The nice people at WordPress prepared this awesome 2011 annual report for me. For some reason, everyone is searching for “You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake“. I just hope that post is not a huge disappointment for everyone, being that it’s a just a Fight Club reference to talk about something that doesn’t have to do anything with Fight Club. Because you really shouldn’t talk about it. (See what I did there?)

You can take a look  at the complete report if your so inclined.

So good.

If you publicly express an opinion that any particular platform is best for a significant portion of buyers, you’re effectively saying that the people who chose differently were wrong. Most people don’t like to be wrong.

Required reading.

“you’re going to get Lossly MPEG”.

Those Swedes are some jackals.

The Missionary Church of Kopimism, or in layman’s terms, the Church of File-Sharing, was founded in 2010 by Isak Gerson, a philosophy student with a love of file-sharing that, well, bordered on religious. Now, after years of petitioning the Swedish government for official status, he finally got it.

Some months ago I wrote why big box retail is always gonna end up sucking at customer service sooner or later. I’m self linking because I think it relates a lot to the click-bate Forbes article by Larry Downes, and because I also think it’s one of my good ones.

To discover the real reasons behind the company’s decline, just take this simple test. Walk into one of the company’s retail locations or shop online. And try, really try, not to lose your temper.

This was painful to read, for reasons that may not be so obvious, but could be figured out. All I’m saying is that their business model is counting on eternal customer ignorance.

(Via Daring Fireball)

The Technium: Beyond the Uncanny Valley

I thought The Uncanny Valley was something that the writers of 30 Rock came up with. But it’s actually a thing. A real thing. In that 30 Rock episode Tracy Jordan is trying to make a pornographic video game, but it’s told by Frank that it can’t be done because of the Uncanny Valley: when fake things look a bit too real and start freaking us out. Tracy manages to get beyond the Uncanny Valley in that episode, but that’s fiction. Kevin Kelly argues in his post that the movie Tin Tin may have just cracked it.

In the first few minutes of the Tin Tin, there is a momentary hesitation when you first see the face of the characters; a feeling they are just a bit shy of something. But that moment passes quickly and thereafter the humans (and animals) seem totally real. Their movements, skin texture, hair, expressions, eyes, everything says they are real — even though they are only simulations. It helps that the environments are also 100% believable, including the elements of water, weather, atmosphere, sand, and city.

I’ve only seen the trailers for Tin Tin and think it still looks a bit too creepy.

Looks promising.

Netflix’s first foray into the realm of original content will kick off this coming February with a new series called Lilyhammer, about a New York gangster trying to make a new start in Lillehammer, Norway. The new show is billed as a fish-out-of-water series, starring former Soprano’s mainstay (and E Street Band guitarist) Steven Van Zandt.

Be sure to check out the trailer.

Shawn Blanc makes some interesting predictions about what Apple may have lined up this year. Everything from a third iPad, to iOS 6, to a 15 inch MacBook Air.

Christopher “moot” Poole, creator of the controversial bulletin board 4chan, gives one of the most insightful talks about identity on the web I’ve ever heard. He argues, and warns about the problem of only having the option of only one fixed identity. Social networks like Facebook, he explains, are convinced on the idea that you are only one person. I remember reading Mark Zuckerberg saying that presenting different identities to different people is unethical and dishonest. Poole argues, which any human being would agree, that we are more multifaceted than what Facebook and other social networks think we are, or like us to be. It’s not a question of anonymity vs real profiles. The problem is not having a choice to be who we want to be or to present ourselves the way we want to be seen.

This year, don’t make a resolution. Instead have a fresh start and a modest change. Hope everyone has a good one.

Ever wonder who was the first author to use a word processor to write a novel? If that question sounds weird well, kids, let me explain. Back in the olden days there were these things called typewriters and many authors used those to write their long form stuff. That was the tool of the trade. But at some point there were brave early adopters. The problem is that to pinpoint with historical accuracy who was the first to save that .doc file on a floppy is not as easy. So far it looks like Stephen King was one of the first to jump in.

Given the spottiness of the record Mr. Kirschenbaum is hesitant to proclaim Mr. King the computer-age equivalent of Mark Twain, the first major American writer to complete a work using the new technology. But Mr. King’s 1983 short story “The Word Processor,” Mr. Kirschenbaum ventured, is “likely the earliest fictional treatment of word processing by a prominent English-language author.”