newspeak

My colleague, Peter Kelly, pointed us to this article (actually, a reference to this one). It’s rather interesting and, like Peter, I’m interested to see what develops—and see this as, so far, a positive change.

Back at CollabNet, when we had to draft webpages for sites, we’d have to put in the exceptions for Netscape 4 (Sun had standardised on it, as had so many) and IE. Tedium. But also more than that. Recall that South Korea’s ecommerce infrastructure, as well as much of its public government, has standardised on increasingly obsolete—embarrassingly, dangerously obsolete—IE. And by dint of contract and law (and oligarchy, I suppose, as well as momentum: boredom) is stuck with the kind of past only a grave robber would love.

Inside Microsoft’s New Rendering Engine For The “Project Spartan” – Smashing Magazine.

“Okay, 80 pages in and I am officially Giving Up on MS Office 2011 for OSX. Switching to LibreOffice with relief, b/c it works better.

— Charlie Stross (@cstross) February 23, 2015

LibreOffice=OpenOffice plus/minus minor things.

The point: it’s easier to use.

And regarding change tracking: Charlie: contact me. We have some ideas on this score. You’ll like them (especially if you give us suggestions).

‘Utterly unusable’ MS Word dumped by SciFi author Charles Stross • The Register.

Challenging perceptions about public investment in Canada | MARIANA MAZZUCATO.

How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life – NYTimes.com.

The title to this examination of the effects of online pack vengeance is not nearly as good as the article itself, which seeks to present the human toll of online shredding.

Slack uses consumer design to invade the enterprise – Business Insider.

I started using Slack a short while ago, in part because a client was using it. It’s remarkably good at what it does: set up a seemingly intuitive, predictable environment for modern workgroups. I’d previously tried out Asana, for another client, and numerous other systems, open and not. Most have problems. They introduce obstacles, demand fidelity to their system, force loss of something one never thought of as important but suddenly realised was; and take time to get used to. Slack does not do any of that. Nor does it invoke that terrible antipathy that arises after entering yet again the same old data about oneself.

Apple and IBM should both look at what UX Write have done on iOS and what we are doing at the Apache Incubator project Corinthia.

Apple IBM Is Going Well And Will Grow – Business Insider.

“VALS Semester of Code is a program that offers students the chance to write code for open source projects. We have worked with the open source community to identify and fund exciting projects for the upcoming academic year.”

Student applications close 13 March 2015.

Welcome to Semester of Code.

Command-C ‣ Clipboard Sharing Tool for iOS and OS X.

Useful. I find that I spend a lot of time using my iPad mini but by no means have I abandoned by laptop. Passing certain kinds of information from one to the other is relatively easy using Apple’s own tools. But this seems easier and more capable.

iPad Air 2 Review: Why the iPad Became My Main Computer – MacStories.

” Publishers that dominate the lucrative U.S. textbook market, estimated to have $8 billion in annual sales, claim they aren’t threatened by OER, as open educational resources are called.”

….

“Publishers themselves are moving quickly to online content, some of it free. But they’re being challenged on many sides. Earlier this month, Federal Communications Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel described the textbook industry as “unimaginative,” a burden on schools and ripe for change. The FCC funds Internet and broadband services to schools and libraries, recently increasing its spending to $3.9 billion. Rosenworcel is pushing to expand Internet connectivity for students, to eliminate the “homework gap” between rich and poor students, who can’t do work online at home.

“Amid the educational technology boom, plenty of developers have joined the gold rush to cash in by improving the “how” of learning and teaching. Now more are tackling the “what,” seeking to create a vast public library of vetted lessons.”

Goodbye textbooks, hello free online resources – San Jose Mercury News.