IASC: The Hedgehog Review – Falling – Bookmarking for the Snook to read when we get home. Let’s put the retirement discussion back at the top of the To Do list…

Thanksgiving Recipes Across the United States – NYTimes.com – Indiana is represented by Persimmon Pudding?! I’ve never ever heard of such a thing.

Google Fit Developer Challenge – I’ve been playing around with Apple’s HealthKit and it’s got some nice features. I wonder what the Android devs will come up with? (I also note that Withings gets a big nod, while Fitbit’s anti-integration stance presumably kept them out.)

Pamie » Barbie Fucks It Up Again – Well, crap. I actually own a Computer Engineer Barbie. I won it at a Girl Geek event at Google three years ago. She’s been sitting on my desk at work ever since, still pristine in her box. I loved her pink laptop and her jaunty Bluetooth headset and her sensible sneakers. And now I can’t even look at her! HOW COULD YOU LET ME DOWN, BARBIE. Ugh.

Scalpers target The Fat Duck – WTF. I can’t believe I missed out because I was honest and only entered once. The Terms said you had to register for the ballot under your own name and couldn’t sell the ticket. They should make people show IDs that match when they turn up. Jerks.

Movie Review: ‘Atari: Game Over’ digs up a great story in a mass grave of game cartridges – GeekWire – Is anyone selling these cartridges on eBay yet? Because I would 100% buy one. (We had that game as a kid.)

After nearly two years, I think we can declare the bulk of our garden renovation complete. I’ve spent the last few hours poring over photos to try to wrangle it into a narrative, and it’s been really fun to relive the process! Without further ado – our garden renovation.

As most old school bloggers can attest, traffic has really dropped off now that a lot of folks have moved to social media. One thing I’ve been trying lately is being more proactive with tweeting links to new posts. It seems to be having quite an effect so far. In the week since I started, sessions and users are both up around 50% and page views are up 30%.

When you dig into the referrers, the major culprit is clear. Clicks from t.co (Twitter’s URL shortener) are up 1800%. My guess is that while a lot of folks don’t regularly scan their blogs anymore, they’ll click through to one if reminded that something new is available.

With that in mind, I’ve also added some additional social media sharing links to each post. You can now share directly to Twitter, Google+, and Facebook. I’ll use them now to share this particular post, so if you see a link to it on one of those services, you know it’s working!

The Forgotten Shores of App Store pricing – Interesting discussion over Monument Valley and appropriate App Store pricing. I think there’s one point that Six Colors misses: a lot of users (including me) now have a negative association with in-app purchases. I associate it with Zynga and Farmville and all those scammy “Freemium” games that really were about tricking kids into buying lots of add-ons. Every time I play an iPad game with my nieces and nephews, they’re constantly clicking on the big attractive ads to “unlock” additional paid content. I stopped playing Words with Friends once I discovered people could buy hints (aka cheat). So for better or worse, I think of in-app purchase as a bit of a scam. I have a negative reaction when I see the option. I know that’s silly and by no means universal, and I’m definitely not someone that would leave a one-star review over it. But I do think it’s a factor that game developers need to consider going forward.

And don’t get me started about idiots who give one-star reviews for spiteful, whinging reasons. Ugh. Once this guy gave a one-star review to an app I’d help build thanking us for finally adding a feature that he really wanted and saying it worked great, but that he was giving a one-star review “because it took so long”.

Karl Stefanovic’s sexism experiment: Today presenter wears same suit for a year – How very timely to be reading this at the salon, where I’m going to spend more in one visit than the Snook does on grooming all year. I wish I didn’t have to. But I rationalise it as an investment, knowing that perceptions of my competence are tied up in my appearance in a way his is not. It’s a very real possibility that my career depends to some degree on putting in the effort (and spending the cash).