Cody Brown, of Scrollkit, made a replica of the ballyhooed New York Times "Snow Fall" story—in about an hour. Naturally, the Times made a copyright complaint: he was, after all, using their images and whatnot! So he removed it. Then they insisted that he "remove any reference to the New York Times" from his website. Heh.

He writes: The backlash to “Snow Fall” is that it’s an indulgence only the Times can afford. It took them six months and a powerful multi-person dev team to hand-code it. Most news orgs don’t have anywhere near these kinds of resources, and this is why we’ve spent the past year [...]

Micro-blogging service Twitter struggles with corporate and celebrity users who refuse to follow industry standards for social media engagement. Case in point: Twitter user @Pontifex, apparently an elderly World War II veteran with an inexplicably large online following, has outraged millions of Twitter users by refusing to follow anyone but his own duplicate accounts. The rudeness reached such a point today that the end-user has finally given in to intense pressure to retire his Twitter accounts and also give up his job leading a global pedophilia ring headquartered in a European castle.

But there is a #fail even with this alleged cessation of the @Pontifex Twitter account, which [...]

"The firearms business is coming under mounting market pressure as calls for new restrictions on gun ownership following last week’s school slaughter drove down shares of two major players and led some retailers to begin pulling specific products from shelves." —Capitalism may need some couples therapy to help repair its relationship with the murder-weapon industry.

Photo by Pop Culture Geek.

"Trillions of dollars worth of stock certificates and other paper securities that were stored in a vault in lower Manhattan may have suffered water damage from Superstorm Sandy. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., an industry-run clearing house for Wall Street, said the contents of its vault 'are likely damaged.'" —And here you are worried about people having food and water and electricity.

This "brainstorming about what the Times should do" is largely accurate. People love membership, when it doesn't suck. The idea is to go more MoMA or BAM and less NPR. Look at the BAM Cinema Club membership levels, which are (sorry!) better executed than MoMA's. But also, then look at airline frequent flyer programs. People love belonging. But more than they love belonging, they love having status. Scratch even the most socially liberal person and you'll still find a person that loves convenience, if not outright status snobbery. (Just speaking from personal experience!) (Photo credit.)

Walking into McCormick Place, Chicago’s half-hangar, half-labyrinth convention center, I looked at the schedule to find that I had just missed “Canadians Do Cremation Right.” The 130th National Funeral Directors Conference, was underway; held each year in a different city, the conference brings together funeral directors from across the country for three days of presentations, trade talk, awards and camaraderie. After shaking off my initial disappointment at having missed the Canadian talk, I scanned the remaining workshops. After passing on “Marketing Your Cemetery: Connecting With Your Community” and “Managing Mass Fatality Situations,” I circled “The Difference Is In The Details,” an embalming workshop.

The small film company I sometimes work [...]

Fellow Tom Ford enthusiasts will of course need to read the Vogue piece regarding his latest women's collection. But they should be warned, of course, that the story of How Tom Ford Keeps His Equity is a ludicrous one. (Spoiler: he expanded his stores recently by selling a Warhol. Why didn't I think of that?) It's a delightful read but it's also just bad business journalism. The word "Zegna" does not crop up (Ford did a huge licensing deal with them) and neither does "Marcolin" (Ford recently extended his licensed sunglasses to them for another five years). That's where the big money is. But at least they do [...]

"Darden Restaurants (DRI) has been struggling to make its brands relevant again as diners increasingly head to chains like Chipotle and Panera, where they feel they're getting restaurant-quality food without paying as much. As it looks for ways to catch up to shifting trends, Red Lobster this week started testing a 'pay-at-the-counter' concept at two locations near its headquarters." —The great divide between people who like to occasionally eat at a restaurant with table service and the food-obsessed coastal elite snobs grew a little wider this week, as mall chain stalwart Red Lobster began selling its Krab Dinners at the counter, McDonaldland-style.

Photo by Daniel Oines.

Apple, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Google, Chevron, Disney, Wells Fargo, Cisco, Oracle, KB Home, Yahoo, Qualcomm, Hilton, Oracle, eBay, Charles Schwab, Clorox, Adobe, Oracle … it seems like a lot of the world's top companies are based in California, including more than half of the NASDAQ technology index. But Texas Governor Rick Perry is the kind of man who knows things in his heart, and he won't let any fancy coastal-elite numbers and facts get in the way of what God tells Rick Perry in the dead of night.

That's why Rick Perry's comically dumb voice is featured on new radio ads aimed at getting Californians to move their [...]

Google's Android phones are used by more people, yet Apple's App Store sells 400% more than Google's online store for Android apps. How is this even possible? Consumer tech experts say it's because Apple started early and has stringent quality control and also has a whole lot of iTunes account holders who typed in their credit card information before they even owned a smart phone.

Consumers are more willing to fork over their money for an iOS app, because they know they’ll probably get their money’s worth, says app developer Zak Tanjeloff with DLP Mobile. “The App Store has a higher proportion of quality apps, thanks to the [...]

Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit suddenly resigned this morning, which is a very big shock to the people who follow this kind of thing. But how does this affect you, the Citi consumer account holder? You still have to pay your credit card bills, sorry.

One of the problems with this innovative and cool approach by the Wall Street Journal to writing about Pinterest by writing about Pinterest on Pinterest (and it is!) is that there you can't address that, more than early Napster, more than Megaupload, more than any government-seized hip-hop blog, Pinterest is entirely copyright-infringement. It's just that, unlike with music and movies, there's no dumb and hostile industry lobby that represents, say, "every photographer everywhere." If there was ever a place on the Internet that made you think SOPA was a good idea, it'd be right here! But there is, in the Journal itself, a spiffy little paragraph [...]

For those of you who don't, somehow, do your private banking with Goldman Sachs, you won't see their just-issued report on the AOL purchase of the Huffington Post. For starters, they expect "retention compensation" to offset the Huffington Post's earnings—that the introduction of the Huffington Post will have no impact whatsoever on AOL's projected 2011 earnings. Although: "We view this acquisition as further solidifying AOL’s stance as an owner of valuable focused content channels, similar to cable networks…." Here comes the bonus: trashing Yahoo! "We consider this acquisition strategically valuable from the perspective of (1) brand building; (2) mobile distribution; and (3) differentiated content as it distinguishes AOL’s [...]

An impressive and scary percentage of the New York Times Company's revenue is from online advertising-27%. Looking back at our New York Times costs v. revenue chart since 2005, excerpted above, which shows from year to year how tight the margin has become between income and expenses, we now see an even further closing-in. Total revenues in the third quarter of this year: $554.3 million. Operating costs: $522.9 million. Here's one thing that's always upsetting: "Newsprint expense increased 19.6 percent, with 25.8 percent from higher pricing offset in part by 6.2 percent from lower consumption." Translated: paper is always costing more, always being bought less. And to [...]

"The benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average rose to an all-time record Tuesday on news that China was pledging to plow more money into its economy, returning the markets to highs not seen since before the financial crisis. By 10 a.m. Tuesday, the Dow was up nearly 90 points, or 0.74 percent, to 14,216.70, blowing past a record that was set Oct. 11, 2007, during a time when the economy was just peaking and headed toward disaster. [...] The Dow’s record high confirmed that the ongoing political paralysis in Washington has failed to spook the markets much in the last year." —The very rich don't seem to be bothered by [...]