The New York Times is trying something new—they’re tweeting links to their articles by hand:

The New York Times is turning off the automatic feed for its main Twitter account this week in an experiment to determine if a human-run, interactive approach will be more effective.

Social media editors Liz Heron and Lexi Mainland are taking turns running the @nytimes account during weekday business hours, hand-picking and writing the tweets and engaging with readers.

Interesting idea. I know I’d be more likely to pay attention to links selected by a person rather than auto-tweeted.

Prototypes is a new application for the Mac that makes mocking up—and testing—iPhone applications easy.

This looks fantastic. If you’re in the early stages of an iPhone application and need to test how well your design actually works, this looks like a great way to do it.

Shawn Blanc writes on some of the things he’s learned by writing his weblog full-time:

In a way, I have to pretend that I’m the only site out there. That if someone was interested in the things I’m interested in, how then would they find out about those things unless I wrote about them? I can’t pass by something I find exciting or interesting because I see that others are already talking about it. That would be a road to silence.

“…a road to silence.” I love that.

Square just got a lot more interesting. They just announced what they’re calling “Card Case,” which effectively allows you to purchase things in stores without ever using your credit card or paying with cash.

Leena Rao describes it:

In a merchant’s card within the case, you can press a “use tab” button which allows the frequent customer to essentially put a purchase on their virtual tab with Square at the merchant. So once you press that button within two blocks of the merchant, you’ll be able to tell the cashier your name and your card will be charged on the merchant’s backend Square register. Because you are a repeat customer, Square already has your payment information. The purchaser will then receive a push notification when the merchant processes the payment.

That’s really exciting, and not just because it means not needing to fish out your wallet when ordering another coffee. It’s great for businesses because they can build a more personal relationship with their customers. No need for them to hand over their credit card or cash; just take their order and give it to them. The payment transaction handles itself, out of sight.

Square is one of my favorite new companies, because they’re doing incredible, exciting stuff, but they’re doing it in a staid industry, payment processing, but one that we interact with every day. We need more tech companies that attack areas untouched by innovation—payments, banking, politics, education—because not only will we all benefit tremendously from it, but there’s so much great potential there.

Jean-Louis Gassée:

The ascent of Netflix signals a broader shift in the way we consume television. For example, “news” programs aren’t really news in that they aren’t fresh, they’re already reheated when we watch them at 6 or 11. Many TV programs, from John Stewarts’s Daily Show to PBS Nightly News, can be watched on a PC when we — not they — are available. Tomorrow, we’ll get all of them (minus NBC, perhaps) on Netflix or one of its competitors.

The chart from Silicon Alley Insider comparing Netflix’s subscriber base and growth to cable operators says it all.

I don’t link to Daring Fireball often, because nearly all of you subscribe, but this deserves it. Gruber is absolutely right—Daring Fireball: Twitter’s new OAuth policy for third-party applications is a shit sandwich:

I can’t think of any reason why Twitter would force native apps through OAuth other than to create a hurdle that steers users toward Twitter’s own official native clients. Because Twitter’s official clients aren’t going to force users to jump through OAuth to authenticate — they’re still going to simply ask for your username and password in a simple native dialog box.

I love Twitter as a service, but what’s becoming clear is management doesn’t have a clear idea for what Twitter is and where they’re heading. As a result, they’re stepping on third-party developers’ toes for no good reason.

The only good explanation for this that I can see is Twitter wants all of their users using first-party applications, like Twitter’s iPhone application, so they can begin advertising to them like a normal web service. Too bad; there’s serious potential for making money using other, less annoying options.

They either don’t know how to make decent revenue by taking advantage of Twitter as a communications utility, or simply don’t think it’s possible. Either way, that’s disappointing.

MG Siegler, commenting on the Amazon tablet:

Google has succeeded in building a massive platform that doesn’t fully rely on them. That’s awesome on paper. But it can work both ways. If others start to realize that they don’t need Google, what does Google do? Just sit there and take it?

Amazon will use Google’s own rules against them. Google allows people to use Android however they would like, but can only get access to the latest Android releases, Google’s app market and Google applications if they follow Google’s instructions.

Rather than try to be an “Android compatible” vendor, so their tablet can be a part of the Android platform, Amazon is going to create an entirely new platform built on top of Android, with their own app store and applications that Google’s Android platform will not have access to. Ouch.

The battle is going to be over developers. Amazon is, as MG points out, getting exclusive rights to certain applications. Will Google try to do the same thing? Will they offer deals to developers who promise to continue developing for the Android platform?

Things are going to get interesting.

Seth Godin:

The opportunity, though, is the biggest of our generation (or the last one, for that matter). The opportunity is there for anyone (with or without a job) smart enough to take it–to develop a best in class skill, to tell a story, to spread the word, to be in demand, to satisfy real needs, to run from the mediocre middle and to change everything.

Don’t talk about doing something. Do it. Don’t let yourself be in the position in a few months or years where you tell someone, “I had that idea. But I was too afraid of failing.”

It’s easy to think of reasons why you shouldn’t, or why it won’t work. And it might not.

Or you might succeed more than you knew possible.

Arvin Dang:

Flipboard can quickly become the distributing model of choice. Consider its already great UI, and connectivity with Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader and RSS.

Content creation is already outsourced, why not create an open marketplace for users to view aggregated content previews and pay per article, or per subscription?

I think there’s a lot of potential here. I wrote about this last week:

Perhaps we need new intermediaries, like Flipboard and Instapaper, that can aggregate content from different sources and charge users, then pay the content creators for their work. This takes care of the central issues: one, it gives users access to a multitude of news sources in well-designed user experiences and two it creates paying users.

Large news organizations are understandably hesitant to give up their “relationship” with their readers, both because they lose control of the reader’s personal information and because they are putting their survival in the hands of others, but I don’t think they have much choice. If they would like to be paid directly for their content, rather than just through advertisements, they’re going to need intermediaries like Flipboard and Instapaper. People want to read a variety of content sources, not a single one or a few, and intermediaries allow content from all kinds of sources to be combined, read and paid for together in a great reading experience.

Here’s Engadget’s coverage of Google I/O.

The highlights are the Music beta, which is basically what was rumored; a home automation framework for Android devices, so they can control household appliances (very neat); a “made for iPod”-like program for third-party peripherals to work with Android devices over USB; and Android 3.1, which integrates all of Android’s different supported devices onto a single OS release.

Android 3.1 is interesting, because of how many devices it supports. What is Google doing with Chrome OS? These OSes are very different conceptually and at some point they’re going to have to choose one to run with.

Microsoft is apparently purchasing Skype.

What’s the business case for this? Integrate it into their business tools? Integrate into Windows Phone 7? That’s all nice, but there doesn’t seem to be an overwhelming reason for purchasing them, besides keeping it out of Google and Facebook’s hands.

Google’s new service may actually launch tomorrow, in beta of course. Here’s the details:

As with Amazon Cloud Drive, Google’s music service will work by uploading your music library to servers, then streaming that music to whatever PC or Android device you’d like, giving you instant access to your library whenever you have an Internet connection. Uploads will be handled by a small downloadable client available for both PC and Mac. There will be a Flash-based web player (which will work with ChromeOS), and the music service is baked into the Music application on Android versions 2.2 and higher, which can also store songs locally.

Not much different than Amazon’s music service, then, with a further limitation: because you cannot purchase music through Google, you must purchase it elsewhere and leave Google’s upload utility running so it will upload your new music for you to the service.

Oh, joy.

It’s certainly an improvement on Android’s current music arrangement, but Apple’s (rumored) set up sounds much, much better. Apple is apparently working out agreements with music labels so they can store one actual file on their servers and stream it to you if you own it. No need to upload any music files.

Oliver Reichenstein speculates about a “business class” for online news—a paid-for version where ads are stripped and the page is re-designed for a better reading experience. Users could still use the ad-filled, subpar experience for free.

That’s effectively what reading news on the iPad should offer, but there’s still a problem. News is a commodity. It didn’t used to be; before the web, reading the newspaper or watching network news was the main source for news and nearly everyone did so, and people tended to stick to a single source. It wasn’t that people wouldn’t watch a different channel or read a different newspaper, but many trusted one over the others.

That loyalty doesn’t exist anymore. People read news on the web anywhere they can find it. This means that only a small subset of readers—the dedicated few who really care about news—will pay for a better experience, and they will only do so for certain news organizations they find particularly good. This isn’t a viable business model on its own for the industry, or even a significant number of organizations.

The main issue here is newspapers never derived most of their revenue from subscriptions—they made most of their revenue from advertising, and ad rates on the web are nothing like what they are in print. So now they are trying to push readers to pay for their news—but people are now used to reading news for free and are unlikely to do so.

Perhaps we need new intermediaries, like Flipboard and Instapaper, that can aggregate content from different sources and charge users, then pay the content creators for their work. This takes care of the central issues: one, it gives users access to a multitude of news sources in well-designed user experiences and it creates paying users.

News organizations, and content creators generally, might need to subordinate themselves to survive.

Patrick Rhone wrote a book. Yes, a book. I’ve had the privilege of reading it over the past few days, and it is very good.

It’s called Keeping It Straight. Here’s one small excerpt I particularly liked:

Therefore, treat it as what it is—the most precious thing in existence. Don’t squander a single second. Perhaps, even more importantly, don’t waste time regretting the time you do squander or lose. Instead, look to how you are going to use this very moment to do something… Anything. Enjoy a simple breath, or make a memorable mark. Don’t worry about the next until the next thing comes along. This moment is far too important.

Patrick’s a great writer and a great guy. What I love about his writing is he’s looking for greater meaning in things. He isn’t just writing about some new application or service or something; he’s writing about how to live a better life, and he does it really, really well.

Keeping It Straight is available as one of those antiquated book things, and also on the Kindle store.

Shawn Blanc makes his MobileMe predictions:

Software development is no longer a contained relationship between a single piece of hardware and the software installed on it. Just as people who are serious about software should make their own hardware, people who are serious about mobile software should make their own cloud.

Shawn nails it.