Graham Spencer has done a terrific job with his “mapping” series on MacStories.

Rob Pegoraro:

You then watch a parade of executives bantering on about the company’s hopes and dreams and showing off their upcoming wares, which is good and useful–but from the cheap seats, you see no more detail than you’d get from watching video offsite. And except for Sony’s presser, which takes place in its exhibit area at the Las Vegas Convention Center, you rarely get any hands-on time with the new hardware either.

Rob does a good job of summing up the problem with press conference day. I always found CES so big that it was almost impossible to cover. In fact, it’s big enough that even press conferences don’t help reporters like they do at other events.

Poynter’s Matt Thompson has a great article on the use — and misuse — of buzzwords.

Maria Popova has some great letters from F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Orr, who has always been reluctant to talk about his many triumphs and has never spoken publicly about his personal relationships, even when they made their way into the headlines, promises to set the record straight on his remarkable life story. While the memoir will include chapters reflecting on the incomparable career of a beloved sports statesman it will also feature the candid thoughts of a man who once lost nearly everything to the treachery of his best friend, then reinvented himself and found renewed success.

I can’t wait to read this.

Yes, this is exactly what CES is like.

Mat Honan:

This is a problem for CES, which has never really been a show about software. As software matters more and more, CES matters less and less. The internet is already the world’s largest trade show. Gadget blogs are the new conventions. The hottest products are all in app stores, or on Kickstarter. Sure, big electronics shows offer the opportunity to meet people and forge relationships. But even that transaction is being moved online in the era of real-time social media.

So true.

I love large TVs and was excited when I heard about this big-ass TV, but damn is it ugly.

MG Sielger nailed it. Samsung’s ecosystem is doing great, but nobody else is making any money.

Still, last year, France’s largest ISP, Orange (the brand name of France Telecom), managed to strike a deal (Google Translate) with Google that required Mountain View to compensate Orange for some of the traffic it was sending. For months now, Free has tried to put pressure on Google to get a similar deal by throttling YouTube traffic for Free users.

When that didn’t work, Free then implemented its ad block last week—which affected, according to BFM Business (Google Translate), all of Google’s ad servers. This halted ads alongside search, Gmail, and YouTube.

They suspended ad blocking for now to try to work out a deal with Google. Given the precedent, I’m surprised more ISPs aren’t doing this.

The company’s lowest quarterly profit since 2004.

Jason Grigsby:

A few months ago I was tasked with finding a good solution for a client who wanted to move to responsive design, but had a web app that they needed to support as well. The question they asked is one that I’ve seen others argue about in the past: does responsive design make sense for apps?

Fred Wilson offers a nice overview of the subscription model and what’s needed to make it work.

You know you want it.

Bold Poker replaces your deck of cards with iPhones and has been praised by The Loop, Daring Fireball, and Mashable.

Try out Bold Poker at your next poker game. They’ll buy you a Heineken (i.e. give you a full refund) if the app doesn’t change your Texas hold’em home game for the better.

The Chef does everything but cook — that’s what wives are for!

My wife would kick my ass.

[Via Jim Coudal]

Former Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo believes that the future is about creating more knowledge and adding a layer of reputation to the fast-growing internet. And that is why he started Quora, his first real attempt at being a startup CEO.

These are just incredible.

This moron bragged on Facebook about drunk driving and hitting a couple of cars.

[Via Shawn King]

MG Siegler:

We all know the “four horsemen” of tech: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. These are the companies that pretty much everyone agrees will shape the foreseeable future of the tech sector. In some circles, that list makes waves for who is not included: Microsoft. But any rational thinker (meaning those outside of Redmond or anyone who hasn’t made a career as a .Net developer) knows that Microsoft simply no longer belongs on that list.

But that doesn’t mean the list is perfect. In fact, I do think there’s an omission that’s becoming a glaring one: Samsung.

MG makes some interesting arguments about why Samsung should be the fifth horsemen. There is no doubt the company is huge and has a lot of resources, but for me the question is can Samsung predict what consumers will want before they know they want it.

That’s one of Apple’s greatest strengths. They’re working on products we don’t even know we’ll want yet, but when they’re released, we have to have them.

This is pretty much how all Canadians do it.