Andy Baio: "If we look strictly at the acquisition cost per user, Facebook got a relative deal with the Instagram purchase, paying roughly $28 for each of Instagram’s 35 million users. (The median cost across all the acquisitions is about $92 per user.)" "But if you look at the payout per employee, Instagram is completely off the charts."

"In old analog cameras, many such filter “effects” were a chemical byproduct of the film, so photographers became expert at understanding the unique powers of each. Fujifilm’s Velvia film, with its high saturation and strong contrast, attracts photographers looking to capture the vibrancy of nature, Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom notes. But casual photographers rarely developed this type of eye, because they just wanted to point and shoot. What Instagram is doing—along with the myriad other photo apps that have recently emerged—is giving newbies a way to develop deeper visual literacy." The argument for filters.

"We should change our focus to the other side of the equation and curtail not the texting but the driving. This may sound a bit facetious, but I’m serious. When we worry about driving and texting, we assume that the most important thing the person is doing is piloting the car. But what if the most important thing they’re doing is texting? How do we free them up so they can text without needing to worry about driving? The answer, of course, is public transit."

I've trimmed the headline a bit (the ABC figure is actually 48,275), but so much for the Wired deathwatch that was predicted. On the other hand, the comments point out a lot of the figure is from freebies and subscriptions. Hm.

Warren Ellis: "Buried in the OMM's web presence, once a month, is a multimedia presentation by Morley. Not just a music column, but video of the interviews he conducted in support of the month's subject or theme, music files, filmed performances, and, most unsettlingly, a Flash file that places an immense screen-filling Morley as rambling disco ringmaster."

Wired's interesting article on Polaroid, although a bit more technical detail would have been nice (I should read up on the process; why were negatives so tricky?)

To go with the David Brin "Transparent Society" piece (also in Wired, but a year later) and this week's Times coverage of the Internet Eyes scheme (see delicious passim). (Thanks Phil.)

"Both futures may seem undesirable. But can there be any doubt which city we'd rather live in, if these two make up our only choice? Alas, they may be our only options. For the cameras are on their way, along with data networks that will send myriad images flashing back and forth, faster than thought." David Brin, 13 years ago.

Warren Ellis: "As an antidote to this audiovisual paraquat they intend to spray into our children's eyes, I say the BBC should re-run Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds. Bear with me."

Interesting musings by Amy Hoy on placebos and advertising.

Bobbie Johnson on Wired UK 2.0 (I'm probably not the first to make that joke, am I?) I took out a subscription, sight unseen, because I'm curious as to how it'll shake out (and it was priced, like US subs, cheaply enough to write it off if it doesn't work out). This makes me somewhat hopeful.

Neal Stephenson interview/promo piece in Wired this month, on the occasion of the release of Anathem, a (shock!) actual science fiction novel. It's as big as you'd expect (900 pages) and I still don't trust him to finish a story, or indeed have had any editing, but I'll get the hardback anyway.

So US-centric it hurts. Boggle at "Google Transit may well become the world's best way to run a railroad" (no, the best way to do that is good frequency and reliability) and the fact this is on their car blog, then point out TfL doing this better, sooner.

"Wolpaw referred to this philosophy as achieving a 'low story delta,' meaning that the gameplay and the plot were so carefully intertwined that one simply wouldn't work without the other."

"Maybe that's why he is able to truly understand mass disease in Africa. We look at the huge numbers and go numb. Gates looks at them and runs the moral algorithm: Preventable death = bad; preventable death x 1 million people = 1 million times as bad"

Good article by Clive Thompson on Collision Detection, even if his reasons overlap somewhat.

Aw, diddums, your stupid simulated life doesn't show up on Flickr. Guess what: it's there for REAL PHOTOS of THE REAL WORLD. Shut up and run off to your little gated photo site for people who spend too much times in MMORPGs.

Graraargh. Chemicals != engineering. Can we stop using the phrase nanotech until there are actual machines involved?

Right: centralised music stores. Wrong: no peer to peer copying. Pretty good though. Via Gyford's Overmorgen, tangentially