It's me, Pete... from the podcast.

A thought on publishers whining about Apple’s app store subscription terms

Apple (finally) announced a plan for allowing publishers a method of selling subscriptions to their publications (and apps and music and TV and whatnot), which includes the standard 30% cut for Apple and a 70% cut for publishers.

Like everything else in Apple’s catalog of stores.

70% publishers.

30% Apple.

Same-same.

But publishers are pissed. They say they’re losing control of the relationship with their subscribers. They say they’re losing money. They say rain is turning to vinegar. They say their toothbrushes are now fashioned of red-hot steel.

The thing is, I’m a potential subscriber for digital magazines. Just as I was a potential customer before Apple introduced a market for music and TV, then apps for my iPhone and iPad. Here’s what happened to me.

I wasn’t buying CDs or DVDs. Apple introduced me to a simple, cheap way to buy the music and movies I wanted to watch without dealing with plastic. Now, I buy music and movies regularly.

I wasn’t buying apps. Web apps sucked on the iPhone at the time. Apple introduced me to a simple marketplace of great apps where developers got a fair shake, and I didn’t feel like I was being kicked in the face by only buying from big box stores. Now, I’m a regular app store customer.

I wasn’t buying much software for my Mac until about three weeks ago. Yeah, Apple introduced the Mac App Store, and the experience is superb. I now buy apps regularly and exclusively from the Mac App Store.

See how this is playing out? I wasn’t buying these things. Apple introduced a clever way for me to enjoy these things. Now I buy these things. You can make a case all you want for how developers are getting screwed, artists are getting plundered, whatever. As a customer, Apple made things easy for me by imposing their sense of sales savvy on a market that has, time and again, shown limited ability to think through these things for themselves.

As a customer, the message I hope I’ve built is this: Apple will take 30% from publishers in exchange for my business as a subscriber. That’s 30% for Apple, 70% for you publishers, adding up to 100% in a transaction for which — just yesterday — neither party would have seen a fat nickel from me.

Things never to say ever, ever, ever if you’re COO of Verizon

AppleInsider | Verizon COO: “We are not going to have any flaws on the execution of the iPhone launch”

“We are not going to have any flaws on the execution of the iPhone launch,” said Chief Operating Officer Francis Shammo. “If we go to customer service, we’ve hired over 3,000 people currently, who have been trained. And if you think about it, we launched the iPad, so that our customer service reps in our stores and in our centers could get used to the interface of the iPhone, which was a pre-launch to the iPhone. So we’ve trained everyone, extensive training around that.”

I’m sure Verizon has applied many of the AT&T lessons as they prep their stores and network for the iPhone on February 10. But seriously, one of those lessons they clearly missed is not to talk balls about something with such incendiary potential to blow up in your face. I just have this feeling that this is going to be the line most often repeated on February 12.

That said, I don’t understand what he’s thinking about the iPad launch. It’s not going to touch the iPhone — not the same sport.

Satarii Star is a robot head for your mobile phone camera

Satarii Star Accessory — IndieGoGo

Our idea is the Star Accessory, a product that makes your mobile camera follow your every move. You can video yourself doing anything without the awkwardness of asking friends or complicated setups. It is a sensor enabled motorized base that moves your mobile camera to follow you and keep you within the image frame. And it gets rid of the need for tripods in a sleekly designed, pocket-able form factor.

Hands down one of the coolest ad-ons I’ve seen for consumer video. Count me in.

“I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can.”

Apple Media Advisory

May we all wish for a speedy recovery for Jobs, and comfort and peace for his family.

Evaporating Water in -30C in Yellowknife, NWT

Absolutely the coolest thing I’ve seen done with boiling water to date. If it’s -30C at your house you should totally do this.

Salon full-on deletes debunked vaccine-autism story from 2005

Kerry Lauerman:

The piece was co-published with Rolling Stone magazine — they fact-checked it and published it in print; we posted it online. In the days after running “Deadly Immunity,” we amended the story with five corrections (which can still be found logged here) that went far in undermining Kennedy’s exposé. At the time, we felt that correcting the piece — and keeping it on the site in the spirit of transparency — was the best way to operate. But subsequent critics, including most recently, Seth Mnookin in his book “The Panic Virus,” further eroded any faith we had in the story’s value. We’ve grown to believe the best reader service is to delete the piece entirely.

Personally, I prefer keeping the story alive on the site with appropriate corrections, as Salon had initially done. It truly was an explosive story, and the fact that it was published in the first place is as much a part of the historical record of media on the web as is the now allegedly debunked claims (I know nothing about autism and vaccines, personally) editors purport to be fixing with this latest move. But that’s only half the media story. The rest of the story is that Salon is making this correction a big deal — working hard to make this a big story with front-page placement today. Well on that front, Salon. Even if the nuclear option is a bridge too far.

New Laura Croft character design backstory on Game Informer covers evolution of design

Brian Horton:

So we knew we wanted to make an origin story. We knew we wanted to make a young Lara Croft, and we wanted her be a blend of someone that has a level of vulnerability and inner strength. She has this aspirational quality. She wants to be someone and to pull away from the perception of who she is because of her legacy of being a Croft. She is her own person and she is trying to make her way in this world. So that was the focus early on – trying to understand who she was inside.
…
The things that we absolutely kept were the brown eyes, the signature quality of her lips having that M shape, and the relationship between the eyes and the nose and the mouth. Those were things we knew we wanted to maintain.
…
We realized that Lara’s hair was a big part of her visual language – the iconography of Lara croft includes her ponytail. But we also knew we didn’t want to do something like the classic braid. We wanted to have the hair itself tell a bit of the story. So the hair moves and helps to sell the drama.

Karl Stewart:

We did some initial tests where we brought in the vision for the new Lara Croft, and then we matched it up against the previous iterations. In the tests of the previous iterations it was clearly evident that people moved around the image more to the items and her chest and her waist size. But with the new image, people spent most of the time piercing her eyes. Anybody who has seen the image says “I know that girl.”

I grew up with Laura Croft. Talk about giving an adolescent boy a false image of the female form? I was that adolescent boy. I don’t regret it for a second, I mean, come on. However, with the reboot of the franchise I think they did a terrific job capturing the story of Laura Croft in her remodeled physique; she’s fit, strong, more normally proportioned. I see women who look like the new Laura working out at my neighborhood club. My kids see those women, too, and strong, fit, and active isn’t a terrible role model to have.

“Sudoku is a denial of service attack on human intellect” – Ben Laurie

Solving Every Sudoku Puzzle

In this essay I tackle the problem of solving every Sudoku puzzle. It turns out to be quite easy (about one page of code for the main idea and two pages for embellishments) using two ideas: constraint propagation and search.

He makes it sound so easy.

Gruber on Lyons on Apple on Verizon

Daring Fireball: Too Late

I can’t decide whether Lyons is really this wrong, or if The Daily Beast makes its writers post eye-rollingly contrarian stuff like this just to get links.

Both. Exceedingly.

Philippine assassin caught on camera on New Year’s Eve — by the victim

Philippine politician captures his own assassination on camera on New Year’s Eve

A police source said: “This is probably the first time in history that a victim has managed to capture his own murder on film.

Absolutely stunning.

New Gary Hustwit film “Urbanized” gets new blog worth following for film buffs

Urbanized: A Documentary Film by Gary Hustwit

Over the next several months, I’ll be posting more about the film’s progress here (like the Mumbai post below), along with special guest posts, stills from the film, and random musings about design, architecture, music, documentary filmmaking, and whatever else I’m currently obsessed with. Stay tuned for a trailer and video clips from the film as well.

I loved “Objectified” and “Helvetica.” Looks like this is going to be a terrific follow-up to always terrific documentary work.

MG Siegler on the Google/Flash/h.264 thing

So Google, You’ll Be Dropping Support For Flash Next, Right?

Don’t feed us bullshit and call it filet mignon. We can smell it. And taste it. And spit it back at you.

MG Siegler nails it.

Tim Sneath riffs on Google’s h.264 video announcement brilliantly

An Open Letter from the President of the United States of Google – Tim Sneath

… we are changing the spoken and written language of this nation to make it consistent with the form of speech already supported by the Language Creation Society. Specifically, we are supporting the Esperanto and Klingon languages, and will consider adding support for other high-quality constructed languages in the future. Though English plays an important role in speech today, as our goal is to enable open innovation, its further use as a form of communication in this country will be prohibited and our resources directed towards languages that are untainted by real-world usage.

The whole post is worth reading. It’s short, to the point, and frames the entire issue in language non-geeks can understand.

Google to drop support for h.264 video codec in Chrome

Chromium Blog: HTML Video Codec Support in Chrome

Specifically, we are supporting the WebM (VP8) and Theora video codecs, and will consider adding support for other high-quality open codecs in the future. Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies.

Google is dumb.

“What do you mean *biblical*?” – Ghostbusters trailer recut with “Inception” soundtrack

This city is heading for a disaster of biblical proportions.