Dave Winer writes about the intermingling of of tech and advertising (via Brent Simmons): The tech industry has been absorbed by the ad industry, and vice versa. However, there is, imho, still room for a tech industry that is not merged with the ad industry. I’ll take this a step further: advertising is on the [...]

For those who don’t know the history, MarsEdit didn’t originate here at Red Sweater. I acquired the software from Newsgator in early 2007 (wow, coming up on 5 years!), and it had been developed originally by Brent Simmons as a feature of NetNewsWire. Brent told me at one point that it was called MarsEdit, because [...]

Marco Arment wrote about the negative impression he had when, after paying $4.99 for a single digital issue of The New Yorker, he was nonetheless subjected to advertisements. He calls the combination of up-front purchase combined with an advertising subsidy “double-dipping,” implying that the content providers are somehow charging you twice for the same product. [...]

I was kept up late last night with the news from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings that the company would split into two. Of course, it didn’t take me long to deliver several of my own choice thoughts about the announcement, including: This heartfelt apology and explanation from @Netflix sounded good until “Qwikster.” Serious branding failure. [...]