The middle version really doesn't look worse. Perhaps you are just conditioned to read the US version and so your aesthetics have been changed by the familiarity with the US format?
Word. That reminds me, I need delete my LinkedIn account - spammy as hell, and wilfully obstructive when it comes to offering levers to opt out of stuff.
Yes, that's me. And no, I don't watch terrestrial TV, or read magazines.
Yes, I use Twitter now, but I'd like to move away from it, especially if it continues to move in the direction that it's going... hence my subscription to App.net and my comment that you're responding to.
The fact that I have a Twitter account means that it is curretly useful for me, but it doesn't change my stance on advertising, which I do not tolerate. I also use Twitter via a client that does not pollute my stream with advertising, but this cannot last.
I'm quite happy to pay for a service that doesn't advertise or sell eyeballs.
Apart from the fact that it's extremely early days for App.net right now, this article assumes that Twitter will remain as it is now, and not deteriorate further with significantly increased levels of advertising and spam. App.net will likely become increasingly attractive as Twitter becomes more "manipulated" to deliver on those promised eyeballs.
I've paid up for App.net because I have a zero tolerance policy to advertising, and I don't want to be involved with services that have their primary business model built around marketing and advertising. In this case App.net is not aping Twitter, because Twitter will never indulge the idea of a world without advertising.
It delivers a personalized curated news feed which is informed by complex data analysis, recommendation, semantic-filtering and machine learning algorithms that use your elected interests and social graph as a data source.
It's much more than simple aggregation.
You can probably tell that I really like it; and no sir, I don't work for them (!)
When I viewed the link (from the UK) I got presented with a popup asking me to understand and accept the new cookie policy. Perhaps you viewed the link from outside the EU? I imagine this relates to the new EU laws concerned with tracking users.
Maybe it is a new UI concept, but should we deny Loren the use of drop-down menus, scroll bars, split-buttons, sliders and all the other UI elements in use today? Patenting this is a morally bankrupt move.
There are no doubt a lot of users like me: I don't have a Facebook account, and I will _never_ have a Facebook account. The result of my personal policy and utter dislike of Facebook is that as soon as I see a Facebook login popup on a new app, I immediately close the tab. Then again, perhaps you don't want customers like me!
My development work is a polyglot split across Linux, Mac and Windows/.NET projects. I also use both Vim and Vim keyboard bindings (in other editors) on Unix.
Whilst I prefer *nix, when I have to use Visual Studio, I use the VsVim plugin, and it's a real pleasure to be able to seamlessly move between platforms and development environments, IDEs and text editors in this way.
Not only do I love VsVim, but it significantly reduces the friction of using Visual Studio, and even adds some enjoyment to coding on that platform. VsVim is F# under the hood too (which shouldn't matter to the user, but it _is_ kinda cool).
Another interesting fact about polar bears: They have black skin, but layered with fur comprised of fibre-optic-like hairs which allows them to soak up heat radiation from the sun.
Whilst the figure is without doubt impressive, I can't help but wonder how much of this figure is money lost by the poor customers that bought costly, overly complex and hard to customise money-sinks that require specialists to beat into shape...