John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot

'Steve always aspired to make beautiful later'

If you read one thing today, or even this week, make it Mona Simpson's eulogy of her brother Steve Jobs. She did not meet him until she was 25, but they evidently became close. The essay, published today in the New York Times, is full of wonderful ancedotes, including the observation above about what drove Jobs. (Innovation may have been one thing, but beauty trumped all.) 

And keep going until the ending. It's quite moving. 

Haggis and Scientology

As magazine pieces go, the New Yorker's take on screenwriter-director Paul Haggis's estrangement from Scientology is top-shelf and utterly compelling.

Feedly groovy: A splashy way to control your reading list

Surf’s Up, as published in the St. John's Telegram on Thursday, July 22, 2010. Click here to read more Surf's Up.]

Sometimes you know something so well that you can’t imagine it could possibly be different. But when you’re shown a new way, and the benefits are instantly obvious, it can be a bit thrilling.

We’re all creatures of habit, but our online patterns are hardly cemented. You may prefer, say, the same type of breakfast cereal through your life, but your online preferences are going to change sooner or later. (Still using Alta Vista to look stuff up?)

A few weeks ago, my eyes were pointed to a service that has breathed new life into a service I’ve been using for years, and for which I now have a whole new appreciation.

Feedly
I’ve been using Google Reader for the better part of five years, and was practically an apostle for it after I first set it up. Reader is what’s called an aggregator, and it was the first tool that managed my RSS feeds that was a genuine pleasure to have.

RSS – really simple syndication, to use one definition – is a workhorse of the web, pushing out content to the people who want updates. It’s not obvious, but it’s integral to many news sites, but is used for many other applications, from news releases to newsletters to personal sites.

Google Reader allowed me to synthesize all that data into one central place. Best, I could toggle to it while using other Google apps, like Gmail or the family calendar.

The hitch? Well, being a creature of habit, I got accustomed to the same look and feel … and got, well, a little bored. I just haven’t been using it nearly as much as I first did.

Enter Feedly, which takes your Google Reader feeds and hands it back to you, looking fantastic.

“A fun, magazine-like start page” is how Feedly pitches itself in bold print, to visitors who’ve come to kick the tires. Fair description, to say the least.

Like a good magazine, Feedly knows that design is as important as the content itself. Thus, some images are given a notable display, the fonts are clean and sharp, and columns are put to sharp use. It’s a lesson that makes perfect sense to me, almost three decades since I first learned the basics of composing a page and falling in love with typography, and learned that how something is presented is absolutely key to how it is understood.

After a quick install, my categories all moved over, including all my feeds and preferences. But this is no duplication: it’s a completely new, and better experience

In an instant, Feedly made skimming through my daily news diet a pleasure.

Getting started

So, if you don’t use Google Reader (or Feedly), you might be scratching you head, and wondering if you’re missing something. Bottom line: you are.

I’d recommend giving Feedly a shot. After all, if you’re reading a column about online culture, and have made it this far, I bet you spend enough time looking at screens that you could use some help organizing things.

So, let’s say your interests include headlines about Boston’s sports teams; releases from your alma mater; newsletters from the company that handles your investments; social-media mentions of the company where you work; a few political blogs; and, um, reports about your favourite rock band.

Or, maybe you’re into mountain climbing, hand-crafted sweaters, Italian football stars and gossip magazines. 

It doesn’t matter. The range of interests is enormous, and can be as customizable and unique as you are.

Like something you see? Copy and paste the URL into a field to add it to your menu. Set it up in a particular category that you can name and edit. Twitter feeds, by the way, are easy to add, and exploring for new content is a slice.

Give it a shot. I hope you get half as excited as I am.

Elsewhere this week

Netflix comes to Canada
Well, not yet. But soon, and how, this is going to mean something major for countless thousands of Canadian movie-watchers, not to mention the video-rental stores that have relied on their business. Netflix has built a solid business model south of the border since the late 1990s with movies-by-mail, but everybody is more excited about where their business is rapidly going: online. Indeed, the Canadian business will exclusively offer on-demand content, particularly movies and TV shows, almost certainly at a flat rate like 10 bucks a month. Couch potatoes, you’ve been warned. 

 

John Gushue is an online editor with CBC News in St. John’s. Twitter: @johngushue. 

The world, illuminated

 Above is a detail from Earthlights, which shows the planet, as it appears from the international space station. Urbanized areas, during particularly clear evenings, are easy to spot. Click here for the full, scrollable image. 

A recession graphic that's impossible to ignore

It's wrong to say that Newfoundland and Labrador has completely escaped the fury of the ongoing recession (export-dependent companies, especially anyone depending on American consumers, are stinging), but we really don't have a sense of how dramatic things have been and still are in the U.S. This graphic puts things into context, at least in terms of job losses and the seemingly unending sink of employment in the States. More to read here on Business Insider.

What kills whom where

What kills Canadians most? Or residents of other nations? And what is the global picture? Check out WorldLifeExpectancy. It's revealing stuff, especially with the ability to compare, contrast and sort.

The quick wit of Muhammad Ali

The Guardian publishes today a list of some of the things Muhammad Ali has said over the years. My favourite, from 1960, when Cassius Clay was in a segregated restaurant:

On being told "We don't serve negroes"

I don't eat them, either. Just give me a cup of coffee and a hamburger.

The rest of the feature is here.

Canadian Lawyer surveys St. John's

The economy in St. John's has been doing very well lately, and the legal profession is no exception, says this report in Canadian Lawyer.

Reading for a long weekend

... in Canada, anyway. In The New Yorker, sample Salman Rushdie's short story, In the South.

Bits and pieces

A few things gleaned over the weekend. Apologies for some overlap from my Twitter feed.

First things first, go to Accordion Guy for a morning laugh.

Joe Klein, writing in Time, welcomes Bob Dylan's new album, but focuses on the 68-year-old singer's age:

And now, with the release of his 46th album, Together Through Life, Dylan is, officially, old. Listening to these songs, I imagine him as one of the last guests at someone else's 70th-birthday party, sitting at a table that's been cleared except for the wine stains and bread crumbs. He's wearing a bolo tie and his scraggly mustache, telling stories about women he used to know but never cared for all that much.

Sheena Goodyear, a former editor of the Muse and now striking out on her own, has been selling some freelance stuff to the Toronto Star. Her latest piece is on how long-distance couples are using technology to keep in seemingly continuous touch. 

Holy Edwardian surprise: This Facebook thing is not nearly as old as we think. Sort of. Jenna Worthman, writing in the Bits blog for the New York Times: 

Bryan Benilous, a historical newspaper specialist at the digital-archive company Proquest, said he and his colleagues came across a Boston Daily Globe article from August 24, 1902, titled, “Face Book The New Fad,” describing a party game where revelers sketch out cartoony caricatures for fun.

“I think it is interesting to note the similarities with this first iteration of Face Book as a shared social experience,” said Mr. Benilous. “It’s almost like having friends write on your wall in a much less tech-savvy way.”

A new, and more literal meaning to writing on someone's wall, eh?

Interesting piece on how daily newspapers might survive. Stop being daily. Hmmm. Another option: Higher newsstand prices. (They aaaalllways go over real well.) 

People don't agree on what makes a great domain name. This piece sorts out what works for two key but not necessarily confluent reasons: branding and search.

Rorshach dies

... and not by being vaporized by a blue dude who glows. It's the anniversary of the death of the real McCoy.

The saddest bear

Ever dealt with someone who just seems to be beyond cheering up? (If you're honest, you'll see yourself as having been in that position the odd time. Or more often.)

Check out The Saddest Bear of All - a very short online book, but one that might meet you in the right mood. After the last week, I appreciated it.

W.: The Onion Years

Or, more accurately, Onion: The Bush Years. Joey at Accordion Guy has done a service and collated a slew of headlines from the satiremeisters at The Onion about outgoing president George W. Bush.

How they died

Curious Wikipedia list of the day: A list of unusual deaths, from the legend of how Chrysippus died from laughing, to Marcus Garvey, who died after reading his own (premature) obituary. 

A tree that really stuffs the house

We've certainly had trees over the years that seemed to overwhelm the room. This report from the BBC, though, is on another level altogether.

The Bible, retold in Lego

Retelling popular movies and comic books with Lego? Old. The Brick Commandments takes on the Bible, with scene by scene recreations in brick format ... even with Moses hearing directly from God.

Corporate leaders, from another point of view

Good magazine surveys the corporate world for employers who think differently, from unleashing employee creativity and to spurring meaningful environmental change. Have a look here; click at the link at the bottom to see the spread in a larger (yet scrolling) format.

White House, grey hair

It's too bad the web version of a Peter Scowen feature in Saturday's Globe & Mail doesn't carry the photo illustration that appeared in print: it illustrates, pretty dramatically, how presidents age while they're in office, from Lincoln to W. The article can be read here, but it's worth seeking out a print edition for the full effect.

Embalming, up close and personal

From the Morning News webzine, a fascinating read on what exactly happens during embalming. We're surrounded by dead bodies in pop culture: the CSI franchises alone have kind of inured us to autopsies, for instance, so much so that it's no longer shocking to see a body sliced apart for forensic study. This essay doesn't have gory pictures of any kind, and relies only on words for the full effect.

Let's shake on it (but not necessarily mean anything)

Curious things, handshakes. We like to think they can mean a lot - "But we shook on it!" - and I, for one, admire people who can stick to something through a handshake without having to go through a formal, lengthy contract. But as this piece by Joe Kissell explains, the handshake can be particularly ambiguous.

Better that it was Rocky than Bullwinkle

Not enough you read about flying squirrels in the news. And toilets. What a howler.

Charge of the light credit brigade

Interesting piece in Slate this weekend on "the death of the credit card economy." Come again? Don't Americans supposedly have crippling household debts, including mountains of personal consumer credit debt on top of mortgages, car leases, student loans, etc?

Well, yes. But it's not the wiser consumer deciding to save first before spending. It's the lenders who are changing ways.

Dry your eyes, mate

What makes men cry? BBC's magazine uses a weepy moment from cricket coach Michael Vaughan (above) to make a list. The comments section, though, notably expands it.

From the you-can't-make-this-stuff-up dep't

Exhibit A.

Gas prices: rockets and feathers

What goes up, must come down ... but not as quickly. That's the conventional wisdom with gas prices, right?

Yep. Slate has more.

(The above image, by the way, is a screengrab I did from a video image for work last fall. It's been featured a lot on CBC stories since ... all part of my unofficial duties of screengrab-of-gas-customer-maker.)