Happy birthday, Miles Davis! The jazz legend would have been 85 today – celebrate with this minimalist illustrated portrait by artist Jorge Arevalo.
How an iPad Speeds Reporting from NASCAR's Pit Row
Mac Rumors:
When the iPad was released in 2010, Burns instantly saw the potential. He could digitize his notepads, drop the pen and paper, and carry all his reference material with him to every race. After addressing concerns about size; durability; using it outside in the bright summer sun; and, perhaps most importantly, which apps to use; Burns arrived at his perfect setup:
Facebook could be looking to buy Opera browser
Engadget:
The latest rumor, from Pocket Lint, says Facebook is looking to buy the Opera browser as part of its larger effort to compete against Google, Mozilla and other internet mammoths. According to a source at Opera Software who spoke with Pocket Lint, the company is shopping around for potential buyers and has even imposed a hiring freeze. While it’s not too hard to believe that Facebook is readying its horse to enter the browser race, this rumor is just that: a rumor. But given the social network’s tendency to whip out new features at warp speed, we should have something more solid than speculation soon — if the Opera purchase story has any legs, that is.
FCC Chairman Says It’s Okay to Be Charged for the Amount of Broadband You Use
Mr. Genachowski said tiered pricing, will “increase consumer choice and competition” and yield in “lower prices for people who consume less broadband.” Although, as Electronista notes, “he did not clarify what mechanism would drive prices down.”
Public interest groups have decried the potential impact broadband data caps will have on the market and innovation, not to mention the biases baked in the plans. Comcast, for example, counts Netflix video into its data plan, but lets its own XFinity service stream away.
…“increase consumer choice and competition”… yeah, that’s exactly what will happen. I mean, except for how that’s not what’s going to happen, at all.
Source: wilwheaton
The American West, 150 Years Ago
The Atlantic:
In the 1860s and 70s, photographer Timothy O’Sullivan created some of the best-known images in American History. After covering the U.S. Civil War, (many of his photos appear in this earlier series), O’Sullivan joined a number of expeditions organized by the federal government to help document the new frontiers in the American West. The teams were comprised of soldiers, scientists, artists, and photographers, and tasked with discovering the best ways to take advantage of the region’s untapped natural resources. O’Sullivan brought an amazing eye and work ethic, composing photographs that evoked the vastness of the West. He also documented the Native American population as well as the pioneers who were already altering the landscape. Above all, O’Sullivan captured — for the first time on film — the natural beauty of the American West in a way that would later influence Ansel Adams and thousands more photographers to come.
The Future of Scholarship: Easier, Harder, and With More Charlatans
Alan Jacobs:
It’s at least possible that in this new knowledge environment we’ll be able to take more of the research as a given — not all of it, but more of it — and will demand from researchers some of the literary virtues: lucidity of style, subtlety of argument, liveliness of narrative. Maybe when readers will make it clear that they know how easy it is to multiply sources, writers will cease to try to impress through numbers of footnotes.
As one of the folks who worked on the old Gmail design for a long time, I feel a bit like a father watching his daughter get a lower back tattoo.
Source: metafilter.com
