Fusion continues to add great weblogs. Joshua Blankenship joins Fusion beginning in December, and Dan Benjamin also joined.

Values of N, Inc., which created Stikkit and I Want Sandy, was bought by Twitter. Stikkit and I Want Sandy will go offline December 8th.

Both web services were outstanding. Sandy was my first real productivity tool, and while I stopped using it for a while, I was about to begin using it again. I’m sad to see I will not be able to.

Elliot Jay Stocks on becoming a member of the Sidebar ad network :

I actually think the adverts have added value to the site. For instance, during a conversation with some friends about e-commerce, I recommended FoxyCart. A few days later, I recommended the service to another friend. Where did I first hear about FoxyCart? From the advert in my sidebar! What more proof could I ask for about the relevance of these ads to myself and my peers? ”

If you’ve been trying to find a way to reduce your number of followers on Twitter, Magpie is here to help you out. Magpie is a Twitter ad network, which uses your account to send adverts.

I think Jina Bolton’s policy is best:

Yeah, I’m pretty much going to unfollow anyone that uses [Magpie].

Campaign Monitor and MailBuild, two great products, are merging.

When I started using MailBuild, I wondered why they weren’t built in to each other. I’m glad they will be soon.

(Via Sean Sperte.)

Since mid-summer, TightWind has been almost advert-free, save a small Basecamp badge.

That changed last Friday. Michael Mistretta’s new company, Fusion Ads, launched last week. Their goal is simple: deliver one simple, relevant and unobtrusive ad per page on growing weblogs which provide great content.

This is what I have been waiting for. When I started writing TightWind, my first intention was to write content that is fundamentally worth reading. I think I have met that goal,¹ and so my next goal is to generate revenue from it.

I do not, however, want to advertise under the conventional model — which is to pack as many ads on to a page as possible, without any consideration for whether the products are worth using, or whether the ads detract from the content, which is why the website exists in the first place.

I think advertising on a page can and should be an additional service for the reader. I removed Adsense during summer both because it was ineffective (readers did not click on links because they were not interested in the ads), and because it detracted from TightWind. In its place, I put in a Basecamp badge, because it is a benefit to the reader. Basecamp is an excellent product, so I have no problem recommending it to readers.

Luckily, Michael agrees that advertising should be an added service for readers. The ads shouldn’t distract from the content with audio or flashing images, and they shouldn’t be for worthless products.

Fusion ads are small, unobtrusive, and for good products that excite me, and are likely to excite you, too.

I am incredibly excited for what Fusion ads, and TightWind, will do in the future. I hope you enjoy Fusion as much as I do.

1. Although there is much room for improvement, and my intention is to continue making deeper analysis and more polished writing. ↩

It’s rare that I get to discuss my two great passions, politics and technology, within the same context, but the day has come. The Obama campaign has released an iPhone application that, I think, is a sign of what we’re going to see in politics in the coming years: campaigning at your fingertips.

Besides its excellent integration of media (video clips of Obama speaking or being interviewed), this application does two incredible things. First, this application sorts your contacts by battleground state. So, if your sister-in-law lives in Wisconsin, her name will show up in the “Call Friends” area so you can call them and convince them to vote for Obama.

There is a lot of potential here. Calling up potential voters in your area to convince them to vote for your candidate is mostly done at campaign headquarters using phone banks. Rather than using phone banks, though, which are limited in number and thus in the amount of people who can be calling at a given time, how about this application connects to a computer via Bonjour and accesses local numbers to call. This would allow a potentially-unlimited number of people to do phone banking without violating potential voter’s privacy (giving their numbers away).

Second, by using CoreLocation, the application lists local campaign events that are close to the user. This allows Obama supporters to get involved immediately with the campaign, and to connect with other supporters.

But think of what this feature could develop into. If a location-based social network is built into this application, supporters can begin to campaign on an unprecedented scale and in an unprecedented way. Supporters could opt in on a website component of this social network so their location is shown to other supporters within a certain radius of them. Then, supporters could post campaign events (whatever they are — fundraisers, sign-waving, meetings, et cetera) which would show up in the “events” area for supporters in the area. They could then confirm they will attend. This would take the power of meetup groups to an entirely new level.

But think about this a little more, too. The application already lists video clips of Obama and other campaign officials. Consider this: when doing precinct walks, campaign supporters are now beginning to bring along video clips on PocketPCs to show potential voters. This application could distribute these kinds of videos right in the application — no need to search YouTube, find them and save them to your PocketPC. Just open the campaign application and go to the media section.

Same with campaign literature. it’s can all be in the application, on your phone. This stuff is game-changing.

(Via Faruk Ates.)

Michael Mistretta just published a thoughtful article on his misgivings with Android, and he makes two excellent points.

First:

An open platform may have worked had there only been a single device. But Android is a multi-year project that will encompass a wide scope of devices with hundreds of varying user interfaces. Touchscreens to trackballs to keyboards to accelerometers. How can 50+ different phones made by different companies with different interfaces possibly function with apps in the Android Market?

Mark my word, three years from now, the Android Market will be a mess. Users will download—or even worse, purchase—an app, only to find that they have no way to interact with it because their phone lacks a touchscreen. Think there are a lot of flashlights and tip calculators in the AppStore now? Wait till you see the Android Market in 3 months.”

This illustrates a central problem with Android as a platform in the sense an iPhone is a platform: the “Android Market” is tacked on. Android’s intent is to be flexible enough to run on a multitude of devices with widely varying hardware. But this diversity of user interfaces, as Michael points out, is why an application store on Android phones doesn’t work that well: how do you account for applications with specific hardware requirements (e.g., “this app only works on phones with a touch screen,” or “…only works on phones with an accelerometer”) in the application store while still retaining a simple store design? I don’t want to wade through long lists of applications which aren’t even compatible with my phone — I only want to see applications that work with it.

One solution is for the application developer to specify certain criteria phones must meet, and if the phone doesn’t, its store will not display the application, but think about the upkeep involved in maintaining this system. The developer must specify explicitly what their application requires, and the Market must keep and update profiles for each phone of what it is and isn’t capable of. It’s begging for a poor user experience.

An OS which is designed to be run on a variety of devices with different configurations simply doesn’t work that well with a unified application store. That’s a trade off being made, and a rather large one on a handheld device, where ease of use is ultimately more important than features.

Second:

The iPhone was marketed as an iPod, a smartphone, and an internet communicator. Now, third-party applications can also be seen as a major selling point. With the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack, dedicated video player, and desktop syncing, the G1 is hardly a media-centric device. It barely compares to the iPod. Surprising for Google, the G1 has a significantly laggy web-browser with a clumsy UI that leads to a lackluster mobile internet experience. That leaves the phone side of things, which I haven’t seen a single screenshot published to date.

The G1 — and any Android phone, really — is not a media-centric device. Period. As Michael points out, the G1 lacks a 3.5mm headphone jack, a built-in video player, and desktop syncing.

Google is betting on developers to make up for Android’s inadequacies, but the experience will be poor, because it isn’t integrated. It isn’t just that the audio application is poor and it has no video application. The issue is media wasn’t a focus in developing Android, so its support is a half-hearted attempt.

In contrast, the iPhone is a very simple concept: a phone, an iPod, and an Internet communication device. It has three functions, and it does the last two really, really well, and the first good enough. Just consider the music experience on the iPhone. The user can buy music, TV shows and movies, and subscribe to podcasts on their computer, and buy music on the iPhone, too. All of this media stays in sync effortlessly. All the user does is sync it whenever they have new media, and iTunes transfers new media to the iPhone and vice versa.

Once the media is on the iPhone, it is all accessible through one application, the iPod. Users can listen to music and podcasts, and watch movies and TV shows, all through this one application. And because this application is one of the device’s main focus, it’s very well-designed. It’s a joy to use.

To put media on the G1, however, users must enable mass-storage in the phone’s options, then hook the phone up and manually load media onto the micro-SD card. After they’re finished, they must disable mass-storage — because if they don’t, the G1 will not be able to access the card. Then they have to hook up a USB-to-3.5mm adapter and use separate applications for audio and video, all in a subpar user interface.

With the iPhone, you drop it in its dock and let it sync. It’s as close to seamless as anyone has ever gotten.

And with an Android phone, we’re back to the pre-iPod and iTunes days for managing our music collections. If there is one single reason I will not own an Android phone, this is it.

Scott Stevenson on Cappuccino.

Where is the Native Brightkite iPhone App?

Brightkite is developing a native iPhone application, and is committing to releasing it by the end of the month. I can’t wait to see it — I love the potential of these location-based social networks, but they have a chicken/egg problem going. They aren’t very useful because hardly anyone uses them, but people aren’t going to use them unless others are already doing so.

Hopefully the excitement over the iPhone and the App Store will give it some momentum.

Theocacao: Thinking Like a Cocoa Programmer

Scott Stevenson gives some excellent tips for any kind of developer or designer:

It’s everywhere — Cocoa programmers think about user experience at every step. Novices think user experience is just on-screen graphics, but it includes things as subtle as the capitalization of text in a preferences window, the name and location of data files, and even the phrasing of messages in the console.

A Green Coal Baron?

NYT profile of James Rogers, C.E.O. of Duke Energy, is trying to “decarbonize” his company by 2050 through ideas like this:

The day we met, he was brimming with enthusiasm for a new approach to solar power. Solar is currently too expensive to make economic sense, according to Rogers, because the cost to put panels on a roof is greater than what a household would save on electricity. But what if Duke bought panels en masse, driving the price down, and installed them itself — free?

“So we have 500,000 solar units on the roofs of our customers,” he said. “We install them, we maintain them and we dispatch them, just like it was a power plant!” He did some quick math: he could get maybe 1,000 megawatts out of that system, enough to permanently shutter one of the company’s older power plants.

Absolutely fascinating idea, and an excellent article, too.

MagCloud — Magazine Publishing for Anyone

Derek Powazek’s introduction of MagCloud

For the last year, I’ve been working on a project with HP Labs called MagCloud. The idea is simple, really. MagCloud enables anyone to start a magazine – a real printed magazine – with no giant pile.

Brilliant ideas tend to be exceedingly simple, and MagCloud fits the description. The idea is that using MagCloud, anyone can upload a PDF’ed magazine design, set a markup percentage on the cost of the magazine (if any if you so desire), and MagCloud will print and distribute it for you. And here’s the cool part: you only pay for the number of magazines you sell.

There is, as Derek notes, still something about paper. Reading on a screen is not nearly as enjoyable as reading a finely-designed and printed book or magazine.

If I am accepted into MagCloud’s beta, or when they officially launch, I am considering creating a printed version of TightWind as a bi-monthly magazine with the past two month’s original content.

At the minimum, I’d like to do a print version just for myself. It would be great to have nicely-designed, permanent paper copies of my writing.

But it would be even better to make this available to my readers for an affordable price. Sound like a cool thing to do to me — TightWind in print.

If you are interested in this, send me an email.

On Software Bundles

(Via the Red Sweater Blog.)

Now, there has been some controversy concerning the bundles, boiling down to whether it is a good deal for the developers. After all this, I can’t say that the issue has been fully resolved in my mind but I’ll try to at least clarify the real issues at stake. I want this to be useful to other devs who are considering participating in bundle promotions without resorting to any demagoguery.

Paul Kim, of Noodlesoft, included Hazel in the MacUpdate bundle. These software bundles are a *little* controversial in the Mac community, but rather than condemn and demonize, Kim analyzes how successful the bundle was for him.

His conclusions surprised me — you would expect that exposure would be the greatest benefit, but he didn’t see a gain in sales the month after the bundle, which would indicate an increase in exposure.

Ars Technica: Media Temple, Parallels introduce first Leopard Server VPS

Features include a collaborative iCal server, hosted, secure iChat server, Leopard-powered wiki, blog, and web hosting, podcast production and publishing tools, and remote management using Apple’s tools, all of them running on an Xserve’s 64-bit architecture. Time Machine will be available for making backups to your local Xserve-Virtual account, and Media Temple will eventually bring a “snapshot” feature online for backing up the entire account.

Sounds great.