Nicholas Carr argues that the “advantage” (yes, those are air quotes) of the physically printed word vs the digital is that it has typographical fixity.

At the simplest and most fundamental level, typographical fixity means that when you have a page printed in ink, you’re able to trust that the page will maintain its integrity; when you pick it up tomorrow, or twenty years from now, its contents will be the same as what you see today. The printing press didn’t create this type of fixity – it was there with the scribal book, the scroll, and certainly the stone tablet – but it did extend it into the modern age.

Simen of Enthusiasms explores the mystery and history of the GIF.

From a technical standpoint, the success of the lowly GIF is a mystery. Both as an image format and as a video/animation format, it’s vastly inferior to the alternatives. It only supports 256 colors; its compression is inefficient; it doesn’t support sound; the last specification was published more than twenty years ago. Yet it’s still thriving.

It’s some super geeky stuff.

This is what I mean when I say that “clicks have consequences”: our information diets online have an ethical consequence to our social community. By watching video of the adorable kittens or by reading online that story about the Kardashians, you’re not only doing yourself a disservice, you’re actually telling editors to write more stuff like that, at the expense of other stuff. The ethical consequences of a poor information diet are more direct and immediate than the environmental consequences of eating meat.

Do yourself a favor and read The Information Diet.

Jeff Atwood on the problem of the iPhone of only having one hardware button. He argues that the home button has too many things assigned to it. Think about it. You use it to get out of an app, to go to the first page, to go to the search window (if you’re in already in the first page), to put apps in wiggle mode, and many others. He put up a diagram of all the complexity that one hardware button does.

I’ve gotten to the point where I dread using the home button on my iPhone because it Makes Me Think. And I get it wrong a significant percentage of the time. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.

Super great Talk Show and feel better now hearing what he had to say about it. Must listen.

Cannot be unseen. Check out the rest of the pics at Geekosystem.

Friedman on why the middle class’s pockets keep shrinking.

In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle. But, today, average is officially over. Being average just won’t earn you what it used to. It can’t when so many more employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation and cheap genius. Therefore, everyone needs to find their extra — their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment. Average is over.

Cut’s like a knife.

Today, anyone can create their own Codecademy lesson. We’re also expanding beyond JavaScript – lessons can be created in Ruby or Python too! The lessons are just as interactive and exciting as the ones that Codecademy itself has created. We’ll be featuring the best lessons prominently on the site as well.

Here’s the web tool to create the courses.

It doesn’t matter if you’re an Apple fan or not, this is concerning. This should concern you. If you’re into computers and gadgets, this should concern you. Because if you read the articles you’ll see that factories like Foxconn don’t just make stuff for Apple, but for other companies like Dell, HP, and others. And it’s not a political thing. Deciding not to buy an Apple product wont make things better. But being aware of it might help a bit.

So why this focus on Apple, since other technology companies also outsource to third world countries? One answer is that they’re the top dogs right now. But I also think it’s because Apple, at least for us Apple partisans,(see episode 46 of Hypercritical), should do better. It’s a company that is held in a higher esteem because they represent higher values. They’re mission is not just to make a profit, or to just make beautiful computers and gadgets. They exist “to change the world.” Right?

So I’m surprised, and a bit disappointed, when John Gruber the other day linked to the NyTime article. I’m disappointed because in that link-post, Gruber did what he’s constantly being accused of doing. Even without saying anything, because all he did was link to the article, paste a negative pull quote, and link to Tim Cook’s email. What he did was very Apple partisan of him, or more colloquially, very Apple fanboy of him. Sure, an email from Tim Cook responding that Apple cares is “objectively” refuting what was in the quote, but that’s it? That’s all he’s going to say about it?

Maybe Gruber doesn’t feel qualified to tackle a complex subject such as human rights and working conditions in third world countries. But he could, if he wanted to. And you kind of expect him to. All those words and in depth analysis he has given to the iBooks EULA thing, or the iPhone mute/ring wars. He could give at least a couple of paragraphs. Maybe I’m being full of shit here, and he does have something in the works, being that he was at Macworld this past week, but till now all he gave us was a link. At least for me, that is not enough and his opinion on this is as important to me, and even more so, as his opinion on if force-quitting iOS apps really makes the iPhone faster.

*Update – Gruber did had some great stuff to say on the latest The Talk Show.

Ice Cube gives us a tour of LA and the Eames house.

I know that this is old-ish by internet standards, but this is so full of win.