App Store shoppers should get to make the choice of whether or not to buy an iPhone app, not Apple. Imagine if Apple chose which music they stocked in the iTunes store based on the company’s taste. No Kanye because Jay-Z is better. No Dylan because it’s too whiney. Of course they don’t do that; they stock a crapload of different music and let the buyer decide. We should deride Apple for that type of behavior, not cheering them on.
Kottke on Apple
7 August 2008
9 June 2008
Google is providing real-time stock prices now…no page refresh necessary. So you can, for instance, watch Apple’s stock price drop after Jobs’ keynote. Now I know how daytraders feel…I can’t take my eyes off of the screen.
Kottke on Google Finance
28 March 2008
I realized the other day that I prefer eating at places where the person that owns the place is in the kitchen because no one else is going to care as much about your meal and experience as that person. Which doesn’t mean that you can’t find excellent food and experiences at Per Se or the diner around the corner, but the increasingly prevalent fine dining empires feel like, in the words of Bilbo Baggins, “too little butter spread over too much toast”.
Kottke on Restaurants
4 March 2008
I’m interested in short video as a contemporary equivalent of the photograph. I love these moments, not only because they are people I love, but because I think they show, as snapshots do, how spectacular a moment can be.
Kottke on Short Video
12 February 2008
Ben [Affleck] was up late, at like 3am, playing Everquest (or maybe Ultima Online?) because he was addicted and couldn’t stop. He also mentioned that he was essentially playing the game instead of being in bed with his girlfriend at the time, Gwyneth Paltrow.
Ben Affleck on MMO’s via Kottke
28 January 2008
Like if Mother Nature sat us down for a talk and said, “listen, you’re really shitting on the rest of the planet, its residents, its ecosystems, etc. and, by the way, you’re killing me slowly and painfully” and the only honorable thing to do would be to jump in a rocketship to colonize Mars or commit mass suicide so everything else could live in peace.
Kottke on the Environment