Technologizer Recapped for the Week of August 15th, 2010
By Harry McCracken | Saturday, August 21, 2010 at 10:59 pm
Time for a new Technologizer feature: a handy wrap-up of the stuff we wrote about all week long. I’m cheerfully borrowing the idea from Andrew Sullivan, and hope you’ll discover (or rediscover) some worthwhile reading…
Monday
Jared reviewed InstantJam, a Guitar Hero-like Facebook game that uses music you already own. He also concluded that yes, the iPad is hurting netbook sales.
Ed explained why the “Facebook Dislike button” was dangerous.
I relayed the sad news that e-readers were dead.
Jared wrote about controversy over a video game that lets players fight as the Taliban.
Tuesday
Jared put together some facts on the first wave of Windows Phone 7 games.
Ed reported that the BlackBerry Torch’s initial sales didn’t seem to be breaking any records. He also covered a Wisconsin college’s report on the technohabits of today’s youth.
Jared wrote about music app Grooveshark’s short time on the iTunes App Store.
I celebrated the unexpected return of Microsoft Flight (Simulator).
I also shared my notes after using a remote-presence robot as my doppelganger for a week.
Wednesday
Jared analyzed Sony’s pricing strategy for PlayStstion Move.
I maintained that there was nothing newsworthy about Wired’s “The Web is Dead” story, since nearly all famous technologies, products, and companies were already goners.
I also worried that a Chrome OS tablet without local apps would be a bad idea.
Ed spoke approvingly of the value of pay-as-you-go wireless broadband.
Thursday
Jacqueline reported from the launch of Fujifilm’s second-generation 3D camera.
Jared wrote about Gmail’s slick new iPad interface.
I said I liked the clarity of identity on Facebook Places more than the vagueness at Foursquare.
Ed wondered whether the Verizon TV tablet was really a tablet, and blogged about RIM’s interest in mobile advertising.
I reviewed a local-information service called Bizzy–I thought it was intriguing but found that it needed more info on more businesses.
Friday
We borrowed a post by Zatz Not Funny’s Mari Sibley on Android graphics apps.
Jared wondered if Other OS, a Linux for the PlayStation 3, might make its return.
Ed noted that Bank of America is testing a system that lets customers use their phones to make payments for stuff. He also reported that HP plans to ship a Windows tablet this year and a Web OS one early in 2011.
Jared contended that the notion that iPads are incapable of being used to create stuff (espoused by an LG honcho) is a myth.
I noted that Best Buy plans to have tablets in stock for the holidays that aren’t iPads (but not thirty-two different models).
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5 Comments For This Post
August 22nd, 2010 at 2:18 am
Why, exactly, is this kind of post 'handy'? I'm not trying to troll, and I hope you don't take it as such, but I really don't see what these kinds of posts add. Whether you come here from the front page of this blog or a feed reader of some kind, the posts that you have so kindly lined out are also lined out, directly below this one, rendering this post somewhat redundant (and if you come here through Digg or some other content aggregator, a recap post is unlikely to be dugg/voted up as much as the originals anyways). Posts that do nothing but reference other posts make me wonder if the writer has any self-confidence in his own work, as I feel that if he did, he wouldn't feel the need to point it out to everyone again. I hope this isn't how you feel.
August 22nd, 2010 at 9:12 am
exactly – weekly recaps are boring and annoying, just as they are on arstechnica, which i do not visit on the weekend precisely because of their recaps.
August 22nd, 2010 at 9:11 am
Because it’s all one-sentence summaries in one post–a snapshot of the week in one place. (If nothing else, it requires less scrolling and reading of extraneous wordage than scanning all the posts.)
I’m not claiming that it isn’t also possible to go back through the posts themselves, and I definitely don’t expect a post like this to be a hit on Digg.
I decided to try this because I like the similar posts at Andrew Sullivan’s site–yup, I find them handy.
–Harry
August 22nd, 2010 at 3:57 pm
So, what audience are you targeting here? I'm still confused about the utility and target. It's not for Digg readers (and other such sites), not for regular readers…who is it for? What benefit do you expect to see by posting these, both for you and for your readers?
From what you said here, it looks like you want to reduce your ad impressions, by allowing readers to read one article instead of several. Seems counterproductive, to me…what am I missing here?
August 23rd, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Kind of reminds me of the old T-Lists from back in the day (AKA, 2008). I think I subscribed to emails of those….