Let me get this out of the way: I don’t like Adria Richards. I think I have good reason to not like Adria Richards. So I should be feeling some major Schadenfreude right now. Instead, though, I think what’s unfolded in the developer community in recent days has been a tragedy. Here’s why.
Adria Richards is at the center of an Internet firestorm this week after she attended during a conference called PyCon. She overheard developers making sexual innuendos during one of the sessions and used Twitter to complain and shame them. One of the developers lost his job over it, and so did Richards.
The incident underscores the pervasive sexism in the tech industry – not to mention the ugly, sociopathic behavior some Internet crazies engage in – and raises questions about how best to handle problems like this in the future.
Blum (who’s a friend of mine) pulled no punches in her observations and looks at both sides of the issue.
Bottom line: This was a lost opportunity – what could have been a “teachable moment” instead went horribly, horribly wrong.
The rare offering of a VOX guitar played by both John Lennon and George Harrison is what rock n’ roll legends are made of. The striking custom guitar built by Mike Bennett and Dickey Denney was gifted to “Magic Alex” Mardas by John Lennon in 1967. Harrison played the guitar while practicing “I am the Walrus” during The Magical Mystery Tour and by Lennon while recording a video session for “Hello, Goodbye.”
A really well designed user interface is one that goes unnoticed by the user, whereas a poorly designed user interface forces the user to pay attention to it instead of the content.
And now Google has confirmed this, with a representative telling us that, “Yes, I can confirm for you: We have not submitted Google Now to Apple’s App Store.”
For the ninth consecutive study, Apple ranks highest among manufacturers of smartphones in customer satisfaction. Apple achieves a score of 855 and performs particularly well in physical design and ease of operation.
The average was 796 points. Nokia scored 795, Samsung 793, Motorola 792 and HTC 790. LG scored 744 and lowest of the manufacturers was BlackBerry with 732.
Apple has joined the growing list of companies offering two-step verification to secure user accounts. By enabling two-step verification, whenever you attempt to log in on a new device with your Apple ID, you will be asked to enter a 4-digit verification code. This code will be sent to a device that you have registered as a trusted device, such as your iPhone, via a Find My iPhone notification or SMS.
Apple’s commitment to the environment is second to none and on Thursday the company released its yearly update detailing the environmental impact its products. I spoke with Apple executive Scott Brodrick about the report and what Apple is doing on the environmental front.
According to Brodrick, many of Apple’s facilities like its Cupertino, Calif. headquarters, offices in Cork Ireland and the Maiden, NC data center are 100 percent powered by renewable energy.
Apple built a solar array and a fuel cell installation in Maiden to power that facility. Broderick said it is the largest privately-held, non-utility installation in the United States. What’s more, Apple is building a second solar array and fuel cell of equal size to meet future energy demands at the Maiden facility.
The mount of energy saved by using these alternate forms of energy is the “equivalent of taking 24,000 cars off the road every year,” said Brodrick.
Apple isn’t just looking at ways to save energy in its existing facilities, they are looking at starting off future facilities by taking advantage of renewable energy from the beginning.
“We are going to continue this strategy in other facilities in Oregon and Nevada,” said Broderick. “Overall, 75% of the power to Apple’s corporate facilities worldwide are met with renewable energy.”
Brodrick said that’s a two-times increase over last year’s environmental report.
Of course, reducing toxic materials used in its products is very important as well. Apple’s entire product line is free from lead, BFR, PVC, Mercury and they use Arsenic-free glass.
The carbon emissions go its products have dropped significantly too. The Apple TV has seen a 90% reduction in carbon emissions since 2007, while the iMac has seen a 67% reduction since 2007. The Mac mini is down 49% since 2007 and the MacBook Pro is down 6% since 2006.
“We are the only company that can claim that all of the products we make meet the Energy star certification,” said Brodrick. “In many cases our products exceed the requirements.”
It’s not only the large things that help reduce a company’s reliance on energy. Apple is working on some smaller, but still important initiatives with its employees.
For instance, Apple’s Cupertino headquarters has reduced its reliance on electricity by 30%. The company is also offering its employees commuting alternatives — a program that has seen a 30% participation increase.
Apple also installed electric car charging stations in Cupertino for employees that want to purchase an environmentally friendly vehicle.
It’s important to note that Apple is the only company that provides this type of environment report. They map everything from manufacturing, transportation, product use, recycling and facilities to give the public a detailed view of the environmental impact it has.
Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) continues to shuffle its executive ranks, announcing Senior Vice President of Geo and Commerce Jeff Huber will step down to pursue new projects within the company. The move follows just one day after longtime head of Android Andy Rubin also resigned his post.
This happened almost a week ago, but I missed it at the time.
The chief takeaway from this year’s issue: Apple’s corporate facilities worldwide now get 75% of their power from renewable sources — solar, wind, hydro and geothermal — up from 35% two years ago.
Impressive improvement. Take that, you stinky hippies.
Apple is dominating the cloud storage wars, followed by Dropbox, Amazon and Google according to Strategy Analytics ‘Cloud Media Services’ survey.
In a recent study of almost 2,300 connected Americans, Strategy Analytics found that 27% have used Apple’s iCloud followed by 17% for Dropbox, 15% for Amazon Cloud Drive and 10% for Google Play (see chart).
Earlier this week I asked all of my RSS subscribers to change the link they use because I am moving away from Google’s FeedBurner. The biggest problem I face now is how to count my subscribers, the main feature I used in FeedBurner.
One of my Twitter followers on Wednesday pointed me to a new Web site called URI.LV, a new service dedicated to replacing FeedBurner. Created by Maxime Valette, the new service will count your subscribers, much like FeedBurner does.
With a WordPress plug-in you can choose to hide the fact you are even using the service, so users will continue using the same feed. Unlike FeedBurner, the site feed will not be redirected, unless you want it to.
I put a test feed in the system yesterday and it did count the subscribers and the hits to the overall feed. It’s too early to tell how accurate it is, but there are so many people in the same position I am in that I wanted to share the information. I’m hoping this will work out as a viable replacement.
“Verbal tinctures for the parched and deviant soul.”
A new app featuring quotes, columns and content from Mark Morford, the San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate columnist and culture critic. Free to download, though some content needs to be unlocked through in-app purchases.
Tired of waiting for games to be fully complete and released before you can buy them? Wish you could play a game while it’s still a bug-riddled, in-development mess? Well, Valve has got you covered with its new “Early Access” sales program.
The program lets players buy games that haven’t finished development yet; it lets developers charge you for the privilege of putting their unfinished game through its paces, warts and all.
Back in MY day, beta testers didn’t have to pay for the games they tested, and they’d usually get a free copy out of the deal too. My, how times have changed. And not for the better.
A new trojan specifically for Macs has been discovered that installs an adware plugin. The malware attempts to monetize its attack by injecting ads into Chrome, Firefox, and Safari (the most popular browsers on Apple’s desktop platform) in the hopes that users will generate money for its creators by viewing (and maybe even clicking) them.
Be vary wary of any Web page that requires you to install additional software you’ve never heard of in order to see content there.
Om Malik on launching Google Keep after just killing Google Reader:
I spent about seven years of my online life on that service. I sent feedback, used it to annotate information and they killed it like a butcher slaughters a chicken. No conversation — dead. The service that drives more traffic than Google+ was sacrificed because it didn’t meet some vague corporate goals; users — many of them life long — be damned.
Looking from that perspective, it is hard to trust Google to keep an app alive.
I agree completely. How can Google expect users to trust them with an app when they could shut it down at any time. No thanks Google.
Some big changes in this release, including support for Audiobus, which allows you to play and record music apps supported by Audiobus directly into GarageBand.
But even from the outside, it’s easy to see that the Android situation isn’t ideal. Yes, it is the world’s “most popular” mobile phone platform, if you sort by the number of people using it, and that’s an impressive achievement. But it certainly isn’t making the sort of impact — on the world and on Google itself — that it perhaps could or should.
Second, even though we’ve been quiet about it, we have been working on new versions of NetNewsWire for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. We have some great new features and a modern design that we can’t wait to show you.
Jim and Dan talk about Kevin Lynch, the iOS update, Google Reader’s demise, leaving Feedburner, Google’s priorities, privacy, Dropbox, BlackBerry’s claim that the iPhone is “old”, learning guitar chords, the Line 6 amp, and more.
Aspyr Media announced Wednesday plans to release a Mac compatible version of BioShock Infinite this summer. It’s the latest installment to the popular first person shooter series, and it’s coming to Windows and consoles later this month.
Previous installments of the game are available for Mac courtesy of Feral Interactive.
