There are 121 posts filed in tech (this is page 12 of 16).
Ina Fried has an interesting profile of Lytro, a start-up that’s releasing a digital camera containing some exciting new technology:
The breakthrough is a different type of sensor that captures what are known as light fields, basically all the light that is moving in all directions in the view of the camera. That offers several advantages over traditional photography, the most revolutionary of which is that photos no longer need to be focused before they are taken.
As a photographer, I find Flickr incredibly useful for several functions, the most prominent of which is its ability to easily share an entire large-format slideshow using a single link. But Flickr has a ton of shortcomings on the design side, which Timoni West (via Gruber) is quick to point out:
Flickr can have a serious competitive advantage if they make photo uploads easy to see and navigate: everybody likes photos, and likes seeing themselves in photos, and it’s even nicer to see photos all arranged on a page without visual cruft like status interruptions and article links. It’s also crucial to have different ways of viewing the photos: chronological is important, but so are groupings by date and contact type.
In other words, Flickr still has the ability to kick ass in this arena. They just have to build it.
Flickr has experienced significant failures on the social side of their business. But West’s post is also a good reminder of how social strategy and design must work together, especially in an industry where competition is so fierce (see: Facebook Photos).
Over at The Atlantic, David Wheeler has written about how difficult is it to write goofy, punny headlines in a time when Google values facts and keywords in headlines more than wit:
In a widely circulated 2010 article criticizing SEO practices, Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten made the same point by citing a Post article about Conan O’Brien’s refusal to accept a later time slot on NBC. The print headline: “Better never than late.” Online: “Conan O’Brien won’t give up ‘Tonight Show’ time slot to make room for Jay Leno.”
The dearth of witty headlines on the Web is enough to make a copy editor cry. But rather than settle for a humorless future, some online editors are fighting back by refusing to embrace SEO guidelines for every story. “It’s not about getting the most readers; it’s about getting the ‘most best’ readers,” says David Plotz, editor of the influential online magazine Slate.
But Jake Brooks points out that, on a technological level, Wheeler is just plain wrong:
Since clicks are still every sites’ currency, copywriters online have to write one headline that will sell the story to the search engines and one headline that will sell the story to human beings. Turns out, doing the latter is not so easy. For print people, think about it this way: Every headline on a homepage is a wood headline. Every headline needs to sell. On any given day, a newspaper has to write at most 3 headlines to compel someone to buy the paper at the newsstand. Online, you have to do it FOR EVERY STORY.
Meanwhile, Dominic Litten delves more deeply into the villification of SEO in Wheeler’s article:
For many journalists, SEO = headline + keyword stuffing. It’s all they know. However, if journalists really want to know and understand how SEO can help them and their publications they should worry a lot less about the importance of headlines and focus on their company’s sitemaps, site architecture, endless duplicate content, internal linking and the like. But they won’t. Many journalists opine about headlines and keyword stuffing because that’s all the information their SEO team is giving them. And it’s all most care to know.
Scott Weinberg asks 3D to die:
3D sucks, and even when it doesn’t suck (Avatar and Beowulf come to mind) (fine, and My Bloody Valentine), it’s a glitzy little light show that exists just to make your tickets 30% more expensive. And the 3D blu-ray? That’s about 50% pricier than the “plain” option. If only a similarly revolutionary new advancement in the craft of screenwriting took place, then maybe we’d be somewhere. As long as our huge leaps in filmmaking lie solely within the realm of technology, we’re missing something. A studio will spend millions to make a film “look 3D,” but they won’t spend a fraction of that to make sure their shooting script is kicking ass on all cylinders.
I agree with most of what Scott says, although I would say that films like Avatar and How to Train Your Dragon by themselves are almost enough to justify the unfortunate rise of 3D in recent times. I actually specifically chose my Thor screening to avoid seeing it in 3D. Seeing Thor at its optimal luminance without the need for cumbersome glasses felt good, but it was also sad that I had to go out of my way to ensure that experience.
The Economist explains what we always knew deep down in our hearts.
I don’t see eye-to-eye with James Rocchi on everything, but I wholeheartedly endorse his viewpoint on internet comments:
[I]t’s because internet commenters are either lazy, cowardly or stupid that I find myself relying on Twitter more and more. I disagree with lots of people in my Twitter feed — @jenyamato didn’t want to vomit from the Justin Bieber film, @mtgilchrist actually liked Tron: Legacy, @MarkReardonKMOX has a political sensibility so opposite to mine I’m amazed we don’t explode when we shake hands — but they are polite, and articulate and, please note, saying what they do under their real names. I think I’ve given up on internet comments about the things I write — reading them or caring about them — unless they’re from people who use their real names. Otherwise, it’s just opening up your life and brain to too much negativity and stupidity.
Jesus Diaz has written an interesting essay on the future of computing:
The fact is that computers and digital photography empowered us to create amazing things that weren’t possible in the analog world. Buy by doing so, they took away the natural connection with the medium. It added a necessary-but-completely-alien layer of complexity to the creative process. They democratized access, but at the same time created new elites. And that’s the key to understand the success of touch computers. They are giving back the tools to the masses because the masses no longer feel alienated by the tools. The touch interface is making things natural and is making developers to simplify the access to their tools. And, by doing that, everyone will have more power than ever.