Nimblebits open letter to Zynga. Brilliant!
Lytro, a Lightfield Camera that uses a new technology is now out for pre-order. Starts at $399 for the 8GB model.
From Andy Warhol’s Tuesday, 9 October 1984 diary entry. It was Sean Lennon’s 9th birthday party. (via edp)
I love all the incredibly wonderful Steve Jobs stories that are coming out of the woodwork.
(via minimalmac)

First I was angry then I was deeply sad. No one has greatly influenced me as highly as Steve Jobs. The world will never forget your perseverance, your ingenuity and passion. My condolences to his family and friends. Here is to the crazy one. May you rest in peace
I was thinking about this when I read pinboard’s blog about The Cost of Bookmarking and when Ben Brooks reiterated it and linked his post to Nick Sabato:
Make something cool, charge people for it, take their money, keep making cool stuff. Sadly, an awful lot of people don’t practice it.
When Silicon Valley started most of the business model is based upon the notion of “If we build it, they will come”. It’s been a successful business model but only in one important factor: attracting user base. The problem they struck within this business model is how to get paid for your handwork. It’s always about getting more user then worry about making money. But as it is no one is willing to pay for a service they’ve been using for a year or two and it’s frustrating as hell that your successful business doesn’t make any money at all. Serving ads won’t cut it anymore in this time and age. You have to build cool product that people will want to pay for. Look at Twitter, Tumblr and Delicious 1. They have created compelling products and services that few people is willing to pay for because they’re also afraid of losing half of their users if they ask for money. 2
It’s a sad fact, really, creating a great product that no one wants to pay is the kind of business that you don’t want to get into. Tumblr, Twitter and Delicious is suffering from this and they can focus on making their product better by offering to get paid by their users. They don’t have to worry about money and they can focus their energy more by serving their user. A great example is a bookmarking service called Pinboard. A one-time paid service that emphasizes on speed and reliability. When Yahoo announced that they are planning to kill off delicious many of it’s users switched to Pinboard. Flickr is also able to improve their service and offer greater value to their pro users. Evernote, dropbox & Instapaper is thriving with their free and paid services.
And why would people want to pay if they can get it for free you may ask: It’s quiet simple, if the service you are using don’t need to worry about money you can bet that they can give an unprecedented service and you don’t have to worry about the company closing down it’s business. And if you really value their services it’s only fair that you pay.
My suggestion for any start up/web services:
I am no expert when it comes to building a great service but I know that I am a customer willing to pay for a better product and services.
Every photographer is waiting for this. A way for us to edit and manage our professional photos in our mobile devices. Adobe has released their “Adobe Lightroom for the iPad” called Adobe Carousel which will be released as a free iPad, iPhone and Mac apps for free with a syncing/storage service fee with a monthly and annual subscription. 1
Get access to all your images on all your devices
Same photo-processing technology as Photoshop Lightroom
Easy browsing and viewing of all your photo
Easily share all your photos to your family and friends
Everything is on the cloud–no need to worry about your device storage space
Advantages
You can easily browse your photos on the ground by importing them to your device using the app so you can easily show your photos in a larger screen.
Managing your photos and being able to choose the right photos for your project.
Edit images on the fly.
If you’re familiar and a user of Adobe Lightroom this is a no-brainer.
The online storage is unlimited.
Disadvantages
As of version 1 release the app cannot edit Camera RAW images but this is coming according to their press release.
This is subscription base. The app is free but there is no way to use other online services such as Amazon S3, Dropbox, iCloud, etc.
This has a potential to be big for photo hobbyist and professional photographers. Now if only Apple will release their version of Apple Aperture for the iPad that works with the upcoming iCloud. I’d be happy camper. 3
For anyone who’s familiar with Foursquare and a big fan of Star Wars. I AM your Mayor! Hit the link for a large screen preview of the ousting page. Forcesquare.
The title of the article sure sounds like a link bait and you can easily change it to “Why I deactivated my Facebook/WOW/Twitter but two paragraphs caught my eye and made this article worthy of attention:
Being bored is a precious thing, a state of mind we should pursue. Once boredom sets in, our minds begin to wander, looking for something exciting, something interesting to land on. And that’s where creativity arises.
My best ideas come to me when I am unproductive. When I am running but not listening to my iPod. When I am sitting, doing nothing, waiting for someone. When I am lying in bed as my mind wanders before falling to sleep. These “wasted” moments, moments not filled with anything in particular, are vital.
One of Wired Magazine’s most controversial cover got water damage from the rain along with 20 back issues ranging from 1997-2004. Frak!
Our family’s Anne Rice hardbound books (except The Witching Hour). Been trying to complete all her books in large format preferably original published cover. This is the kind of vampire stories I read back when I was a teen.