On the Radar: Apple Retail, Vendetta vs. Da Vinci, and WordPress Tweaks

* ??NorthJersey??: “Citigroup pulling plug on its AT&T Cash Rewards Card”:http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkyOSZmZ2JlbDdmN3ZxZWVFRXl5NjkzODY4NyZ5cmlyeTdmNzE3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTI. Wow, directly relevant to a “brief conversation”:http://kennsarah.net/2006/05/20/on-the-radar-2/#comments about finances on this site, it looks like the AT&T card is now, officially, too good to be true.
* ??The New Yorker??: “Heaven Can Wait”:http://www.newyorker.com/critics/cinema/?060529crci_cinema (“via Alissa”:http://www.alissaclark.com/?p=324). Awesome, snarky review of the sucky Da Vinci code. It’s amazing that this movie has garnered such vilification. Is it because it’s ratio of quality to marketing dollars is so low?
* ??Wired Magazine??: “The Resurrection of Al Gore”:http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.05/gore.html. Funny, I just read an article in another magazine that said Al lost the election largely because his handlers told him to marginalize the environment — the one true issue that Gore is passionate about — in his platform against Bush. Yeah, I think if he sounded less like a robot, he would have scored some extra votes, but I don’t think Bush won the election on the basis of his personality. *Bonus*: out today, NPR takes a look at the art and science of Al Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5428154.
* ??Fortune Magazine??: “Real Estate Survival Guide”:http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/03/news/economy/realestateguide_fortune/index.htm. Fascinating series of articles from Fortune about the impending market correction. A lot of people got in over their heads with the real estate bubble, taking on massive debts in exotic mortgages on property that isn’t worth what they paid for it. The crisis will occur when those mortgages (such as interest-only loans) turn into “real” mortgages and double the monthly payment for a lot of people. It won’t be pretty.
* YouTube: “CNBC Interviews Steve Jobs”:http://youtube.com/watch?v=y6BFhRkUJEI&search=apple,%205th%20avenue (“via John”:http://daringfireball.net/linked/2006/may#tue-23-cnbc). CNBC grills Jobs on Apple’s retail strategy, growth, and even the rumored iPhone. A bit weird to see Steve not totally in control of a media situation.
* ??New York Times??: “Apple, a Success at Stores, Bets Big on Fifth Avenue”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/technology/19apple.html. In retrospect, success has a way of looking inevitable. But there was considerable skepticism at the outset about what Apple was doing. And others have failed; Gateway closed its retail stores two years ago.
* ??Signal vs. Noise??: “Is Don Norman right about Google?”:http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/is_don_norman_right_about_google.php. Matt writes up some interesting thoughts on organizations, innovation, and what the intersection of those two things looks like for Google.
* ??Joe Tan??: “WordPress Flickr Post Bar”:http://tantannoodles.com/toolkit/wp-flickr-post-bar/. Joe provides a WordPress plugin that lets you post your Flickr photos into blog entries with a helpful upload bar. I used it for “this entry”:http://kennsarah.net/2006/05/20/how-sarah-topped-the-philharmonic/, and it saved a bit of time flipping back and forth from our Flickr acocunt.
* ??WordPress Widgets??: “Drop Down Archives”:http://widgets.wordpress.com/2006/05/23/drop-down-archives/. The XHTML is not quite valid, but a nice little widget that gives you a drop-down of that growing list of archive months. I used it to tidy up this site a bit: our sidebar was becoming a monster, and I didn’t want to devote so much real-estate to links that weren’t getting many clicks. I also shortened the number of blogs we’re displaying on the homepage — less is more.
* ??Metaphilm??: “V for Vindictive”:http://metaphilm.com/philm.php?id=475_0_2_0. ??Jim Rovira?? takes an incisive look at V for Vendetta against the backdrop of the Wachowski’s previous power vs. freedom dialectic in the Matrices. Interesting reading — I think maybe I’ll go see the movie now.
* ??Tyler Hall??: “How To Backup Your Mac Intelligently”:http://www.sitening.com/blog/2006/05/23/how-to-backup-your-mac-intelligently/ (“via Lifehacker”:http://www.lifehacker.com/software/backup/backup-your-mac-the-smart-way-176314.php). We don’t have a good backup solution right now. I just spent an hour pulling data off of Sarah’s old IBM 570 laptop (which is now officially retired) and onto the Powerbook. I do have a backup of our music and documents on an external hard drive that’s at least a month old, but, beyond that, we don’t have a good incremental solution.
* ??John Gruber??: “Confidence Game”:http://daringfireball.net/2006/05/confidence_game. Gruber analyzes Apple’s hitting on all cylinders in the context of Microsoft’s lackluster performance — at least in terms of products. It’s a great article, but if Microsoft were really coming unglued, how is it that they’re returning profits at a growing rate?