Speaking of Rhapsody, my first MP3 player came with Rhapsody integration. I think it was a couple of free song downloads or a free trial of Rhapsody To Go®. That was around 2008. It's incredible how much has changed since then.
(via Daring Fireball)
I just got my wisdom teeth out. I had all four removed which is why my newsletter is late and 4x less wise. Hopefully you enjoy this issue anyway.
I've updated my Partisan Makeup of the Oregon Legislature project with new Squarespace Charts. I'm looking forward to using more of these charts for future projects.
Just when you think Squarespace couldn't get any better, they go and make an incredible way to do charts.
“Margaret Thatcher has won the election and become Britain’s first woman prime minister. To celebrate their victory her party took a half page of advertising space in the London Evening News. This message, referring to the day of victory, was ‘May the Fourth Be With You, Maggie. Congratulations,’ further proof of the extent to which Star Wars has influenced us all.”
I wish the conservative party here in the U.S. was that cool. Oh wait, we are:
Hope for Republicans there still is. #MayTheFourthBeWithYou #StarWarsDay @StarWars -TW pic.twitter.com/DEqTUQE5gA
— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) May 4, 2015This a great review. I've found my own usage to be similar.
I wrote a big blog post. Politics and design are controversial (who knew). I also threw in a link about America's pastime. If you said "Netflix!" then we need to chat.
One of my smart readers wrote me with some excellent comments in response to my piece The Next Big Lobby:
Note: I’ve made small edits to the email (with the sender's consent) for clarity.
Two issues: First is money. Tech or any other group. Money matters. The fact that tech can spend so much is significant no matter what. Other groups spend big, too. It can backfire.
Eminently correct. At a certain point investing additional cash in politics is a series of diminishing returns. A group with $50 billion dollars probably can't outspend a group with $30 billion dollars in any meaningful way. Even though one has closer to twice as much money it offers no no significant advantage because of sheer size of both amounts.
I think it would be more accurate for me to say big tech has become one of the most well funded lobbies out there. They may have more money but at this point it's probably not enough more to matter.
The second issue is the use of technology itself. The techies are good at it right out of the box because it is their tech. But other groups will begin using tech better, too. Soon it will become common place.
Your article was an interesting read because of the confluence of money and tech right now. But I don't think tech will have the corner on the market for either for very long.
This is essentially the crux of my point. Money is an equalizer for paid talent. It's the talent, skill, and dedication of the kind of volunteers big tech will get that I consider to be the game changer. There's a built-in set of technical skills almost every one of their constituents will have. It's something you just don't find with any other group. With political battles increasingly fought online, it's an advantage that is incredibly difficult to duplicate.
One final point worth discussing:
In Oregon, right now, I think Nike has shown more pull than any of the techs. The unions would mop the floor with high tech if they needed to in a floor fight.
Absolutely correct. It's possible I overstated the current influence of big tech. I think they're likely to develop incredibly strong influence but I think I did overemphasize how quickly that will happen. It's possible this is a five to ten year power accumulation.
Note: I've written some addtional thoughts on this topic based on some smart reader feedback.
I believe there is a massive paradigm shift occurring in American politics right now. You might be surprised to learn it's half over. The already completed half is about how technology is being utilized in politics. Donation emails, social media, and online ad networks are now crucial components of campaigns and policy initiatives across the country. These are just a few ways technology is being utilized to make public policy. This aspect of technology is enormously interesting in its own right. However, I am not going to address that today. I want to address the part of this shift that's still in its infancy: When the tech world works to make public policy.
The technology industry is descending upon Capitol Hill and statehouses across the country in force. They pushed the Federal Communications Commission on net neutrality and won big. Last week they defeated big cable companies again. They take no prisoners and don't show signs of stopping. The technology lobby (aka big tech) is one of the most formidable new advocacy groups to form in American politics.
Google ranked fifth in the amount spent on lobbying in the first quarter of 2015 among all organizations that lobbied Congress and federal agencies, according to an analysis by MapLight. The search giant spent $5,470,000; for context, that is more than four times the amount that Apple spent, and nearly $1 million more than Comcast did.
John Gruber puts it in crystal clear terms:
Looking at these numbers, what strikes me is how low these sums are. $5.5 million is almost nothing to Google. Nothing. They reported $14 billion in profit last year. That means they spent 0.04 percent of their profit on lobbying here in the U.S.
Big tech has deeper pockets than big oil and has the potential to organize more quickly and in greater numbers than big labor. They don't just have the Internet on their side. They are the Internet. And they're going to reshape politics as we know it.
The tech lobby has the knowledge and skill set to assemble a large, formidable, citizen-led campaign seemingly out of nowhere. In simple terms, big tech is rapidly learning how to harness the political power of thousands of nerds across the country. These nerds are not well versed in politics but are passionate in their defense of technological freedom. The people who built the Internet want to defend it.
Like technology itself, their issues are diverse and complex. These are few items currently on their agenda:
The tech lobby and their geeky grassroots have no respect for the status quo. They rarely ever begin as the majority but they know how to become the majority. They champion an agenda of technological freedom and know how to make it resonate. The industry deep pockets and powerful voice of their tech savvy citizenry are ready to take on politics. They don't come exclusively from the right, left or center. They borrow aspects of each while staking out a kind of societal moral high ground with innovation and technology at the forefront.
Lawmakers should be aware that the technology industry is going to become a powerful player in politics. One that is prepared to turn the political world upside down and inside out. They could be stronger than any previously significant lobbying force in our nation's history.
Technology in our culture (and by extension our law) is only going to increase over time. So far the tech lobby has pursued a strategy of convincing those in power to see their side of an issue. As their goals come closer to significantly disrupting the status quo they will face greater resistance. Logically they will shift their focus to sending lawmakers who are "uneducated" on their issues into permanent retirement.
In order to better serve their constituents, it in the best interest of legislators to educate themselves on the issues of interest to the tech lobby as soon as possible. You don't want to be on the wrong end of the keyboards of this powerful constituency if you can help it.
I think of blogging as a public conversation. If you have any thoughts send me an email or a tweet.
This is an fantastic website focused exclusively on the Apple Watch. If you want the latest on news, apps, or anything else about Apple's latest device, you should be reading WatchAware.
Watch the new Star Wars trailer and read about Scott Walker "crashing" a wedding. Check out the other stuff too if you want but Star Wars and Scott Walker is where it's at this week.
The MacRumors forums have a screenshot of the "Now Playing" screen.
The Music app has never been super pretty but this looks just awful to my eye.
Disclaimer: I haven't used the new MacBook. I hope to eventually make a trip to the Apple store to see one but for now I will just make some remarks about it as a Mac user.
I love the concept. The new MacBook is meant to be a mid-size computer with a retina screen, great battery life, and an incredibly thin profile. Personally this would be great for me. I would love to be mobile with my 13" retina MacBook Pro. I certianly can be but it's far more cumbersome than I would like it to be.
A good review of the new MacBook comes from Dieter Bohn of The Verge. He had some interesting thoughts about it.
This new MacBook is the future. All laptops are going to be like this someday: with ridiculously good screens, no fans, lasting all day. Just like the original MacBook Air defined a generation of competitors, this new MacBook will do the same. It, or something inspired by it, is what you'll be using in two or three years. It's that good.
My currnet Mac is fairly new, but already I think the new MacBook is likely to be my next computer. Not this year, probably not next year, and (if my Pro holds up) not even the year after that.
I think the new MacBook is the future. Eventually, I will need a new laptop. And it's probably my future computer.
A new name and an old name have officially entered the race for President. Scott Walker got Politifact to go shopping and the Apple Watch is cool.
Being able to quickly try an unhelpful DuckDuckGo search on Google almost always returns equally unhelpful Google results, confirming that the results I got from DuckDuckGo are crappy because web search just sucks these days.
I can't remember when I switched to DuckDuckGo. It might even be more than a couple of years by now, and ever since it became a default option for search in iOS and OS X I haven't looked back. It's great.