February 16, 2019
This is probably one of the most photographed areas of Brooklyn, maybe all of New York, but I still love it. Taken just beyond Water St. on Washington in DUMBO. It was too foggy out on this day last December to see the top of the Empire State Building behind the bridge, but it's still there somewhere.
February 13, 2019
Craig Mod, with an excellent piece about email newsletters:
Newsletters and newsletter startups these days are like mushrooms in an open field after a good spring rain. I don’t know a single writer who isn’t newslettering or newsletter-curious, and for many, the newsletter is where they’re doing their finest public work.
His new newsletter is called Ridgeline and it’s wonderful.
February 13, 2019
Benjamin Mullin, Lukas I. Alpert and Tripp Mickle, for The Wall Street Journal:
In its pitch to some news organizations, the Cupertino, Calif., company has said it would keep about half of the subscription revenue from the service, the people said. The service, described by industry executives as a "Netflix for news," would allow users to read an unlimited amount of content from participating publishers for a monthly fee. It is expected to launch later this year as a paid tier of the Apple News app, the people said.
The rest of the revenue would go into a pool that would be divided among publishers according to the amount of time users spend engaged with their articles, the people said. Representatives from Apple have told publishers that the subscription service could be priced at about $10 a month, similar to Apple's streaming music service, but the final price could change, some of the people said.
I’ve been spending a lot of my time lately working in and around the publishing industry. As a whole the industry's concerns are almost always tied to declining revenue, legacy high-costs, and therefore reduced or non-existent profits. I find it difficult to believe that any publisher is willing to take a 50% cut on revenue. Apple would need to deliver a massive upswing in subscribers for this to even be a conversation.
February 9, 2019
Taken from atop the High Line looking down West 14th Street on a cold early New York morning.
February 3, 2019
Frank Bruni, with a nice piece about Tony Romo ahead of tonight's Super Bowl:
Romo, 38, previously spent more than a decade as a quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys. He was great but he wasn't great, and with him as its leader, the team never went all the way. In a twist that's testament to second acts in American lives, he's doing something as a star for CBS that he never did as a star for the Cowboys: going to the Super Bowl. I suppose that's fitting, because he's more than great in his current gig. He's peerless. And he's a sensation.
January 23, 2019
Speaking of Jack Dorsey, it looks like he is making the PR rounds this week. He’s also featured in a nice piece at Rolling Stone.
I liked this bit where he responds to Seth Rogen’s concern that racists were being verified on Twitter:
That was heartbreaking. I DM’d him, and we got on the phone together. He said to me, “I’m surprised at myself for not hanging up…But I think you have the right intent. But you all are terrible communicators.” I agree, we have been bad at communication, we haven’t been as forthright as we need to, we certainly haven’t been as transparent. We do care deeply. But we need to do it in scalable ways. This work doesn’t happen overnight.
January 23, 2019
I really enjoyed this interview with Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, by Bill Simmons. Twitter is still a fascinating company to me despite its problems. Bill Simmons pulls no punches asking tough questions about harassment, Twitter’s role in politics, Trump, and controversial features like editing tweets.
There’s also a nice trip down memory lane with discussion of Twitter’s early days and how it came to be. (I remember vividly using the text message version of Twitter at SXSW in 2007. A simpler time.)
January 19, 2019
Pine trees seen near North East, Pennsylvania.
January 17, 2019
Slack:
Today we’re launching a new logo, as we start to refresh our look in general. We loved our old logo, and look, and know many felt the same. And yet, here we are to explain why we decided to evolve it.
The design work was done by Pentagram.
Change is hard, and I’ve been so used to seeing the familiar Slack icon for years that this will take some getting used to. The logo itself doesn’t bother me near as much as the awful dark purple background behind it.
Related:
January 16, 2019
Rocks, bricks, and some driftwood pieces on the shores of Lake Erie in New York.
January 12, 2019
It’s a cold day in Texas and I’m missing the beach. Taken last fall during a business trip to Soho Beach House, Miami. A lovely place to begin working on a new project.
December 30, 2018
December 25, 2018
“Christmas trees” on the shores of Lake Erie near the city of Dunkirk, New York.
December 20, 2018
It's that time of year again for the annual Christmas tree trip. Some views from the tree farm in East Texas earlier this month.
November 28, 2018
Scenes from an early morning walk through New Orleans this summer.
October 16, 2017
Great new update to the app I spend more time using than anything else.