- Download an image from the internet, crop it, and upload it to a blog
- Post a video you find on Twitter to your Tumblr
- Download a song from a website and save it to your music app (or generally get music, or anything else, on or off the phone on anything but its “home” computer)
- Run Flash (and spare me, the $199 Kindle Fire does it)
- Check the weather from the home screen (or display any information other than the date: the calendar app customizes its icon with the current date, but no other app can do this)
- Adjust the size of text on a web page
On The Fence episode 1
Here’s episode 1 of On The Fence, a hopefully weekly podcast by me and Steve of Obalesque. The not insignificant audio issues are all my fault, and will be reduced in coming episodes, I sure hope. An iTunes listing is pending.
William Pope.L prints for sale
The legendary William Pope.L has three pieces up for sale at 20×200, one each for $50, $100, and $500. I have no idea where to send someone on the internet to first learn about Pope.L … maybe as good a place as any is this interview.
Descriptions of 5 variations on the Paleo diet
Robb Wolf’s introduction to the Paleo diet includes a link to descriptions of 5 variations on the Paleo diet at Dan’s Plan. Cheese and alcohol remain points of contention.
Login names and passwords
Login names and passwords, right? What a pain. And “Connect with Facebook” is no better. Well, Jeff Atwood has an idea of what a long-range solution might look like.
Amazon Fire tablet
The Amazon Fire tablet is released. Pretty much what we were expecting, except that the web browser sounds like it feeds through Amazon’s engine, which supposedly makes it super fast (and able to run Flash) but which is a little icky.
One guy’s not-so-optimistic opinion
One guy’s not-so-optimistic opinion: “This economic crisis is like a cancer. … The governments don’t rule the world; Goldman Sacks rules the world. … Get prepared.”
Why Amazon’s new tablet could beat the iPad
Go read my latest article at The Atlantic, Why Amazon’s new tablet could beat the iPad. We’ll all likely have a completely different perspective on this tomorrow, after Amazon makes their announcement.
Lessig’s new fight
Copyright activist Lawrence Lessig has given up the fight — he’s realized that before anything else, there’s a more fundamental problem that has to be solved: the corruption of congress by money. In this video, he does a remarkable job of outlining the problem. He does a somewhat less then perfectly convincing job of suggesting a solution. Specifically. Since congress is unable to reform itself, he has a strategy that would — eventually — lead to a constitutional convention, per Article 5 of the Constitution. Bold stuff. This guy’s serious: there is soon coming a book, and here’s his presentation at the Conference on the Constitutional Convention, which he organized, at Harvard, where he teaches:
We should be freaked out about the speed of light being broken
I’m not sure why we should be freaked out about the speed of light being broken. Yes, it “invalidates” Einstein’s theory of relativity. But it does so in the same sense that relativity “invalidated” Newtonian physics: that is, for a tiny sliver of edge cases that mostly apply just to theoretical physics. Just as bridges didn’t start to collapse after Einstein, nuclear reactors are not going to begin exploding if it turns out to be true that neutrinos travel slightly faster than the speed of light. EVERYBODY CALM DOWN!