iA / Why is Facebook not Paying the Apple Tax?

Tag: Communication

Why is Facebook not Paying the Apple Tax?

– Why should Facebook—the biggest beneficiary of the iPhone, its tools, and its infrastructure—pay nothing, when small developers have to pay tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Computer Poetry

– Language has the power to make us understand others, to feel like others through time and space. To almost become someone else. Used as tool, computers can help us amplifying the use of language. But if we talk to them alone, they can extract understanding for commercial use and make us die a little.

Make Bots Identifiable

– Everybody that has an interest in influencing public opinion will happily pay a handful of Dollars to amplify their voices. Governments, political groups, corporations, traders, and just simple plain trolls will continue to shout through bot armies—as long as it is so cheap.

On Icons

– Icons save space. Icons look crisp. Icons give quick answers to hard questions: How do we make it nicer? How can we brand it? How do we make it more fun? We ♥ icons. Until they start messing with our minds.

Putting Thought Into Things

– To get a good perspective, we start our projects with research. We go mobile first for prioritization, and we want all the content first so we can design in the browser… Unfortunately, the reality of web design follows a different stereotype.

Twitterror

– How do you deal with erroneous tweets? Not any erroneous tweets, your erroneous tweets. The tweets that you misspelled or, worse, that contain information you later discover is false, or a late night knee-jerk response you regret in the morning.

Follow-up to “Sweep the Sleaze”

– Our call to question the common practice of blindly adding social media buttons to every page got a lot of attention, and found many friends across the board. This proves we are onto something. Let’s look at some of the more critical reactions.

Sweep the Sleaze

– Promising to make you look wired and magically promote your content in social networks, the Like, Retweet, and +1 buttons occupy a good spot on pretty much every page of the World Wide Web. Because of this, almost every major site and brand is providing free advertising for Twitter and Facebook. But do these buttons work?

Kommunikation ist Knochenarbeit

– Der folgende Text über die Grundregeln des Bogenschiessens stammt aus dem sogenannten Shaho-Kun. Er lässt sich leicht auf die Kunst der Kommunikation übertragen.

Der Computer: Velo oder Hamsterrad?

– Werkzeuge sind Verlängerungen des Körpers: Die Brille ist eine Verlängerung des Auges, der Hammer eine Verlängerung der Hand, der Hut eine Verlängerung des Kopfhaars. Was ist ein Computer? Die Verlängerung unseres Geistes? Steve Jobs meinte, der Computer sei ein Fahrrad für den Geist. Eine schöne Vorstellung. Wenn man aber schaut, was insbesondere das Mobiltelefon mit uns macht, dann wirkt der zeitgenössische Computer eher wie ein Hamsterrad.

iABC

– The idea: Look at the history, shape and sound pattern of each letter, sum it up in 140 characters, and collect a beautiful specimen for each letter.

Business Class: Freemium for News?

– I had a perspective-changing talk on the subject of pay walls with the chief executive of a big publishing company (no, I can't tell you who). He asked me what I think about pay walls.

Die Zeitungs-Applikations-Komplikation – wer zahlt?

– Computer, Smartphone, Tablet-PC, IP-TV, Spiele-Konsole, Navigationsgerät und vielleicht sogar im Display des neuen Backofens. Das Web soll uns ganz wie von Bill Gates vorhergesehen überall Information übermitteln. Ob das wirklich Sinn macht, ist eine andere Frage.

iPad: Scroll or Card?

– How do you navigate content on the iPad? Scroll or flip? In 1987, the biggest neck beards in tech held a conference on the Future of Hypertext and there were two camps, “Card Sharks” and “Holy Scrollers”. They had an epic battle over this question: Should you scroll or flip pages on the screen? Who won the fight?

Meet C140, Our Next Trend Map

– It’s one year since our last Web Trend Map. A lot has happened, but there are not enough changes in the landscape of domains in the last 12 months to create another domain-based Web Trend Map. The big changes happened one level higher, on the social layer, that is: On Twitter and Facebook.

Der Weg des Projekt-Samurai

– Obwohl ich immer wieder grosse Projekte leite, habe ich nie intensiv über das Handwerk der Projektleitung nachgedacht. Ich sehe aber, dass selbst gestandene Projektleiter immer wieder scheitern.

Die Schnipsel-Kultur

– Diesem Artikel ging eine schockierende Selbstbeobachtung voraus. Lange habe ich mich geweigert, den 140-Zeichen-Dienst Twitter auch nur aufzurufen, geschweige denn zu – das Wort auszusprechen fällt mir heute noch schwer – twittern.

Kill Blog Comments?

– Blog comments have an innate communication problem: You can't discuss and moderate the discussion at the same time.

New and Dirty: Tweet Blogging

– We all waste too much time reading (and writing!) boring text. Here is one solution to the problem.

The Age of Digital Baroque

– After all, blogging is over now, isn't it? Very probably so.

Elvis and the Opposite

– A 14-year old video blogger named Fred somehow managed to get a fan base of almost 45 Million users. Now instead of asking how that's possible, Seth Godin and Robert Scoble trivialize his success. Did they forget what Elvis said?

Data Gourmet

– The IT-Revolution promised to free and enrich us. To free us from propaganda, to free us from mindless TV, to free us from advertisement torture, and to enrich us by letting machines do all the boring work so we'd have more free time. So, how did it go?

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Use Your Real Name When You Comment

– Dear anonymous reader, if you intend to be critical: Be our guest. But if you're our guest, act like a guest.

Understanding New Media

– You often hear people saying that other people understand or don't understand the media. Funny enough that the appreciative "he/she understands the media" is applied to success in old media, while "he/she does not understand the media" is applied to old media people fumbling with the Internet.

Pushers and Spammers Should Pay

– The amount of spam and flooding blogs and mailboxes is getting worse and worse and worse. How should we stop it?

Technorati: Big Business with Bogus Data

– Since the PR giant Edelman and Technorati are working together they are both trying to become an industry reference for statistics on the blogosphere. The question is how reliable is Technorati’s data?

Partner in Astroturfing: Boycott Technorati?

– We all had a bad feeling about this right from the start. Why is the blog watch-and-search engine Technorati bonding with the No.1 PR giant Edelman? Can we trust them?

Good Books Want to be Re-read

– Good books are good people: Books are people speaking with signs. Meeting cool people several times is nice.

Build a Plane and Fly to Sicily

– Since Mondays are typically low energy days, I’d like to share this story with, to reassure you: If you have a strong vision—no one can stop you.

電脳紳士

– ユーザーフレンドリー(user friendly)でないサイトは、オーナーのマナーのなさを暴露するものです。専門家の方々は、このユーザーフレンドリーという単語を乱用しすぎて、元来「フレンドリー」という言葉が道徳用語だということを忘れてしまったのではないでしょうか。

The Electronic Gentleman

– If you have a website that is not user friendly, you have an unfriendly website which basically means that you lack manners. The specialists use that word (“user friendly”) so often that they forget that “friendly” actually is an ethical term.

Read Different: Apple Ads in Japan

– Last Sunday, they started airing the "Hello, I'm a Mac… and I'm a PC" ads here in Japan. And here's a surprise: they're different. The Mac guy isn't particularly cool and the PC guy is a real "salary man" type. The ads aren't as obvious as the Western originals.

New Athens

– When people ask me about my background, they're confused. I studied philosophy. How come I do web design? In short: The old Greeks brought me here. What can Internet workers learn from the old Greeks?

Web Design is 95% Typography

– 95% of the information on the web is written language. It is only logical to say that a web designer should get good training in the main discipline of shaping written information, in other words: Typography.

ウェブデザインの95%はタイポグラフィ

– 95% of the information on the web is written language. It is only logical to say that a web designer should get good training in the main discipline of shaping written information, in other words: Typography.

CI and CSS

– Corporate design manuals, CSS, information architecture and object oriented programming follow the same principle. They are modular.

Internet Consulting?

– The Internet business took a hard hit around 2000 after the tech bubble burst. To call yourself an “Internet agency” or even an “Internet startup” was considered nothing less than masochistic. That is when most Internet companies started to get into “consulting“ and “branding” and “marketing”.

Startup in Japan (2): Find an Accountant

– I needed an accountant for my new company and so I checked out a couple of websites and made a couple of appointments. And if you think accountants are boring, you are so very wrong.

What is an Idea, and How Much is it Worth?

– An idea is not some pink cloud that looks like a bunny. The Greek word "Eidos" originally meant "form, shape", and that is what a real idea is.