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New York Time iPad App…Oops!

Scott Adcox — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 20:42:42 +0000

Many, if not most iPad subscribers have been unable to access Times articles since Friday, when an update pushed through Apple’s App Store rendered the application unable to display content.

Four days is a lifetime in the digital world. Having a problem that long is not a good sign.

HT @JimMacMillanSimilar Posts:

WordPress 3.2 Available!

Scott Adcox — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 03:19:33 +0000

Gershwin is available, and there are some really nice features included. My favorite new feature is one I’m using right now…full page editing that gets rid of all the superfluous litter around the post composing screen and lets you just write. No worries, some nice smooth AJAX allows the major post editing options to appear with the move of a mouse above the title.

Check out this video for more on the newest features.

Also included is Twenty Eleven; the fully HTML5 default theme. I’ve played with it a little already and can’t wait to see what some of the top notch designers start coming up with going forward.Similar Posts:

New York Times Leveraging Twitter As A Content Database

Scott Adcox — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 16:12:01 +0000

Instead of building our own system, we asked reporters to post their updates to Twitter and use hashtags to associate each update with a race.

It’s very cool that the New York Times found a way to use someone else’s platform to not only churn out updates, but also store and pull in information from their app users and readers.

Even cooler…they aren’t doing anything that you can’t do. What if your own whitelist was made up of a Twitter list you create? It wouldn’t be that hard to do the exact same thing they are doing, would it?

HT @jacklailSimilar Posts:

Twitter Changing The Way It ReTweets

Scott Adcox — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 04:38:44 +0000

TechCrunch has some details of the changes we can expect to see to the mechanics of the ReTweet and even has some screen shots of how this could look on Twitter (the site):

From the looks of it, this could mean some pretty big changes on Twitter. As you can see in the mock-ups above and below, the retweet (written as “RT” in most tweets) is no longer a part of the actual tweet itself, but rather is a link below the tweet.

Now…how many people are actually using Twitter (the site) most of the time? Most people I know use Twitter (the service) with a client like TweetDeck, Seesmic, or apps on their mobile phones. All of these came about because Twitter (the site), well, kinda sucks.

They definitely need to beef up their web site with some features to get people to actually use it, but has that ship already sailed?Similar Posts:

The Facebook/FriendFeed Marriage

Scott Adcox — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 13:35:18 +0000

Dan asked me on Facebook last night if we’d be writing something about it on NTZ. I’m not sure there’s much to say that hasn’t been covered by ReadWriteWeb. Basically, we can expect to see more of FriendFeed’s features being pulled into Facebook, even though the two will remain separate entities for now.

If I were inclined to break it down to levels beyond scientific, I’d follow this line of thinking:

Facebook owns FriendFeed now, which mean Google doesn’t.
Neither does Twitter.
Twitter may be less inclined to flood FriendFeed with tweets now, since it seems like that’s where most FriendFeed conversations start.
Google may make another run at Twitter to counter Facebook’s move. And the price just went up.

Similar Posts:

We want Google Voice on our iPhones

Trace Sharp — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:32:43 +0000

Jim Voorhies calls this the best comment ever.

I can’t help but agree.Similar Posts:

Some Hilarious Stuff on AP’s DRM

Scott Adcox — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:49:22 +0000

The AP has released some info on its new “protection” system–not sure what exactly they are trying to protect us from.

From CrunchGear:

This same system, as you recall, has prevented the rise of piracy in the music and movie arenas and must be applied to the written word before the Internet fails and we all resort to getting our news from “prophets” who will line major thoroughfares opining on things they believe happened, whether or not they are true. In short, we’ll be stuck with cable news pundits.

Even funnier is the graphic that leads the post. If you’re easily offended by curse words you may want to skip it.

However, if you are offended by the AP’s attitude towards bloggers and everyone who isn’t the AP, it’s a must read.Similar Posts:

Twitter Crackdown

Scott Adcox — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:44:58 +0000

Did your follow count just drop? I received an email from @tless that I’d lost 60 followers on Twitter. I’m not really phased by that, since I don’t really put much stock in how many people are following me. I mean, I want followers, but I only want quality followers who are engaging. According to TechCrunch, Twitter has eliminated a bunch of spam accounts.

If you notice this morning that your follower count on Twitter dropped dramatically, don’t be alarmed. It is just Twitter cracking down on spam accounts and bots that automatically follow people. So chances are those weren’t real people anyway.

I’m actually good with that. Not that it harms me for fake accounts and bots to follow me, but I’d like to see the communication medium kept as pure as possible. Spam accounts make it less credible.Similar Posts:

Some Results From The Slate Experiment

Scott Adcox — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:26:23 +0000

We told you about this experiment at Slate a couple of days ago. The idea is to have one group of people limit themselves to the web and one group to limit themselves to newspapers. After a couple of days, who would feel better informed.

Here’s a case for newspapers from one of the participants I haven’t seen before, and it’s one that is definitely difficult for the web to match due to the number of choices available.

But even in our fractured media world, it still is satisfying to feel that you share with people you know a baseline of common information that comes from reading the newspaper—and, obviously, it doesn’t matter whether that paper is delivered to your door or downloaded on your Kindle.

Interesting take, but you could also flip it around and say that you could share a common baseline of non-information. And that is not good.Similar Posts:

What’s More Effective? Print or Web?

Scott Adcox — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:29:08 +0000

Slate is running an interesting experiment, although not exactly scientific. One group of readers will limit themselves to print media for a couple of days, and the second group will avoid newspapers and limit themselves to reading news on the web (no aggregation sites allowed). The idea is to try and figure out who is better informed after a couple of days.

This is pretty interesting. Does it make a difference that when you read a newspaper you are deciding to read and do nothing else? Is your attention span shorter when you are getting your news online and you have a hot game of Desktop Tower Defense on pause in the background?

Again, this is hardly scientific, but it’s interesting nonetheless. We may get an idea about the degree to which we can expect to be (mis)informed in the future if print goes away.

Any predictions?Similar Posts: