The MAZ Blog

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I like this idea of mixing and matching content from different sources, in a curated way, but this execution is SO BAD:

1. Zinio’s reading experience just sucks. Period.

2. Not available in the Zinio iPad app. (really?)

3. To read any of the articles you have to buy the entire issue of that magazine. No one is going to buy 10 different magazines just to read 10 articles about the Titanic. (Titanic is one of the collections) If Zinio had an all-you-can-eat model this might be compelling.

4. Only works in Flash. (really?)

Sigh.

And they are right.

Thanks @marcedwards for the link.

“The Casual Vacancy”

For adults.

Why haven’t I heard anything about this???

Does this mean Pottermore did not do as well as they wanted? Or do they just want to reach a broader muggle audience?

I felt like this is when Radiohead finally started selling In Rainbows through normal channels after all the die-hards had finished buying/downloading directly from their site.

Again, my favorite kind of data: the kind that confirms what you already know anecdotally.

When I joined the NYC startup world in 2009 it was so so so so different than it is now. We didn’t even call it that, we just called it “doing work”.

And I have a feeling NY is only getting started…

In March, the web browser accounted for just 18.5 percent of time spent online among US smartphone users. Mobile apps accounted for the rest.

That is 81.5% of time spent in native apps, for you math majors.

Soo my takeaway is that people like using apps, and even more importantly, they use apps.

When people read news and features on electronic media, they expect stories to possess the linky-ness of the Web, but stories in apps didn’t really link. The apps were, in the jargon of information technology, “walled gardens,” and although sometimes beautiful, they were small, stifling gardens. For readers, none of that beauty overcame the weirdness and frustration of reading digital media closed off from other digital media.

This is not a limitation of apps, but instead simply a limitation of the way that apps have been implemented by certain (popular) developers.

People assume that the apps that exist today, as of May 2012, somehow represent the entire potential of all the apps that could ever be in the future.

The fact is that Facebook controls the news feed like an editor-in-chief controls a newspaper’s front page.

Is this what publishers really want? Forfeiting your brand?

Is this even what consumers want?

Department of Motor Vehicles officials said Monday they’ve issued Google the nation’s first license to test self-driving cars on public streets

Does anyone else feel like Johnny 5 just got his citizenship?

Keyboard shortcuts are one of things I miss the most on the iPad. Love this non-literal gesture stuff. Just awesome.

If you purchase, lease, or rent computer system hardware it 

may be exempt from sales tax if used or consumed directly and 

predominantly in designing and developing computer software 

for sale.

Reserve a spot now

Haha I love this so much.

Class I’m teaching at General Assembly this week:

Thursday, April 19th from 8:00 - 9:30 pm

In the battle for mobile and tablet dominance, there is one fact that remains uncontested by friends and foes alike: Apple has the best design. Yet most of the 600,000+ iOS apps were not designed by Apple itself. Some third-party apps fall short of Apple’s legacy, while some actually surpass Apple by pushing the limits of great interface design and creating new standards of their own. This begs the question, what makes a great iOS app great? What makes something look “Apple-y?” This class will discover the secrets of iOS design by examining the Apple iOS Human Interface Guidelines and critiquing the best (and worst) designed apps out there today.

Sign Up!

Nice post on how Amazon, despite its success, is dragging behind on social. Reminds me of the iTunes conundrum.

“The one OMGPOP employee who turned down joining Zynga was the weakest one on the whole team,” Porter tweeted. “Selfish people make bad games. Good riddance!”

Yikes. Just take your money quietly, smile, and wave.

PS - Draw Something is so drawesome, I’m completely addicted.