Today, we’re reading Chris Anderson’s flame-bait lead article in Wired (‘The Web is Dead’) on how the proliferation of apps and streaming services is on the Internet is making the Web obsolete (i.e. the World Wide Web of HTML pages we view through the browser). Ironic, coming in the same week as when Facebook, one of the world’s most popular websites, announced location sharing with Places. I jumped immediately to Lifehacker’s guide to disabling Places (including preventing friends from disclosing your location). Entertaining but irrelvant, TechCrunch noticed the Facebook Places logo is a ‘4 in a square.
We also read this fascinating analysis of how Apple and RIM have upended the mobile market in the last 3 years (they went from a total of 7% share of industry profits in 2007 to 65% this year.) Astounding: Apple makes 48% of all industry profits with a 3% market share. And earlier this week, we read about Stephen Wolfram’s computer setup (although I’d love to know more about his actual workflow). As an aside, one of the emails in this screenshot of the new ‘stacked cards’ interface in Gmail for iPad is hilarious. Spot why.
In non-tech, James Fallows from the Atlantic returns to Japan, where he lived in the 80s, and laments that it seems content with itself, no longer ambitious. (but what, in any case, is wrong with that?). The New York Times describes, in a lengthy article, the realization that there’s a new, distinct life stage (’emerging adulthood’?), using this to explain why so many of today’s American 20-somethings are moving back in with their parents, putting off marriage, taking much longer to find a job or ‘start a career’. And the Wall Street Journal writes about some investment avenues that are open only to the very rich in India.
Away from the computer, we’re beginning ‘God is back‘, a chronicle about the resurgence of religion globally, ‘Imaginary Homelands‘, a collection of esasys in the 80s by Salman Rushdie, and polishing off ‘The Lost Continent‘, Bill Bryson’s travels in small-town America and ‘Alwaleed‘, a biography (although authorized) or the Saudi wunderinvestor prince.