An idea I first saw Tim Bray do - when he finds a bunch of interesting tabs open in his browser, he writes a "tab sweep" post to share the links, and why they're interesting. I think it's a good idea. So, here are a few tabs that got opened up during my lunch-hour RSS feed reading…

via Stephen: Google Entices Mobile Developers To Its Cloud With Kinvey

The full stack required to deploy stuff is surprisingly/insanely complex:

"To build your own back-end stack, you'd probably need a year and a million dollars," said Kinvey CEO Sravish Sridhar in a recent discussion.

Reminds me of Sagan's apple pie recipe:

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.

So much for 2 guys in a garage building the next killer platform, unless they build it on top of Google/IBM/Microsoft/Amazon…

See also, Stephen's What's Ours post on building on top of other people's/companies' platforms. And David's post on The Post Flickr World (and the Global Village Construction Set )

Flooding in Europe, via The Big Picture. Dang. I thought the Danube was supposed to be blue…

EdTech Magazine: These 14 BYOD Statistics Tell a Story of Opportunity and Danger. fear! danger! My son's school has open wifi for students to bring their own stuff if they choose. Works great. Biggest problem is apparently getting kids to stop playing at lunch and… you know… go outside.

All The Young (edu)Punks: Technology Changes Everything (or How I Stopped Worrying About MOOCs)

I've been fairly critical of the statements about technology being a panacea for all that ills higher education; it's not and it never will be. To create a quality e-learning piece, it takes often 10 times the amount of time, and usually the same amount of cost to produce. So logically, you'll have to use that item at least 10 times before it makes a return on your investment. If it's a lecture that's been professionally captured, captioned (as required by law in 2014), audio tweaked and perfected, slides intercut with video, title cards for the beginning and end, and you deliver that lecture once a year, you'll have to wait 11 years for that to make any return. Think your video format will be out of date? How about the content itself?

via BoingBoing: How do mosquitos survive rainstorms? I always pictured them deking around like little X-wing fighters…

Stratechery - The Jobs TV Does

In fact, the only way things will change is through true disruption.

Disruption is a funny word; in most of the tech press, it has come to mean little more than "competitive," and functionally superior products are often labeled as "disruptive."

Disruption is so overused that it's now meaningless. Let's disrupt lunch. Did you see Game of Thrones this weekend? DISRUPTIVE! Etc… We need to find a better word…

via Ars Technica - New method can image single molecule, identify its atoms HOLY CRAP WE CAN SEE AND IDENTIFY INDIVIDUAL ATOMS!

Combine that with this post via BoingBoing, about a new technique to capture images of molecular bonds. Wow. Science fiction, ladies and gentlemen…

via The Russians Used a Pencil, linking to an article by Alan Siegel and Irene Etzkorn in the Wall Street Journal:

Complexity is the coward's way out. But there is nothing simple about simplicity, and achieving it requires following three major principles: empathizing (by perceiving others' needs and expectations), distilling (by reducing to its essence the substance of one's offer) and clarifying (by making the offering easier to understand or use).

and

Predatory companies with business practices that are onerous for consumers are only too happy to hide behind the cloak of complexity. And virtually all companies and organizations are averse to change and naturally inclined to take the path of least resistance. For them, it is far easier to keep tacking on amendments and exclusions than to take a blank-slate approach that would make things clearer to customers.