Twitter replies and Instapaper integration

I wanted to post something brief to let you know I made a few small but (I think) useful additions to this site.

First, I’ve added a button to the bottom of all posts letting Twitter users reply or ask questions directly from the post. Thanks to the purveyor of kaos.am for unknowingly alerting me to this classy and subtle way to allow some direct communication without resorting to comments. Find more info on my no-comments policy here.

Second, all of my article posts now include a “Read Later” button that will send that post to your Instapaper account. If you don’t have an Instapaper account, you should consider getting one. It’s not free, but it’s worth paying for the knowledge that it won’t “pivot” or become ad-ridden sometime down the road. Instapaper also innovates frequently, doing things like Kindle integration and fonts for vision-impaired readers before anyone else.

Third, I’ve added some more feed options to the site. The original Tumblr feed is still available. However, you can now choose between a master feed including all updates, a links-only feed that only includes the links I share (updated at least once a day), or an articles-only feed that includes only longer articles (updated at least once a week). Find more information here.

That’s it. I hope you find at least one of these additions useful. I don’t plan to add to this site very often, as part of the goal in building it was to keep it clean and content-focused.

Amazon heads off app fragmentation on Kindle Fire, Android

Amazon heads off app fragmentation on Kindle Fire, Android

MySpace renovations

MySpace renovations

What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology

What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology

Planet of the Tweets

Planet of the Tweets

Gamers confront copyright law

Gamers confront copyright law

Welcome to VentureBeat’s reporting-driven Friday

Welcome to VentureBeat’s reporting-driven Friday

Temple Law Profs Feed

I used Yahoo Pipes to make a feed that unites all posts by Temple profs writing at their various law blogs. The feed still needs some work, specifically to ensure that the author name, and preferably the name of the blog at which they’re writing, is published in every entry. But overall I’m very happy with it.

I didn’t get permission from them or from their respective blogs, but since the stuff is posted publicly, all the content in my united feed is available freely in each separate feed, and all the entries in my united feed link directly out to the source posts, I don’t see why anyone would object.

But, of course, if anyone does object, I’ll remove them from the feed immediately. In fact, at any point in time, and without warning, I may need to delete the feed altogether, so consider yourselves warned.

For now, though, it’s a convenient way to follow what interests Temple Law professors on a day-to-day basis, particularly with regard to current events in their respective areas of expertise.

So, here’s the feed, and here’s the Yahoo Pipes URL so you can see how I did it.

Justice Ginsburg Smile

Justice Ginsburg Smile

NYT quote approval policy is (only) a good start

The new quote approval policy at The New York Times, as quoted by Times opinion writer Margaret Sullivan:

So starting now, we want to draw a clear line on this. Citing Times policy, reporters should say no if a source demands, as a condition of an interview, that quotes be submitted afterward to the source or a press aide to review, approve or edit.

I first wrote about the quote approval problem when I linked to David Carr’s piece on it. Then I expressed my agreement with Temple Law professor David Hoffman, who wrote at Concurring Opinions about the frequency with which experts such as himself are misquoted or taken out of context.

I’m not sure the Times policy does a very good job of distinguishing between approval by PR folks and approval by subject-matter experts. The former try to approve quotes to control messaging, while the latter try to approve quotes to ensure their opinions on a given issue aren’t manipulated to further a skewed narrative.

I don’t think those two cases can be dealt with in the same policy without explicitly pointing them out and setting up a framework for each one. The Times policy allows for exceptions with senior editorial approval, and that may allow experts like Professor Hoffman to explain that they want to ensure their comments are presented in the manner in which they intend them to be presented. Or, it may not.

Marco Arment suggested disclosing when quotes have been approved for an article, instead of calling for an unqualified end to the practice. I’m not sure that’s the perfect solution, but I think I prefer Mr. Arment’s policy to the Times policy.

Disclosure makes sense and would show great respect to readers by allowing them to decide whether the reliability of a particular quote is or is not affected by its pre-approval by the source. Experts could ensure accurate representation of their opinions, and readers could be kept in the loop when a communications department has manufactured the CEO’s statement to the paper.

In short, the Times quote policy is nothing less than a good start, but it’s also nothing more.

Longread: Cameron Todd Willingham, Texas, and the death penalty

Longread: Cameron Todd Willingham, Texas, and the death penalty

Verizon Galaxy Nexus gets Jelly Bean...

Twitter changes force removal of related IFTTT triggers

IFTTT CEO Linden Tibbets, in an email to users today:

[ … ] on September 27th we will be removing all Twitter Triggers, disabling your ability to push tweets to places like email, Evernote and Facebook. All Personal and Shared Recipes using a Twitter Trigger will also be removed.

IFTTT is everything Yahoo Pipes could have been and I’ve been using several Twitter triggers for a long time, to do things like save my tweets to Evernote and add favorite tweets to Instapaper.

My “Twitter” tag is becoming so littered with the company’s user-hostile decisions and their unfortunate consequences that, soon, it will make more sense to post something when and if they ever put users first again.


Here’s the full email from IFTTT’s Linden:

Dear joeross,

In recent weeks, Twitter announced policy changes* that will affect how applications and users like yourself can interact with Twitter’s data. As a result of these changes, on September 27th we will be removing all Twitter Triggers, disabling your ability to push tweets to places like email, Evernote and Facebook. All Personal and Shared Recipes using a Twitter Trigger will also be removed. Recipes using Twitter Actions and your ability to post new tweets via IFTTT will continue to work just fine.

At IFTTT, first and foremost, we want to empower anyone to create connections between literally anything. We’ve still got a long way to go, and to get there we need to make sure that the types of connections that IFTTT enables are aligned with how the original creators want their tools and services to be used.

We at IFTTT are big Twitter fans and, like yourself, we’ve gotten a lot of value out of the Recipes that use Twitter Triggers. We’re sad to see them go, but remain excited to build features that work within Twitter’s new policy. Thank you for your support and for understanding these upcoming changes. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at support@ifttt.com.

Linden Tibbets IFTTT CEO

*These Twitter policy changes specifically disallow uploading Twitter Content to a “cloud based service” (Section 4A https://dev.twitter.com/terms/api-terms) and include stricter enforcement of the Developer Display Requirements (https://dev.twitter.com/terms/display-requirements).

Twitter continues to value advertiser utility above user experience

Twitter continues to value advertiser utility above user experience

David Hoffman on quotation approval

David Hoffman on quotation approval

Virgin Mobile USA's inadequate response to a good-faith vulnerability disclosure

Virgin Mobile USA’s inadequate response to a good-faith vulnerability disclosure

The New Feedly Mobile

The New Feedly Mobile

Mitigating My Mitigating

Mitigating My Mitigating

David Carr on quotation approval

David Carr on quotation approval

Apathy and ecstasy for the iPhone 5

Mat Honan, writing at Wired’s Gadget Lab blog:

It is an amazing triumph of technology that gets better and better, year after year, and yet somehow is every bit as exciting as a 25 mph drive through a sensible neighborhood at a reasonable time of day.

I am still waiting for Verizon to push Jelly Bean to my Galaxy Nexus. Meanwhile, the damn thing throws a force-close dialogue every couple of hours, stutters whenever I try to switch between apps, and occasionally reboots itself just for fun.

My fiancée has had an iPhone 4 for a little over a year, so I’ve had a lot of time to sit on the couch late at night and compare the two phones (like the unashamed geek one has to be to do such things…). The verdict is clear, quick, and simple: go Android for customization and Gmail (a far bigger point in Android’s favor than non-Gmail users might imagine…) but go iPhone for stability and app availability.

That has been the state of things for some time, and it’s no different with the introduction of the iPhone 5, iOS 6, or Android Jelly Bean.

Maybe it’s because I’m 29 this year, but my desire to customize the hell out of my phone is fading fast, especially at the high cost of stability. I’ll always keep an Android phone or two around for playing with custom ROMs, but I need something more refined for my primary phone.

Also, I’ve found on other Android devices that the four-inch display is my preference. The older iPhone displays were too small, and the Galaxy Nexus, at 4.6 inches, is a bit too large. Some people are complaining that iPhone 5 looks the same, just as the 4S looked the same. But it doesn’t: it has a bigger display and a thinner depth, without sacrificing anything in the spec department. That’s change enough for me.

Honan nailed it: iPhone 5 is great and it’s whatever. But it’s stable, app-rich, uniformly-updated whatever. And unless my first experience with it in a store or from a friend’s unit is surprisingly negative, it’s what I’m getting the next time I need a new phone.

Twitter forced to turn over protester's deleted tweets

Twitter forced to turn over protester’s deleted tweets

Apple's Comfortable Middle

Hamish McKenzie, writing at PandoDaily :

With two product launches in a row that show Apple is merely keeping pace with innovation rather than leading it, the world’s most valuable company will start to seem mortal.

I disagree.

For the record, I’m usually on board with Mr. McKenzie’s analyses, and I think he’s right that the iPhone 5 doesn’t restore the staggering lead Apple once had in smartphone innovation. I just don’t agree that there is any probable circumstance in which the iPhone 5 marks the beginning of the end of Apple’s dominance. I want him to be right, but I believe it will take action on the part of Apple’s competitors, rather than mere inaction from Cupertino, to catalyze that descent from the pinnacle.

I want to see something truly threaten Apple’s dominance: it would be good for consumers and even good for Apple, potentially motivating just the sort of next-generation innovation everyone wishes we saw with the iPhone 5. But Android is peddled in an ever-changing array of hardware of wildly varying quality, its interface often marred by manufacturer “improvements” and carrier-mandated bloatware, with no cohesive or remotely predictable software upgrade schedule.

Yes, it’s customizable, “open” (depending on how you define the term), and a provider of competitive pressure. In fact, Android, the OS, in its pristine Jelly Bean state on glorious hardware, is functional and gorgeous. But Android, the experience and, for lack of a better word, the brand, is truly a mess.

Then, there is the iPhone.

Apple tried for years to make things people loved. They succeeded. Now they are in the business of making improvements on the things they make that people love. And they’re succeeding there, too.

Whether or not they revolutionize TV next, and whether or not they drastically refresh iOS in the next couple of years, I think they’re still comfortably in the middle of their dominance, and at the top of their game.

Gruber on "Amazon's Play"

Gruber on “Amazon’s Play”

"The Math"

“The Math”

Say Hello to Samsung's Fanboy Factory - The Mobilers Program

Say Hello to Samsung’s Fanboy Factory - The Mobilers Program