We love what we know and we’re afraid of what we don’t, so we don’t want to see our old friend replaced with this new thing. It’s irrational, but it’s human nature. When we look at our parents and grandparents we don’t see a crowd of pudgy gray-haired wrinkle factories… we see our history. We love them even when they start smelling weird and wheezing all the time. We wouldn’t dream of replacing them.

Our mistaking a familiarity bias for inherent superiority is where our gut reaction against iOS 7 comes from. It’s a kind of xenophobia. Apple took our beloved iPhone and gave it back to us a stranger. Still walks and talks the same, still the heart and soul we love; just not the face we knew.

—Chris Clark has some advice for everyone freaking out about the new iOS.

Retiring Chrome Frame

Google is retiring Chrome Frame, the plug-in that let Internet Explorer act like Chrome. I was pretty excited about Chrome Frame when it debuted and even though it never really saw much use, I see this as a victory. Late model versions of IE are quite good and the web of 2013 has little need for these small, if elegant, hacks.

daniel sinker: Tapped out: Phone monitoring, young love, and me.

apophatic:

you will never look cool wearing google glass, especially when taking pictures. 

Apple’s tax bill is a window into the global post-industrial economy, and all its problems

I was trying to think of what to write about today’s Apple and taxes Congressional hearing, as it intersects both my political and tech partisanship, and but Quartz wrote this excellent analysis.

I will say this whole story seems to be engendering a fair amount of cognitive dissonance — who would imagine a supporting quote from Rand Paul on Daring Fireball, for instance. While I do think it’s a bit unfair that Apple seems to be singled out for doing what nearly every multinational corporation in America is also doing, I’d prefer Apple hewed a bit more closely to the spirit of the law.

That said, I genuinely believe Tim Cook wants to do what’s right and is committed to helping fix some of the more glaring problems with the tax code so that Apple, and its competitors, can do the right thing.

If you want a job in media, technology or a related field, make learning basic computer language your goal this summer. There are plenty of services—some free and others affordable—that will set you on your way. Teach yourself just enough of the grammar and the logic of computer languages to be able to see the big picture. Get acquainted with APIs. Dabble in a bit of Python. For most employers, that would be more than enough. Once you can claim familiarity with at least two programming languages, start sending out those resumes.

—

Kirk McDonald: Sorry, College Grads, I Probably Won’t Hire You - WSJ.com

This is great advice. I know it’s great advice because I’ve heard it half a bazillion times in the past year. I’d love to teach my journalism students some of these skills, but first I have to learn them. 

If you know what McDonald means by “the grammar and logic of computer languages” (I do not), I could use your help. Got any specific recommendations? Where should I start? 

(via kimlisagor)

Hi, Kim, awesome question. I disagree a little with what McDonald is saying here, specifically that knowing a little bit about programing makes one better prepared to allocate resources (I’d say the exact opposite is just as likely true) or that dabbling dilettantism for its own sake is necessarily a good thing.

However! I’m certainly a proponent of code literacy and that journalists should learn more about all aspects of the business, whether it’s how the CMS works or how ads are sold.

The highest bang/buck ratio for your students would be to learn HTML and CSS. They are going to be publishing on the web, they need to know what that means and why the CMS is throwing in stray tags or why copying and pasting from Word is probably going to get screwed up. Here’s what I’d consider a basic level of understanding:

• How HTML tags work, including attributes and nesting.
• Basic semantics and hierarchy (the difference between an h1, h2, and p tag)
• What HTML entities are, why they matter, where to look them up
• The difference between an ‘id’ and a ‘class’ and when to use them
• How to reference external media, like images
• How CSS syntax works and how to reference external stylesheets
• How to use CSS selectors
• Basic styling - color, borders, backgrounds
• What “box model” means and how this affects the width, height, padding, borders, and margins of an element
• How floats and clears work

A more intermediate to advanced level of understand would include:

• Understanding doctypes and why they matter
• Getting up to speed on the new semantic HTML5 elements like header, footer, section, article, and aside and when to use them properly
• What the DOM is
• CSS positioning
• CSS psuedo classes and elements
• How different browsers render pages
• Building fluid and adaptive layouts
• What responsive design is and how to use media queries

There are certainly plenty of things I’ve left out or forgotten but this should keep just about anyone busy for the summer.

As for programming (btw, the difference between markup, styling, and programming is another good thing to figure out), it’s tempting to think Javascript is a good language to start with. It’s ubiquitous, native to the web, and looks good on a resume, especially alongside its more comely cousin jQuery.

There are a few problems with Javascript as a starter programming language. First, you really need to understand how web pages and browsers work to really get what Javascript is doing, otherwise, it just feels like magic; a pretty intimate understanding of the DOM really helps. Javascript, as a language, has a few truly bad parts that are easy to avoid if you understand programming concepts more broadly but can be hard to get over if you’re learning the fundamentals of programming at the same time.

I’d recommend starting with a high-level, interpreted language like Python or Ruby first. They’ll run on any computer, are easy to start with, you can see the results of your programs immediately, and they don’t require anything more than a text editor. My personal preference is Python.

These days, there’s no shortage of places, many of them free and online, to learn all of this stuff. And, true to Sturgeon’s Law, most of it is crap. There are a few bright spots, some of them requiring a little bit of money.

• Treehouse is a really intriguing technology-focused learning site. They’ve got courses on building websites, building responsive websites, programming with Ruby on Rails (a web framework built on Ruby) and Javascript, even building iOS apps.
• Zed Shaw’s Learn Python the Hard Way is as excellent as it is irreverent. He starts at the very beginning and insists readers type in every line of code themselves so they can also learn how to debug and deal with syntax errors. He’s written versions for Ruby, C, SQL, and regular expressions, too.
• The Mozilla Developer’s Network is a great syntax reference for HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
• Our own Steven Frank (of Panic fame) wrote “How to Count”, it’s a great, high-level, language-agnostic overview of some of the more basic math concepts that govern computer science.
• Think Python is a wonderful introduction to programming using Python as the example language. It really does help you understand how to think like a programmer.
• For Journalism hasn’t launched just yet but promises to teach some more intermediate and advanced level programming, visualization, and data management, aimed specifically at the needs of journalists.

I hope this helps. Happy to add more or answer any questions I can.

Your pal in nerdy journalism,

Jim

Teens aren’t abandoning “social.” They’re just using the word correctly.

My pal Cliff wrote this excellent piece last week, it’s such an incisive view of the social bubble.

Newsbound explains the Chargemaster

One key part of the Affordable Care Act went into effect today, which makes the internal price lists public.

There’s something so boringly obvious about Kara Swisher’s behind-the-scenes look at how Facebook came to own Instagram. To fans of Silicon Valley drama (amongst whom Swisher seems to count herself), it’s a breathless tale of luck, determination, and picking the decisive moment to pivot. From a more critical vantage, it’s the story of a rich white son of privilege selling his company to another rich white son of privilege.

Maddeningly1, Swisher insists on writing it straight as a rags to riches story, glossing over the life of complete safety and entitlement of Instagram’s most prominent co-founder, Kevin Systrom. Prep school, four years at Stanford, startup internships, requisite time at Google – this is a well worn path in the valley (or a parallel one to Wall St.) and there’s nary a hint of what made Systrom different or interesting. If you read the story hoping to glean some lesson for selling your own zero-revenue company for a cool billion, keep looking, unless that lesson is to pick your parents well.

Perhaps there’s some cause to celebrate the waspy young turks who forsake well-groomed, upper crust New England lives in finance or medicine or law to strike out to the already tamed frontier of the valley. After all, Systrom and Zuckerberg and Bill Gates all reached further than their fellow prep-school grads to amass unimaginable wealth from silicon and social. Look no further than a Winkelvoss or (Randi) Zuckerberg to see how it could have turned out. Ultimately, though, these amount to little more than brave tales of how the 1% become the 0.1%.

The background stories of today’s robber barons amassing users and mining likes are no different than any other generation’s: wealthy scions risking little and being rewarded for their cynicism and ability to network.

Maddening, if not exactly surprising, considering the whole thing is in Vanity Fair. The day Swisher’s story was published, the second most popular story on the site was one about a hedge fund manager alongside a slideshow of beautiful people on horses. ↩︎

Jan Chipchase has written a wonderfully thoughtful essay on Google Glass