Outfoxed: how protests forced Mozilla's CEO to resign in 11 days →

On the day Brendan Eich resigned as Mozilla's CEO, I wrote about the strange path that took him from company co-founder to pariah a mere 11 days after he got the company's top job:

In nearly two decades working on Mozilla’s mission, Eich became known as a brilliant technician and a crusader for the open web. But after becoming Mozilla’s CEO 11 days ago, Eich became known primarily for his opposition to same-sex marriage. In an era when Jeff Bezos donates millions of dollars in support of marriage equality in Washington and Mark Zuckerberg marches in the San Francisco Pride parade, Eich stood out both for his opposition and his refusal to discuss his beliefs. His appointment sparked an extraordinarily public debate between him and the broader Mozilla community over when a CEO can claim a right to his own unpopular beliefs — and what should happen when those beliefs clash with the written values of his company.

Office politics: Microsoft comes back to reality →

Upon the release of Office for iPad, I wrote about Satya Nadella's vision for a renewed Microsoft:

The world Nadella describes is also one in which Microsoft, after years of chasing the tectonic shift to mobile devices, can lead again — by helping other businesses navigate the shift to mobile devices that threatened to derail Microsoft itself. Former CEO Steve Ballmer saw Windows as the center of the world, and the story of Microsoft was the operating system’s unstoppable march around the globe. At a small news event in San Francisco today, Nadella formally acknowledged a changed world: one where our computing is more likely to be done on a device made by a competitor than one branded with the Microsoft logo. "There is no trade-off; it’s reality for us," Nadella said as he pledged to bring Microsoft services to customers whatever platform they use. "What motivates us is the realities of our customers."

Twitter experimenting with showing how many people saw your tweets →

I was the first to report that Twitter has begun showing some users how many views their individual tweets are getting:

Like many experiments in Twitter's continuous redesign, showing users what amount to pageviews is likely an effort to encourage people to tweet more. For users with a modest number of followers, tweeting can sometimes feel like shouting into a void. That's why Twitter started letting you know when someone favorites something you retweeted, or a tweet you were mentioned in — those moves help to build a feedback loop that still doesn't feel quite complete. A view count lets you know that even if you're not receiving retweets or favorites, your posts aren't going totally unread.

Hucksters and hustlers: inside the hidden brand orgy of SXSW →

While attending my first South By Southwest Interactive Festival, I wrote about how the event had gone from a gathering of top tech minds to a numbing orgy of the #brands:

The festivalgoers in Austin this week mainly represent not blogs or design firms but some of the biggest corporations on earth. The interactive festival that drew 9,000 people in 2008 drew more than 30,000 last year, and what awaits them is a freewheeling carnival of brands. Outside the convention center, they stand in line to eat crowdsourced Oreos. Inside, they attend seminars on hashtag design. All around the convention center this week, corporate spaces glimmered in the rain like so many banner ads. In a way, SXSW itself has become the worst website ever — it just doesn’t realize it. 

Veronica Mars review: a true detective returns →

I reviewed Veronica Mars, a film that I helped Kickstart into existence:

Veronica Mars arrives in theaters and online this week, heralding a new era in filmmaking where fans could have unprecedented influence over which projects are developed, and how. The resulting film shows both the promise and perils of making a movie for the diehard fans who want it to become reality: the harder a film works to please its existing fan base, the more trouble it will have appealing to a wider audience. And there’s something unsettling about watching a show known for its relentlessly dark worldview returning as an elaborate act of fan service.

But credit where it’s due: Veronica Mars is a lovingly crafted, immensely satisfying reunion. Bell’s Veronica is fearless, funny, and an uncommonly good detective — but she’s also a lousy girlfriend, a distant daughter, and mired in the sort of quarterlife crisis that nearly always results from going to law school. As written by Thomas and co-writer Diane Ruggiero, Veronica is the smartest character in every scene. And yet she’s also deeply uncertain of her place in the world, and that tension helps turn a mostly run-of-the-mill murder mystery into something that feels more substantial.