You should have seen my face when I saw this photo. (by andreas612, via alice44)

Rare Video Footage of Yours Truly Making Predictions Regarding New Products From Apple

Swish!

So can I get out this way, or…

Would You Ever Pay for Twitter?

Apparently no one would. Zero percent. It’s tricky—we buy phones, we pay monthly to make them work; people complain but not because of the concept. Same with computers (and related devices) and their monthly service (access to the internet). Twitter is more like email, but then again some of us pay for email (server costs or things like Google Apps to use custom domains). Ultimately I think Twitter will need to decentralize and become a protocol rather than a name-brand service but that sure isn’t good news for the company that provides it today. I realize I’m not saying anything new here.

For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t be against paying a fee comparable to what I’m paying for, say, my email address (that is, less than $50 a year). I use Twitter more than I use email.

Also this:

More than half (55%) of the respondents in this study said they’d rather be exposed to display advertising than pay for content. Yet the same people also expressed strongly negative views about online advertising, calling it “annoying” (70%) and saying that they never click on it (50%).

I don’t mind supplemental ads if they’re poignant and not distracting but that doesn’t mean I’ll pay attention to them. This goes even for The Deck, probably the most tasteful online ad service in existence. There’s big value in human endorsement, I think, like Daring Fireball’s RSS sponsorship (once a week, an item will appear in the feed describing the product or service being advertised in support of DF with a description that is written, I believe, by Gruber himself). I’m much more likely to react to a human’s description of some thing than a little graphic that was designed in a specific attempt to will me into handing someone money. I’m certainly not alone in this regard.

But the majority of people who took this survey were thinking of the more standard, far more annoying display ads seen on most every website and I’m really surprised that these numbers are as low as they are. I’d have guessed at least 90% for both.

(via The Awl)

WaterField not only offers a surprising amount of customization on their products, but the process of choosing the options is a lot of fun, too.

The Rolls-Royce website is exceptionally well-done, especially compared to just about any other luxury brand website in the world (briefly: all-Flash, splash pages, background music, mystery meat navigation, little to no utility, “mystique”). It’s obvious from their product line that this is due in large part to their company culture and not simply a lucky draw in picking a web design firm.

But here’s something I see a lot. The HTML5 geolocation APIs are still fresh and not widely supported but look, you already have my IP address. You can track me down pretty accurately—certainly to my country, if not to my state or ZIP code or specific lat/long. It may not be 100% accurate (proxies, etc), but in most every case it’s gonna be pretty good. Take a stab. Make it clear what’s happening: “We think you’re in New York, NY, United States. Click here to change your location.” Then continue on.

It sure could be worse, and often is—a lot of luxury brand sites require me to tell them where I am before I can even enter the website. Sometimes this makes sense if you offer different products in different places, but surely there’s something you can show me to set my initial impression of your brand besides an unusually invasive and mandatory query?

And so I say this with cautious love for Rolls-Royce. I actually hate the general design of their products—or at least I did up until a few minutes ago when I realized how much effort goes into those ugly designs—but as far as this industry goes on the web they’re doing most everything right (even their gentle autoplay videos give way to tasteful still photos when Flash is disabled, which almost no one does anywhere) and so it hurts to see such smooth sailing hit rocks on something that’s so easy to fix.

And if you’re wondering: yes, this is the only thing stopping me from spending three hundred thousand dollars on a Phantom.

Do not approach the smokers without proper safety attire.

I’m not touching you! I’m not touching you!

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Genesis vs. Katy Perry - Invisible Gurls (Chambaland Mashup)

(by chamberlain, via lookmom)