The story of my life in China is here.
Jenni Avins:
McGee writes that tomatoes originally came from a warm place—the deserts of South America’s west coast—and therefore shouldn’t be stored at arctic temperatures. A tomato subjected to a refrigerator’s cold climate stops producing its aroma-making enzymes and starts to lose its flavor.
Interesting.
Storehouse co-founder and ex-Apple designer Mark Kawano:
I think the biggest misconception is this belief that the reason Apple products turn out to be designed better, and have a better user experience, or are sexier, or whatever . . . is that they have the best design team in the world, or the best process in the world […]
It’s actually the engineering culture, and the way the organization is structured to appreciate and support design. Everybody there is thinking about UX and design, not just the designers. And that’s what makes everything about the product so much better . . . much more than any individual designer or design team.
He shares some more insight into the design process at Apple.
You’re given an impossible task. No one understands. Because you’re the expert.
Suzanne LaBarre:
In Wuhan, the largest city in central China, developers are planning not one but two skyscrapers, both of which will edge out their Middle Eastern rival. Plus they’re on an island. And powered by renewable energy. And pink.
Mark Gurman:
Apple’s approach to developing hardware from the home is yet another indicator of the company’s integrated hardware and software philosophy. Like with iTunes arriving before the iPod and the Health app arriving on iOS before the iWatch, Apple is creating a Smart Home ecosystem via its software and planting its feet in the category before introducing actual hardware.
It’s similar to the way they launched iBeacon. At first they made sure that every device is equiped with Bluetooth Low Energy. When they released iOS 7 there were already hundreds of millions of capable devices out in the wild.
Patrick Witty:
There was not just one “tank man” photo. Four photographers captured the encounter that day from the Beijing Hotel, overlooking Changan Avenue (the Avenue of Eternal Peace), their lives forever linked by a single moment in time. They shared their recollections with The Times through e-mail.
New ad from period care package provider HelloFlo:
My favorite is still this Bodyfrom ad:
Esther Honig sent her picture to artists from more than 25 countries, asking them to “make me beautiful”:
Below is a selection from the resulting images thus far. They are intriguing and insightful in their own right; each one is a reflection of both the personal and cultural concepts of beauty that pertain to their creator.
Unlimited storage for $10/month. I’ve heard this before…
Major disappointment Bitcasa used to promise the same.
I hope Google is more reliable.
Ridiculous.
Vivian Maier (February 1, 1926 – April 21, 2009) was an American street photographer born in New York City. Although born in the U.S., it was in France that Maier spent most of her youth. Maier returned to the U.S. in 1951 where she took up work as a nanny and care-giver for the rest of her life. In her leisure however, Maier had begun to venture into the art of photography. Consistently taking photos over the course of five decades, she would ultimately leave over 100,000 negatives, most of them shot in Chicago and New York City.
So many amazing images.
Carsie Blanton:
It’s my observation that as casual sex becomes more acceptable behavior (for men and women), it lessens the shame and anxiety associated with the sex that people are having anyway (and have been having since the dawn of time, and are going to keep having). […]
But why not have the option of exploring love, too, with or without a side of commitment? If we can agree that our bodies are not inherently dangerous, can’t we do the same for our hearts? […]
Imagine if you could say to a casual partner, “I love you. It’s no big deal. It doesn’t mean you’re The One, or even one of the ones. It doesn’t mean you have to love me back. It doesn’t mean we have to date, or marry, or even cuddle. It doesn’t mean we have to part ways dramatically in a flurry of tears and broken dishes. It doesn’t mean I’ll love you until I die, or that I’ll still love you next year, or tomorrow.”
Great read.
Kyle Vanhemert:
At a point when humans need to take a sober look at our energy use, we’re poised to use a devastating amount of it keeping our homes and offices at the right temperatures in years to come. A team of students at MIT, however, is busy working on a prototype device that could eliminate much of that demand, and they’re doing it by asking one compelling question: Why not just heat and cool our bodies instead?
Interesting concept. I was thinking about a cooling suit when I was walking through the extremely hot and humid climate of Southeast Asia.
For inside use it’s probably more sustainable to retrofit buildings with better insulation.
Greg Kumparak:
Google is promising full phone support for Google Domain customers, making it one of very, very few Google products with a support number tied to it.
And that’s the problem with Google.
Years ago I bought domains via the free version of Google Apps for your Domain. I wanted to cancel one of them but the “renew subscription” checkbox would always changed its state back to checked. There was no way to contact Google. I posted on Google+, wrote people working at Google, called the Google office in Munich. No way.
I had to use the free trial and upgrade my account to the paid version in order to get a human to talk to me.
I hated that experience and moved all my domains to GoDaddy. Only then, Google would send an E-Mail with a telephone number. And up to now I get E-Mails like this one:
Our records indicate that the payment for registering your domain [DOMAIN] was unsuccessful.
Payment failures happen for a variety of reasons (such as insufficient funds or an expired card). You can update your payment information to resolve the issue.
Please log in to your account and update your payment information. If you take no action, your domain will not be renewed on [DATE].
There is no domain…
So for me, Google and domains has been a very, very unpleasant experience. Not sure I want to trust them with a new one.