Agree with your first two points, especially in the comparison to NYC. They're just not comparable from the outset--NY is way bigger (469 sq miles and 8+ million residents, while Boston is 90 sq miles and 600,000 residents).
But I'd say bar closing time is a real issue. I hate having to end my nights at 2, especially if I have to cab it back anyway because the T isn't running.
Actually, that's what I'd say the biggest issue with Boston is--the T service. Not only does it suck when it is running, it doesn't even run when I need it the most. The MBTA is very poorly-managed and many hundreds of millions of dollars in debt (very few actual improvements to the system are done because of this; it will take the MBTA until ~2050 to pay back all its debts under the current structure assuming it incurs no other expenditures)
> I strongly believe the contemporary fetish of liking and sharing cheapens the way we consume our information.
It's not necessary to like, retweet, etc in order to consume the content. If all you want is to click on a link and get to an article, then that's all you have to do.
> Don't get me wrong, I do see value in community driven content, but there's also a lot of dirt and sensationalism.
Then curate the people you follow / subscribe to on your social networks. You have full control over the posts you see on Twitter, for example, especially if you create lists to only include accounts that tweet out new articles for a given blog or newspaper. Works just like an RSS feed, but it's integrated in the social product you use anyway (speaking from my perspective, at least).
> This forces me to absorb it all, even though most of their content doesn't go viral. This liberates me from feeling the urge to be connected all the friggin' time, plus more importantly, there is a gold mine of wisdom to be found in the non-controversial content out there.
Being forced to absorb it all and not miss a post is liberating? I often feel the opposite--that I need to disconnect and just accept I can't read everything on the Internet.
Same here. Was on my phone, but it wouldn't show up in Play Store app search, only on the web interface. Since there's no mobile web version of the Play Store, I had to navigate the desktop version using my mobile device.
Really poor downloading experience overall--took 10 minutes to get an app which I don't think is nearly as good as the iOS version. It's missing blur functionality, the filters don't seem to be as effective, and there are WAY too many unlabeled icons which you have to tap to figure out what they do.
Here's a tip: Instead of using the Play Store app search search for the following:
<thing you want to search for> site:play.google.com
Not only are you much more likely to get what you're looking for, but the result links you get back will give you the option of opening the link in the Play Store [1] (through the magic of Intents), so you won't have lost anything in terms of integration.
I really, really, really don't understand why someone at Google hasn't chucked the default search in favor of a site search of play.google.com (or, back in the day, market.google.com). I used to be befuddled as to how Google, of all companies, couldn't implement a decent search for their app store. Now I'm amazed because they've also implemented a good one and just aren't using it!
[1] Presuming you're using an Intent-aware browser (e.g. Browser [best bet], Chrome, Dolphin not Firefox or Opera) and presuming you haven't picked a default for the browsing Intent. Though if either of those apply to you, you probably know how to work around it.
The most they'd ever do is a stylesheet change or an overlay on top of the text. Actually removing their content, for even a day, would irreparably screw up their search traffic in the future. Any site that big is being constantly revisited by Googlebot.
I wonder. I run a website that has ranked on Google page 1 for the relevant search terms just behind Wikipedia for years now. But it's been on the backburner for some time; I've basically been ignoring it. A couple months ago a server migration that escaped my notice took it completely offline. Totally dropped off Google. Well, I just updated the DNS record a few days ago and within a day or two it was back on page 1, right behind Wikipedia.
So in my experience Google is remarkably forgiving.
If Google wanted to show support against SOPA, have they considered telling their bots to grant everyone amnesty on Jan 18 for taking down their content? Merely blacking out the color scheme of your site is great for awareness, but it doesn't do much to put you in the experience of what it means when a website is taken down.
Conceivably, we could serve the normal site to search engine spiders and black it for everyone else. However, we have a complex load balancing setup that may make this impossible.
An all-black theme would do the trick, but redirecting using Temporary Redirect shouldn't screw up search if we do it right.
Your best option would be a 302 redirect to a SOPA-specific page. Google won't follow that and it shouldn't screw your search engine rankings. At least, that's how I understand it.
I wouldn't really want to count on that; Google tends to guess what common response codes mean. The safest response would probably be to use "503 Service Unavailable" with an error page.
I went to the London Transport Museum that chronicles the history of the city's mass transit system. It's chock-full of these types of posters from Transport for London, and also delves deeply into the design strategies throughout the different eras. It's worth a visit if you're ever in the area.
On a related and more positive note: Microsoft also released a preview of changes they're making to the actual copy/paste process. And it's kind of cool.
