Business
And you thought the efforts to lock down the design of their devices was extensive.
Apple has trademarked the interior bits of their stores. Where do you put the little “TM” or “R”? The restrooms?
Marc Andreessen predicts
the end of traditional retail. "Retail chains are a fundamentally implausible economic structure if
there’s a viable alternative. You combine the fixed cost of real estate
with inventory, and it puts every retailer in a highly leveraged
position. Few can survive a decline of 20 to 30 percent in revenues. It
just doesn’t make any sense for all this stuff to sit on shelves. There
is fundamentally a better model."
Netflix's goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become Netflix
Quirky is a design and manufacturing website for
inventors. In 2010, one of their users, Bill Ward, came up with an idea for a dustpan called the
Broom Groomer
with a comb-like edge for cleaning off all the dustbunnies and stuff
that builds up on your broom. Turns out, gadget company OXO came out
with a very similar design in 2012 called the
Upright Sweep Set. Last week, the folks at Quirky
staged a protest and paid for a billboard that accused OXO of ripping off their design.
OXO responds on their blog with a mini-lesson on patents and international intellectual property rights.
Entertainment
Website
vgleaks.com is claiming a world-wide exclusive by revealing the
full spec for the upcoming next-generation Xbox, codenamed Durango.
News
TruthTeller is an
ambitious new automated application built by the Washington Post, which
fact checks political speeches, ads and interviews "
in as close to real time as possible." The prototype is intended to be a complement to the paper's
Fact Checker Blog. More on the project from
TechCrunch and
Poynter.
Reading & Discussion
Aaron Swartz:
The Punishment Did Not Fit the Crime
The
Learners Bill of Rights, a set of “Principles for Learning in the Digital Age,” is the outcome of a
twelve-person meeting held in Palo Alto last week to explore the voice of the educated in online learning discussions:
As we begin to experiment with how novel technologies might change
learning and teaching, powerful forces threaten to neuter or constrain
technology, propping up outdated educational practices rather than
unfolding transformative ones.
Mark Zuckerberg's Hoodie
Rebecca Solnit on how Silicon Valley corporations are transforming San Francisco: "competition for any apartment in San
Francisco was so intense that you had to respond to the listings – all
on San Francisco-based Craigslist of course, the classifieds website
that whittled away newspaper ad revenue nationally – within a few hours
of their posting to receive a reply from the landlord or agency. The
listings for both rentals and homes for sale often mentioned their
proximity to the Google or Apple bus stops."
A recent Atlantic article magazine raises the question of whether online dating discourages long term commitment.
This is not the first time Atlantic has raised concerns about online
dating sites. In 2006, the tone of an article on the topic was neutral.
Not so much in
2010,
2011,
and more recently. But perhaps
we just all need more data.
