37 Signals is hiring an iOS developer.

Hell of an opportunity.

Tim Bray wonders how app stores can be better organized:

Even though Amazon is selling way more titles than any app retailer, the problem they’re solving is more tractable because there’s a whole ecosystem, which includes a big chunk of the world’s academic community, devoted to discovery and criticism of books and music and movies. It operates against a fixed background context, rich with powerful brands; examples include J.K. Rowling and Madonna and Johnny Depp. As we gaze across Amazon’s nearly-infinite virtual retail space, we’re all standing on a platform of largely-shared perceptions of what it is we’re looking at, and for. 

The app ecosystem just doesn’t have that. It’s being made up as we go along.

True, but don’t we have something similar with, for example, reviews provided by Macworld writers and users? iTunes reviews tend to be basically useless, but Macworld provides excellent reviews and their readers are likely much more informed than a typical iTunes reviewer. Why not factor Macworld’s ratings in, or at least display them, just like Rotten Tomatoes is shown for movies?

Jorge is running a great little contest to win a printed copy of one of his photos.

What a fantastic idea.

Wired has an excellent article on Sergey Brin’s use of large datasets to try to find a cure for Parkinson’s disease:

Most Parkinson’s research, like much of medical research, relies on the classic scientific method: hypothesis, analysis, peer review, publication. Brin proposes a different approach, one driven by computational muscle and staggeringly large data sets. It’s a method that draws on his algorithmic sensibility—and Google’s storied faith in computing power—with the aim of accelerating the pace and increasing the potential of scientific research. “Generally the pace of medical research is glacial compared to what I’m used to in the Internet,” Brin says. “We could be looking lots of places and collecting lots of information. And if we see a pattern, that could lead somewhere.”

Brahma Chellaney describes China’s world position:

That approach became more marked with the global financial crisis that began in the fall of 2008. China interpreted that crisis as symbolizing both the decline of the Anglo-American brand of capitalism and the weakening of American economic power. That, in turn, strengthened its two-fold belief – that its brand of state-steered capitalism offers a credible alternative, and that its global ascendance is inevitable.
…
The biggest loser from the global financial crisis, in China’s view, is Uncle Sam. That the US remains dependent on China to buy billions of dollars worth of Treasury bonds every week to finance its yawning budget deficit is a sign of shifting global financial power – which China is sure to use for political gain in the years ahead.

The amusing thing about the U.S.’s complaints about China’s currency policy is the vast sums of dollars it results in for China are used to fund our drunken borrowing. Biting the hand and all that.

Chellaney is correct—China views this as the moment where they begin to pull ahead of the west in global power.

Our refusal to recognize the role government power played in the 2008-09 financial crisis only strengthens their position. We continue to try to fix our economy through government control (government spending as stimulus, home buyer tax credit which only delays the inevitable home sales contraction, prolonged low interest rates, and ridiculous amounts of borrowing to support it) under the illusion that the financial crisis was merely a resort of free markets, and thus can be controlled. All the while we are granting the Chinese Communist Party’s basic premise that capitalism must be directed by an authoritarian government hand for the benefit of society, and borrowing our way toward future disaster. We are losing our philosophical and financial edge.

Om Malik thinks Amazon will win the “ebook wars”:

This is a big advantage for Amazon, for as more people start living multidevice lifestyles, such cross-platform availability of content will increasingly become a big deal. Unlike Amazon’s Kindle store, iBooks is going to be limited to the iPad/iPhone platform — which is not good enough for me. I like the flexibility of the Kindle app, even if it offers books to me in somewhat of a less attractive format. In other words, Amazon should be thinking about Kindle as a platform that leverages other people’s hardware.

I am using the Kindle application much more than Apple’s iBook application mainly because Amazon’s selection is much better. After a few days of use, too, I found iBooks’s paper ornaments distracting.

These are things, of course, Apple could fix. Malik’s argument is much more interesting—that Amazon will succeed because they are cross-platform, while Apple is not.

Matt Ridley on why invention and innovation seem to be inexhaustable:

Technologies emerge from the coming together of existing technologies into wholes that are greater than the sum of their parts. Henry Ford once candidly admitted that he had invented nothing new: He had “simply assembled into a car the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work.”

Since innovation is the application of an existing technology or the pairing of existing technologies together toward a new use, innovation requires broad interests and understanding of the world. Putting your head down and diving into one specific field is important, but pursuing seemingly disparate interests is just as important.

Tony Hsieh didn’t want to sell Zappos to Amazon, but had little choice because of Sequoia Capital’s investment:

By early 2009, we were at a stalemate. Because of a complicated legal structure, I effectively controlled the majority of the common shares, so that the board couldn’t force a sale of the company. But on the five-person board, only two of us — Alfred Lin, our CFO and COO, and myself — were completely committed to Zappos’s culture. This made it likely that if the economy didn’t improve, the board would fire me and hire a new CEO who was concerned only with maximizing profits.

That is Sequoia’s choice of course (it is their investment), but it does not mean trying to squeeze every last dollar out of one of the best companies in the last decade is the right thing to do.

Netflix released a slideshow on their business strategy.

It’s a fascinating look at what they’re thinking. Not surprisingly, of course, they are shifting to online video streaming, but their strategy for what to focus on is much more interesting. They will focus on movie and TV show streaming, but not new releases. They are giving up new releases to their competitors. This means Netflix must be an additional service for their customers if they want access to new tv show episodes, news, sports and new release movies.

Twitter is blocking all third=party ads:

For this reason, aside from Promoted Tweets, we will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API.

This would seem to include applications like Tweetie for Mac and Twitterrific which place Fusion or Deck ads in the timeline, but Chris Bowler said on Twitter this morning this rule change doesn’t preclude them from showing ads.

Twitter’s API terms clarify this a bit. They say:

(a) We encourage you to create advertising opportunities around Twitter content that are compliant with these Rules. In cases where Twitter content is the basis (in whole or in part) of the advertising sale, we require you to compensate us (recoupable against any fees payable to Twitter for data licensing).
…
(b) You may generally advertise around and on applications or sites that display Tweets, but you may not place any advertisements within the Twitter timeline on your Service other than Twitter Ads.
…
(d) You may advertise in close proximity to the Twitter timeline (e.g., banner ads above or below timeline), but there must be a clear separation between Twitter content and your advertisements.

The last term is ambiguous. It says adverts can be close to the timeline (they use the top and bottom of the timeline as an example), and then say there must be a “clear separation” between tweets and adverts. Tweetie’s Fusion Ads could fall within this; while they are technically within the timeline, they are clearly distinguished from tweets. So while (a) seems to clearly ban placing ads within the timeline, (d) might also provide a condition to that. This isn’t at all clear and Twitter needs to clarify it.

I have a feeling ad services like Fusion Ads and the Deck will be allowed to continue placing adverts within the timeline, because they aren’t trying to deceive users into thinking their ads are Twitter content. Twitter’s real target, it looks like, are services trying to blend ads in to look like tweets or content from Twitter, and that is something they should absolutely try to stop.

A Better Freelancer is giving away a copy of Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson’s Rework on Monday. You just need to follow them on Twitter (https://twitter.com/freelancebetter) or Tumblr to enter.

It’s a great book and Aaron and Pat are great guys. Good idea.

Seth Godin:

Let’s say a marketer has $10,000 to spend. Is it better to acquire new customers at $2,000 each (advertising is expensive) or spend $10 a customer to absolutely delight and overwhelm 1,000 true fans?

Not only is that easier to do, but probably more effective, too. The best promotion you can get is people who really believe in what you’re doing telling friends about it that would be interested. By building on your supporters, rather than casting a huge (and expensive) net through advertising, you can create a much more dedicated and powerful following.

37 Signals is building a new office.

How they’re doing it sounds great. Rather than individual offices, where people work privately all day, they are building communal work areas along with team rooms and private rooms. Designing a building so people work better is a fascinating subject, and I think that’s the right approach. It forces people to mix and talk, but it allows them to work privately when they need to.

Rands:

As I walk in this shop, the proprietor sees me and grins. “Rands, I have the perfect desk for you.”

“I don’t need a desk.”

“You need this desk. It’s vintage Stow Davis. It’s walnut with solid brass and wood handles. It’s the perfect size for your Cave.”

“I don’t need a desk.”

“Stow Davis. Founded in 1879. Did you know Frank Lloyd Wright commissioned them to produce furniture in the ’30s?”

Alex Payne is leaving Twitter to co-found a… bank:

Imagine, for a moment, a bank that doesn’t suck.

A bank that doesn’t gouge you with fees.
A bank that doesn’t treat you like crap.
A bank that cares about design, but gets out of your way.
A bank that puts your money to work automatically.
A bank that’s building a platform for the future of personal finance.

This is many times more exciting than most projects we see. This is a guy who’s leaving a great job at a company growing really fast to help start something most people would never want to work for–a bank–and do it in a new way. Something that we deal with all of the time, and hate it, but that we all just assumed was the way it was. Banks suck.

I’d love to use a bank run by guys I respect and know have the best of intentions. If the basics are there–a large enough network to make withdrawals being the main issue–then I’m going to switch immediately.

Cheers to Alex for doing something hard that can make all of our lives a little better.