If you're the kind of person who judges apps by their icons, this resource will likely become an awesome (yet expensive) favourite place to visit. It's a great way to discover new apps, too.

I love being able to downsize the icons, so I can see a lot of apps on the screen at once. Not knowing what the apps do, yet still having to judge based solely off an icon is a great challenge.

Jordan writes another great piece for The Industry, this time focusing on efficiency and why it isn't always what our goal in life should be:

Efficiency is just a means to an end, not an end unto itself. It would be foolish to set a life goal of just living more efficiently — that would make us no better than glorified machines. Instead, we try to lead lives that are more meaningful, fulfilling, edifying, productive. Efficiency can help enable us to do those things, but it can’t replace them.

One should look upon life as a piece of music: we don't listen to music to get to the finale — we listen to music for the journey. Life isn't a path towards a goal, it's a steady journey we should strive to enjoy.

Visual News has some very rare photographs taken during WWII. But they're in colour. There's also a larger selection which can be found at the US Library of Congress, but it's pretty daunting to browse.

When viewing really old photos, we're usually reminded of their age by the poor quality and lack of colour. These photos look strangely modern; as if taken with Instagram, today. This modern feel injects new emotion into the images, which is a strange sensation considering the era in which they were taken.

Fraser Speirs just wrote up some thoughts about his iPad mini. A section in his article stood out to me: where he discusses the inherent compromises in a first generation product: something I have been thinking about recently.

The iPad mini reminds me of my first MacBook Air. When the Air first shipped it was a Mac with some serious technical compromises with a design and form factor so compelling that you would re-arrange your entire digital life to make it work. The iPad mini reminds me of that except that it only has one serious compromise: the non-retina display. In every other respect, it's a full-bore iPad.

The MacBook Air is the most popular Mac. Does that mean the iPad mini will be the most popular iPad?

That "Russians use a pencil in space" story you've probably heard before? Not so true.

Nobody likes debt.

A new, charitable organisation called Strike Debt hates debt so much that they're planning to do something very unique to combat it. It's a common practice for banks to sell debt onto third parties, so they don't have to collect the debt themselves.

Strike Debt will buy debts from banks with money received from donations, but it won't collect them.

The genius of this idea is compounded by the fact that Rolling Jubilee, a Strike Debt project, will buy debts for a fraction of their real value: meaning the $320,000 raised so far will pay off over $6,000,000 in debt.

Sounds like a great way to make a charitable donation 20 times more valuable.

As ever, some great analysis of data by Horace:

Samsung’s success is dependent on having ridden on the back of Android. [...] Meanwhile, indications are that “mobile” is causing a contraction in Google’s margins.

I think the story here isn't that Samsung is making more money from Android than Google is, but instead that as Google enters the mobile space further, their margins decrease. This seems counterintuitive and can't be a good sign for the company.

We know that Google makes significantly more money from iOS users than from Android users. That fact, coupled with this new revelation, seems to indicate an unpredictable and worrying future for the platform.

As Horace concludes:

If nothing else, Android has created a very interesting industry.

Very interesting indeed.

Jordan Koschei writes a great piece for The Industry, which, after reading, reminded me to spend more time enjoying the moment, and less time detailing it:

In our rush to document our lives we’ve stopped living them. By placing a lens between ourselves and our experiences, we make ourselves mere observers. We go through the motions of doing interesting things, all the while considering our experiences as a meta-narrative. Instead of focusing on the experience, we’re focusing on what other people will think of us having had the experience. We’ve relegated ourselves to cameraman status in our own movies.

This isn't to say that documenting one's life isn't a good thing — I keep a diary of sorts (and am very glad I do) — but it's easy to spend the entirety of a rock concert taking pictures and recording video, only to realise later that one's limited attention had been devoted to taking pictures, rather than enjoying the concert.

I would rather devote my full attention to the moment, then write my own description of the day in a diary. Attempting to take pictures of or live-tweet something I may later wish I'd paid more attention to is only setting myself up for regret.

I value my memories and experiences more highly than the images I capture with my iPhone.

MG Siegler writes some smart things about Steven Sinofsky's departure from Microsoft:

Sinofsky was the driving force behind the “no compromise” approach to Windows 8. I believe that approach is at the heart of the ultimate problem with the OS. As two separate halves, Windows 8 and Metro seem fine. As a whole, the OS seems like a schizophrenic mess. Microsoft should have copied the Apple approach with OS X/iOS, keeping them separate and slowly merging them over time by taking the best of both.

If Microsoft now starts to move Windows into a more iOS/OS X-esque, touch/keyboard and mouse optimised route, I think my biggest concerns with the software will disappear. I firmly believe that the “no compromise” approach to Windows 8 harmed the software significantly. Trying to glue together software designed to be interacted with a keyboard and mouse to software designed for touch, and attempting to make both work was a huge mistake.

If Sinofsky was the man responsible for this “no compromise” approach to Windows 8, perhaps his departure will result in more compromises and therefore better design. This may give Microsoft a chance to make headway in the tablet space.

I believe Microsoft could ship a Metro-only version of the Surface, without Office (or a desktop) and optimise it for touch. This is what they should have done all along with the Surface for Windows RT. The Surface Pro should be the only version with a desktop-mode — and only for running legacy applications. Microsoft should have created Office for Metro.

Microsoft shipping a real alternative to the iPad would be good for everyone: a monopoly is rarely a good thing, and Apple operates well under pressure from competitors.

Impressive numbers reported by Nvidia: a third of its entire business is now non-PC and its tablet shipments have doubled from just a year ago. The post-PC era seems to be benefiting Nvidia a lot; their third quarter revenue reached the highest it's ever been at $1.2 billion.

Nvidia's CEO says the total market for PCs is "being eaten by tablets". Why? He explains:

"The reason for that is because a great tablet is surely better than a cheap PC."

A great tablet is cheaper than a great PC.

In short: it's not for everyone, but those who it is for will love it.

Michael Wall, for Space.com:

NASA is serious about sending astronauts back to the moon's neighborhood and will likely unveil its ambitious plans soon now that President Barack Obama has been re-elected, experts say.

Now, that's awesome news.