“Doesn’t someone here still use this?”

The Slack message linked to an article on The Verge. Facebook was announcing it would kill its app Paper at the end of July.¹

It wasn’t much of a surprise, even for a Paper bitter-ender like me. The Facebook division that made Paper disbanded long ago, and Paper hadn’t been updated in months. The app’s news aggregator / reader functions have become less of a priority for Facebook.

Mourning an app that so clearly failed in the marketplace might seem pointless. But Paper was quite simply the best designed app available for... More

I remember the first time I saw someone using a giant phone. One of those really oversized Samsung phones.

It looked silly, as if the person was holding an iPad Mini against their head to make a call. Who wants to look silly?

Not me. I had my iPhone.

When the iPhone debuted in 2007, it was the thinnest, smallest smartphone available. In typical Apple fashion, they had designed a phone years ahead of others in capability and then made it impossibly small. ¹

Some of bulkiness of their competitors was due to limitations of the era.... More

My Apple Watch is quite literally the most nicely made thing that I own.

While it might not have the heritage and mechanical engineering of a Rolex, it has the feel: a smooth, heavy ingot of the watch itself and a lovely stainless link band crafted to what seems like aerospace tolerances.

The software has that same general fit and finish, too. It’s a device that just feels good in all ways.

Well, all ways but …

I am left-handed, like 10 percent of people in the world, Ned Flanders, and five out of seven of our most... More

I’ve become Internet famous in the past few days.

I’d always hoped it would be because I pulled a really good internet prank. Turns out it was because I wrote a blog post.

So far, it’s be tweeted out or linked from Harvard’s Nieman Lab and included in their e mail newsletter, it made Neiman Labs’ Fuego, and has been shared by Commarts.com, NewsWhip, PBS Idea Lab, PBS Mediashift and by countless editors and designers. Tweets about the post have been linked to, favorited and retweeted more times than I can count. As of this... More