A few things that could be poetry An Article by Wesley Aptekar-Cassels notebook.wesleyac.com The right combination of street signs, viewed from a artful vantage point Words on bit of packaging, torn to reveal and conceal as needed The output of a command line tool, perhaps unexpectedly Overheard words, drifting along, liberated from their initial context A form, at first appearing bureaucratic, revealing humanity on deeper reflection An idea, if you consider it divine enough poetrychancewordseuphony
Rewarding Curation An Article by Wesley Aptekar-Cassels notebook.wesleyac.com Something interesting about the design of Twitter is that it doesn’t have much of a way of rewarding curation, only authorship. ...I’m inclined to think that the mechanisms of distribution of information are very important, and I think figuring out ways to reward good curation is probably an important thing. ...I don’t really know what the solution is here, but I do think that finding and curating good links and bits of information is useful, and something that should be rewarded more than it currently is. organizationcollectionscontent
How Websites Die An Article by Wesley Aptekar-Cassels notebook.wesleyac.com I recently started compiling a list of defunct blogging platforms. It’s been interesting to see how websites die — from domain parking pages to timeouts to blank pages to outdated TLS cipher errors, there are a multitude of different ways. It leaves no sign of its past self behindThis obsession with permanence
On Taste The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste, and what that means is — and I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way — in the sense that they don’t think of original ideas, and they don’t bring much culture into their product. And you say “well why is that important?” Well, you know, proportionally spaced fonts come from typesetting and beautiful books, so that’s where one gets the idea. And if it weren’t for the Mac they would never have that in their products. And so I guess I am saddened, not by Microsoft's success — I have no problem with their success. They have earned their success — I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third-rate products. Their products have no spirit to them, no spirit of enlightenment about them. They are very pedestrian. And the sad part is that most customers don’t have that spirit either. But the way that we’re going to ratchet up our species is to take the best and to spread it around to everybody so that everybody grows up with better things, and starts to understand the subtlety of these better things. And Microsoft is McDonald’s. So that’s what saddens me — not that Microsoft has won, but that Microsoft’s products don’t display more insight and more creativity. Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview The aspiration for qualityWe'll slap a little color on this piece of junkSuch an unholy allianceDo they really need it? tastequality