Minor nitpick, it was Path who first started using the cover photo. Facebook did the same only a few months later, and then many other services followed.
What he said is that he is "the exclusive rights holder for the artwork contained within Flat UI". Presumably he's referring to Flat UI the UI Kit, not Flat UI the general trend.
Nice app. Users could combine this with a proxy, so they can use files.yourdomain.com/file.html instead of dl.dropbox.com/s/longrandomstring/file.html. I've used this one for a while, which runs for free on App Engine: http://code.google.com/p/dropbprox/.
On the one hand I'm very excited by this; I see Marco as an interesting writer/speaker, when it comes to iOS development or when he geeks out about whatever gear he's recently bought. I also expect him to be a great editor, so I'd gladly pay money for a magazine put together by him.
But on the other hand...I'm really wondering why this needs to be an iOS app. Written content is perfect for publishing on the web, I really don't think you'll be running into any speed issues when you release this as a web magazine. And even if you would, why not make the content available both native and on the web?
I'm aware that Marco is an iOS developer, and that a lot of his readers (myself included) will have iOS devices, but for the sake of the open web I'm still slightly disappointed.
It's not dumbing down, it's simplifying. By designing mobile first, you force yourself to think about the priorities in your UX. You can still add all kind of things on top in the full web interface, but that's on top of the core experience.
It's built into the normal iPhone texting application and turned on by default. When my Mom texts another Apple user, iMessage will automatically route her message over the Internet. She doesn't have to approve this, and honestly, probably won't even know the difference.
The problem with that approach is that he expects be extradited to the US as soon as he gets to Sweden. Oh and you might call it nitpicking, but he's not convicted of rape yet, let alone charged with it.
No it doesn't really, it keeps your HTML clean. Sure, there's better ways of getting a MacBook into your webpage, but this definitely shows the power of the :before and :after selectors.
Funny that all 3 companies you mention are money-related, which is a tough nut to crack in most countries. There's so many rules and regulations which all differ from country to country that I think it's quite understandable for companies like these to focus on 1 country first.
BTW, obviously all startups handle money in some way, but for these 3 it's a bit more complicated, as they're providing financial services to third-parties. (Ebay+Kickstarter to sellers/buyers, Stripe to sellers.)
That's where the problem lies, they first took money from users, and then "offer" to pay it back. They should've done it the other way around, only charging money for sites which actually signed up to the service.
They've done a good job at making it sound like a great service for publishers, but when you think about it a bit more it's quite shady.
This is just goodwill-in-disguise. They've collected money on behalf of publishers, without consent, and now they realise that was a bad idea. They understand they obviously can't get away with keeping the money, but they don't want to invest the time into you know, actually contacting the domain owners.