Today we’re introducing an updated ad experience we think is more attractive for users and more effective for advertisers.

Oh thank you, thank you Google, I really wanted ads in Google Maps.

Shawn Blanc has a great article on how he recently self-published his new book, including the tools he used and the problems he ran into. Worth a read.

Yesterday I mentioned that yet another NYT story on a brush-with-danger aboard an airliner was suspicious.

Let me rephrase that: The story the imperiled traveler told is phony, and America’s best paper shouldn’t have credulously passed it along.

Five major U.S. publishers objected to the Justice Department’s proposal to limit Apple Inc.’s influence in the electronic-books market, saying it would effectively alter their existing settlements with the U.S. government.

It’s like a giant soap opera.

Jim and Dan are joined by Peter Cohen the other half of The Loop to discuss AMBER alert disruptions, The Newton’s 20 year anniversary, PDAs as the predecessor to the MacBook Air, the sale of the Washington Post to Jeff Bezos, and more.

Sponsored by Hover (use code DANSENTME for 10% off), Squarespace (use code DANSENTME8 for 10% off), Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME8 for 30% off), and Igloo.

I’ve been watching Barley for the past few months and I’m impressed with what I’ve seen. The company provides an inline editor, so you don’t need experience in coding to build a Web site. They provide unlimited storage, hosting and templates to get you started.

Great article by Horace Dediu looking at Apple and Amazon.

Amazon, Kobo and Sony are petitioning the Federal Communications Commission to permanently exempt e-readers from certain federal accessibility laws for the disabled, arguing that e-readers are barebones devices designed for a single purpose: reading text.

The petition is interesting because it argues that e-readers’ value lies in the fact that they are inherently limited devices and that any non-reading functions they include, like experimental web browsers, are “rudimentary” and not very useful. Amazon, Kobo and Sony say that if they were forced to comply with FCC regulations and make e-readers fully accessible to people with disabilities, the essential nature of the devices would change, making them more like tablets, more expensive and, overall, less useful for their express purpose.

Okay, admittedly your products suck balls, but to go against implementing accessibility is wrong.

‘In 2009 the Smithsonian found a “secret” message engraved in Abraham Lincoln’s watch by a watchmaker who was repairing it in 1861 when news of the attack on Fort Sumter reached Washington, D.C.

I’ll be speaking at SecondConf this year, closing out the conference on the last day. If you’re attending, bring your instrument because we’ll be having a jam session too.

I agree with Joe, I’d love to see the Post get back to that old style journalism. Clearly they need to still compete with the newer, quicker news items, but mixing it with some investigative journalism would be welcomed by everyone.

Peter Cohen:

An anniversary of sorts quietly passed us this weekend: Saturday, August 3rd, marked the 20th year since Apple began selling the Newton MessagePad, its then-groundbreaking tablet device with handwriting recognition. While the device was never hugely commercially successful, its development, creation and sale inevitably, inexorably lead us to where we are today, a “Post PC world” dominated by touch-sensitive smartphones and cellphones. The Newton’s influence can even be felt in Apple’s Mac line, with products like the MacBook Air.

I still remember the first time I saw one of these.

I must say, that was very good.

You know you have to be good to win a National Geographic photo contest.

[Via Jim Coudal]

This kind of reminds me of what the guys did at Barley—except Barley is finished and implemented.

MG Siegler did a great article on Jeff Bezos, but it still didn’t convince me that buying The Washington Post was a good deal.