Matt Buchanan
How Digital Cinema Might Crush Art House Theaters
As if you needed another reason to dislike James Camerson after Avatar, the death of 35mm film engendered by digital's cheerleaders has a lot of unanticipated consequences, like potentially squeezing independent art house theaters to death.
Matt Buchanan
This Is How Your iPad Was Made
Wondering how your iPad came to be? This video from the second reporter ever allowed onto Foxconn's factory floor shows how an iPad is born.
Matt Buchanan
Some Questions Asked By An Article Asking "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?"
Is Facebook making us lonely? Is Facebook part of the separating or part of the congregating; is it a huddling-together for warmth or a shuffling-away in pain? Does the Internet make people lonely, or are lonely people more attracted to the Internet? What does Facebook communicate, if not the impression of social bounty? Doesn’t that make people feel lonely? But hasn’t the car increased loneliness?
Matt Buchanan
Why The Justice Department Might Lose The Ebook Conspiracy Lawsuit
Some experts tell Cnet why the DoJ is likely to lose its lawsuit against Apple and the major publishers over ebook price fixing. Its case against Apple is weak, and one lawyer says, "Strengthening a new competitor against an incumbent hardly sounds like a terrible outcome for consumers."
Matt Buchanan
The Origin Of #Long Things
We're probably in a bubble in terms of the way we talk about reading longer pieces of writing. But where did #longreads and longform come from?
Matt Buchanan
How The $9.99 Ebook Died
Thanks to Amazon, the price of a hit ebook was $9.99, the same way hit songs cost 99 cents. But then Apple and the publishers changed all that, alleges a lawsuit brought by Justice Department.
Matt Buchanan
The List Serve, A Newsletter Lottery
From a friend of mine, Alvin Chang, the List Serve is a newsletter lottery that allows one person each day to email everybody else that signs up for the List Serve (kind of like Fame, but it's more about "people who want to see what people write" than simply snatching the mic). If email is broken, why are newsletters a thing again?
Matt Buchanan
Spotify's Play Button Is A Play For The Whole Web
Spotify piled on users by getting all integrated with Facebook. The next step: integrating with the entire web. That's the point of its embeddable Play button that'll work on basically any website. The user-ensnaring trick is that if you want to play music from it, you've gotta sign up. (Also, check out the Terms of Use.)
Matt Buchanan
The Big Box Stores' Last Stand
Best Buy has never really understood the internet. And now it's sort of dying.
Matt Buchanan
This Plan To Create A Centralized Database Of Cellphones Can't Possibly Go Wrong
A lot of smartphones means a lot of smartphone thefts! The plan to fight this, devised by police departments, the FCC and the wireless industry: "the creation of a central database to track stolen phones and prevent them from being used again." I can only think of 7,000 reasons this could be a terrible idea, and the ineptitude of the federal government on things like this is only one of them.
Matt Buchanan
Things Other Than Instagram Worth A Billion Dollars Today
Instagram was not the only technology thing bought for a beelleeon or so dollars today!
Matt Buchanan
The Gross Searches Leading People To Our Wiki Child Porn Piece
We published a mini-expose of Wikipedia's child porn problem. What kind of search terms brought people to that piece?
Matt Buchanan
An Instagram Escape Plan
"I'm deleting this app!" is the nerd equivalent of "I'm moving to Canada!" If you're upset about Facebook buying Instagram and are one of those people, Instaport will painlessly move all your photos, wherever you want. (via)
Matt Buchanan
Facebook Just Bought Instagram, So Clearly Everything Is Ruined
And iPhone users were worried about the Android hordes invading Instagram's semi-gated community. Now Facebook just bought Instagram for $1 billion.
Matt Buchanan
How The Netflix Recommendation Engine Works
"I can't believe Netflix said that was a four-star movie, it was totally only two-and-a-half stars, and oh GOD I don't want to watch that, why does it think I'd be interested in that crap? UGH." This is how Netflix got there.
Matt Buchanan
People Have No Idea What A Megabyte Is
Which is totally fine, really! Except that now you need to know how to measure in megabytes if you don't want to get crushed by your carrier's new data plans for smartphones.
Matt Buchanan
"The Cloud" Is A Real Big Box
You probably have some data stored in "the cloud." Well, facilities like this are where "the cloud" lives. Wired flew over Apple's 500,000-square-foot data center in Maiden, North Carolina, to see what else it was building: a bio-gas power generator and 100-acre solar farm.
Matt Buchanan
Why You Should Never Play Videogames With Someone You Make Out With
I've neeeever had an experience to the contrary. Destroying someone in Smash Bros. inevitably leads to destroying their heart.
Matt Buchanan
The Workers Hidden Inside Our iPhones
The people we don't think about when we play Angry Birds or post pictures of our brunch with Instagram.
Matt Buchanan
An Essay On The Shape Of Cameras
From Zach Zamboni, lead photographer of No Reservartions, a three-part essay on the form of cameras: "Though Moore’s law gives us more processing power in a smaller space it isn’t rapidly reducing the footprint of all camera bodies." (via)
Matt Buchanan
