via facebook.com
Looks like they're taking a page from twitter after all. The basic fit and finish continues to evolve and be an inspiring force. Can't wait to see it live.
Gotta post again, because there's too much cool stuff on forgottenmichigan.com, metro-detroit urban exploring photo sharing site... beautifully haunting. Totally abandoned parts of the city. Surely there are uses for this besides indie film movie sets?
Check out this abandoned high school -- wow, you can do so much with it. They're like ready-made for a zombie slasher flick 28 Days Later-style, or maybe a post-apocalyptic Half Life 2 / Children of Men thriller.
The median home price in Detroit has plummeted to $10,000. Literally, they can't even give these houses away -- they're abandoning them wholesale. Imagine buying AN ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD for the price of a 1 BR condo in San Francisco.
Gutted, abandoned. This was a major American city, now left empty. ForgottenMichigan.com shows photo galleries of dozens of sites around the city just left utterly empty. Not just random houses and the odd warehouse here and there -- we're talking high schools. Highrise hotels and apartment buildings. Hospitals. Ballrooms. Churches. Heck, even the downtown train station, Michigan Central Station.
In other words, they have aspects of an email system, but they don't have a full offering. To me, the question about companies like Twitter is: Do they fundamentally evolve as sort of a note phenomenon, or do they fundamentally evolve to have storage, revocation, identity, and all the other aspects that traditional email systems have? Or do email systems themselves broaden what they do to take on some of that characteristic?
This rings incredibly true to us here at Posterous. We're positioned in a way make this exact thing a reality.
Exciting times, friends.
Q: Anyone here lived through the Japan depression care to share their experiences with us?
A: It was terrible. People were forced to eat raw fish for sustenance. They couldn't get full-sized electronics, so they were forced to make tiny ones. Unable to afford proper entertainment, folks would make do by taking turns to get up and sing songs.
LOL
via youtube.com
Trippy and good.
Productive mediocrity requires discipline of an ordinary kind. It is safe and threatens no one. Nothing will be changed by mediocrity; mediocrity is completely predictable. It doesn't make the powerful and self-satisfied feel insecure. It doesn't require freedom, because it doesn't do anything unexpected. Mediocrity is the opposite of what we call "genius." Mediocrity gets perfectly mundane things done on time. But genius is uncontrolled and uncontrollable. You cannot produce a work of genius according to a schedule or an outline. As Leonardo knew, it happens through random insights resulting from unforeseen combinations. Genius is inherently outside the realm of known disciplines and linear career paths. Mediocrity does exactly what it's told, like the docile factory workers envisioned by Frederick Winslow Taylor
via chronicle.com
Funny that I should happen upon this article just as I am pondering the nature of genius / extreme productivity.
As Leonardo da Vinci discovered, extreme productivity cannot be bottled by the mundane routines of daily life.
Facebook has a rep for attracting good talent, and their products are really, really popular, and yet, from my perspective, whether it's missing, disorganized, or just broken, Facebook's work (not just Facebook Connect) is consummately subpar.
via mushpot.net
The Facebook API and Facebook Connect continue to have tremendous potential. And the teams behind them are still pushing out some pretty great stuff regularly.
But as the angry blogger above complains, the Facebook API teams need a thorough attitude adjustment to start acting like hungry startup guys again. Maybe there needs to be a true crack-the-whip sort of reorg there. No new features until old bugs are fixed. Each developer does support on their own features, and bugs on those features must be at ZERO before they are allowed to check in. At Microsoft, we called this bug jail.
Also, if the developer who created the feature has to support it day-to-day, you get a bunch of positive behavior where the creator will optimize for ease of use and ease of documentation, which is super advantageous if you're making an API for mass consumption.
I hate to rail on a free service, but as the blogger above mentions -- tough love is better than coddling.
Please don't coddle us -- tell us what you hate about Posterous and we'll fix it. How do we know if it's broken if you don't let us know? =)
Why do people commit their life to blaming their genes for not granting them that talent they desire with their soul?