Daring Fireball
- Jeff Bezos, inheritor to Steve Jobs’ crown? by Om Malik at Om.co
- Making Money While Keeping Prices Low: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Explains It All (Mostly) by Tricia Duryee at All Things D
Aggregation is plagiarism
I couldn’t help but aggregate (though not plagiarize) this link Jim Dalrymple aggregated to a post by a Mr. Joe Wilcox about how aggregation is, well, plagiarism.
It’s true, now that you’ve read this you don’t need to read the original to know what it’s about. However, my guess is you’ll miss out on the personal reasons and nuanced perspective Mr. Wilcox offers if you don’t go and read his post.
I certainly agree with his position, not an uncommon one, that word-for-word copies or close paraphrases are plagiarism plain and simple. But I would term that behavior, well, plagiarism. Aggregation, done right, will collect interesting material to which the collector wants to point his own readers, adding context or perspective or opinion lacking in the original.
John Gruber’s Daring Fireball is a great example of that: it’s comprised almost entirely of links to the work of others, often including quotes from the linked-to article. But it’s as far from plagiarism as you can get. People read Gruber’s site specifically for his opinion on the news of the day. Most of his readers probably find the newsy bits elsewhere, be it on Twitter or another news site. But Gruber’s take adds value, and that’s why they’re there.
I like to think that’s what I’m doing here, but I suppose only readers like you can decide that.
John Gruber on the convergence of smartphones and tablets
John Gruber on the convergence of smartphones and tablets
John Gruber:
Better, I think, not to treat smartphones and tablets as separate categories, but merely as different sizes of the same thing.
I think he is absolutely right, but even a year ago I would have argued like a lunatic against that very point.
'Babble' to consolidate Google's chat tools under one brand
‘Babble’ to consolidate Google’s chat tools under one brand
Geek.com's Russell Holly:
Google’s recent decision to block non-native XMPP requests is the first step towards building their own closed communications platform. In order to use Google’s chat service, especially the new Babble service, you’ll need to be using it the way Google wants you to use it.
This doesn’t sound very open. John Gruber of Daring Fireball has been tracking this issue for a while, most recently citing Google’s abandonment of CalDAV.
Google isn’t doing themselves any favors on the “open” front. I wouldn’t be surprised if they abandonment that mantra altogether going forward.
128 GB iPad perfect for pros?
I still personally have no interest in a 128 GB iPad, but as John Gruber points out, some professionals prefer the tablet form factor generally, and the iPad specifically, but run out of space for the multimedia they use every day.
Gruber on "Amazon's Play"
John Gruber writes one of the most respected and prolific tech blogs on the web, Daring Fireball. Some people deride him as a blindly-worshipful Apple fanboy who delights in pointing out the failed attempts of other companies to copy Apple’s products and strategy.
I don’t agree with those people.
This article by Mr. Gruber is a great example of his willingness to praise true innovation. Amazon has taken inspiration not from Apple’s hardware or software design, but from their approach to product development.
Place the delight of your customers first and the device and multimedia sales will follow. Put another way, Amazon, like Apple, operates on the premise that putting customer experience first is the best way to put corporate success first.
Further Reading
Evening Edition beautifully presents the important news you missed
Co-creator Jim Ray of Mule Design describes Evening Edition like this:
It’s a summary of the day’s news, written by an actual journalist, with links to the best reporting in the world, published once a day.
Last night, in between reading the news using various Android apps, I spotted a link to John Gruber’s Daring Fireball post about Evening Edition. I went to the new news site on my phone and, ten minutes later, I realized I had learned more in that time reading Evening Edition than an hour of playing with Flipboard and Pulse.
I spend all day reading technology news. It’s my area of interest and there are some great people reporting on it. But it takes time away from informing myself about what is happening in the world in general.
It looks like Evening Edition beautifully solves that problem. Ray’s design is elegant, minimal, and simple. (Put Evening Edition in a browser window next to this site, and you’ll realize very quickly why I’m such a big fan of Ray’s design decisions.)
As for substance, it’s like the site’s news editor, Anna Rascouët-Paz, secretly knows all the important stuff I either didn’t encounter or shamefully skipped over to read another Apple rumor.
Rascouët-Paz boils down complex topics well enough to keep you informed, but also whets your appetite to click through to her sources and get more information. Her summaries contain more rapid-fire facts and quotes than most of what you’ll find in the newspaper, and that’s a very welcome change.
If you want to read a beautiful website about the important news you missed every day, bookmark Evening Edition.