'The Verge' Launches

For those of you who weren't already aware, Joshua Topolsky and various other people formerly of Engadget have been blogging on the excellent 'This Is My Next...' site while they have been preparing for the launch of their new tech media network, The Verge. Well, The Verge has finally launched and I am very impressed.

From their Welcome to The Verge post:

We think of The Verge (and its underlying CMS) as something akin to an app. A piece of software that is being constantly developed and updated. Today we're launching with The Verge 1.0, but 1.1 and 1.2 are just around the corner.

I encourage you to read that entire post, because they link to various examples of site features and design, all of which are well-crafted and beautiful. I think it's safe to say that this is one of the best-designed tech sites I have ever seen and I'll likely be coming back to it every day just to admire everything (and get some excellent tech news too, of course).

MetroTwit Updates, Introduces Obnoxious Ads

MetroTwit, the desktop Twitter client for Windows that I've been using for a while now, has updated to include several new features. Most of the new features are great but one of them is irking me somewhat: the introduction of ads.

I want to make it clear right now that I fully support the idea of application developers making a living doing what they love, and in most cases, I don't mind advertisements showing up in an application I'm using, provided that they are out of the way and do not interfere with what the app is being used for. But the way it has been implemented in MetroTwit is irritating.

As you can see, they chose a prominent place to insert these ads (right inside your feeds), as opposed to a corner somewhere or even at the top of the window where a banner ad would fit perfectly. Obviously it's not strictly preventing me from tweeting or reading any particular column, but I cannot stand that it's taking up space where tweets would normally reside. This is a Twitter client, after all.

There is no way of getting rid of this ad space without paying a $15 fee. Personally I think $5 would be a more appropriate price for such a feature, but that's beside the point.

I've noticed several people on Twitter questioning the new ads, and MetroTwit's response has generally been "well, did you know you can place the ads into a different column if you want?" That's not good enough.

I'm the type of person that has never willingly clicked an ad on any website or application for any reason. Not once. I also use an ad-blocker whenever possible. If an ad can't be hidden/removed, I try my best to ignore it. Unfortunately, that's not possible with MetroTwit's implementation.

I can't even choose to have the ads show up in an unused column and then hide that column offscreen by shrinking the window (which is the way Tweetdeck handles columns); MetroTwit just forces all columns to fit into whatever window size you've chosen. If MetroTwit would handle columns the way Tweetdeck does, I would happily let them run their ads but then get them out of my sight. It would be win-win.

The only reason I'm even this upset about the whole thing is that I really like the application they've put together here (it's easily the best Twitter desktop client for Windows), and it's disappointing that they chose the most annoying way possible to monetize their product.

UPDATE: It turns out that there is one way to hide the ads. You can resize any other columns you're using and sort of "push" the ad-filled column offscreen. It's still a bit silly that a user would even have to do this.

Skeuomorphism in iOS

Sam Biddle on how Apple's UI conventions have become a little...odd these days.

The rules worked fine for decades! And, arguably, no giant company has made prettier software more consistently than Apple, ever. That is, until the company began taking the design advice of what can only be someone who stuck a syringe full of amphetamines into his neck and rode a horse straight into Cupertino.

Today, I find myself agreeing with a Gizmodo post for once. Especially in regards to Game Center, one of the worst examples of Apple design I've ever come across.

Gizmodo | Ugh. God. Why Is Apple Making Everything Look Like an Ugly Wild West?

Instapaper 4.0

Marco Arment has released Instapaper 4.0 for iOS. Huge update with lots of great new features (and a lovely new icon, as seen above). Go check it out.

Marco Arment | Introducing Instapaper 4.0 for iPad and iPhone

Kevin Rose: "Google Should Buy Evernote"

Kevin Rose posted this on Google+ earlier:

Google idea of the week: Buy Evernote, integrate it w/Google Docs and your upcoming GDrive storage produce. Think mountable storage (eg. dropbox) with Google Docs content creation tools and the searchable indexing of Evernote. Now that would be a killer product.

I disagree.

Evernote CEO Phil Libin has stated several times that he sees Evernote as a "100 year company" and I think that he would prefer to maintain control over the product instead of allowing Google to get their hands on it.

Google doesn't need Evernote's indexing capabilities anyway—being the search giant that they are—and even if they did, they have every resource available to them to create such a product on their own.

Evernote doesn't really offer anything that Google wants or needs. Despite its great web client, Evernote still relies heavily on its desktop and mobile clients, while Google is very much about web apps. In the event of such a transaction, Google would likely cannabalize Evernote's features and scrap the old product, pissing off over 10 million users and not gaining much in return.

Google Docs and Evernote are products for different audiences and I think they should stay that way.

Amazon's Kindle Fire Tablet

 

What's known so far:

• $199 price point
• 7-inches
• 8GB hard drive
• No 3G
• No camera
• No microphone
• Custom Android interface
• Comes with 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime
• Totally wireless thanks to Whispersync; no computer required
• 8-hour battery life while reading, 7.5-hours while watching movies (both with Wi-Fi disabled)

This looks pretty killer as an Amazon product, but as an iPad killer? Doubtful.

Facebook Nation

Nancy Baym, writing for Social Media Collective, on the idea of a universal Facebook login being regarded as a "passport" for the internet:

But we should think long and hard about its implications. Except for nations that block the internet or some of its sites (hello, China!), the internet has thrived on being a set of domains across which we could travel without passports. Do we really want Facebook citizenship to become a requirement for accessing other domains? Do we really want an internet where we not only need a passport, but a passport from a nation – any nation – owned by a privately-held corporation? Either social network “citizens” need rights beyond emigration or we need to push back hard. We must be the builders of our own futures, not subjects in a nation motivated by profit.

It's a good read, go check it out.

Social Media Collective | Introducing Facebook Nation

Pandora's New HTML5 Interface

ReadWriteWeb has a writeup on Pandora's new look and the removal of the 40-hour-per-month listening cap. I think it's a step in the right direction but I don't understand why they didn't commit to an all-HTML5 interface instead of still using Flash for playback.

[ReadWriteWeb]

Instagram 2.0

Introducing Instagram 2.0:

Today, we’re excited to announce the release of one of the largest revamps to the Instagram app since it launched nearly a year ago.

Since the day we launched, one core part of the app has remain largely unchanged: the camera. In the past, we’ve added filters & tilt-shift, but the base technology has never evolved. Today that all changes as we introduce a complete upgrade to Instagram’s camera with a brand new technology layer.

Click over to their blog to get the full rundown of new features.

'Be wary of "starring" in Spotify'

Justin Blanton has unfortunately come across the same issue that I've had with Spotify's built-in starring system. Hopefully they come up with a solution for this, as I know for a fact that many others have also run into this problem and I haven't seen any evidence that anyone at Spotify has heard these complaints yet.

Hypertext | Be Wary of "starring" in Spotify