Daring Fireball: Obsession Times Voice
http://daringfireball.net/2009/03/obsession_times_voice

Merlin Mann talk about making money to do more art

We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies

"My muse for the session was this quote from Walt Disney: “We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.” To me, that’s it. That’s the thing. / [...] / No one gets into something like this without an obsession, but if your obsession is with the money, and your revenue is directly correlated to page views, then rather than write or produce anything with any actual merit or integrity, you’ll dance like a monkey and split your articles across multiple “pages” and spend more time ginning up sensational Digg-bait headlines than writing the articles themselves. It’s thievery — not of money, but of readers’ attention." / [...] / The entire quote-unquote “pro blogging” industry — which exists as the sort of pimply teenage brother to the shirt-and-tie SEO industry — is predicated on the notion that blogging is a meaningful verb. It is not. The verb is writing. The format and medium are new, but the craft is ancient."

"There is an easy formula for doing it wrong: publish attention-getting bullshit and pull stunts to generate mindless traffic. The entire quote-unquote “pro blogging” industry — which exists as the sort of pimply teenage brother to the shirt-and-tie SEO industry — is predicated on the notion that blogging is a meaningful verb. It is not. The verb is writing. The format and medium are new, but the craft is ancient. Obsession times voice is a pretty good stab at a simple formula for doing it right."

How to PLC ladder http://program-plc.blogspot.com/

"Digg sends a tremendous amount of traffic to sites that make it to the top of their front page, but it’s the worst kind of traffic: mindless, borderline illiterates. Good riddance, really."

“People who love computers overwhelmingly prefer to use a Mac today. Microsoft’s core problem is that they have lost the hearts of computer enthusiasts.”

hat same simple example also w

A long, thoughtful post about why everything should auto-save all the time, because when you're trying to work, you don't want to be diverting your attention into meta-work at the same time.

by John Gruber - 20 February 2009 - Daring Fireball

A great article of file saving conventions and usability.

Here’s the thimbleful of information I have heard regarding The Tablet (none of which has changed in six months): The Tablet project is real, it has you-know-who’s considerable undivided attention, and everyone working on it has dropped off the map. I don’t know anyone who works at Apple who doubts these things; nor do I know anyone at Apple who knows a whit more. I don’t know anyone who’s seen the hardware or the software, nor even anyone who knows someone else who has seen the hardware or software.

iPhone Developer Program License Agreement

New iPhone Developer Agreement Bans the Use of Adobe’s Flash-to-iPhone Compiler

This makes me very happy.

hat’s how Microsoft became Microsoft. At a certain point developers wrote apps for Windows because so many users were on Windows and users bought Windows PCs because all the software was being written for Windows. That’s the sort of situation that creates a license to print money.

John Gruber’s interpretation of the iPhone SDK developer agreement change, which Steve Jobs endorsed when asked about the change: “I’m not arguing that it’s anything other than ruthless competitiveness. […] I’m just arguing that it makes sense from Apple’s perspective — and it was Apple’s decision to make.”

"The iPad becomes the app you’re using. That’s part of the magic. The hardware is so understated - it’s just a screen, really - and because you manipulate objects and interface elements so smoothly and directly on the screen, the fact that you’re using an iPad falls away. You’re using the app, whatever it may be, and while you’re doing so, the iPad is that app. Switch to another app and the iPad becomes that app. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is."

A must review by a definite iPad fan. The notes on syncing are a good wake-up call to Apple though