✂ I cut the cord. When I decided to move apartments earlier this year, I knew I would be bringing a lot stuff with me: my clothes, my furniture, etc. But one thing I was determined to leave behind was my cable box — and the $100 monthly bill I paid for the privilege of using it. I was ready to cut the cord. Well, this weekend I completed my move, and today Time Warner Cable installed internet — but not TV — service in my new apartment. For the first time in my adult life, I am not a cable TV subscriber. Here’s the bottom line: I was paying Time Warner $156.23 a month for a standard HD cable TV package, DVR service, and ... Continue reading →
Body This kind of blew my daughter’s mind: a US$0.99 iPhone app that simulates a FaceTime call from her favorite Sesame Street monster, Elmo. I offer it here because what I generally hear about FaceTime is that no one uses it. But what I see is that it’s one of the most successful bits of technology that the rest of my family have taken to; in our house, FaceTime calls are a regular feature of almost every weekend. Thuy’s grandparents, aunts and cousins all relish the ability to talk with her via FaceTime. It seems unlikely we’re alone in this, which is borne out in the fact that this app mimics the FaceTime look and feel, and not Skype or Google Hangouts. It’s a useful ... Continue reading →
Simplee will send you many helpful alerts, like when an insurance claim is ready to review, when a medical bill is due, if there is a billing error, when you use out of service doctors, or if you could be taking advantage of certain medical services. You will also get personalized insights related to your FSA or HSA account. Continue reading →
Photo As you scroll, iA informs you how much reading time is left. Photo Gawker goes one step below “interstitial” with an ad that blurs the story you’re about to read. (Also, Men at Work is totally going to be cancelled in two months, right? I’m glad we had this talk.) Photo The Economist has an interactive cloud widget to explore trending topics through comments. Photo Another fantastic article page. Link Share and sell a blog post directly to your followers. I often complain that there’s not enough ways to monetize for publishers. Here’s a novel one. Photo Stijn Debrouwere’s article page has a block summary up top. Quote "Who cares! You do, in an involuntary, Pavlovian way, which is why you’re reading me when ... Continue reading →
May 25 Nytimes_ebooks Like a large swath of the Internet, I have become increasingly obsessed with the nonsensical tweets of the @horse_ebooks spambot twitter account (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, here are some links: Know Your Meme; The Ballad of @Horse_ebooks; The Human Being Behind @Horse_ebooks; and the Web Comic). I also love the @nytimes twitter account, which is now 5 years old and over 5 million followers strong. I felt like it would be fun to do something silly to commemorate how far @nytimes has come… And thus, @nytimes_ebooks was born. If you are interested, this is how it works. First though, I must restate my usual caveat: I am a developer at the New York Times who works on twitter ... Continue reading →
Subway systems are marvels of engineering and design, even more so for the ones (like London’s or New York’s) that were built in the early 20th century. But still, any rider of a mass transit system has no doubt cursed its design at some point. Why doesn’t the train go here instead of there? Why should an express line reach this neighborhood and not that one? Who’s to blame (or praise) for mass transit system design? According to a French physicist named Marc Barthelemy, nobody is. Barthelemy and his fellow researchers published a paper depicting the design of subway systems as an "emergent phenomenon" of large cities. "Each network is the product of hundreds of rational but uncoordinated decisions that take place over many years," ... Continue reading →
