Author: Tim's Bookmarks

Saeed at On Product Management is asking for feedback about the problems that need to be addressed in technology product management. Go comment!

“We may be lining up to eat at soup kitchens in 2009, but we’ll have the fastest news cycle ever to keep us informed.”

Good snow day food.

That didn’t take long (https://www.jarretthousenorth.com/2008/11/04/links-for-2008-11-04/) Unfortunately it leaves Best Buy as a monopoly bricks & mortar electronics retailer. Is that like being the most successful buggy whip salesman?

Details from a London Times editor about the technical process of landing a large passenger jet on water.

Federated Search today = Sherlock in Mac OS 8.5. As I comment on the article, Microsoft is pulling out all the stops to keep the user in the Windows shell rather than the browser.

A roundup of interesting links following the event that has made me swear off pointing to aviation safety links ever again.

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! Oh and RIP Ricardo Montalban.

The initial obituary for a luminous artist; a fuller version followed afterward. I remember being stunned when I toured the Brandywine Valley museum in high school.

Good news: the rule of law stands. Bad news: what was Holder doing during the Clinton administration?

That’s a scary shoe to drop.

The accountability moment for torture. If senior outgoing Bush administration officials embrace a coherent definition of torture, accept that it offers no useful intelligence and makes it more difficult to prosecute, and that it lowers American moral standing, then how can we help but pursue justice on those responsible?

Or, how to be right and not get drowned at sea by Pythagorus.

I’ll give this to Cheney and Bush: their determination to remain committed to demonstrably false information in the face of so much contrary evidence is impressive.

Interesting tip on “removing” corking taint from wine. Works? Who knows?

I actually have hope, after this goofup, that Geithner will use his experience to chase after tax code reform with a new level of motivation.

“[MIT Professor Arnold] Barnett calculates that it’s more likely for a young child to be elected president in his or her lifetime than to die on a single jet flight in the USA or in similar industrial nations in Europe, Canada or Japan.” Nice to get some good news about airline safety for once.

Where’s the creation in the “creative destruction” that venture companies are supposed to be funding?

Really valuable insight into the necessary nightmares of the valuation of startup companies.

This doesn’t sound good.

It’s always depressing to see that an evil like adware is generally the product of good intentions and a series of insufficiently considered decisions. That said, there’s some interesting insight into the security model of Windows here.

The last remnants of the old Republic have been swept away: Pragmatic Marketer goes electronic-only. Specialized trade mags like these are a canary in the coalmine for general publishing. How long before the print magazine is extinct?

This sounds really promising amid acres of bleaker notes about the economy.

Need to add this to my blog at some point. If you want people to point to your stuff, it’s always a good idea to make it as easy as possible to do so.

Need to add this to my blog at some point. If you want people to point to your stuff, it’s always a good idea to make it as easy as possible to do so.

Bradley Scholozman is fingered as having responsibility for the politicization of the Justice Department.

Bono’s first NYT column. Voice of defiance, passionate and heartfelt, and an editor’s correction on a factual point.

Interesting peek into what the next four years at State will hold.

“10. Maintaining the frakin’ Supported Platforms List. ARGH. Is anything more thankless or tedious?” No, Cranky, there is nothing more thankless or tedious.

Inspirational words for all those who despair about one more supported platforms document revision.

I’m surprised that it’s taken this long for an open source blog conversion project to become available.

Really interesting if slightly disappointing result for Honda.

Interesting product changes. The 50MPG is definitely appealing.

Or, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Tyler Magill on Sacred Harp singing.

The headline is an example of focusing on a point in time but ignoring the trend.

Tilt shift on demand! TSAAS!

Without Gilly Sullivan the Virginia Glee Club would not exist today. Moment of silence…

You can assail Obama for some other appointments, but the appointment of strong anti-torture folks to the CIA and Office of Legal Counsel is an important signal to me that we’re getting our country back.

Settling the question of whether some bloggers practice journalism, in the affirmative, with a good long case history.

Maybe the biggest news from the Phil-note–the whole store is going to iTunes Plus with variable pricing.

Stupid DNS tricks! I like the concept of using the DNS infrastructure to distribute information this way. It makes me wonder who thought of it first and who else is using it… (ominous thought, that).

How to target different mobile browsers with specific stylesheets.

And the sideshow continues.

What we have to answer for.

Interesting reflections on the new congress.

Interesting hack to save a radio stream to your iPhone or iPod.

My college friend Paul Bibeau continues to plumb the netherworld of horror. Goblinbooks features his research along with short fiction like “Three Dozen,” a retelling of Poe’s “Berenice.”

More speculation. I for one welcome our copy-protection-free, variably priced overlords.

The classic Blue Screen of Death screen saver, written by Mark Russinovich of Sysinternals and now available from Microsoft. Fool your enemies! Amuse your friends!

Best part: Summer Glau appears twice.

Nice song-by-song summary of 2008 musical discoveries. I like Isis’s format because it’s not just 2008 releases but stuff she discovered in 2008.

Sasha Frere-Jones discusses Bon Iver on record and live and covers some of what’s so unsettling about that record for me.

Dave Winer cuts through the common engineering complaint that “the customer is stupid” and points it out for the self-defeating mantra that it really is.

Steve publicly discusses his health.

Aaaand let the speculation start.

Community site for reminiscences of the Mac launch.

Virginia boy makes good. Raises the question, though, of whither Dean?

Alex Ross writes about recent performances of the music of Carter and Messiaen in NYC.

“Delicious Monster is also exhibiting at next week’s Macworld Expo in booth 2602, where, supposedly, they’re going to have something new to show.” Um, judging from the artwork on their site and the occupation listed on Twitter of one of the “delicious librarians,” I’d guess that would be an iPhone app for Delicious Library. What do I win for guessing correctly?

Chuq von Rospach on the balance between transparency and control at Apple.

NOOOOO! Make.tv isn’t going to be shown in Massachusetts until later in 2009! Where oh where will I get my John Park fix??

This one’s pretty straightforward and it’s one that every product manager learns quickly, but it’s worth repeating nonetheless: assure the customer that yes, you heard and understood their feature request, explain that there are prioritization challenges, and Never Commit.

Does anyone do anything against the MediaWiki API? Good question. I’d bet there are a lot of Wikipedia add-ons that leverage it behind the scenes.

More of these “Wall Street shrugs off bad news” stories make me think that the market might be close to the bottom. Did all the bad news get priced in in advance?

One of the options, to open search results links in an embedded browser rather than closing the Google iApp and opening Mobile Safari, should be the default behavior. You can skip the rest of the settings unless you like animated voice waveforms.

Chris Eng’s take on the failure of certificate authorities to move away from MD5 sooner: it’s a travesty.

Interesting post from Cranky regarding managing influence with engineering teams. The insight is that each engineering needs to be managed as an individual stakeholder for any productive teamwide discussion to take place. This is, I think, because engineering is a flatly organized discipline where any individual can derail consensus at a moment's notice. Much better to do your convincing one on one.

This is seriously scary. Any one who thinks that industry will always do the right thing need only look to Appalachia for counter examples, time after time after time.

Byrne compares the travails of the newspaper industry to the music industry, and is concerned.

A list of links to White House photos, documentation, and models. Agreed, Tin Man: you might be the tiniest bit obsessed (though at least you're not the one making the Sketchup models).