DESIGN, BUSINESS & INNOVATION

Image via Yahoo!

You might not have noticed yet, but if you have an iPhone the new U2 album is sitting there in your Music Library. Thanks to Daniel Bean now you can learn how to get rid of it. "During the company’s iPhone and Apple Watch event Tuesday, Cook was joined on stage by the band and explained that the collection of 11 songs, which you know by now is titled Songs of Innocence, would be “going out for free” on iTunes. What wasn’t explained at the time was that it would be gifted to us whether we liked it or not and be a son of a gun to get rid of if we didn’t feel like looking at it on our iPhones." Read it in Yahoo! E.T.P. 3' (absolutely worth it, of course).

PS. BTW, apparently Apple spent US$ 100 million to buy you that U2 album... and they say that musicians don't sell albums anymore. 

Photo via WIRED.

And since we are on it, let's have a look at Wired's article: The Disappointing Design of Apple's New Gadgets by Gadi Amit. "Apple’s software environment is innovative and clearly superior in cohesion and experience, but its industrial design is what we were all watching for this week at the launch of the iPhone 6, 6 Plus and Apple Watch. The centrality of Apple’s industrial design is Steve Jobs’ legacy; it is what dictates Apple’s brand dominance, its marketing storyline and its strong effect on every one of us. And it is here where Apple went slightly wrong." Read full article in Wired. E.T.P. 6'

Great selection of New York Fashion Week SS15 collections made GIFs: From Proenza Schouler's country club vixen to Wang's love letter to sneakerheads. Links to photos of the collections included. Have a look in Dazed Magazine. E.T.P. 7' 

Photo: BBC's Sherlock via Quartz.

Leo Mirani writes an intersting article in Quartz: Why people love paying for Netflix but hate paying for the BBC. The key might be as having the choice. " It is the voluntary nature of Netflix that makes subscribers feel like they’re getting value. If they spend hours browsing, they conclude it is they who are indecisive, not the service that is lacking in choice. If they don’t like it, they can stop paying. Perception of the BBC is tainted by its compulsory nature. Despite the tremendous news-gathering, Sherlock, Planet Earth, and all the other flagship shows, the British public resents not having a choice in the matter. Yet that is what makes the BBC what it is; without the mandatory fee, it would slowly crumble. It is this dichotomy that both the network and the public must live with." Read full article in Quartz. E.T.P. 3'

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Canal Cultura collected links for over 200 documentaries available to watch online. The documentaries cover everything from music and cinema, to literature, religion, politics and physics. From Buena Vista Social Club and Dial H for Hitchcock, to Derrida and Einstein's Brain. As Canal Cultura points out, these pieces are thought-provoking, eye-opening, and enlightening. Definitely this is what we call meaningful procrastination. Have a look in Canal Cultura website. E.T.P. Endless (ok, it has a end, but a very distant one.)

Photo: Mozart in the Jungle via Wired.

Graeme McMillan writes in Wired: "Amazon announced today that six more shows from its Amazon Originals program will be made into full series, following viewer input on the pilot episodes the company released last month. The big surprise? That the right shows made the cut." Read full article in Wired. E.T.P. 3'

Photo: The Procrastinator (some) Times.

"French Radio London created a series of bi-lingual podcasts during the Totally Serialized festival, 2014 edition at the Institut français". Here is an interesting one, continuing with the TV theme, about Netflix and the future of broadcasting television. Listen in Culturètheque. E.T.P. 5'

DESIGN, BUSINESS & INNOVATION

 Illustration by Edel Rodriguez via Wired.

Have you ever heard about the Darknet? A network of secretive websites that can’t be viewed on the “regular” Internet. Mostly used for illicit purposes from drugs, arms sales or pedophilia. Darknet sites are hosted on regular servers, but to access them you need special software, usually something that encrypts all users’ traffic and allows them relative anonymity. Read all about it in this article by Clive Thompson in Wired. E.T.P.: 3'45''

Photo: The Procrastinator (some) Times.

Earlier this week Leo Miriani wrote in Quartz: Forget Big Data: the future is Small Data, and Facebook just bought it. Onavo, an Israeli start-up, whose flagship product is a data compressor. When you browse a web page or use an app on your phone, Onavo routes the traffic through its servers, where it compresses and optimizes the data before sending it on to the phone. Call it “small data.” The result is you see exactly the same web page but less data comes out of your plan. Sounds good, right? Well, Facebook thought so too. Read full article here. E.T.P.: 1'20''

Photo: Reuters via The Atlantic.


Interesting article in The Atlantic: Netflix was supposed to kill cable, so why is it beggining to join cable? "Netflix is in serious talks with Comcast and other pay-TV providers to hop onto the cable bundle as a stand-alone channel. Add it to the list of tech companies—Apple, Google, Microsoft, Intel—who have internally debated trying to "disrupt" the cable TV business, but have wound up working with the cable companies (e.g.: Apple, Xbox) or simply built their own cable equivalent (Google Fiber TV)." Read full article here.