Category: News-Politics

Useful Links: W3C news, Instagram TOS

W3C published today the complete definition of the HTML5 and Canvas 2D specifications. Though not yet W3C standards, these specifications are now feature complete, meaning businesses and developers have a stable target for implementation and planning.

Instagram’s new terms of service are causing controversy. What Instagram’s New Terms of Service Mean for You is from the NYTimes. Wired tells us How to Download Your Instagram Photos and Kill Your Account. Alexandra Asher Sears, who writes about various site’s terms of service for BlogHer in a series called If Emily Posted, will be looking at the ethics of what Instagram is doing. That post will be published on BlogHer on Thursday and should be full of helpful details to help you make a decision about your Instagram account.

Regarding Instagram, here’s a strong thought from blogdiva,

 

Useful links: Gifts, Apps, Parallax

Spydergrrl has been posting an unusual gift each day of December. I was struck by these. Digits Turn any Gloves into Texting Gloves. Creative idea.

Apple’s Best of App Store 2012 Rewards Creativity, Google; Skype and Rovio take Top App Spots at Tech Crunch talks about the best apps of the year. I’ve been taking a class on how to make an app, and one of the topics of discussion is whether it’s possible to make any money from selling an app, or from building an app for someone else as a developer. Seeing the top apps in this article when compared with the millions of apps available makes me think that a more reliable source of income might be as a developer for businesses who need an app to bring their business into the modern world. What do you think about making money with apps?

Are you on top of parallax in web design? Yeah. I understand. Here’s an interesting discussion of it at Usabilla blog.

 

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

nate silver
Nate Silver from Wikimedia Commons

Nate Silver is a statistician. On election day his blog Five Thirty Eight at The New York Times accounted for 20% of all the traffic at the newspaper. That’s because Nate Silver had been standing up for his statistical analysis of the voting trend numbers and predicting Obama’s win for days before election day.

Keep in mind we’re talking about a mathematician here. But his name was all over Twitter and the news because he knows how to crunch numbers.

So here’s to Nate Silver. May his name become an inspiration to young people who are thinking about a career in some branch of mathematics.

Useful Links: Meritocracy, Primers, Binder fun

you keep using that word is a passionate rant about the word “meritocracy” in response to the post I linked to yesterday called A primer on sexism in the tech industry.

With even more response to that primer post, Laura Sanders wrote A primer on sexism in the tech industry – by an actual girl. Then Kathy Sierra send an email to Faruk Ateş, who wrote the original post, and later gave him permission to publish her email.

On a lighter note, were you on Twitter last night during the debate? I was, and was surprised by how inane some of the tweets were. But you know what, perhaps humor is the only response to politics in our time. Here’s a TechCrunch report about some of the fun people had at the expense of the Romney: ‘Binders Full Of Women’, Romney Gaffe, Gets Tumblr And 200k Likes On Facebook. It’s just amazing what the Internet and social media allow in this day and age – sometimes we forget that.

 

Useful links: Hacker vs. Maker, Social Media, Prebooks

Hackers and Makers: Language Matters is from Curious for a Living. She said, “Yes, language matters. Especially when we’re inviting community. What feels more welcoming to you: A hackerspace or a Maker Faire?”

NIce summary of how the candidates are using social media in the 2012 election. Do you think it makes a difference?

CSS: The Definitive Guide, Fourth Edition by Eric Meyer is a post about much more than the latest edition of Eric’s CSS opus. It’s about how books are marketed, sold, packaged, distributed and even conceived of as entities. As far as I know, O’Reilly is the first publisher to do something like this. I don’t think O’Reilly will be the last. Even if you aren’t interested in the latest CSS book, you need to read this post.

I tweeted about Eric’s post yesterday. He doesn’t completely share my opinion. Here’s a part the conversation Eric and I had then. (By the way, have you noticed how impossible it is to embed a complete conversation from Twitter? Twitter decides for you what tweets you want to include. This is a patchwork and not complete.)

 

 

 

Useful links: Pixie Dust, profitable, MOOCs

Pixie Dust and the Mountain of Mediocrity is a guest post by Kathy Sierra at Gaping Void. Thanks to Hugh MacLeod at Gaping Void for snagging Kathy Sierra to write this post. Her voice is missed and needed. Here’s the opening paragraph:

We’re always searching for that sec­ret for­mula, that magic pixie dust to sprin­kle over our pro­ducts, ser­vi­ces, books, cau­ses, brands, blogs to bring them to life and make them Super Suc­cess­ful. Most marketing-related buzz­words gain trac­tion by pro­mi­sing pixie dust results if applied to wha­te­ver it is we make, do, sell. “Add more Social!”. “Just need a Viral Video!” “It’s about the Story­te­lling!”. “Be Authentic!”

 

Find out if your favorite web service is profitable with “How Do they Make Money?” You know you’re curious.

Why MOOCs should be in your marketing plan talks about the effect of Massive Open Online Courses on higher ed.