Linkdump for April 2nd
¶ by Rob Friesel-
Lisa Margonelli writing for The Nation:
The cost of owning and driving a car should be a major political issue. Republicans have spent the past decade talking about lowering taxes, while Democrats have put enormous effort into lowering medical costs; but most families spend more on their cars and gasoline than on either of these expenses. A family of four making $50,000 spends $7,900 on transit, according to Commerce Department figures. A survey of 2,000 households by EnergyTrap.org this past summer suggests that many households spend much more–more than $10,000, possibly because (as the survey showed) some lower-middle-income households actually drive farther to work, in less efficient cars, and spend more on repairs than their wealthier neighbors. Income inequality, a recent fixation of the political sphere, is deepened and exacerbated by the extraordinary expense of car ownership. And yet, in our current economy, going without a car is not an option for most people […].
tl;dr: gasoline prices aren't going anywhere, so we need to make the solution "use less gas" instead of "make available more gas"; and not only that, you've got to make the middle class the beneficiaries here, and not the almost-millionaires that can afford to by a $40k Chevy Volt.
As an aside, these points ought to resonate in a big way. I looked at what our family spent last year, and it was over $5800 for gasoline, insurance, and maintenance alone (to say nothing of the auto loan).
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Worth noting, in light of our current project.
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Wil Shipley, writing at Call Me Fishmeal, on the Mac App Store and its need to permit developers to set and manage upgrade pricing for the applications. I've been following this story across a number of developer blogs (notably and most recently Gus Mueller's blog, 1 which is where I saw a link to Shipley's post) and I think Shipley has captured the sentiment well. I could see Apple launching the Mac App Store without a mechanism for managing upgrade pricing back when they originally launched it, but it's fast becoming time for them to get this in place for independent developers. Not having it is only hurting everyone.
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A decent write-up by Alex Sexton on — when all is said and done — why putting in the extra effort to do proper i18n (and/or L10n) makes a big difference to your customers. (And/but: I'll split some short and fine hairs on the use of "UX" here — feeling that it's a bit of a "link-bait-y" usage — but just the same: good piece.)
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By Alexis Madrigal, writing at The Atlantic.
- Specifically re: this post, which (oddly?) is a link out to this Brent Simmons piece.[↩]
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