World Airmail Links

Jul 7

“The shift of online communities resembles urban development and the gentrification of many hip neighborhoods. The artists and hackers move in first, they are in development parlance, risk tolerant. For urban neighborhoods that means they’ll deal with crime if they can get cool warehouses to take over. Then slowly the neighborhood transforms, and gets some nice cafes and clubs, gets known as the place where the hip kids play, and more people come. Rent gets driven up, the crowds come, it becomes to crowded, and the hipsters have to move on. Just replace hipsters with alpha geeks and you get the same process.” The ascendancy of Hacker News & the gentrification of geek news communities

Jul 6

Don't Build Your Web Site In Flash

“[Flash web sites are] a lame attempt to make your boring site look interesting by distracting users with pretty pictures and moving frames. You should be using your content and product/service offerings to do that.”

Jul 3

“…stop living your life as a waterfall-planned software…” David H. Hansen, Early retirement is a false idol (the whole piece is nothing mind-blowing, but I like the waterfall anology)

Politics Failed, but Fuel Prices Cut Congestion

“…Still, the new numbers do bolster a central point of the Bloomberg plan: that higher prices can motivate commuters to give up their cars.” But the MTA gets nothing, whereas it would get Congestion Pricing revenues.

Update: Streetsblog wonders how much of the congestion cut cited in the article is due to toll increases instead of gas prices. Additionally they ask, “which tool for cutting traffic is more desirable: a ‘market-driven’ gasoline price rise that enriches the owners of petroleum, or a socially-decided road-pricing policy whose revenues would be available to improve transit.”

Civil Rights Groups Sue Over Government's Cell-Phone Tracking

“The [EFF and ACLU] also want to know the number of times the government has sought cell-phone location information without court permission and how many times it has obtained the information.”

Jul 1

UI Improvement for Scrolling in iPhone 2.0 Software

From the iPhone 3G guided tour video, which also notes improvements owners of the current iPhone will see in the iPhone 2.0 software: “When you’re at the bottom of a long web page, a list of contacts, an SMS conversation, or your inbox, just tap the status bar to jump to the top” (at 9:28).

“Status bar” refers to the bar at the top of the screen with the clock, data network indicator, phone service indicator, &c. This is a welcome improvement; I’ve found myself doing a lot of scrolling on web pages in MobileSafari when one “flick” is not enough to bring me back to the top. (And the top is where a user needs to go to enter a new URL or search term.)

Update: rit notes that this works in MobileSafari with the current iPhone software. It does not seem to work elsewhere (SMS conversations, mailboxes, contact lists) yet.

Jun 27

The Wild Differences in These Polls, Explained

“…if you do the math and apply the proper percentages to the L.A. Times/Bloomberg and the Newsweek findings, you find that their results change dramatically.”

Jun 24

“…people want to be creative without change. They want innovation with no risk. They want a new result with the same exact behavior.” Scott Berkun, The irony of creative change

Jun 22

“…Democrats will regret embracing the expansion of executive power because a President Obama will find his administration undone by an ‘abuse of power’ scandal. All of those powers which were necessary to prevent the instant destruction of the country will instantly become impeachable offenses.” Duncan Black, in Regret, perhaps referring to the FISA compromise

Jun 18

Domestic Airline Fee Chart

Rick Seaney of FareCompare: “I get asked this question all the time so I decided to compile a list of all the domestic airline fees. I’ll try to keep it as up to date as possible.”

“Most people in corporate IT want to do a good job. Most people in corporate IT are capable of doing a good job. Every developer I know is driven crazy by crappy code; they want nothing more than to get in there and make it better, stronger, faster. Most of the time, however, they are actively stymied from doing a good job because they can’t act on their own, best instincts.” Tales of an IT Director: I quit my job today, oh boy

Jun 17

“Is cutting corners to make a buck appropriate when you consider what you could have done? What would someone with a bigger vision have done instead?” Seth Godin, Is it worthy?