are we to give them the right to love?), the French language is filled with great oddities that may help us reflect on these problems. After all, this all pertains to gender issues in the end. Some will argue that these genders are not...
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Apple Kills AppGratis’ Push Notifications In... →
Didn’t take that long.
I’m linking to TC’s analysis because it is good. Without the push notifications that generated say 70-90% of their traffic they are actually dead. Since there are plenty of players in this market: who’s next?
Also: never bite the hand that feeds you.
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iOS Dev, Thou Shall Know Thy Market
If you are reading many blogs telling you “how to make money on iTunes with your apps”, or even - gasp - paying a consultant to improve your sales… make sure that you have looked at the most obvious. And today, the most obvious change you can make is localization. Many apps are still available in only a few countries. A typical example is: US, Canada, and the UK. Sad…
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The Lytro Camera... →
The only camera that captures life in living pictures.
How I did miss this one is a complete mystery to me, it may have come out while I was moving to Asia. Found it completely by mistake, while researching in pixels maths, as they introduce one additional dimension. Thinking about it, it is interesting that some animals apparently have more cones than we do and hence a completely different...
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Garr Reynolds on Citizen Kane →
Rick Stawarz (@stwrz) just reminded me that I had not checked my RSS of Presentation Zen for quite a while. And, as is often the case, a great piece was waiting for me at the top of the list. Actually it is a redux of a piece he wrote a while ago, but it has aged very well. I do particularly appreciate it as I, too, believe that Citizen Kane is one of the best movies ever made.
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