Post(s) tagged with "marco arment"

Marco Arment Sells Majority Stake In Instapaper To Betaworks

The next generation of Instapaper – Marco.org

I’m happy to announce that I’ve sold a majority stake in Instapaper to Betaworks. We’ve structured the deal with Instapaper’s health and longevity as the top priority, with incentives to keep it going well into the future. I will continue advising the project indefinitely, while Betaworks will take over its operations, expand its staff, and develop it further.

I’ve known Betaworks for years, and I’ve spent a lot of lunches at their office. They have great engineering talent, great product direction, and plenty of experience running services at Instapaper’s scale. I wouldn’t put Instapaper in just anyone’s hands, and I know that they’ll do right by it.

With Betaworks’ drive and resources now behind it, I’m confident that Instapaper has a very bright future. I’m looking forward to seeing what they can do.

I think Borthwick & Co is exactly the right group to see this to the next level, too.

As an avid user of Instapaper, I have a few thoughts that I will put to paper, mostly about what goes on after hitting the ‘archive’ button, because I want to hold onto many links, and share them with others. And for that, I have been trying out a long list of interesting but incomplete tools, like Dispatch.io, Mightybell.com, and others. Best would be a single tool, which could be Son of Instapaper.

More to follow.

Congratulations to Betaworks and Marco.

Source: marco.org

26 April 2013 12 Permalink
instapapermarco armentjohn borthwickbetaworks
Microsoft’s developer problem – Marco.org ⇢

Marco Arment doesn’t actually say that Microsoft Surface or Windows 8 smartphones are doomed, but he cuts to the chase pretty fast: Microsoft is in real trouble because they are starting with next to zero apps, and app developers — like Marco — have migrated off Windows onto Mac:

Marco Arment via Marco.org

By 2005 or so, most of those developers were working on web apps. The web was the platform for that kind of work for most of that decade.2

And during that decade, almost every such developer I knew switched to the Mac if they weren’t already there, partly because it was better for developing web apps.3

That’s one of the biggest reasons there was so much pent-up developer interest in the iPhone before the App Store opened: these consumer-product developers were all using Macs already. As the dominant consumer platform shifted from the web to apps over the last four years, most talented consumer-product developers built products for their app platform of choice during that time: the Apple ecosystem.

Many Windows developers were upset that iOS development had to be done on a Mac, but it didn’t hurt Apple: the most important developers for iOS apps were already using Macs.

But the success of Windows 8 and Windows Phone in the consumer space requires many of those consumer-product developers, now entrenched in the Apple ecosystem, to care so much about Windows development that they want to use Windows to develop for it.

How likely is that?

Anything’s possible, but that’s going to be an uphill battle.

Actually, I don’t think that anything’s possible. But Microsoft might be able sway some developers by subsidizing development of critical apps, as reported by Bijan Sabet. I don’t think that will be enough.

25 June 2012 16 Permalink
microsoftmarco armentmicrosoft surfacetabletsappleiphonewindowswindows 8iosipad
Elena by Nicole Dotin I was happy to read that a new version — 4.1 — of Instapaper has been released for iPhone and iPad. I don’t read via Instapaper on my iPhone much, but now that I am reacquainting myself with my iPad, I will have to take another look. One thing that caught my eye is that Marco Arment has included a number of new fonts, including Elena, which is now the default font for Instapaper on iPhone and iPad. Perhaps the current fonts are part of the reason I don’t read on my iPhone much, I immediately wondered. Marco said that on these devices, the fonts had to meet stringent requirements: Marco Arment, Introducing Instapaper 4.1 for Iphone, iPad I’ve spent a lot of time testing fonts recently.2 My criteria were: Every font had to be extremely readable in a wide range of sizes, since Instapaper’s fonts are highly adjustable.3 Every font needed to look good on Retina and non-Retina iPhone and iPad screens. Every font needed to be licensable for apps. (Easier said than done.) I didn’t want to overwhelm people with a barrage of slightly different choices. I wanted to offer just six — three serifs and three sans-serifs — and cover a wide range of styles and tastes, so every font needed to be sufficiently different from the others. So I clicked through to learn about Elena, created by Nicole Dotin: Elena: For text that’s meant to be read. The design of a new serif typeface meant for extended reading is an exercise in subtlety and restraint. The type designer traveling this path is faced with a limited and abstract palette with which to build unique character – stem widths, counter shapes, proportions, terminations and so on. Elena is a manipulation of these subtleties in a direct and unaffected way to create a modern serif typeface quietly balancing warmth with a crisp, tailored tone. Central to this typographic balancing act is a rejection of extremes. Serif typefaces meant for continuous reading quickly turn bookish and old-fashioned when rote historicism is the singular influence. On the other hand, a designer attempting to capture a contemporary voice may strip or exaggerate details only to find that grace and ease went with them. Elena merges these two ideological opposites by heeding the lessons of the past while taking advantage of formal possibilities no matter their origin. The result is a low contrast typeface of economical proportions, moderate x-height and spare details. The influence of the broad-nibbed pen is conspicuous but tempered by a discreet reinterpretation of its shapes. Soft, brush-like terminations in the lowercase lend an organic note while fluid, tense curves mixed with a strong horizontal movement create a structured counterpoint. From its conception, Elena was designed to serve two basic typesetting functions: text for continuous reading and display work of moderate size. Following from this, the typeface was tested extensively for text sizes between 6 and 14 point and for display sizes between 14 and 48 point. As such, magazines, books and publications of all types would be well served by this compact, two-weight family. As with all of our typefaces intended for complex typographic tasks, a suite of related parts naturally follows. Small caps, lining figures, tabular lining figures, small cap figures, tabular figures and arrows are all included in the full version of the design. If this sounds excessive for your job, we’ve also designed a basic version with – you guessed it – just the basics for simple tasks and web use with the CSS @font-face rule. Elena is available exclusively at the Process Type Foundry. I look forward to looking at it. Marco’s list also includes these others: Lyon Text by Kai Bernau FF Tisa by Mitja Miklavčič Ideal Sans by Hoefler & Frere-Jones FF Meta by Erik Spiekermann Proxima Nova by Mark Simonson

Elena by Nicole Dotin


I was happy to read that a new version — 4.1 — of Instapaper has been released for iPhone and iPad. I don’t read via Instapaper on my iPhone much, but now that I am reacquainting myself with my iPad, I will have to take another look.

One thing that caught my eye is that Marco Arment has included a number of new fonts, including Elena, which is now the default font for Instapaper on iPhone and iPad. Perhaps the current fonts are part of the reason I don’t read on my iPhone much, I immediately wondered.

Marco said that on these devices, the fonts had to meet stringent requirements:

Marco Arment, Introducing Instapaper 4.1 for Iphone, iPad

I’ve spent a lot of time testing fonts recently.2 My criteria were:

  • Every font had to be extremely readable in a wide range of sizes, since Instapaper’s fonts are highly adjustable.3
  • Every font needed to look good on Retina and non-Retina iPhone and iPad screens.
  • Every font needed to be licensable for apps. (Easier said than done.)
  • I didn’t want to overwhelm people with a barrage of slightly different choices. I wanted to offer just six — three serifs and three sans-serifs — and cover a wide range of styles and tastes, so every font needed to be sufficiently different from the others.

So I clicked through to learn about Elena, created by Nicole Dotin:

Elena: For text that’s meant to be read.

The design of a new serif typeface meant for extended reading is an exercise in subtlety and restraint. The type designer traveling this path is faced with a limited and abstract palette with which to build unique character – stem widths, counter shapes, proportions, terminations and so on. Elena is a manipulation of these subtleties in a direct and unaffected way to create a modern serif typeface quietly balancing warmth with a crisp, tailored tone.

Elena Font Specimen

Central to this typographic balancing act is a rejection of extremes. Serif typefaces meant for continuous reading quickly turn bookish and old-fashioned when rote historicism is the singular influence. On the other hand, a designer attempting to capture a contemporary voice may strip or exaggerate details only to find that grace and ease went with them. Elena merges these two ideological opposites by heeding the lessons of the past while taking advantage of formal possibilities no matter their origin.

Elena Font Specimen

The result is a low contrast typeface of economical proportions, moderate x-height and spare details. The influence of the broad-nibbed pen is conspicuous but tempered by a discreet reinterpretation of its shapes. Soft, brush-like terminations in the lowercase lend an
organic note while fluid, tense curves mixed with a strong horizontal movement create a structured counterpoint.

From its conception, Elena was designed to serve two basic typesetting functions: text for continuous reading and display work of moderate size. Following from this, the typeface was tested extensively for text sizes between 6 and 14 point and for display sizes between 14 and 48 point. As such, magazines, books and publications of all types would be well served by this compact, two-weight family.

Elena Font Specimen

As with all of our typefaces intended for complex typographic tasks, a suite of related parts naturally follows. Small caps, lining figures, tabular lining figures, small cap figures, tabular figures and arrows are all included in the full version of the design. If this sounds excessive for your job, we’ve also designed a basic version with – you guessed it – just the basics for simple tasks and web use with the CSS @font-face rule.

Elena is available exclusively at the Process Type Foundry.


I look forward to looking at it.

Marco’s list also includes these others:

18 March 2012 3 Permalink
instapaper 4.1instapaperreading fontsmarco armentelenanicole dotinfontstypefaces
I’m not a “curator” – Marco.org ⇢

I wrote recently about Maria Popova’s promoting some very hard-to-use microsyntax for curation, called Curator’s Code. The skinny? In principle, I’m down with making a distinction between via and h/t (hat tip), but I don’t think that her symbology, ᔥ and ↬, respectively, will catch on: Too hard to use, and they don’t add anything to the well-established via and h/t.

Marco Arment weighs in on the discovery angle:

Marco Arment via Marco.org

I completely disagree with Popova on the value of discovery.

The value of authorship is much more clear. But regardless of how much time it takes to find interesting links every day, I don’t think most intermediaries deserve credit for simply sharing a link to someone else’s work.

Reliably linking to great work is a good way to build an audience for your site. That’s your compensation.

But if another link-blogger posts a link they found from your link-blog, I don’t think they need to credit you. Discovering something doesn’t transfer any ownership to you. Therefore, I don’t think anyone needs to give you credit for showing them the way to something great, since it’s not yours. Some might as a courtesy, but it shouldn’t be considered an obligation.

Every link-blogger has their own standards for when to use a “via” link (or a “hat-tip” — again, I doubt most of us know the difference). I add a “via” if it’s convenient (if I can remember where I found the link) and I probably wouldn’t have seen it from any other sources.

If your standard is never to add a “via” to intermediate linkers, even when I am an intermediate linker, that’s fine with me, too.

And my syntax for adding a “via” link is… a link, often prepended by the word “via”. My readers understand.

[…]

The proper place for ethics and codes is in ensuring that a reasonable number of people go to the source instead of just reading your rehash.

Codifying “via” links with confusing symbols is solving the wrong problem.

14 March 2012 4 Permalink
curationcuration codesmaria popovamarco armentmicrosyntax
What Safari’s Reading List means for Instapaper – Marco Arment ⇢

Beware of any prognostications that end with ‘time will tell’.

I have to admit, when I heard the announcement about Reading List, I said ‘that’s the end of Instapaper’ but on reflection, it won’t be. There are many other browsers out there, and it remains to be seen if Apple is providing an API to the Reading List service of Safari. If they do provide that service, I think Instapaper has a difficult way forward, however.

7 June 2011 3 Permalink
apple reading listsafariinstapapermarco arment
I’m a big believer in human curators. Algorithms alone do a terrible job of predicting what will be interesting to readers.

Instapaper founder Marco Arment at Studiomates lunch (via curiositycounts)

If you replace “readers” with “listeners”… it’s the same dynamic. Humans matter.

(via danielholter)

Most definitely yes.

(via mikehudack)

Yay. (via brysmi)

Source: curiositycounts

25 May 2011 135 brysmi Permalink
curationmarco arment
Marco.org - Job transition ⇢

Job transition

After four years of my serving as Tumblr’s lead developer, Tumblr’s technical management needs have evolved to require types of experience that I don’t have, and my independent career has offered a lot of opportunities that I haven’t had the time to take full advantage of.

Marco Arment, the lead developer at Tumblr, is heading off to do other things. It sounds amicable, but…

It’s definitely time for Marco to do something structural with Instapaper, the ‘read later’ application, which is his baby.

The thinking among the smart people I talk to is that Instapaper definitely steps over the line of fair use, since it strips out ads in the ‘text view’.

Either Instapaper has to become a real company and figure out how to pay publishers for use, or he might have to redesign or shut down.

Right now, dozens of other services are integrating with Instaper — I just bumped into another iPhone Twitter client called Weet that does — and this is going to draw the attention of big media companies, inevitably. I bet he is only one step ahead of cease&desist.

22 September 2010 Permalink
marco armenttumblrinstapaper
Marco.org - More ideas than time: Logarithmic calendar view ⇢

Marco Arment argues that since time is relative — things near us have greater weight than those far away — why should the level of detail in calendar entries be the same regardless of closeness in time?

The same observations hold with regard to the posts in streams like Twitter: those posts most likely to be important — items from your closest contacts, or posts that many have reposted — should be larger than others. And all posts in a stream don’t need to move at the same rate of speed: the stream could more like Techmeme and less like a chat session.

Source: marco.org

4 August 2010 Permalink
logarithmic timetwitterstreamscalendarsmarco arment

About

Web anthropologist, futurist, author. My focus is the future, and the tectonic forces pushing business, media, and society into an unclear and accelerating future. more.

Working on longer format projects, Sign up for the newsletter.

GigaOM Research analyst and curator.

Also writing beaconstreets.com.

Contact me. or ask me a question.



My Vizify profile.

Socialogy

  • John Hagel | John offers up some great insights, like the fact that passion is lower the larger that businesses get.

  • Euan Semple | A chat with my old pal, and the author of Organizations Don't Tweet, People Do

  • Will McInnes | The author of Culture Shock and managing director of Nixon/McInnes

  • Jennifer Magnolfi | An interview with the woman who said, 'Work is not a place you go, it's a thing you do'.

    • Hot Now

  • What Drives Us? | A draft chapter of my book, discussing motivations, Maslow's hierarchy, and fluidarity.

  • Socialogy: Interview With John Hagel | I Speak with Joh Hagel about the innovation at the edge.

  • Complex organisation arises from webs of interaction among causal factors | So, it turns out that DNA is, in fact, a great metaphor for business culture, but only after you realize that DNA is not a few hundred off-on switches, but instead a universe of unknowable complexities, that we can interact with, and understand at some abstract cartoonish level, but not control, and never fully comprehend.

  • Bitcoin May Be the Global Economy’s Last Safe Haven | Paul Ford

  • Innovators Get Better With Age | Companies make a mistake by relying too much on the innoations of the young, because Nobel laureats don't come into their prime until their 50s.

    • Oldie

  • Infodemics | 2009 | Passing incomplete or inaccurate information about some risk event can make people take actions that increase the damage of the event itself.

    • Lynx theme created by Andrew Stichbury for Tumblr.