Nostalgia

2010 July 20
tags: ,
by Tim Hanlon

Macpaint

Some time in 1985, my father brought home a Macintosh. While he played with MacPaint, my two-year-old self appeared behind him, commandeered the mouse, and had his little mind blown. (While I seem to have turned out alright, it is a shame about Apple.)

The reason I am writing this is because the source code to the first computer program I ever used is now in a museum.

This is the thanks you get for breaking news?

2010 July 6
by Tim Hanlon
Thanks, Google

Thanks, Google

Gizmag breaks a story with 2280 words, 42 images and a video. Engadget covers it and goes straight to #1 in the SERPs. Don’t let anyone tell you that search is solved.

In an attempt to push things in the right direction, you should go check out the Canon Wonder Camera. The future is awesome.

Keep an idea log

2010 June 4
by Tim Hanlon

Keep an idea log

This is the best advice I’ve received in a long time. Thanks Josh!

Found at Startup Quote.

New Matilda goes under (or, lessons in how not to run a new media startup)

2010 May 27
by Tim Hanlon

Sad news today with New Matilda announcing they’ll be ceasing business on June 25, after failing to turn a profit in over six years online.

Editor Marni Cordell writes:

“The big media players are struggling to find a workable online business model that allows them to pay their writers and maintain high standards — and so are we. Since we already run a very lean operation, cutting costs is not an option and we are taking the only path available to us at this time.”

As Duncan Riley says, “There’s nothing hard about covering your costs and living within your means.” Gizmag’s modus operandi has always been “do more with less” – and we’ve been profitable for years as a result of our frugality.

read more…

Smartphones and synthesizers

2010 March 25
by Tim Hanlon

With CTIA 2010 in full swing, I jumped back behind the reins at The Mobiler for the week and published over 40 posts. There’s been some gorgeous phones announced, namely the first “4G” (WiMAX, not LTE) handset, the HTC EVO 4G (which is the sexiest pairing of Android and the 1GHz Snapdragon processor to date) – it’s headed to Sprint’s WiMAX network this year.

…but the coolest thing I wrote about this week wasn’t a smartphone.

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Quantcast goes global

2010 March 12
by Tim Hanlon

Quantcast has just launched a massive update, making a giant leap from US-centric to global.

This is what our monthly global audience graph looks like now:

Monthly global audience graph for Gizmag

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What we don’t want our art to be like…

2010 March 10
by Tim Hanlon

…is often the greater influence.

via @GreatDismal (aka William Gibson)

My favorite graph

2010 March 8
by Tim Hanlon

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Scareware (or malvertising) and tips for dealing with ad networks

2010 March 5
by Tim Hanlon

Having just fought (and thankfully, won) a week-long battle against scareware (Google calls it malvertising) appearing on Gizmag, I wanted to do a brain dump of what I’ve learned along the way.

Every time a user experiences this kind of “advertising”, it’s damaging the user’s experience, the site and its relationship with its readers, the advertising network itself and the industry as a whole – no doubt a significant percentage of AdBlock installations have been a result of scareware.

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Australian journalists on Twitter

2009 March 23
by Tim Hanlon

I spent some time this afternoon messing around with the Twitter API to create this list of Australian journalists on Twitter. I just did a quick scan of the people I follow, so it’s mostly tech people. If you want to be added to the list, send an @reply to @imtimhanlon or leave a comment.

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