Kickstarter by The Magazine to make a hard-cover book with some great material from its first year.

At the $15 pledge level, you can get a year of The Magazine, a $19.95 value. For $8,000 you get to have dinner with Glenn Fleishman.

Choose wisely.

(Disclosure: I have written for The Magazine in the past.)

Benedict Evans on all the kinds of devices that get counted as Android:

The important dynamic here is that a combination of very cheap off-the-shelf chips and free off-the-shelf software means that Android/ARM has become a new de facto platform for any piece of smart connected electronics. It might have a screen and it might connect to the internet, but it’s really a little computer doing something useful and specialised, and it probably has nothing to do with Google.

The answers to these questions are usually more complicated than they seem.

How do the economics of product design and consumer electronics change when you can deliver a real computer running a real Unix operating system with an internet connection and a colour touch screen for $35?

They’re puttin’ computers into everything nowadays.

Shawn Blanc’s new site dedicated to finding the very best apps for iOS and the Mac is live and I have two pieces in it, looking at the best Twitter app for the iPhone and for the Mac.

Hard to believe Microsoft is having trouble connecting to consumers.

(Via Molly Wood and Jason Snell.)

And it’s only Monday! But no less an outfit than the Los Angeles Times reports that teens are clamoring for iPhones! Well, according to:

…a survey conducted by Ebates.com, an online cash-back shopping and coupons website.

In Ebates defense, all of the good web site names were taken years ago.

There’s not a lot about the methodology of the survey other than this:

The survey was conducted during October and polled 500 teens ages 12 to 17.

Yes, I’m sure teens want iPhones. But a survey that’s probably just of 500 visitors to an “online cash-back shopping and coupons website” is not designed for scientific accuracy. It’s designed to get the “online cash-back shopping and coupons website” in the news.

(Via TUAW.)

My thanks to Global Delight for sponsoring the Very Nice Web Site RSS feed this week.

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Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

Try saying “Butts” to Siri and you’ll get a rather explicit Wikipedia entry about a sex act involving butts.

(Hat tip to my my 9-year-old.)

(Really.)

Ben Thompson, who used to work at Microsoft, floats some problems with summarily killing stack ranking:

What makes a decision – or a product, for that matter – a good one, is not the surface level question of whether or not it’s a good idea. Stack ranking2 stinks, and it was hurting Microsoft for years. But simply tossing it out the door without carefully considering every aspect of the decision, including who is making it, what is replacing it, and how it interacts with the other seismic changes at the company, threatens to convert a good idea into a bad decision, and another example of the lack of deep consideration that undermines so many of Microsoft’s initiatives.

He makes good points (as usual, sheesh, what is with that guy?), but assuming there is a process in place for performance reviews to be evaluated by the employee and the manager’s manager, I still think, yes, getting rid of a crappy policy is better than keeping one. Thompson knows better than I how it was implemented at Microsoft, but having worked someplace that went down this path, stack ranking had nothing to do with writing the reviews, it simply had to do with forcing them into a bell curve.

Unlike Thompson, I assume that this move did not come from Steve Ballmer but from the board.

Many managers may take the easy way out and give everyone about the same amount of compensation, which sure, prevents said manager from delivering really crappy news to the bottom of the curve, but unintentionally demoralizes the folks that are actually making a difference.

If you’re a manager and you’re not managing by providing your employees the proper incentives, then your manager should let you know you’re not doing your job. That’s how a normal review process works.

None of it is ever perfect in any organization. What you don’t want to do, however, is institutionalize the unfairness and I believe that’s what stack ranking does.

Shawn Blanc’s new effort set to launch soon:

Spending an inordinate amount of time and energy to research, test, and find the very best apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

I’ll have a few pieces in it that I think will help us to learn, laugh and love all over again.

The Verge’s Tom Warren reports that Microsoft is killing its stack ranking system, which fit employees into a bell curve for performance evaluation.

In a closer look at Microsoft’s turbulent history and mixed management decisions, Vanity Fair contributing editor Kurt Eichenwald blamed a combination of Microsoft’s obsessive focus on Windows and Office and the company’s internal stack ranking-system for a “lost decade” and cannibalistic culture. Eichenwald interviewed a number of current and former Microsoft employees who all cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside the software giant.

As I said last year, I worked at a company that tried to implement this system but was smart enough to back off after employee outcry. It’s a toxic example of the kind of social Darwinism preached by management consultants. Treating your employees like dogs in a fight pit isn’t a good way to run a business. Which kind of helps explain what’s happened at Microsoft.