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May 24, 2013
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Why New Flickr Makes Me Nervous.
I’ve been a Flickr user since (as they now remind me on almost every page) November 2005. Their recent redesign has attracted controversy from the sorts of people who complain at every change (who are often the same people who complain when nothing changes), but I think it’s largely for the better. Apparently Yahoo! is now investing in Flickr again, so it’s safe to assume some of the rough edges will be cleaned up in due course.
However, I’m extremely nervous about their new pricing model. Flickr’s “pro” users (of which I have been one since 2006) used to pay $25 per year for unlimited storage, unlimited history, and some other perks. But what we bought in addition was the status of customer.
Flickr’s new payment plans are fairly clearly strawmen, designed not to entice anyone to purchase them. (If the first terabyte is free, I imagine there will be approximately zero customers who need a second terabyte and who decide to pay $500/year for it rather than just starting a second free account.) So Flickr users will no longer be customers; rather, we’ll be the product which is in turn sold to advertisers.
Flickr has long felt to me permanent in a way that (for example) Facebook photos do not: the deal being offered was that in exchange for my $25, they kept my photos and would give them back to me upon my request. Of course, this notion of permanence was totally illusory: Flickr could have gone (and could still go) out of business at any moment. But now the illusion is destroyed.
For now, I’ll keep my Flickr account, and I guess I’ll stop paying for it. But offers for actual archival storage from dear friends in the nonprofit-industrial complex are looking tempting, at least as a companion.
May 22, 2013
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I received my “key” for New York’s new bikeshare system in the mail today. I was curious to know what would happen if I scanned it with NFC TagInfo.
The key is apparently a “vicinity card,” and the data retrieved is notable primarily for its brevity. The only identifying information appears to be the tag’s UID (masked in the linked gist). The data inside the tag (all of which is marked writable) is all blank except for the final four bytes, W_OK.
I’m no NFC expert, but apparently this means it’s pretty easy to clone one of these keys given the right equipment. Maybe someone will make an Android app so you don’t have to carry your key around all the time.
Have people in other cities with Alta bikeshare tried reading their keys? I wonder if the structure has always been this simple or if some of this is a result of the reimplementation of the Alta system before the NYC launch.
May 21, 2013
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On Political Subtexts at Google I/O
I attended Google’s developer conference this year, mostly (entirely?) to improve my technical skills developing for Android. You can go elsewhere on the Internet if you want a summary of this technical content and/or the product announcements made; however there are a few interesting trends implicit in the conference itself that may be interesting:
May 5, 2013
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[The NYPD advises its officers] ‘if you respond to a vehicle accident and you’re disheveled, that goes a long way to how people see your professionalism.’ Indeed, proper attire might lead people to believe that the police are actually investigating the vehicle accident.— Gothamist reports on the NYPD’s second-in-command’s suggestions to the force.
Apr 15, 2013
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citibike: not an elaborate hoax?
As of this morning, you can even give them money now! Maybe one day you will be able to, like, ride a bike.
Apr 10, 2013
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Twitter and Tumblr both released new versions of their Android apps this week. While I don’t love every design choice in either app, I’m impressed that both manage to feel modern and native to the Android platform while remaining true to their respective brands.
Hopefully other developers will be inspired to step up their game; interesting times are definitely afoot in the Android design community!
(And, if you’d like to help us bring Meetup’s app to the next level, please get in touch!)
Mar 28, 2013
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It is well-known that Facebook clones small apps and rolls them out to Facebook’s broad user base when an outside app becomes threatening to Facebook’s business model. Given that strategy, it’s not hard to see how Facebook may want to incubate its own feminist movement in order to prevent a more activist and transformative feminism from affecting Facebook’s business. Just as with any of Facebook’s competitive moves, the need to create an in-house version of a product arises due to an external threat. And put very simply, feminism is a threat to Facebook, just as Instagram or Snapchat were threats to Facebook’s photo-sharing business.— Kate Losse, reviewing Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In in Dissent
Mar 26, 2013
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When I say ‘livable,’ I mean to say that cars are awful.— An interview with Neil Freeman about his map of the US as fifty equal-population states, in the Paris Review.
Mar 25, 2013
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»You promised me Mars colonies. Instead, I got Facebook«
Buzz Aldrin stars this cover of MIT Technology Review with this great headline: »You promised me Mars colonies. Instead, i got Facebook”
Mar 20, 2013
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