Links for Wednesday April 2nd 2014

Links for Friday March 28th 2014

Web Hosting For App Developers
Marco Arment articulates some basic truths about app hosting. Noting this for future reference, because clients occaisionally ask us if they could save money with cloud hosting, and the answer is generally no.

Placed iBeacon based app shortcuts
This might be useful, if I finally get around to buying some of those iBeacon kits.

27 Reasons Why You’re Still Watching “The West Wing”
I really did/do love that show. In fact, I honestly worry about people who don't. I suspect they may have something wrong with them. Something really quite fundamental.

The Case For Columbo
I now wish to watch more Columbo. I've seen the odd episode before, but I've never really had a go at the full canon, as it were.

BBC News – The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
This is an absolutely fantastic story about a man who has invented something that genuinely makes life better for some of the poorest women in the world.

Only 90s Web Developers Remember This
And boy, do I remember some of these. The twitching has almost stopped…
clutter – Opt out of Dropbox’s arbitration clause – Opt out of Dropbox’s arbitration clause
If you use Dropbox, I urge you to go here, read this, and then opt out of the new TOS clause. Dropbox is still a great service, and I hope it will never matter that I've done this, but the clause is a bad idea – I don't want my rights limited if something *should* go wrong – even if I never exercise them. All that said: I'm impressed they've made it easy to opt out of this clause.

Kintsugi – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Found this via Del. Brilliant and fascinating concept, the idea of using repair to add value and even beauty to damaged things.
An Exciting Announcement | Newspaper Club
Newspaper club are now doing a PoD service. This is the proper interesting. OK, it's not terribly cheap, but as a notionally interesting object, a 24 page newspaper for a fiver seems saleable to me.

The Year of Code’s neoliberal agenda – Adrian Short
I completely support teaching young people a basic understand of what it means to code – I think it's an increasingly vital skill to understand, even if one does not wish to do it professionally, in much the same way I think it's a good idea to have an understand of the rough shape of legal proceedings, and how the law works, even if you're not a lawyer. What I absolutely *no not* support, as expressed on this bit of writing, is teaching the idea that it is only of value to learn a skill because it will make you money. All the skills I am proudest of, and derive the most personal satisfaction from, are the ones that I *do not want* to commercialise, and we should be teaching our kids that *learning* is good, not "skills acquisition".

Beautiful Games gallery: football fonts | Football | theguardian.com
I have close to fuck-all interest in football, but I do like studies of unusual uses for type.