The Atavist (iTunes link, also available on Kindle, nook, and others) publishes long-form nonfiction: shorter than a book, longer than a magazine article, that they sell individually for $2.99 per article.

Their publishing platform, Periodic Technology, also looks really interesting: write once, export to a bunch of formats and devices. In other words, give away the app, then sell the content within it.

I love that they point out that it’s easy enough for an editor to use, too.

Mac users listen up! Enable certificate checking.

Do it now. It will take you a minute if you’re slow, and there’s no downside to speak of:

The only downside to this extra checking is possibly a slight delay to perform the request the first time you go to a web site and when the cache expires. This should be less overhead than downloading a small image, so I’m not worrying about it.

Think Quarterly issue #1 is a lovely design and smart concept, with interesting articles, even if its Flash interface is annoying. It was produced by Google UK, and designed by TCO London.

At Google, we often think that speed is the forgotten ‘killer application’ — the ingredient that can differentiate winners from the rest. We know that the faster we deliver results, the more useful people find our service.

But in a world of accelerating change, we all need time to reflect. Think Quarterly is a breathing space in a busy world. It’s a place to take time out and consider what’s happening and why it matters.

So, an immediate follow-up to the last post, since I forgot to add it. Sarah Carpenter concludes her article with this:

So, I pass the challenge back to you, Waylon: how can you achieve your goal for inner and outer peace, connecting within and beyond the choir to the masses, how to live a mindful life, without being so caught up in fame and money and dictatorship? And is anyone else making money off the publication besides you, yet?

Here’s why.

After she decided to quit after a couple of days on the job, Waylon asked her to write an article for the site explaining why she was leaving. The reasons sound awfully familiar:

St. Ronnie of Yorba Linda—Some Home Truths is a good read from Chris Espinosa. Take five minutes and enjoy. It starts thus, and improves:

But that view, when not outright false, is a huge distortion of Reagan’s actual presidency. And while that’s par for the course for venerated leaders, it’s particularly pernicious in this case, because what Reagan actually did and actually stood for was particularly harmful to our domestic liberty, our international standing, and the rule of law.

Involuntary Collaborations: I buy other people’s landscape paintings at yard sales and Goodwill and put monsters in them.

This is utterly brilliant up-cycling, turning shitty paintings into shitty paintings with monsters in.

(Via William Gibson, originally linked from Reddit.)

Clement Valla: Postcards from Google Earth

(via Apartment Therapy New York)

When it released Xcode 4, Apple stopped giving it away to folks with free developer accounts. Now you need a $99 developer account to get Xcode. Or, you can buy it on the App Store for $4.99 (coincidentally, the same price as Angry Birds).

From the looks of things, adding a price tag hasn’t interfered with people acquiring it:

(Screenshot is from the App Store today.)

There’s a very good article, and a very nice poster to go with it. Most of the advice is very applicable to other professions, so go read it! (I might need to order the poster…)