Pandora Re-Introduces 40-Hour Listening Cap for Free Mobile Users

Title is self-explanatory, but Jared Newman for Time Tech had this to add:

"It’s worth noting that Pandora did turn a small profit last quarter, according to TechCrunch, but the company expects heavy losses ahead, possibly as high as $20 million in the first quarter of 2013."

Pandora is one of those services I don't use much anymore now that I've got Spotify, but if I did use it more than a couple times a month, I would definitely become a paying subscriber. Hell, I might just sign up anyway. These guys provide an excellent service and have done so for years.

This is just another example of the recording industry's greediness forcing good services to employ these kinds of tactics in order to survive. Ugh.

'Herald Tribune' to be renamed 'The International New York Times'

New York Times president Mark Thompson:

"The digital revolution has turned The New York Times from being a great American newspaper to becoming one of the world’s best-known news providers. We want to exploit that opportunity."

Great move, in my opinion.

My Minimal Wallet

The guys over at My Minimal Wallet have been kind enough to let me blather a little about my Supr Slim wallet. If you're interested in that sort of thing, go check it out and then browse through their archives because they've posted some very nice wallets in the past.

Giles Turnbull Answers the Oddest Job Interview Questions in the World

These are awesome.

"Towers Watson: Estimate how many planes there are in the sky.

What, the sky just here? Or the whole sky, everywhere? And do you just mean big planes like 747s, or are you including itty-bitty one-seaters, and training flights for learner pilots? What about remote-control planes? Those drones the Army uses to spy on people? They could have thousands of those and none of us would know. That’s a very wide question. I’m going to say six. No, 14."

via NextDraft

Ben Brooks Talks Publishing With Marco Arment

Marco on consumer mindsets:

"Anyone who tries a paywall on a website (at any price), or tries to charge $30 for a mobile app, is going to lose most potential readers or customers. (This might not correspond to lower profits.) They’re breaking the market’s price expectations by pricing above the boundary for what’s usually acceptable. Today, that boundary for apps is about $5, but that boundary for most websites is $0. Once you’re above that boundary, it doesn’t matter as much whether you charge a few dollars more or less — you’re losing sales because it’s over the line, and it’s almost irrelevant how far over the line you are (within reason)."

Great interview, go check it out.

Google and Experimentation

Matthew Alexander:

"Rather than spending time in vacuum-sealed rooms and spending countless hours pondering the curvature of a piece of plastic, Google acts. The result is frequently imperfect — awful, even — but the sentiment of action and active experimentation is one of the most compelling notions in the world today."

'Why I Retired from Apple'

Don Melton:

"What surprised me after I retired was not missing the control and authority I had, such as it was. My ego remained intact. And I didn’t feel diminished. I woke up February 18 without any minions. Of course, I woke up that morning without any obligations either."

CriticMarkup

Gabe Weatherhead of Macdrifter and Eric Hess of The Mindful Bit have teamed up to develop a new syntax called CriticMarkup, which is useful for denoting editorial changes in a document and is fully compatible with Markdown, LaTeX, and HTML.

As someone who doesn't do a whole lot of collaborative writing, I honestly don't have much use for this currently, but I think it's a fantastic idea and something I'll be keeping on my radar.

They've come up with lots of other goodies to go along with the syntax, so head over to Gabe's site to read more about the project or visit the CriticMarkup site itself.

'The Man Who Killed Osama Bin Laden...Is Screwed'

Interesting and sad profile of "The Shooter" over at Esquire:

"No one who fights for this country overseas should ever have to fight for a job," Barack Obama said last Veterans' Day, "or a roof over their head, or the care that they have earned when they come home."

But the Shooter will discover soon enough that when he leaves after sixteen years in the Navy, his body filled with scar tissue, arthritis, tendonitis, eye damage, and blown disks, here is what he gets from his employer and a grateful nation:

Nothing. No pension, no health care, and no protection for himself or his family.

via NextDraft

Psychedelic River

Yesterday I came across these psychedelic images of the Mississippi River, as traced by Harold Fisk back in 1944. These things are incredible, and Fisk traced quite a large span of the river this way, stretching from southern Illinois to southern Lousiana. You can see them all stitched together here but be sure to look at each one individually to really get a good look at the all the little details.

'Handmade Portraits: The Swordmaker'

In the same vein as the video I linked to last Friday, this video features one of the last remaining Japanese swordsmiths, Korehira Watanabe.

He tells the story of how the last 40 years of his life have been spent honing his craft as he attempts to recreate a legendary type of sword known as Koto, of which the manufacturing secrets have been lost for several hundred years.

Not only is this another example of a master craftsman doing what he does best, but an inspiring story of someone so dedicated to their craft that they are willing to spend their entire lives trying to get it right, even at the expense of being disowned by their family.

That kind of passion seems all too rare these days.

Khoi Vinh on Blackberry 10

"None of what is on display here — the clean yet unremarkable typography, the tasteful but de rigeur color gradients, the straightforward but rudimentary iconography, the communicative but nearly featureless spinners, arrows and other visual cues — is particularly distinctive or unique to Blackberry. In fact, they demonstrate a startling lack of character, almost a willful desire to be mistaken for any other random operating system."

I totally agree. My very first impression of the new Blackberry homescreen was that it looked like a cheap imitation of Android 2.2 (Froyo) from a few years ago. I think "missed opportunity" is a bit of an understatement here.

'The Best Waffle in America'

I really enjoyed this piece, but the following quote stuck out in particular:

"The majority of things in the world float in a sea of mediocrity. But when you find the products that are truly wonderful, they easily rise above."

So true. Now if you need me, I'll be the guy boarding a plane and flying to Vermont to visit this waffle joint.

'The Birth of a Tool, Part 1 - Axe Making'

I love videos like this where you get to watch a master of their craft in action. If you like the first video, be sure to check out the rest.

'About App Icons'

Louie Mantia:

"Consider walking down a candy aisle at a drugstore. If you have a craving for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, you know how to find it. Of course, it’s the bright orange wrapper with a bubbly yellow word on it. Instant. Most candy bars have very distinct brands which can be instantly recognizable at a glance of the entire aisle. This should be precisely how you approach your app icon design."

He goes on to point out some fantastic examples of app icon design, including some groups of apps that fit under a single brand and have been designed to make this fact prominent, such as Nike.

When I got to this part...

"If you take that same logic to app icons, any style you have in your app should be applied to your icon."

...I immediately thought of Check the Weather, whose icon does not match a single part about the app's interface at all. It's one of my favorite apps, but that icon is about as generic-looking as you can get. Which is a shame, since the app itself has a very unique design aesthetic.

Go read the rest of Louie's post, it's pretty fascinating.

'My Father's Eviscerated Work'

Christopher Tolkien, in his first-ever press interview, on the juxtaposition between his father's work and the Lord of the Rings films:

"Invited to meet Peter Jackson, the Tolkien family preferred not to. Why? "They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25," Christopher says regretfully. "And it seems that The Hobbit will be the same kind of film."

I personally loved the films, but damn.

'Designing a Responsive, Retina-Friendly Site'

"If you need to use something like Readability or Safari Reader to read my articles, I've failed as a designer."

Paul Stamatiou details the process that led to his current blog design, explaining the reasons behind every decision and iteration. I love these kinds of behind-the-scenes looks at how a great product comes together.

I'm particularly fond of the post archive page Paul has put together, it's very reminiscent of Facebook's timeline feature.

Netflix Super HD

Netflix's new HD video delivery service, included for free with any Netflix membership.

It's only available for certain ISPs (not mine, currently) and devices (PS3, yes!), but it sounds very interesting nonetheless.

'Becoming Batman'

Sergio DeLaGuera on dressing the part:

"When we put on that suit-and-tie for our day job, our brain kicks into work mode. We start thinking about how to do our job because our brain expects us to start doing it. Work-at-home professions can lose that separation of selves by being dressed in the same outfit for both work and leisure."

'Sober Reminder'

Marco Arment:

"Tucked away under the pile of everything else in life, I always planned to visit Allegheny, stop into Cup’s office, and say hello. Tell him how much I appreciated what he taught me. Show him what I’ve done since then. But it never happened, because I never got around to making that trip. It’s a sobering reminder that it’s never too early to show your appreciation for what someone has taught you."