Warning: this is going to be one of the more geeky/uninteresting posts in the history of this blog (and that’s saying something). I am going to criticize the user interface of Twitter. So just prepare yourself for that (or click “next” in Google Reader).

Here’s the problem:

I follow a fair number of people on Twitter. Not a crazy number, but enough so that during the day I tend to get at least 5 or 6 updates an hour. When I spend the whole day at the computer (or check in online every few hours), it’s no problem. Twitter’s home page shows 20 updates at a time, so unless I miss more than 20 tweets I can catch up all from the one page.

Where it gets tricky is when I miss more than 20 tweets. First of all, Twitter’s API limits client programs to seeing the most recent 20 updates. If there are more than 20 that I’ve missed, all but the most recent tweets simply don’t show up. This is aggravating, but understandable—Twitter bears the cost of serving updates to users’ clients (and if it served up everything, users could use clients and circumvent the site entirely); if they want to force people to their site for deep access to data, that’s fine with me. But if they do it that way, they really need to make sure that using the site isn’t a miserable experience. Speaking of which…

So what do I do if I’ve missed those 20+ tweets? If I’m out of town for a week, I don’t bother going back over the archived updates, but if I miss just a few hours I usually go to the Twitter site and page back to where I left off, using the “Older” button (when the “Older” button works—but that’s another story). So the problem here is that it’s a huge pain in the ass to do this—if I have to go back 50 or 60 updates, there’s not really an easier way to do it than to click on “Older” multiple times. What’s worse is that the cursor focus is set to the update text entry box, so I can’t even quickly page down to get to the “Older” button again. This is not smart design, because it assumes that my primary goal in loading an archive page is to post an update to my own account—but why would I have just clicked “Older” from the main page if what I wanted to do is update my account?

Anyway, back to my main critique. Because of the stolen focus, I have to click outside the text box, or use my mouse’s scroll button, to get down to the “Older” button. Meanwhile, I have no choice but to skim messages, looking for a familiar one, to figure out where I left off. So I’m stuck reading tweets in reverse order, navigating using an awkward, ungainly process that really doesn’t make much sense.

I propose that Twitter create a new process/UI for navigating through one’s update stream. Here’s how it would work:

Add a tab called “Timeline”. On the Timeline page, give me a basic horizontal timeline (or vertical would work too, and might fit in better with the general site design). Mark off the time by whatever makes sense—minutes, hours, days—depending on how many updates a user gets per day. Or alternately, create a logarithmic scale, so that the first timeline unit navigates by minutes, the next by hours, the next by days, etc., so it’s easy to skip back just an hour or two, or much more, all without messing around with settings. The latter idea appeals to me more, and once people get used to it would probably be easier to use, but it is not as simple as a regular old timeline.

Allow me to drag a slider on the timeline, to start reading missed tweets starting at any time on the spectrum. A live-updating box could display the tweet closest to whatever time the slider is at, and once I saw I was in the right neighborhood I could release the mouse on the slider. Starting with the tweet I’ve just seen, the page would display the proceeding tweets in chronological order (as opposed to the current “Older” pages, which display tweets in reverse chronological order—that makes sense for the main page, arguably, but it’s poor design for this purpose).

That’s about the extent to which I’ve thought this out, but I think, if you’ve actually made it this far, you’ll agree with me that with nothing but constructive criticism I’ve single-handedly made Twitter’s website a million times better.

Here’s what I’ve been up to:

I took the California bar exam in Ontario, which is near Los Angeles. Also, it’s about 10 miles away from the epicenter of the 5.4 earthquake that hit towards the end of the first morning. So that was nice. But aside from that, things seemed to go fine. I mean, I have massive doubts and regrets, but I think that’s normal and not really indicative of how I did. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I won’t get my results until November, so there’s not really much use in stressing out about them until then.

After the bar, I had a celebratory meal at Benihana (their Mai Tais are fantastic, even if you don’t drink out of a ceramic buddha), then went to sleep at a reasonable hour. I’m pathetic. The next day I flew up to San Francisco for the weekend. I stayed with a friend from college and had a very good time. Featured were:

• Dinner at some hipster joint that actually serves very good food.


• Drinks at The Orbit Room, a fantastic lounge with bespoke cocktails and a clever vintage aeronautic theme.


• Watching karaoke at The Mint. The performance quality was a letdown after my last visit there, but the entertainment value was quite high nonetheless. The highlight of the evening for me was getting verbally ambushed by a truly drunk astrology aficionado whose buddy Reuben wouldn’t return her calls. After a series of sarcastic remarks that she understood to be sincere, she asked for my phone number, but I gave her a fake number! OMG YOU GUYS, I’M A PLAYER! So that was fun.


• Playing softball on Treasure Island. For the record, as best I can recall I went 4 of 6 with 3 infield singles, and had a pretty unimpressive fielding day at third base. But I had one solid putout, which is probably the first time in my entire life I’ve successfully thrown a runner out at first base. Baseball: not my best sport.


• Potpourri: Playing a bunch of card games, spilling at least one glass of wine, spending a lot of time on Muni/BART, having eggs benedict in Rockridge, helping my friends pick out a hookah at a smokeshop staffed by a cliché.

Next, I flew up to Vancouver, where I stayed at this hostel. This is a pretty fun place to stay, but I think I may be too old for it. Everyone seems to be approximately 17 years old (and to have been travelling the world for at least a decade). But it’s cheap, central to downtown Vancouver (and in very close proximity to any number of sex shops and vagrants), and has free wifi. Here are things I’ve been up to in Vancouver:

• Meeting up with my internet friend Tim. Tim is real life friends with some other internet friends who I have met before and overall, I don’t totally hate him. So that’s a plus. Anyway, he and I hung out a fair amount, which was good, since I don’t know anyone else in Vancouver.


• We played Pitch ‘n’ Putt in Stanley Park. It’s 18 holes of between 50 and 100 yards each, using a pitching wedge and a putter. It was surprisingly similar to real golf. I kicked Tim’s ass, but he had the only birdie of the group, so I guess it’s a wash.


• Saw Batman again. I feel the same way: very good, not perfect, occasionally too implausible/stupid, but overall very well done and enjoyable.


• Had sushi and gelato. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.


• Walked all over the place. Like, 6 miles on Monday, 13.5 miles on Tuesday, 10 miles on Wednesday, and, er, .2 miles so far today. The weather has been a little warm, but not too bad (no rain so far!). I’ve got a hilarious raccoon tan from wearing my sunglasses all the time.


• Spent a ridiculous amount of time dealing with technology. Charging my iPod, phone, laptop, trying to find wifi all over the city, having all access to ATMs cut off, going to FUTURESHOP (Canadian Best Buy) to replace the camera Tim managed to lose during a nap... but on the plus side, I’ve had a lot of luck getting free wifi on this trip, which has been a huge help. I don’t know what people did before cell phones and ubiquitous internet access—I don’t think I could get around without it.

Now I have a few more hours to kill before I head off to the airport for the short trip to Seattle (I should have taken the ferry, but I’m an idiot), where I will spend the weekend doing fun things. Then I spend a week with the fam before going back to Boston to pack up my life and head down to DC.

One more thought I have been deeply yearning to share:

• Brett Favre: sucks. He retired, and then double retired when the team asked if he was sure about it. The team moved on. He reneged. The team refused to drop his contract, to prevent him from signing on with one of their division rivals. He whined on national television. They couldn’t get any decent trades for him, because his whining made it clear that they would be desperate to get rid of him (and thus had no leverage). Yet somehow this guy is a victim? Bah, humbug.

My internet friend Tracy wrote a post about Deadspin that kind of blew up. Here’s the lede:

The thing about sports is that it, well, tends to be an old-boys’ club. The sports world is full of sexist shit that pisses me off if I think about it too much (and, honestly, I’m not often prone to do that, because I don’t always want to be addressing Big Issues in the context of something I enjoy just for the hell of it, which I suppose is lazy of me). Commercials aired during sporting events or programs often are sexist. There are sexist athletes and sexist columnists, and I hate it all, but I try not to hold it against sports as a whole. That would be like being a Cubs fan, but hating the Cubs because of Cubs fans.

That said, there’s one place where the sports assholes come out in droves and it drives me batshit insane every freaking time I see it. It’s a land where you’ll see Asshole Stupidus in its natural environment, taking a gigantic dump on women and human decency.

It’s the land of the Deadspin commenters.

I was going to leave a comment there but figured I might as well put it here instead, since it’s important that many people in the world know how I feel about this issue.

Basically, I think DS has acquitted itself kind of poorly in defending itself in the comments of the post, but I guess that lack of rational thought is sort of the point of the irreverent misogyny.

I think the best criticisms of this post are the ones pointing out that Tracy is painting with a pretty broad brush. But those criticisms aren’t so great, either, because the fact is that the great majority of DS comments ARE offensive and stupid. So we’re not talking about a few bad apples spoiling it for everyone—we’re talking about a pernicious and overwhelming atmosphere that invites and encourages a race to the bottom.

Not to say that most Deadspin readers, or even most commenters, are offensive/stupid, but the atmosphere in the DS comment space is pretty pathetic most of the time. I like that kind of stuff when it’s well done (Kissing Suzy Kolber, literally the product of DS commenters, is at times pretty brilliant, for example), but there’s nothing less enjoyable than someone aiming for hilariously-rude and missing the mark (ahem, Carlos Mencia).

And it’s true that DS is no worse than many, if not most sports blogs (or, um, nearly all blogs), but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to make it better. I don’t know what it is about public fora, but any blog with a sizeable readership ends up with a crew of douchebag commenters trying to one-up each other in stupidity and offensiveness. It’s a complete waste of time, and I basically never bother reading the comments on hugely popular sites like Deadspin, Engadget, The Washington Post (yes, even old media suffers from this problem), etc.—sifting the wheat from the chaff is just not worth the energy.

So, given that reading comments is not compulsory, even if you do read the blog’s content, how important is it that Deadspin’s commenters come off, for the most part, as hateful assholes? Probably not all that important, really. But it is pretty pathetic, and gives ignorant old media types ammunition in their poorly-conceived arguments against the basic idea of “the blog”—the quality and content of blog comments end up getting attributed (unfairly) to the blog itself. So when Deadspin’s comments are stupid, it makes Deadspin itself look stupid. Which is unfortunate, because Deadspin’s actual tone and quality are pretty great.

Although of course there are plenty of exceptions to Tracy’s general argument, I don’t think there’s any question that Deadspin’s commenters are representative of a misogynistic streak that runs through sports culture. And having someone point that out (and actually be heard) can only be a good thing.

I’ll be in San Francisco from the 1st to the 4th, then in Vancouver from the 4th to the 7th, then in Seattle from the 7th to the 10th. It’s not a lot of time in any of those places, but I’m hoping to be able to meet up with anybody who’s around. Leave me a comment here or email me (calamityjake at gmail dot com) if you want to make that happen—although I may not be able to get back to you til after the exam is over.

Good luck to everyone else who’s taking the bar—I’ll be back on the internet, hopefully with something more interesting to say, in August.

I really enjoyed this interview between Dan “DC Sports Bog” Steinberg and Chris “Chris Cooley’s Official Blog” Cooley. It made me feel a bit bad for Fabini. Also, when Cooley mentioned that his blog gets ten or fifteen thousand hits a day, it made me feel a bit bad for myself.

If you don’t have time for the whole thing, you can just catch the highlights at this page.

Second problem: For some reason, as of a week or so ago, Google Reader is including all of my shared items (which, pretty much by definition, I’ve already read) in my “Unread Items” count. It’s also including them in my “All Items” stream, so I can’t practically use that to scan my new items.

Is this what resting on your laurels look like? Or is Google’s development team busy working out the kinks on Google Reader 2.0?

Update: Well, that’s one feed accounted for. But my general query remains!

From Fimoculous.

Hmm, I dunno. It was good. I was glad Katie Holmes declined to return until I found out that her character died. I thought it was maybe a little ambitious, plot-wise—having three big characters, each with their own motivations, made things a bit complicated. Heath Ledger was, in fact, pretty great. Too bad he’s not coming back.

The most interesting thing, for me, was how little a role Bruce Wayne/Batman played in it. It was the Harvey Dent/Joker/Gordon show, for the most part, with Batman basically reacting for the first 3/4 of the film (except for the Hong Kong jaunt, which seemed frankly unnecessary, plot-wise, but was really cool, action-wise).

Also, I think this movie was basically a superhero remake of No Country for Old Men. It’s a morally-questionable hero grappling with a fundamentally chaotic, destructive force, and in the end nobody really wins. Plus, Tommy Lee Jones was Two Face once.

Another observation: whoever did the soundtrack kind of stole from There Will Be Blood—the same unharmonious whining drone played right before action scenes. It was actually pretty great.

And I’m pretty sure the whole thing was also a powerful indictment of the war in Iraq, and the surveillance state that has sprung up here in America.

8/10. I want to see it again in IMAX.

I sat next to a stupid nerd who laughed uproariously at jokes that were in the trailer that we all watched six months ago. In the middle of the movie he spent a good thirty seconds rustling a plastic bag, trying to take out a bottle of Snapple. Two thumbs down to that guy.

And I’m sorry, but if you aren’t standing in line for opening night it is LAME to dress up like the Joker and put makeup on and all that. If you insist on being that much of a weenie, at least commit to a midnight screening.

Anyway, spoilers welcome in the comments.

Which is all to say that I’m getting really sick of seeing listings claiming that apartments are three blocks from the metro when anyone who knows the city (or, um, has ever been to the apartment) knows that it’s at least seven blocks away. And that’s a generous calculation. It’s not three blocks, it’s never been three blocks, and unless they pave over Willard, Swann, Riggs, and Corcoran streets, it will never be three blocks. So we’re talking about brazen deceit here, not “putting yourself in the best light” or however we characterize the piddling inaccuracies that riddle our resumes and facebook profiles.

Now, in the bad old days, this kind of thing might have been more effective. But we’re a bit better equipped to assess these claims. Why bother lying, when the truth is so easy to suss out? I Guess We’ll Never Know.

After I take the bar, maybe I’ll have time for posts based on something other than my site visitor logs (or cut-and-pasting from someone else’s blog). Until then…

I’ve been thinking about my most popular posts, in terms of hits (most coming from web search sites). The common thread is that Googlers really want to know how to do stuff: how to reset their ipods, how to block the stupid video on ESPN’s homepage, and how John Basedow died in the tsunami (or not).

The first two links (A and B) consistently get more hits than the rest of my blog, combined. The ESPN one, I get—it was linked by Deadspin, and actually fixes a problem that lots of people have. But the iPod one is even more popular, and the actual content of the post is basically just a series of links to other, useful sites. I don’t understand it.

And the John Basedow post is not actually that popular, but it is a personal favorite, especially since the lazyweb came up big and I now have the mp3 of the John Basedow theme song, of which I will never tire.

Now You Know.

Hey, Common Sense Dancing did it again. EW has another list up, of “the New Classics”—movies of the last 25 years. The ones I’ve seen are in bold, the ones I’ve seen and loathed are in bold/italics (spoiler alert: the movies I hated are Hoop Dreams, Drugstore Cowboy, and Napoleon Dynamite). Enjoy this fascinatingself-indulgent look into my likes and dislikes. (The last 90 movies, and my thoughts on the list, after the jump.)

1. Pulp Fiction (1994)
2. The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-03)
3. Titanic (1997)
4. Blue Velvet (1986)
5. Toy Story (1995)
6. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
7. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
8. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
9. Die Hard (1988)
10. Moulin Rouge (2001)
11. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
12. The Matrix (1999)
13. GoodFellas (1990)
14. Crumb (1995)
15. Edward Scissorhands (1990)
16. Boogie Nights (1997)
17. Jerry Maguire (1996)
18. Do the Right Thing (1989)
19. Casino Royale (2006)
20. The Lion King (1994)
21. Schindler’s List (1993)
22. Rushmore (1998)
23. Memento (2001)
24. A Room With a View (1986)
25. Shrek (2001)
26. Hoop Dreams (1994)
27. Aliens (1986)
28. Wings of Desire (1988)
29. The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
30. When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
31. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
32. Fight Club (1999)
33. The Breakfast Club (1985)
34. Fargo (1996)
35. The Incredibles (2004)
36. Spider-Man 2 (2004)
37. Pretty Woman (1990)
38. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
39. The Sixth Sense (1999)
40. Speed (1994)
41. Dazed and Confused (1993)
42. Clueless (1995)
43. Gladiator (2000)
44. The Player (1992)
45. Rain Man (1988)
46. Children of Men (2006)
47. Men in Black (1997)
48. Scarface (1983)
49. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
50. The Piano (1993)
51. There Will Be Blood (2007)
52. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad (1988)
53. The Truman Show (1998)
54. Fatal Attraction (1987)
55. Risky Business (1983)
56. The Lives of Others (2006)
57. There’s Something About Mary (1998)
58. Ghostbusters (1984)
59. L.A. Confidential (1997)
60. Scream (1996)
61. Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
62. sex, lies and videotape (1989)
63. Big (1988)
64. No Country For Old Men (2007)
65. Dirty Dancing (1987)
66. Natural Born Killers (1994)
67. Donnie Brasco (1997)
68. Witness (1985)
69. All About My Mother (1999)
70. Broadcast News (1987)
71. Unforgiven (1992)
72. Thelma & Louise (1991)
73. Office Space (1999)
74. Drugstore Cowboy (1989)
75. Out of Africa (1985)
76. The Departed (2006)
77. Sid and Nancy (1986)
78. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
79. Waiting for Guffman (1996)
80. Michael Clayton (2007)
81. Moonstruck (1987)
82. Lost in Translation (2003)
83. Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987)
84. Sideways (2004)
85. The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005)
86. Y Tu Mamá También (2002)
87. Swingers (1996)
88. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
89. Breaking the Waves (1996)
90. Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
91. Back to the Future (1985)
92. Menace II Society (1993)
93. Ed Wood (1994)
94. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
95. In the Mood for Love (2001)
96. Far From Heaven (2002)
97. Glory (1989)
98. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
99. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
100. South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut (1999)

Thoughts:

I sure have seen a lot of movies. The disparity between this list and the book list is somewhat depressing.

Interesting how two high-budget, special-effectsy sci-fi sequels—Aliens and Terminator 2—got love over their arguably better but unquestionably less showy predecessors. Also interesting how one sequel generally seen as significantly better than its predecessor—Toy Story 2—got no love. WASSUP WITH THAT?

Putting a trilogy on the list—in the #2 spot, no less—seems kinda shady, no?

Hoop Dreams: Just too depressing. I had the wrong expectations for this one, perhaps. I certainly would never watch it again, though.Oh, um, I had this one mixed up with The Basketball Diaries. I am an idiot.

The Bourne Supremacy: Really? I mean, it was fun and all… is this like the Da Vinci Code of this list? I don’t understand. See also: Men in Black, Clueless, and the criminally overrated Napoleon Dynamite.

Back to the Future: greatest time-travel movie with an incest-based subplot.

L.A. Confidential couldn’t crack the top 50? Unlike, er, Shrek? I am just going to pretend these movies are unsorted, because otherwise I might have an outrage-induced coronary.

Of course if they are sorted, I can definitely back up putting There Will Be Blood way above No Country for Old Men. GOOD CALL, EW! (note: I’m not being sarcastic.)

Basically, I think it’s pretty difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff with so little perspective. Some of these movies came out last year. This is a fun discussion piece, but the presence of Evil Dead 2 on the list should tip you off that it’s not to be taken too seriously.

From the NY Times’ Talking Business column^*:

What is it with Steven P. Jobs and batteries? On Friday, Apple’s new iPhone went on sale (for a mere $199; how does that make you early adopters feel who stood in line last year for the privilege of plunking down three times that amount? Just wondering.) In their reviews of the new device this week, both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal pointed out that the iPhone’s battery problem had gotten worse in the new iteration.

The original iPhone, you may recall, got “8 hours of talk time, 6 hours of Internet use, 7 hours of video playback or 24 hours of audio playback and more than 10 days of standby time,” to quote Apple’s public relations mantra. There were two catches, however. To get that long battery life, Apple had to forgo high speed wireless 3G, which chews up batteries. Second, if the battery did run down during the day, you couldn’t just swap it out for your backup battery, as you can with just about every other smartphone. The iPhone case was sealed tight. Looked cooler that way.

The new iPhone, of course, has wireless 3G — indeed, that appears to be the biggest improvement in the new model. And sure enough, it’s a battery-killer; according to The Journal reviewer, Walter S. Mossberg, the new iPhone battery lasts only about four and a half hours before it needs a new charge. Yet Apple still insists on sealing the case, thus preventing customers from using a spare battery when it runs down. For heavy cellphone users—and who isn’t these days?—the battery is going to need a charge by lunchtime. Good luck with that. Unless Apple does something about its battery problem, the iPhone will always be more a toy than a tool.

Or maybe people will just charge their phones more often. THE HORROR!! At any rate, the 3G iPhone’s horrific battery life isn’t, in fact, any worse than the other 3G phones on the market (in most cases, I believe, it’s actually better). So the issue here isn’t Apple, it’s the industry as a whole. Better battery life is a worthy goal, but singling out Apple for what is really a industry-wide chipset problem is kind of silly.

Also, the lack of a replaceable battery isn’t just an “it looks cooler” choice. It allows Apple to use non-standard batteries, custom-fitted to whatever space the iPhone’s internal design allows. Designing for replaceable batteries requires a designer to make other concessions (size, weight, durability, cost, etc.) that might be more irritating.

To be honest, this is a reviewer’s problem more than a real life problem. Battery life is something easy to measure and easy to criticize (critics did the same thing with the iPod’s features for a long time—how’d that work out?), while user interface and hardware design are difficult to quantify (more on this from Daring Fireball). So everything that Apple excels at gets lost in the shuffle of a simple (and deceptive) feature checklist. Would you rather have an ugly, awkward, pain-in-the-ass phone that gets eight hours of battery life, or a really useful, intuitive, powerful handheld that gets four hours? I get the impression that most reviewers would recommend the former, but it’s safe to say that most consumers want the latter—and are happy to pay a premium for it.

All of that isn’t to say that the iPhone’s battery life isn’t annoying, but for 90% of people it really won’t be an issue. Those who really need more battery life will, no doubt, be able to buy external battery pack gizmos, just like they have been doing for the iPod for many years. And if battery life is more important than data speed, consumers can facilitate it: they can just turn off the 3G radio, which allows the device to use the EDGE network instead, with slower data but better battery life.

What this “problem” comes down to is that the iPhone is so much more useful than just about every other phone on the market that people will be glued to it all day long. Of course that uses more battery, but it’s really a symptom of Apple’s success. If your product’s biggest problem is that people like using it too much, I’d say you’re in the catbird seat.

^* Incidentally, the column starts out, “If I were a blogger, these are some of the posts I would have written this week.” Which is kind of an odd start, but is actually much odder when you look at the bottom of the page and see: “Joe Nocera’s new blog, Executive Suite, can be found at nytimes.com/executivesuite.” Huh?

Game-ism’s most recent post is about Nike’s designs for this summer’s Olympics, and there’s a lot of really cool stuff there, including the Ippeas—a riding boot designed by Nike, drawing from motocross, track & field, and other sports’ designs. It’s pretty fascinating how Nike applied contemporary design to a very traditional sport:

(Sorry that the video starts automatically. Hopefully you’ve got Flashblock installed.)

There are a ton of other fascinating designs on the Nike Labs site (you can scroll through them all on the bottom of the screen, and click for more details and designer videos—much bigger than the one I’ve embedded here). Great way to waste half an hour.

1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars’ Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World’s Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators’ Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)

From Entertainment Weekly, via the internet wizards at Common Sense Dancing.

I’ll be honest; this isn’t really the top 10 anything. Depending on how you count, it’s the top 9, top 15, or top 16 things I want changed about the iPod Touch. But I hear people like top 10 lists, so I thought I’d try to entice you with the post title. With that caveat, let’s get to business.

I have a new toy, an iPod Touch. I just got it last week, and I have been having a lot of fun with it, especially using Safari to browse the web (on a tiny screen, but still—it’s pretty nice not to have to boot up my laptop to check my email and Twitter feed).

But not to worry, there’s still plenty of room for improvement. Apple is set to release version 2.0 of its mobile operating system (which runs on the iPhone and iPod Touch) early next month. With that in mind, here are the ways the fanciest iPod model needs to be fixed—just through software (and note that most of these changes could, and should, be implemented in the iPhone as well). Let’s hope we see these features in just a couple of weeks.

First and foremost, I use this thing to play music. So my biggest gripes are with the “Music” app. Here are the things Apple should do to improve it:

1. Make cover flow optional.

   I don’t care about cover flow. It’s cute and all, but I NEVER browse my music by album, anyway. I certainly don’t want it to pop up every time I accidentally turn my Touch sideways.

2. Put the song progress bar on by default, all the time, and make it easier to adjust one’s place in a song/podcast.

   As it is, there’s a huge slider for volume across the bottom of the screen that I thought, from screenshots, MUST be a progress bar. Let’s go ahead and make it the progress bar, and put the volume slider somewhere else on the default screen.

3. Related to #2: Adjust the default music playing screen.

   Why are artist name, song title, and album title in such tiny print? The Touch is great because it’s screen is so big—let’s go ahead and use it, so I don’t have to squint to see what’s playing. Furthermore, go ahead and put more information on the default screen. I like having the album cover on there, but it doesn’t need to take up the whole face of the device. How about that progress bar, to start with, and/or the names of the last two and next two songs slated to play, so I can keep track of where I’m at? And let’s throw the song star rating on there, too (for more on ratings, see #5, below).

4. Show both song title and artist in playlists.

   When I’m going through a long playlist (e.g., music added in the last 6 months), I’m not necessarily familiar enough with everything by song title. Let me see the artist, so I can navigate to the beginning of the album I’m looking for.

5. Include ratings in the shortcut screen.

   They won’t do this one. I’m probably one of 8 people in the world who care about this. But I want to be able to rate songs (or adjust existing ratings) from the shortcut screen, Apple.^*. It would make my life a lot easier, since I have a ton of songs that are currently unrated, and often I’m waking it from sleep solely to add a rating.

   ^* The shortcut screen, or whatever it’s called, is great. When you double-click the home button, in any application, a window pops up telling you what song is playing and allowing you to skip ahead or back, or adjust volume. It also works when the device is asleep, so you don’t have to unlock the device for these basic operations.

Other software improvements I’m hoping for:

1. The ability to see passwords as I type them, rather than asterisked versions.

   I know, I know, security or whatever. But it’s already enough of a pain in the ass to type on this thing—don’t make it so hard for me to tell whether I’ve at least gotten the ridiculous wifi network password right.

2. Syncing: don’t complain about not having enough space for the playlists I choose.

   Give me the choice of loading a random selection from one or multiple playlists, up to a size I choose. This functionality is more or less already available for the Shuffle, so there’s really no reason I shouldn’t be able to do it with a Touch.

3. Store zoom sizes per website.

   Okay, this one is pretty picky. Right now, Safari loads every page such that you can see the entire width of the page on the screen. But for sites I have already visited, I would like Safari to remember if I have zoomed in (so I can actually read the text, for example).

4. eBook Reader

   This one is big for me. We’ve got this decent-sized, high-resolution screen. I want an eBook Reader application that is integrated with iTunes, so I can browse the library and buy books, either from the Touch or from my PC. This would be a blatant, shameless ripoff of the Kindle, but screw it. eBook functionality would turn the Touch into a subway godsend.

Okay, fine, a few hardware suggestions for the next generation iPod Touch (which won’t be along for a year or two, I’d guess).

1. GPS.

   If you’re going to keep charging $100 more for the Touch than the iPhone, at least include everything that isn’t in the iPhone. GPS would be really helpful for the many location-based 3rd party apps coming out starting next month. As it is, I’m going to be left out of most (if not all) of that stuff, even in places with available wifi.

2. Volume buttons on the side.

   The iPhone has them, and they would make life much easier. As things stand, I have to unlock the iPod (first you press a button, then you swipe a finger across the screen) just to adjust volume or pause.

3. Related to #2: Go nuts, add a couple more buttons on the face of the device.

   I understand that Apple likes to keep it simple with its hardware, especially the first iteration. And the touchscreen is really cool and fun to use. But I really want to be able to skip tracks and pause while it’s in my pocket, and as long as I have to use the touchscreen for these things that will not be possible. Moreover, a couple of buttons would open up some opportunities for lots of applications (like games!)

4. Speaker.

   Again, the iPhone does this, and I think the Touch should, too. Now that we’re working with a decent sized screen, and playing video and everything, it would be nice to be able to listen to audio over a tinny speaker rather than pop in headphones all the time. I’m not asking for great audio quality, just something loud enough that I can set it on the counter and listen to podcasts while I do the dishes.

5. Ditch the chrome backing.

   I know this design touch is synonymous with the iPod line, but it’s time to move on. The chrome back gets scratched up immediately, is kind of slippery, and at this point it’s a bit of a cliche. Show me something new, design gurus.

6. QWERTY keypad.

   I know this won’t be happening for a year or two. Apple likes to limit its input options to its revolutionary new innovations (e.g. the mouse on the old school Mac, the touchwheel on the 2nd generation iPod, etc.), so for the next little while there’s no way it’s going to admit what we all know—that using a real QWERTY keypad is a far superior option for extensive mobile typing. But eventually, I am sure, this is coming. And when it does, I will be first in line. Not literally.

Okay, those are the biggest gripes I have with the current version of the iPod Touch. It’s not a perfect device, but even as it is I’m really enjoying it. The screen is pretty big, and easy to look at—even high-res video looks respectable on this thing. Having a wifi-enabled handheld with a touchscreen and a decent web browser comes in handy all over the place (as a wifi-detector, if nothing else). Mine holds 16 gigs, which is not nearly big enough for my entire music collection but is more than big enough for a pretty good selection. Overall, it’s already a really cool toy, and I have no doubt that next month’s OS update will make it much more versatile and fun to use.

I’ve got just one more suggestion, one that I have no doubt Apple will take to heart right around back-to-school season:

Lower the price.

Right now, an 8 gig iPod Touch will run you $299. And the new 8 gig iPhone is going to cost you $199. While it’s true that $100 deficit doesn’t take into account the massive monthly outlay the iPhone entails (at least $70/month for phone plus data service, I believe), it is glaring nonetheless. Flash memory is cheap, nowadays, too cheap for Apple to keep charging such a premium for the Touch. All the early adopters (including me) have splurged—it’s time to bring the rest of the public into the fold. I’m as sure as anyone can be, with respect to Apple and unannounced price cuts (i.e., 65%)—the iTouch will cost the same or less as the iPhone by November. Remember, you heard it here first.

When you air a standard definition (“SD”) program on your lovely high definition (“HD”) channel, please do me a big favor. Do not stretch it out to fit the screen. Just give it to me in SD, and let me decide what to do with it.

The biggest perpetrators of this horrific mistake (big enough that I made this list from memory of being infuriated in the past): TBS, TNT, the Food Network. But I’m sure there are other wrongdoers, and as the rest of the cable universe transitions to HD I suspect the problem will only increase.

ESPN does it right; when airing SD programs, it puts a bar on each side of the screen, so there’s no blank space on the tv, without warping the aspect ratio of the actual programming. Another option, which works fine for me, is just leaving the sides of the screen blank.

Here’s why those are better solutions: just about all HDTVs can stretch SD signals (which, to be fair, may HDTV owners prefer to do, because it fills the screen)—but they generally can’t reverse the operation (i.e., “de-stretch” signals). This is because when the TV detects an HD signal, it is to be expected that the programming is, you know, HD. So when, for example, I get Iron Chef stretched out on my screen, I have no recourse.

So, in summary, stop stretching programming out so that everybody’s face is too wide and things look incredibly stupid.

Thank you very much for your consideration.

July 31-August 1:
I will be in the Los Angeles area. I don’t know whether I will be able to get into the city, but it is a possibility.

August 1-August 4:
Oakland/Berkeley/San Francisco

August 4-August 7:
Vancouver, Canada (WHAT IS THERE TO DO IN VANCOUVER?)

August 7-August 10:
Seattle

August 10-August 20:
Detroit and other parts of Michigan (also, possibly, Windsor or other parts of Canada)

August 20-August 31:
Boston (putting everything I own in a box)

September 1-forever:
Washington, DC

^*But not really.

Michael Gerson is very worried about vulgarity in politics:

In 2006, after a long monologue about a dog and its vomit, Franken impersonated the deceased Sen. Strom Thurmond as saying: “Yeah, I screwed a woman who was vomiting once.” He once proposed a television sketch about a female CBS reporter being drugged and raped. He has suggested that his next book title might be “I F———Hate Those Right-Wing Motherf———!” At an event hosted by the Feminist Majority Foundation in 1999, Franken offered this thigh-slapper: “Why don’t we focus on what Afghan women can do? They can cook, bear children and pray. As I recall, that was fine for our grandmothers.”

Our popular culture, of course, violates even these expansive boundaries of tastelessness with regularity. We laugh at comedies featuring the C-word and at cartoons of foul-mouthed third-graders. In the cause of relevance and realism, our common life is already decorated with excrement. Why should political discourse be any different?

For at least one reason: Because vulgarity is often the opposite of civility.

Incidentally, I think “I F———Hate Those Right-Wing Motherf———!” would make for a great title. It makes its point quite artfully, and is much better than the title of Bill O’Reilly’s upcoming tome.

My favorite part is where he explains that when his friend is vulgar, it’s okay, but when RAPPERS do it, it’s loathsome. Not sure I understand why that is… maybe because his friend has a terminal degree? But a lot of rappers, apparently, have doctorates, so that can’t be it. Hmmm… what could it be?

Also, remember when Dick Cheney told a senator, on the floor of the Senate, to “fuck yourself“? Or when George Bush called a reporter “a major league asshole“? Weird how Gerson, former Bush speechwriter and policy advisor, doesn’t mention those incidents in his condemnation of Al Franken (who has, as of yet, never even been elected to any office that I know of).

What a load of (to pick a civil word) manure.

But let’s get back to Franken for a minute. Gerson takes great offense to Franken’s description of his work as “satire.” Because it uses naughty language, and stereotypes, and even sexual imagery. Well, yes, I think we can all agree that it does those things. But, last I checked, in pursuit of satire we aren’t limited to the scrabble dictionary and the Comics Code. Sometimes, offensive content and objectionable imagery is the most effective way of making a point. Let’s look at an example from Gerson’s op-ed:

At an event hosted by the Feminist Majority Foundation in 1999, Franken offered this thigh-slapper: “Why don’t we focus on what Afghan women can do? They can cook, bear children and pray. As I recall, that was fine for our grandmothers.”

Okay. So does anyone out there think that Franken, a dyed-in-the-wool liberal who loves taxes, abortions, and homosexuals, said those words sincerely? AT A FEMINIST MAJORITY FOUNDATION EVENT??? Of course not. This is, what’s the word, sarcasm. Franken is making a point—to limit women to these traditional roles is horrible, stupid, and maybe even terrorism! Okay, probably not really terrorism, but you can’t deny the Afghanistan connection. Better send in some troops, just to be safe.

Okay, where was I. Oh, right. Gerson is just being disingenuous. He knows Franken doesn’t seriously believe women should only cook, bear children, and pray. He knows Franken was joking. And, more generally, he knows that there’s nothing seriously objectionable about Franken’s humor—except that he is a liberal and is running for the Senate. This piece is deeply cynical, condescending, and just plain wrong.

For the record: I like Al Franken and think he would make a very good representative. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a few more politicians who are funny on purpose?