Author Archives: David Pierce

About David Pierce

David Pierce, the founder of Digitizd, is now Reviews Editor at The Verge.

A Miss Manners for the 21st Century

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Slate, one of my favorite places on the Web, has started a series called "Manners for the Digital Age 2011," where they look at what etiquette and polite-ness mean in the connected, digital, Internet-y world of 2011. So far Emily Yoffe and Farhad Manjoo have talked about using your phone at the dinner table, and the etiquette of online coupons, Groupons and deals.

Both must-listens, and the Digital Manners podcast is a good one to follow in the coming weeks.

NPR's Guide to Blogging

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NPR published guide to blogging in October of last year, but somehow I never noticed it until this week. It’s a fantastic presentation, with lots of right ideas and useful tips.

The whole slideshow is below, so check it out. Two things stick out to me: slides 34 and 35. They total four words. “Feed > Post” is one slide, and the next reads “Subscriber > Visitor.” Those two ideas have, in my mind, totally changed how I’m doing this blog from here on out.

Essentially what those ideas suggest is that the principal advantage of a blog over any other medium is that it’s a running discussion, always in-flux and changing. The value of a blog, unlike a book or a magazine article, doesn’t come from a single piece. The whole of a good blog should be much more than the sum of its parts.

I love that idea, and looking around, it’s what I love about my favorite blogs. Jason Kottke has become someone I trust to provide cool things, and to give a liberal arts take on technology and the Web. John Gruber’s Daring Fireball, over thousands of posts, becomes the most compelling argument I’ve ever seen for why Apple is so successful, and why it deserves to be. Andrew Sullivan (referenced a lot by the NPR guide) spends his time filtering opinions, agreeing and disagreeing, and forms a worldview (but one that’s always subject to change). I love these blogs because they’re thinking out loud, over time, never sure or certain and always learning new things and refining others. They want other people’s opinions, want your opinions on those opinions. One post is interesting enough, typically, but a hundred posts creates something that none of those hundred can create alone.

That’s what I’d like this site to be. I’d like to, over time, begin to understand what in the world it means to live in this crazy, shifting, digital world we’re all being thrust into. Posts here should be part of a larger whole, one toothpick in the crazy toothpick sculpture that I hope Digitizd will be.

Anyway, here’s the slideshow. It’s a great one, and a must-read for anyone who blogs.

The Sweet Spot of iPad Mag Pricing

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Ah, meta-reporting. Wired’s Sam Gustin reports on the New York Post’s reporting on Wired and Conde Nast (whew):

The New Yorker will become the first of Condé’s magazines to be offered, Kelly reported, but by the end of May, seven other Condé titles will be available, including Vanity Fair, GQ, Glamour, Allure, Self, Golf Digest and Wired. That means Condé Nast will win some measure of bragging rights over its rival, Hearst, which this week said that it would begin offering iPad subscriptions for the July editions of several of its magazines, including Popular Mechanics, Esquire, and O, The Oprah Magazine, which will become available in June.

Details on the digital subscription pricing scheme remain unclear, but Kelly reported that the single-copy price of the digital version of The New Yorker and GQ will be slashed from $5 to $2, and Wired will drop from $4 to $2. Annual subscriptions for each of the digital titles will be $20.

The New Yorker is already out – $59.99 per year, or about $1.50 an issue (if you’re a $69.99/year print subscriber, it’s free). The price is solid there, but I’m more interested in the monthlies like Wired and GQ.  $4 an issue is too expensive, but a subscription model promises something better.

The Post reports that those subscriptions will be $19.99 a year. To me, that’s an absolute sweet spot. A year of a magazine for $20 doesn’t feel like too much, but it’s enough money that it’ll add up fast for the magazines.

Of course, they’ll all be free for print subscribers, which leads to the same conclusion the New York Times created: this is, primarily, a way to incentivize print subscriptions. It’s going to cost, say, $10 more for  a year’s subscription to the print magazine, and for that price you’ll get the digital copy and a print magazine you can read when the plane’s taking off. That’s a good deal for readers, and could lead to a lot more eyeballs for Conde Nast and others, who are scrambling to give consumers reasons to buy print magazines.

The one thing The Daily did right was the price: $.99 a week or $40/year. That’s right for a daily paper, and $19.99/year seems right for a monthly. It’s a lot of content, for a swallowable price. I’ll probably pay it a few times over, if the Post’s report pans out.

What do you think? What would you pay for an iPad magazine? Would you go for the gusto and get the print too?

Pin Tabs in Google Chrome to Save Space

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Small tip for the day, filed under “Things I Know and Yet Somehow Forget Even Though They’re Super Useful,” and applying to people who fit under two categories: Those with a lot of tabs open all day in their browser, and those who have a couple of sites they keep open all day.

pin

For me, it’s check and check. I have a million tabs open all day, but Gmail, Google Reader and Remember the Milk should never get closed. Those three tabs take up a lot of space in my browser bar, though, and make it hard to figure out what my other tabs are, especially when I’ve got a lot of them open. Which is pretty much all the time.

If you use Google Chrome, there’s a clever solution, which is to Pin the tab. Go to the tab, and right-click on the tab label. Click “Pin Tab,” and Chrome makes the tab only the size of the small identifying icon. It takes up far less space, making it easier to see all of the 83 other tabs you’ve got open.

Not exactly Earth-shattering, but I love solving the little annoyances computers cause.

The Me History Museum

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Paul Ford, one of the People Who Know Things on the Internet and one of my favorite writers, takes a look at his personal history through the lens of his Gmail archive:

I had, as you would expect, the fantasy of sitting down with my 1996, 22-year-old self, for just a minute or two. Before today I would have wanted to tell him things, give him nostrums for his ailments—give a lecture, with the 14-years-later me at the podium. But reading the younger I’s emails I can’t imagine him being such a good listener as all that. I imagine we’d both start talking at once, each angling for the other’s respect and admiration. Reading his old messages, even though they were intended for someone else, I know that he wanted more life, more love, and more space to think, and I’ve given him, imperfectly, not always willingly, but best I could, all three.

RCRDLBL, Groupon for Music

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Alan Henry, at Lifehacker:

RCRD DEALS is a new feature from the folks who started RCRD LBL. If you dont know, RCRD LBL is a music blog that also features daily downloads of new and interesting music to its subscribers. The music can be hit or miss depending on what you like, but theres no discounting the fact that its free, legal music in your inbox every day.

The service launched RCRD DEALS to give artists and site owners a way to give fans more music, and to sell them CDs, digital downloads, and even music packages featuring CDs, t-shirts, messenger bags, and other goodies. The service is planning to branch out into entire discographies, limited editions, concert tickets, and even VIP or backstage passes so you can meet the artists you enjoy.

I kind of love the idea of RCRD DEALS, but I love RCRDLBL even more (despite its incredibly-difficult-to-pronounce-ness). One thing I’ve constantly had trouble with over the years is finding new music. I have a lot of bands, artists and songs that I like, but using that data to find new music I’ll like, despite being something that everyone from Amazon and Apple to Grooveshark and Pandora have tried, doesn’t really work.

RCRDLBL gets away from that, and just is what it is: free music, every day, sent to you for download. Some might be good, some might not. But hey, it’s free, so who am I to complain? If I hit once out of fifty times, I’ll still call it a win.

Thanks to EQA Office Furniture

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Once again, many thanks to EQA Office Furniture for sponsoring Digitizd this week to promote their office furniture solutions. They’re a great company, selling everything from desks and chairs to entire offices, which they’ll install for you and all you need to do is show up. If you’ve got any needs for office furniture, in your home or at work, check out EQA Office Furniture and tell ‘em I sent you. It won’t do you any good, but tell ‘em anyway.

Thanks again to them for sponsoring Digitizd this week.

 

Remember the Milk Comes to the iPad

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Finally. Lots of awesome-sounding features, too:

Get stuff done with gestures.

Tap tasks with two fingers to quickly complete or postpone in the task list: pull down to reveal the Complete button, pull up to reveal the Postpone button.You can also perform actions on several tasks at once. Just tap Edit on a task list to complete, postpone, prioritize, move, tag, and set the due date for tasks. You can also perform all these actions and more while editing a single task.

Can’t wait to try it out.

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