I joined Ben Brooks on this week’s B&B Podcast to fill in for Shawn. We talked about snow in Italy, the iPad 3, iPhone 5, NFC payments, and washing machines running Android.

Listen here.

Fluent looks like a great new email service, created by ex Googlers:

The three of us left Google to form Fluent out of a desire to create a communication product that is design-led, fast moving and — most importantly — pushes email into the future. A tool that accurately reflects how people communicate today and will adapt to what they want tomorrow.

They say their unique take on email is based on these principles:

• Simple conversations
• Streamlined workflow
• Access anywhere
• Beautiful design
• Seamless experience for desktops, small screens and touch devices
• Communicating in the best way possible

I’m not normally one that gets excited about the latest web app and cute-looking service, but check out the video. The email UI is, for once, different. It’s an uncluttered stream of messages stripped of all unnecessary information, focused on people, topics, and actions. Images can be viewed...

Great post by MG Siegler on the current state of tech news:

Most of what is written about the tech world — both in blog form and old school media form — is bullshit. I won’t try to put some arbitrary label on it like 80%, but it’s a lot. There’s more bullshit than there is 100% pure, legitimate information.

The problem is systemic. Print circulation is dying and pageviews are all that matters in keeping advertisers happy. This means, whether writers like it or not, there’s an underlying drive for both sensationalism and more — more — more.

In November, I was forced to stay out of the office for a month or so, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t read and catch up on the news from my iPhone and iPad. I, too, gained some perspective in watching tech news and commentary unfold from a bird’s eye view that, because I wasn’t forced to “be first” anymore, allowed me to reflect, and understand...

Path’s Address Book controversy got me thinking about sharing and privacy. Specifically, this piece by Justin Williams raises an interesting point:

Tossing up another dialog asking for user confirmation doesn’t solve the problem users are faced with. It just puts a band-aid on it. At the core is a more fundamental problem in how iOS handles permissions and access to data. Basically, I have no idea what sort of permissions or access an app wants until I download it and launch it the first time. Moreover, I really don’t to see another dialog pop up in my face as I’m using an app.

Justin is right about the App Store needing a way to inform users about privacy upfront. But I want to focus on another aspect of the story.

As the web moves forward, new technologies are implemented, and mobile devices get more ubiquitous and powerful, I believe we’re only going to see more of those dialogs...

It is my pleasure to announce that I’ve joined the fine selection of writers over at Read & Trust for their Premium Newsletter project, which I’m also subscribed to as a reader. It is an incredible honor for me to be mentioned alongside such talented people, and hopefully my writing will be worth of the Read & Trust name. David Sparks is joining today as well.

For those who haven’t heard of Read & Trust before:

Since its inception, the goal for Read & Trust has been to bring quality content to as many people as possible. There’s an over-abundance of media to consume each day, and it’s hard to find those perfect nuggets than can enrich our lives and help us grow as human beings. The writers that make up the Read & Trust network are all committed to crafting regular, high-quality content that stirs the mind, tugs the heart and pushes the boundaries.

And:

Read & Trust is committed to...

Great piece by Matt Alexander over at The Loop:

For some, “news logic” may elicit success, but for others, it merely fosters a dangerous tendency toward stifled, ego-centric decision-making. Decision-makers are far better served by focusing upon building a product worthy of the adulation of its users, rather than attaining complimentary press. Envisioning the pleasure of the end user – let’s call it “user logic” – forces the idea to undergo development until it is something good. If the idea is good, it will make its way onto the coveted blogs that Harrington speaks of. Focusing upon the potential for praise and attention alone makes way for the rise of negative headlines and critical responses.

In the past three years, I have been trying to apply the “news logic” to everything I do, write, and say. I often find myself asking “Is this something worth writing for my readers?” or “Do I...

I’ve seen a lot of people I read and respect making the switch from Google to a search service called DuckDuckGo, so I’ve decided to give it a try as well.

For me, this experiment isn’t really about being concerned due to Google’s new privacy model as much as it’s about tweaking and experimenting and genuinely being curious. I admit I didn’t even bother going through Google’s privacy changes yet because a) I’m waiting for Graham to write one of his in-depth analysis and b) I’m still going to be forced to use Google on a daily basis anyway (with Gmail, Google Reader, Google Apps) so it’s not like I can pretend I’m ditching Google entirely. Sure, Google has been doing some weird stuff with Google+, Search Plus Your World, Twitter and Facebook, and Eric Schmidt. Unfortunately, Google is one of those services that has become so connected to our personal lives and data that I, like many...

Stephen Hackett:

I’ve struggled with questions concerning online friendships in the past. This week, I learned that people I know from the Internet are real people and – more importantly – that our friendships are real, even though we don’t see each other most of the time.

I should have gone to Macworld this year, but couldn’t make it. After having seen hundreds of Instagram photos from the people mentioned above, and read posts like this, I’ll just have to be at WWDC this year (assuming Apple doesn’t change anything, that is). June can’t come soon enough.

Last week, my Twitter account reached the (at least for me) impressive milestone of 40,000 tweets sent. I don’t know when it happened, exactly, as I was probably busy tweeting, writing, or both.

I signed up for Twitter three years ago, In February 2009. That was a few months before launching MacStories with its own domain, back when I was “blogging” with a site hosted on Wordpress.com that doesn’t exist anymore. I had no idea back then both MacStories and Twitter would become such an important part of my life.

Unlike most web services I try every day, I have an emotional connection with Twitter. Like an Apple product, the essence of Twitter transcends its commercial nature of social network to become a lifestyle, a people network, which for me is inherently different from simply social.

40,000 tweets isn’t important as a number in itself; I might as well have written this post when I...

Apple recently updated its Developer docs to include various formatting improvements and better rendering in iBooks. So, for instance, if you download the latest iOS Human Interface Guidelines as PDF and import into iBooks, you’ll get a nicely formatted cover page, improved table formatting, better handling of headers, and more.

I know what I’ll be reading this weekend.