So long as we’re talking about great updates to great apps, here’s another. Quotebook 2.0 answered two critical needs: iPad and iCloud support. But that’s not all. Quotebook also added URL support, so you can now send quotes from other apps such as Instapaper and Launch Center.

Three bucks in the app store.

Yesterday my favorite calendar app got a nice update. Fantastical now supports iCloud reminders.

It’s funny, when I first saw the release notes I thought they meant pop-up notifications for event reminders. But no, it’s the to-do items that exist in your iPhone’s Reminders app. And what’s great is that the same natural text recognition that works for creating events also works for creating reminders.

You just type in “Remind me to call my mom tomorrow” and Fantastical will know you’re creating a reminder, not an event, and set the due date for tomorrow. My only quibble here is that you can’t set a specific time for a reminder, only a day.

You can type into Fantastical the same way you would talk to Siri. I often wish that Siri had a way to type in my commands. If I’m in a place where I can’t or don’t want to speak out loud to my iPhone, it would be quicker and easier if there were a way for me to type in my natural language command for Siri rather than having to manually create an event or reminder.

Brand-new Twitter client for the iPad that has a particular focus: catching up on Twitter conversations amongst those you follow. Quip does this quite differently than the way any other Twitter client does, and I think it’s a great.

It’s a clever app and is very well designed. Federico Viticci has written a full review, including info on how Quip differs from Tweetbot regarding conversation display.

If you use Twitter a lot (I certainly do), Quip makes a good additional Twitter client, and it’s priced right: just $0.99 on the app store.

From Pat Dryburgh, a t-shirt celebrating that nobody’s perfect.

John Gruber reading between the lines:

On Tuesday morning, Presidio [the big, keynote room] is booked for the Developer Tools Kickoff, Game Technologies Kickoff, and What’s New in Cocoa sessions. After that, Presidio is pretty much entirely “TBA” from Tuesday afternoon through the end of the day Thursday.

This implies not just that Apple will be announcing new stuff (duh, it’s WWDC), but new stuff that will fill the biggest room in the building with two-and-a-half days worth of sessions.

And speaking of television’s trying times, Dan Frommer reads between the lines in some of Tim Cook’s answers last night regarding Apple TV:

[T]he way Cook was acting – his allusions, his commentary about the TV business, and some nervous chair-twisting – suggested that he was hiding something. (Cook even defended iTunes’ video content library!)

(You can watch this specific segment here.)

I agree with Frommer, Cook’s answers are dodgy and seem uncomfortable.

If Apple TV truly is no more than a hobby then why feel the need to defend it? As it stands today, the Apple TV is a perfectly legitimate device with a great reason for existing: it’s an inexpensive, central hub for two major forms of media we all have our computers stuffed to the brim with: video and music.

But Cook never seemed to settled into a confidence about the device as it is. He kept saying, “We’re gonna keep pulling the string and see where it takes us.”

(Via Marco.)

While driving around town doing errands over the weekend the latest episode of On The Media was airing on NPR and I really enjoyed the topics they covered. From this week’s show description:

On the Media explores the world of television, including how the industry is coping with changing consumer habits, the future of the communal viewing experience, and television on the web.

Assuming the folks who read shawnblanc.net are interested in topics like getting access to digital content, internet television, usage-based cable bills, and the like, I think you’d also find this episode interesting and enjoyable.

If you are going to have Twitter and Facebook buttons on your site, at least have the decency to use something that is minimalistic and non-obtrusive like these custom designs by Christoph Ono. (Via Adam King.)

Dr. Drang on accelerometers.

And for more, check out this interview with the guys who designed the Wii Motion Plus controller.

Another good article from Oliver Reichenstein, this one recommending we ditch the “Tweet This” / “Like This” / “+1 This” buttons that adorn our websites like punch the monkey ads:

What does it mean that every Mashable article has thousands of retweets and likes? It’s not like the number of tweets shows how interesting an article is. It more likely shows the strength of their social media profile.

How much of web design is done because that person did it over there? We see how big sites like Mashable have hundreds or thousands of retweets and so we think that we will get that sort of traffic as well if only we had a Tweet This button of our own.

In my previous site design I had a “Share this on Twitter” link at the bottom of every article. But as I watched and measured the use of that button I found that people were organically sharing my articles on Twitter at a ratio of 5-to-1 those who were clicking the “Tweet this” link.

If you provide excellent content, social media users will take the time to read and talk about it in their networks. That’s what you really want. You don’t want a cheap thumbs up, you want your readers to talk about your content with their own voice.

When I redesigned this site I considered every element and asked myself why it was there and what purpose it served. Based on my own web browsing habits and how I use other people’s sites, I tried to incorporate only what I thought would the most helpful elements to the most amount of readers.

Oliver Reichenstein on the what and why of Information Architects’ new typeface, iABC, which they’re using on their site:

[S]creens are changing not just in size, but also in pixel density. In other words: we do not just need responsive layouts, we also need responsive typefaces. To test that assumption, iA has created its new website with responsive typography and a custom-built responsive typeface.

[...]

You can’t see responsive typography on one and the same device. And you can’t even see it comparing the devices if it’s done right. The idea of responsive typefaces is that the typeface always looks and feels the same.

The Boston Public Library has a Flickr set with 351 travel posters from the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s. And man are they fantastic. I especially love the Union Pacific Streamliner “City of Denver” poster, as well as all of the Austria travel posters.

But that’s not all. They’ve got a slew of other sets as well, such as this one of vintage labels from produce crates.

(Via TNW.)

InstaCRT is an iPhone camera filter app unlike any other. From the FAQ:

Q: What’s the difference between InstaCRT and other camera apps such as Hipstamatic or Instagram?

A: Hipstamatic and Instagram and other apps are applying filters to your photos in the software in your camera. InstaCRT is sending your photo to our office in Stockholm where the photo is displayed on a actual physical 1” CRT monitor which is photographed with a digital SLR from which the new photo is sent back to your phone over the internet.

Watch the video to see how the photos taken with the app show up on that miniature monitor in their office. The final results vary based on the time of day and thus the amount of daylight in their office, and the more people are using the app the longer the wait time for your photo to be processed. Here’s some info about how the app and its server-side software were developed.

All Things D has posted the video clips from last night’s interview session with Tim Cook.

Macworld has transcribed its highlights of what Tim said about various topics such as working at Apple, secrecy, the iPad, and more. Also Dave Caolo pulled some good quotes, and the MacStories team has a Storify recap with tweets of images, quotes, and the like.

I completely forgot about this post on Adobe’s Brand Experience Blog until Stephen Hackett linked to it this morning.

It takes well over a year to design, execute, deliver, and ensure the proper implementation of the roughly 5,000 or so assets it takes to get a CS release out the door (we’re already thinking about CS7). Along the away, there are innumerable institutional, technological, and political hurdles to overcome. It can be daunting, but we do everything we can to get it made with as few design compromises as possible.

Of all the screenshots, design concepts, and other graphics in this article it is this image of their splash screen less-versus-more continuum that grabs my attention. I consider the splash screen design that was used in CS3 and CS4 to be the best one — it was simple, basic, and minimalistic. And yet the Adobe designers consider that design to be far too simple, and they label the “sweet spot” to be mostly “more” with only a little bit of “less”.

Jim Dalrymple:

Apple today invited media to a keynote kicking off its annual Worldwide Developers Conference. The keynote will be held at 10:00 am on Monday June 11 at Moscone West.

And if you’ve seen or heard about the rest of the WWDC schedule, as Kevin Hoctor says:

I judge how juicy the WWDC keynote will be based on the count of “Session to be announced” slots on the schedule. Lots of juice this year.

Thomas Brand:

Path Finder feels at home on my Macintosh desktop just like as any application developed by Apple. The only difference is Path Finder was designed with Power Users in mind.

The latest update to Path Finder is remarkable. But there was one thing that I couldn’t get over, and it’s the fact that Path Finder is a separate app.

The most troubling part of adopting Path Finder as your daily file management application is that it can’t replace the Finder for everything. Clicking on the Trash Can in the Dock, or performing a Spotlight search for a file will relaunch the Finder even if it is not running. The task of juggling two file managers breaks some of the enchantment Path Finder brings to file management, but CocoaTech have provides some powerful preferences to keep the Finder out of your way as much as possible.

Another app is TotalFinder. TotalFinder is actually a plugin that brings certain power user features right to the native Finder, which means you don’t have to deal with two Finders. However, TotalFinder doesn’t have as many features as Path Finder does.

Joe Schmitt, the Lead Mobile Engineer at Vimeo, looks at what’s good and what’s missing from Panic’s Diet Coda. (Via MacStories.)

Sudoku Touch is the world’s simplest Sudoku, incorporating an innovative and clean interface, 5 levels of difficulty and gorgeous retina graphics. Powered by advanced handwriting recognition, Sudoku Touch is a joy to use. It is available today at a special price of 99c from the App Store. It works on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Could have been worse. He could have tried installing the whole suite.

I hear the boxed version now comes with complimentary salt and lemon juice packets.

Maxim Harper bought a Das Kyboard Ultimate, the one with no markings whatsoever on the key caps:

Think back to the trench run in A New Hope when Luke disables his targeting system. This is what it’s like having no keycaps — you’ve just got to use the force at times.

After my clicky keyboard review I received a lot of emails from people who use the blank Das and love it.

Interesting and cool-looking new coffee brew machine:

What looks like the futuristic love child of a Linea 2 and Bunn Trifecta, is a customizable, PID controlled brewing system that functions like a modern day syphon. With four separate chambers, you’re able to create different profiles and brew four coffees at once.

Watch the video at the bottom for a better idea of how it works.

(Thanks, Seth.)

My thanks to JetPens for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. I only ever buy my pens from these guys because the prices are great and they have the best selection of pens you’ll find anywhere.

My hands-down favorite daily writer is the Uni-Ball Signo DX. Though fellow pen nerd John Gruber prefers the Zebra Sarasa.

Also, I recently dipped a toe into the waters of fountain pens with the Platinum Preppy fountain pen. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed using it, so at the recommendation of others I’ve ordered a Lamy Safari.

Also: free shipping on orders over $25.

On this week’s episode of The B&B Podcast, which we recorded one day early, Ben and I talk about BBQ and slow-cook smokers, iPhone rumors and how a larger-screen iPhone could survive not being announced at WWDC, and Readlist, the new service from Readability.

Brought to you by Hover.

Seth Godin:

[T]there’s always one more tweet to make, post to write, words with friends move to complete. There’s one more bit of email, one more lens you can construct, one more comment you can respond to. If you want to, you can be never finished.

This has been an oft-visited topic on Shawn Today over the past month. And Seth is right: “It’s a dance.”

One thing I have done in my dance to find that balance is to set a new standard of what finished looks like for me. And that standard no longer means my inbox is empty, but rather it’s about budgeting my time and attention.

Cameron Moll adds:

Balance is a process, not a final resting state. I’m constantly juggling, shuffling, and re-prioritizing life’s demands. And I’m learning to be okay with that.

Breath no longer bated. Coda 2 is here.

I’m going with the Mac App Store version because it will support iCloud syncing, if and when Panic has OTA syncing of Coda and Diet Coda.

A fantastic, comprehensive, and thoughtful article on the iOS and Mac App Stores by Federico Viticci. He talked with many 3rd-party devs and writes about the past and present state of the App Stores. This is the sort of smart and in-depth piece you’d expect to find in Wired or The New York Times.

Shane Richmond, in his interview with Jonathan Ive, asks if he were to be remembered for just one of his Apple designs which one he would pick. Ive answers:

[W]hat we’re working on now feels like the most important and the best work we’ve done, and so it would be what we’re working on right now, which of course I can’t tell you about.

(Via Jim Dalrymple.)

John Gruber:

For the sake of argument let’s take it as a given that the next iPhone will sport an 1136 × 640 display, with the same 326 pixels-per-inch resolution as the iPhone 4 and 4S, the same width, but an extra 176 pixels in height, changing the aspect ratio from 3:2 to 16:9.

Let’s further assume that this new iPhone will not be announced until later this year, say, around October, just like the 4S last year. How might Apple get developers on the right track to support a new aspect ratio at WWDC next month while maintaining their standard radio silence regarding as-yet-unannounced products?

Ben and I, while recording The B&B Podcast live, were in the middle of talking about this exact issue when John posted his article. Ben doesn’t think there will be a bigger-screened iPhone this year, and I’m skeptical about it but, as John says, there’s an awful lot of smoke for there not to be fire.

Stills from The Avengers showcasing some of the User Interfaces that Jayse Hansen designed for the glass screens on the Helicarier and the visuals Tony Stark had in his new and upgraded Iron Man suit.

Reminds me of the UI design work for Tron Legacy, in that both were done with great skill and care and both played a huge role in making the film seem more realistic.

Glad I’m not the only one who was thinking this while watching the movie. (Via John Moltz.)

And in additional science-fiction economic nerdery, have you read about how much it would cost to build the Death Star?

Joey Devilla points out that, according to StatCounter, Chrome just overtook IE as the world’s most-used browser. Here at shawnblanc.net headquarters we use Safari. (Via Jonathan Christopher.)

A way to link to a specific part of a YouTube video:

WAIT… CAN’T I DO THIS MYSELF BY ADDING THAT BIT AT THE END?
Yup.

THEN WHY IS THIS HERE?
A) Not everyone knows about it yet, B) even if they do, they forget how to do it, and C) laziness.

It’s funny in this case, but great inventions, products, and services are often born out of a desire to help with forgetfulness and/or laziness. See also this chart: Geeks and Repetitive Tasks.

Some people will think this is sacrilege, the rest of us will think it is awesome.

Horace Dediu:

[C]apital spending has provided reliable foreshadowing of iOS device production. This is itself because Apple invests in the equipment used in the manufacturing processes for its devices. The more spending on equipment, the more production capacity is brought to bear and the more units are produced. Since iOS devices tend to be supply constrained, the more units are produced then the more are sold.

It’s one thing to have a hot product, it’s another thing to be able to (mostly) keep up with such high demand while also turning a crazy profit.

The pieces are in place for continuing the existing rate of growth.

Success breeds success. And in this case, the more successful Apple is the more successful they can continue to be.

Marco Arment was a guest for the latest episode of On The Verge. I enjoyed the whole 20-minute segment but I have to say that it gets especially great when Marco and Joshua start bantering about Android and iOS.

And here’s another video interview with Marco from the summer of 2009. He answers a lot of the same questions that come up in On The Verge, but this was back when Marco was still working full-time as the lead developer at Tumblr, there was no Instapaper for iPad (because, you know, there was no iPad).

In a way, what makes this poster even cooler is the fact that Denver never did host the 1976 winter Olympics — they withdrew because hosting the Olympics costs a lot of money.

After Denver withdrew, Whistler, B.C. was offered the games but they declined. The International Olympic Committee then offered the games to Innsbruck, Austria and that’s where the games were held. Here’s one of the posters from the Innsbruck games.

While you hold your breath for Coda 2 and Diet Coda, here’s a link to my review of Coda 1:

Coda is a text-editing, CSS-styling, WebKit previewing, file-managing, FTPing, terminal-accessing, web-site-building and publishing application for the Macintosh.

And, Coda has no duct tape.

I wrote the Coda review over 4 years ago, and Coda has been my only text editor ever since.

Because, oh, you know, Coda 2 and Diet Coda.

My thanks to JetPens for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. I’ve been buying my pens from these guys for years — they have only the best pens that you can’t find anywhere else.

One-of-a-kind writing instruments and office gear from Japan that you can’t find in your local office store.

Everything from gel pens so fine they can write on a grain of rice to carbon fiber fountain pens.

Free shipping for orders over $25.

Find out what makes Japanese pens so special at www.JetPens.com…it’ll be love at first write!

Great tip from Brett Terpstra. Just punch this into the Terminal and restart the Finder:

defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection -bool TRUE

If the standard bow tie knot isn’t for you, maybe this’ll suit you better.

Steven Sande at TUAW reviews the Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover:

Combining the protection of Apple’s Smart Cover and the typing ease of the Apple Wireless Keyboard into a wafer-thin cover is a great idea, and Logitech’s execution of the concept is essentially perfect. Without a doubt, this is the best iPad Bluetooth keyboard on the market at this time.

If I were going to get an iPad-keyboard-case-type-thing, Logitech’s Ultrathin Keyboard Cover is probably what I’d spring for. I don’t want one of those keyboard-cases that permanently attached to the iPad because I use my iPad without a Bluetooth keyboard far more than I use it with one.

But, I use the Origami Workstation from Incase along with my Apple Bluetooth keyboard and it is all just great.

Though, one thing I like about the Logitech Ultrathin is that it has specialized iPad keys (like one to go to the Home screen, one to activate Spotlight search, etc.). The AmazonBasics iPad keyboard has these buttons as well, and in my time of trying it out I found that I used the specialized keys quite regularly.

Pre-orders for the latest round of sweet t-shirts ends when I send them off to print on Monday morning. If you want one, there’s no time like the present.

Ben Maurer’s answer to the Quora question about the safest way to send someone $1,000 in cash:

Get 10 new $100 bills. Cut them into thirds. Put all of the left sides in one envelope, right sides in another, and middles in a third. Send the envelopes separately.

It’s clever because the Department of the Treasury allows you to redeem damaged currency. It’s illegal because you aren’t supposed to willfully mutilate currency.

Ben and I had a fun time talking about laser tag, iPhone rumors, and Mac App Store sandboxing rumors. (This week’s episode of The B&B Podcast was almost a live-only show when we realized half-way through that there was a technical difficulty with the recording. Fortunately some friends of the show helped us out and all was not lost.)

So good.

This zinger stuck out to me the most: “those who don’t design for readers might soon not be designing for anyone.”

In Twitter’s new privacy policy, they let us know that they are now using those embedded tweet buttons to track our website browsing history and thus offer us tailored suggestions for who to follow.

As Dustin Curtis points out, this is nice for getting more “tailored suggestions”, but what about the privacy issues?

Basically, every time you visit a site that has a follow button, a “tweet this” button, or a hovercard, Twitter is recording your behavior. It is transparently watching your movements and storing them somewhere for later use. Right now, that data will make better suggestions for accounts you might want to follow. But what other things can it be used for? The privacy implications of such behavior by a company so large are sweeping and absolute.

In an update at the bottom of his post, Dustin adds some clarification from Twitter that: (a) they do not and will not sell browsing history to advertisers; and (b) they delete visits to pages within the Twitter ecosystem after 10 days.

Nevertheless, you can disable Twitter Tracking under the “Personalization” option of your top-level Account Settings. I did. Also, as Jeremy Stanley points out, Safari 5.2 will have an option to ask websites not to track you and Twitter honors this request.

Om Malik and Mathew Ingram are posting the best tweets and stories around all the FB chatter.

Jim Dalrymple:

Blogging doesn’t have an agenda, other than expressing your true thoughts on a subject.

Yep.

A very nice and brand-new search app. Bang On is technically a dedicated DuckDuckGo search app, but it does a lot more than that. What Launch Center is to your iPhone apps, Bang On is to search. You can set site-specific searches (such as Amazon, IMDB, Wikipedia) and app-specific searches (like Pandora, Instagram, Tweetbot) and then save them as custom !bang shortcuts.

I was fortunate enough to get early access to Bang On a few weeks ago and I’ve been launching it all the time. It’s a great app, it’s got a good-looking icon, it’s universal, and is just $2 in the app store.

Droplr, the link-shortening, file-sharing, does-lots-of-cool-things service I’ve been using for as long as I can remember introduced a pro-level account last week. It’s $3/month and gets you a slew of upgrades and expansions over the layman’s account.

Classy.

Fun and candid shots taken during the filming of The Empire Strikes Back. I love the one with Anthony Daniels standing there in his futuristic C-3PO outfit trying to stay cool in the shade by holding that gaudy sun umbrella with the flower print and the tassels.

Wow. Little did I know I was just chipping at the tip of the iceberg with this app.

My thanks to Igloo Software for sponsoring the RSS feed this week.

Work isn’t a place — it’s what you do.

And you might work on a lot of devices — a Mac, an iPhone, an iPad — in a lot of places. You might work on the road or maybe from home (with your AeroPress and clickity keyboard). And that makes it hard to securely use a shared drive, coordinate with clients and collaborate with your team.

Igloo offers a complete digital workplace — you get full access to all your files, project discussions and plans for world domination. The information you need to work is available anywhere in the world, literally at your fingertips.

Igloo has a space for your team. Each team gets dedicated file sharing, Twitter-like microblogs, activity streams and a host of other collaboration tools in one cloud-based platform. Plans start at just $4/user/month.

Work better, not harder.

Enter to win an AeroPress and try Igloo free for 30 days.

This morning, when trying to unsubscribe from Twitter’s new weekly digest of toots and whatnot, I realized that I could not access my Twitter account settings using my iPad. Twitter insisted on redirecting me to the mobile version of their site and from there you cannot find a link to access your account settings.

Some folks on Twitter pointed out that you can navigate there directly by manual typing in the URL: http://twitter.com/account/settings. However, on a mobile device Twitter only shows you a mobile-sized amount of settings:

I realized that there could be a time when I am working solely from my iPad and forced mobile redirects like this could be a serious issue. In a worst-case scenario I could simply connect to my MacBook Air using LogMeIn, but it would better if I didn’t have to resort to that just to get around a website’s agent sniffers.

Dave Chartier directed me to a 3rd-party Web browser, iCab.

iCab is $2 in the app store and it is absolutely packed to the rafters with options and settings for things. And one of iCab’s features is the ability to choose your preferred user agent. I won’t use iCab as my default browser, but it’s a nice app to have as another tool in the box.

Now I have a Keyboard Maestro macro for telling Safari on my Mac to pretend that it’s Safari on my iPad (usually just so I can watch Kickstarter project videos), and an app on my iPad that pretends it’s Safari on my Mac so I can change my Twitter account settings. Computers.

Josh Sternberg:

Four years ago, [Atlantic Media's] traditional-to-digital-audience metrics were at a one-to-one basis, meaning for every traditional reader there was a digital one, according to Justin Smith, president of the Atlantic Media Company. Now, he says, on average, its digital audience is 25 times higher than the print audience.

Sternberg also notes that though Atlantic Media’s digital audience is 25 times larger than their print audience, digital accounts for only half of their advertising revenue.

I just logged in to my Twitter account settings and lo and behold that new checkbox for me to recive that “weekly digest of Stories & Tweets from my network” was enabled by default. Gee, thanks.

This is not that I think Twitter’s new weekly digest is a bad idea, but I’m on Twitter enough as it is and don’t need an email telling me about what I likely already saw. Moreover, it would have been polite of Twitter to let me opt in to the new email list rather than requiring me to opt out.

Seth Godin:

I care a lot about using digital shadows of real world devices because we don’t have the imagination to reinvent them.

The Home Work Podcast has become one of my favorite new shows. It’s short, and I’ve been learning a lot. About 3 weeks ago Dave and Aaron talked about what they call The Mental Office:

Working from home isn’t always about notebooks, apps and office furniture. Much of it happens in the head, between fighting distraction, staying focused and keeping things organized. In this episode, Aaron and Dave chat about leaving work at work (even when it’s in your home) and doing a mind-sweep to keep things clear.

Aaron shared a metaphor of how switching between work and home life was akin to transporting between worlds in Myst. I took some of his ideas and adapted them into my own daily routine. I now end the day by doing a brain dump into a running text file in nvALT — I jot down all the ideas still in my head, all the loose ends I didn’t tie up, all the things I may want to do but didn’t get to.

It can be hard to call it quits for the day when there are still things which could be done. And so my text file is my way of admitting that yes the day is done and yes there is still work to do, but there is always tomorrow.

It reminds me of this Hemingway quote:

I learned not to think about anything that I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day. That way my subconscious would be working on it and at the same time I would be listening to other people and noticing everything, I hoped.

By jotting down the loose ends of my work, and then leaving things alone, it has helped tremendously to let my conscious mind not keep work at its forefront when it’s not office hours. It also works as a great way to start the next day if I don’t already have an idea or project buzzing in my mind.

Not in a million years did I ever imagine that I’d link to a Martha Stewart article. But with Spring here and Summer on the horizon, this is a clever idea for use in iced coffee or tea:

If the ice is made from coffee, it won’t dilute your drink as it melts. Freeze hot coffee (or tea, if you prefer) in an ice-cube tray, then use the cubes to cool your brew.

I’m not a big fan of just plain iced coffee, even toddy. I like iced lattes or iced tea. And I have a killer sweet tea recipe that I make using mint we have taking over the flower bed on the south side of our house.

Dieter Rams, in a speech which he delivered at Jack Lenor Larsen’s New York showroom in December of 1976:

Ladies and gentlemen, design is a popular subject today. No wonder because, in the face of increasing competition, design is often the only product differentiation that is truly discernible to the buyer.

I am convinced that a well-thought-out design is decisive to the quality of a product. A poorly-designed product is not only uglier than a well-designed one but it is of less value and use. Worst of all it might be intrusive.

That was 36 years ago and it’s as relevant as if it had been delivered this morning.

(Via Oliver Reichenstein.)

The story of how they accidentally deleted the film before they were done and nearly lost everything.

My thanks to Timing for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. Timing is a utility app that runs in your Mac’s Menu Bar and keeps track of where you’re spending time on your computer.

I’ve been using this app for almost a year to keep tabs on my work habits. Timing runs in the background and does all the heavy lifting of tracking what apps I’m active in, what websites I’m spending time on, and more. I can bundle those apps into Activities such as “writing”, “designing”, etc. and see aggregate time spent on certain task categories.

You have to give Timing a few weeks to really get some good useful stats that you can look over in aggregate to see how you are spending your time, where you’re spending it, and if there are certain apps or websites you need to be more conscious of in order to be more focused and productive. I just recently looked back at my total aggregate stats for the past 10 months, and it gave me some motivation to continue refining my daily routine.

Right now, Timing is on sale in the Mac App Store, or you can snag the free version that shows your activities for today and yesterday.

The brand-new 5by5 Radio app is out. Launch it and it connects to the live stream. Set push notifications for when your favorite shows go live, and see the upcoming live broadcast schedule. Here’s a list of shows worth enabling notifications for.

More info about just how much the Pebble does and doesn’t interact with the iPhone, as well as what it’s like to have to ramp up production of a runaway Kickstarter project. The Pebble has been so successful that they literally had to cap their Kickstarter campaign at 85,000 units; all the rewards are now sold out.

Jonathan Ward, founder and lead designer of the drool-worthy Icon trucks, shares about the design decisions that go into creating the Icon Bronco. (Via Stephen Hackett.)

The syncing engine that powers Simplenote is now available to developers to use in their apps. Looking at the example uses, Simperium looks fantastically clever, powerful, and fast. It’s currently in free public beta.

“The emotions of life in advertising as told through gifs.”

Absolutely hilarious. (Via John Pastor.)

Gene Gable looks back at dry-transfer type and some of the Letraset catalogs of the early 1970s:

I was a freshman in college when I had my first confrontation with dry-transfer type. While every dry-transfer type encounter had a minimal likelihood of success, I somehow ended up with a decent-looking party invitation, which I remember distinctly was set in University Roman.

The Field Notes Dry Transfer “_______ Edition” were my favorite to date.

(Via Khoi Vinh.)

Dave Caolo brings a voice of reason to this sensationalist link bait post by Robin Wauters at The Next Web, and this flat-out lie from Kevin Smith at Business Insider. Sigh.

Episode 60 of The B&B Podcast, Ben and I get sabotaged by Skype (or perhaps TWC) but still manage to talk about cloth diapers and advertising in the Web.

Brought to you by two fine sponsors, Igloo Software and Hover.

Paperless is a brand new iBookstore book from David Sparks. He wrote it in iBooks Author and, in addition to being full of great information and how-tos, it’s jam packed with slideshows, screencasts, and Retina display graphics. I’ve been slowly working towards setting up a paperless office here at my home, and so I bought my copy yesterday. It’s just $5 in the iBookstore.

Pierre Igot installs Adobe CS6. (Via Viticci.)

This is the first pro-level Adobe app to hit the Mac App Store. Well, unless you count Elements, but ew. Also, this is the best installation process you’ll find for an Adobe app.

I use Lightroom 4. After Noah was born I realized I needed a better photo editor on my Mac besides iPhoto. I gave Lightroom 4 a trial and it’s great and surprisingly easy to use even for a guy like me who does light photo editing with the pre-set filters.

After you read about it on Quora, you can see it in action on this video from The Slow Mo Guys of popcorn popping at 10,000 frames per second.

Much better. (h/t Michael Anderson.)

John Carey:

I would say a good 90 percent of the debate on the iPads usefulness as a computer is coming from writers and casual users and this is where I find the debate getting a little one sided. Of course a writer would like the ipad. The tools most needed to get their work done are right there for the taking, you can hunt and gather all day long and it does make a fantastic, distraction free space to write in.

John is right. The iPad is very well suited for the sort of work that guys like myself, Federico Viticci, and Andy Ihnatko do.

Isaiah Carew, an indie Mac software developer, has nearly the exact same sentiment:

Speaking personally, my job revolves around: writing and debugging software, manipulating production graphics design, and supporting customers. I’ve tried to do all of these tasks on an iPad, and while all are possible, at least in part. There isn’t any task that’s made easier by the iPad. And most are made much more difficult.

The argument for why the iPad doesn’t work as a laptop replacement is just as valid for why it does. There are a lot of folks, like John and Isaiah, who are using professional-grade software to do design work, app development, photography and video editing, and more. The iPad of today can’t handle that.

What the iPad of today can handle is most all of the standard tasks of most average users. Email, Web browsing, Facebook, movies, music, games, and more. What will things look like 5 and 10 years from now?

I like this summary paragraph from John’s article:

As it stands, the iPad is amazing. I use it every single day for writing, browsing the news, sketching ideas, and reading though email or tech riders and I love every minute of it. It complements my daily life and on days when I don’t need to get any real work done, I leave my laptop at home. But when it comes to honest creative work I can not help but find the iPad as little more than a sidekick. I can say with certainty though, that this is far from the last word on this. I can clearly see a future where touch screen devices such as the iPad become more and more viable for the kind of things I have discussed here today. It is still new territory being explored and I for one can not wait to see where it takes us.

Side note: remember when the conversation was about whether or not the MacBook Air could be your only computer?

Stellar article by Alex Payne.

Stellar article by Michael Lopp.

Speaking of Mac utilities, this new Menu Bar app is pretty cool. It’s basically a Menu Bar folder, where you can store away some of the Menu Bar apps which are necessary evils. I’ve got a few apps living in my Menu Bar that I keep running but which I don’t need to see. Bartender hides them for me.

Bartender is currently in public beta, so it’s free to try out and if you buy a license now it’s half the price that it will be once it reaches version 1.0. My only quibble with Bartender so far is that the icon options are all blurry in the Menu Bar. If you’re going to have just a single Menu Bar icon, it ought to be crisp and well-designed.

Update: Here is a nice replacement icon by Adam Betts.

(Via MacStories.)

Here’s a great deal for what is probably the most-used utility application on my Mac.

Aaron Cohen, who was guest-editing for Jason Kottke over the weekend, asks the following question in his link to Jason Pontin’s article about apps and publications:

What’s the best way to use new technology to build and sustain an audience?

A lot of people are trying to figure that out. There is no one right answer, and there a lot of factors which come in to play. As someone who is making a living from publishing this website I do have a few thoughts.

Ultimately it boils down to one thing: make your content as easy to access and read as possible.

Not as fun, or unique, or feature-rich as possible. As easy.

Jeff Atwood:

Getting the details right is the difference between something that delights, and something customers tolerate.

Here’s a random way to think of it: every user is a princess and every poorly-implemented detail is a pea.

I like the idea of skipping Episode One all together, even though it does feel like cheating. Sure The Phantom Menace is by far and away the worst of all the episodes and pretty much adds nothing to the storyline nor does it provide any entertainment value. But: it is still one of the six episodes, and I hear kids love it.

Amazing. Works great on the iPad and iPhone, too.

I wrote this nearly a year ago. It’s still relevant (even more relevant now that the new iPad has a Retina display) and is related to the last link.

Jason Pontin, editor in chief and publisher of Technology Review:

The paid, expensively developed publishers’ app, with its extravagantly produced digital replica, is dead.

I’d say that the magazine app was only alive for about one issue (if that).

I hated every moment of our experiment with apps, because it tried to impose something closed, old, and printlike on something open, new, and digital.

The magazine app seemed alive only during that brief moment when the iPad was brand new and it was a novelty to have your favorite magazine available on your new tablet. But then you realized that it took up a lot of space, was slow to download on demand, and was not as easy to read as an article in Instapaper.

The Shawn Blanc T-Shirt Shop is currently open with a brand new t-shirt design that’s available in creme and heather gray.

The shirt was designed by local Kansas City illustrator and good friend of mine, Adam Grason, and is built off the same theme of last year’s shirt, that Computers are for Creating. Can you identify all the elements in the design?

I’ll be taking pre-orders until Monday, May 21. After which the t-shirt shop will close and all orders will be sent to print. Shirts are expected to be mailed out during the first week of June.

Speaking of The Avengers.

The Avengers brought in just over $200 million this past weekend, setting a new box office record. And, as Jonathan Weilbaecher writes for The Flick Cast, “it was the original Spider-Man movie in 2001 that was the first to breach the $100 Million Dollar plateau.”

Seth Godin:

The tipping point is the sum total of many individuals buzzing about something. But for an individual to start buzzing, something has to change in that person’s mind. Something flips from boredom or ignorance to excitement or anger.

This morning I brewed a cup of coffee using the recipe that Charlene Debuysere used to win The Gold AeroPress in this year’s World AeroPress Championship. It was delicious. It was also a nice change of pace as it’s quite different than the espresso-like cup that I normally brew with the AeroPress.

My thanks to Timing for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. On a personal note, Timing is one of the few apps in my Mac’s Menu bar. I use it to track and monitor how I spend my time at my computer.

Timing is the best way to keep track of the time you spend with your Mac. It automatically tracks which documents you are editing, applications you use, and the domains of the websites you visit. You’ll never have to worry about forgetting to start or stop a timer again!

After tracking, just drag and drop activities into projects. Sophisticated graphs show you how you spent your time each day and which projects consumed most of your time.

This week, Timing is available at a 60% discount off the regular price of $19.99. Get it from the Mac App Store today! There’s also a free version available that’s limited to showing today’s and yesterday’s activities.

Nice tip from Ted Landau. Odd preference location placement by Apple.

Lots of great tips here. Command+B and Command+R were new to me.

Matt Gemmell:

Unconsidered design (or lack of design) tends to simply gravitate towards the familiar, which is a natural instinct when we’re lost in some way.

Talk about a trip down memory lane. (Via Shaun Inman, naturally.)

Some behind-the-scenes info on the development of the color theme appearance options for Photoshop CS6.

One of the hallmark features of InDesign CS6 is its adaptive design functionality and the introduction of alternate layouts within the same document, liquid layout rules, and the content collector tools. Here’s Jay J. Nelson’s review of these features for Macworld.

Here’s a first-look overview of InDesign CS6 by Mike Rankin, based on the public beta. Of the creative suite apps, InDesign is perhaps my favorite and the CS6 update looks like it brings a lot of great new features. It’s not just for print-design anymore (well, it hasn’t been since CS5).

Adobe Creative Suite 6 is now available. The Photoshop CS6 beta has been out for a while, and I have yet to read or hear one negative thing about it.

I’m still rocking CS3 Design Standard from my previous life as a print designer, and this is the first update to the creative suite family that has me considering an upgrade even though I have no reason to.

If you’re jumping on the “access trumps ownership” bandwagon (cf. Netflix, Rdio), then you may be interested in Creative Cloud. It’s a $50/month subscription service that gives you complete access to the latest version of every app in the Master Collection, as well as a handful of cloud-centric services such as file storage, over-the-air sync, a Typekit subscription, and more.

I’ve been using Instacast to subscribe and listen to podcasts since I first came across it over a year ago. It’s simply a great app and version 2 has a lot of design and functionality improvements — I like how Stephen Hackett describes it as the best getting better.

Thanks to apps like Instacast and Rdio, the native Music app on my iPhone pretty much never gets used. Instacast 2 is just a buck in the app store.

My thanks to The Escapers for sponsoring the RSS feed this week to promote the just-released version of their web-design app, Flux 4. Flux is both a text editor and a WYSIWYG editor for building and designing web sites.

The hallmark feature of Flux 4 is what’s called FreeCode. FreeCode is the Flux text editor that stays un-touched by the WYSIWYG editor. If you’ve ever done WYSIWYG editing you know how mangled your clean code can get. Flux leaves the code you write intact if you switch between the text and the visual editor. Additional new features include: support for MAP and AREA tags, so you can visually edit image maps, code completion, support for TextMate themes and Coda plugins, an all new FTP/SFTP engine, and more.

Flux is available direct from The Escapers website or via the Mac App Store.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if more companies took cues from Amazon in this regard?

I am continually befuddled at what a company does with all the information I give them between the time their automated system requests it and the time I’m transferred to an actual customer service representative. Usually, the rep asks me all the same questions I just answered.

Perhaps the only thing that worse is when a company spams their own customers.

It’s nearly the same breakdown for me except I have a much higher percentage of apps that I should just delete, and the ones I actually use are also the ones I generally demo (such as Instagram, Launch Center, OmniFocus, and Simplenote).

When I first got an iPad back in 2010 it was Safari that I usually used to show off the device — Showing them a familiar thing (a website) in a new context (9.7-inch touch screen device) was the easiest way for people to instantly get a foundation for how awesome the iPad was. Now that most people I encounter are pretty familiar with the iPhone and iPad, if they don’t own one already, they want to see demos of the apps I use on a regular basis.

Dustin Curtis breaks out all the raw, relevant numbers from Facebook’s most recent S-1 filing.

Ads, duh.

The Wall Street Journal on Facebook’s amendment to their S-1 that they filed yesterday:

Facebook Inc. pulled back the curtain on how much it thinks it is worth, targeting a valuation as rich as $96 billion in what would be a record debut for an American company. [...]

Currently, the largest valuation for a U.S. company at the time of an IPO was United Parcel Service, in 1999, at $60.2 billion, according to Dealogic.

Long-time readers of this site know that I have never had an interest in Facebook. I’m not anti-Facebook, I just don’t personally have any desire to have a Facebook profile. Mostly because I see it as being just another time sink. But, as Facebook inches towards going public, I’m getting more and more interested in the network as a company.

Cool video demonstrating a concept for easier granular control of the cursor: swipe left or right across the keyboard to move the cursor respectively, and more.

The tap-and-hold bubble is neat but can be very frustrating and slow at times, especially when trying to fix one letter. In fact, a not-insignificant reason to use a Bluetooth keyboard when doing a lot of typing on the iPad is for easier eding of the text. It’s why all these iOS text-editing apps (Byword, iA Writer, Writing Kit, et al.) have dedicated cursor mover buttons.

Some fascinating charts by Chris Sauve breaking down the market share of the entire tablet market.

This week’s episode of The B&B Podcast Ben and I talk about the Samsung Galaxy S III (which was announced during the show), Paul Miller’s decision to leave the Internet for a year, and thoughts on the ethics of linking to a Kickstarter project which you are not a backer of.

Eric Migicovsky, creator of the latest runaway Kickstarter project, the Pebble smart watch which I’m sure you’ve all heard about by now, shares a little bit of the funding and development story.

I haven’t yet backed the Pebble. If I did it would be for science rather than for my personal desire for the watch. While I do think an iPhone-connected smart watch could be very cool, it would need to be more than a “read-only” device. Other than accessing the Music app, the Pebble can do little more to control your iPhone. It can’t answer your phone calls, reply to your text messages, dismiss a Twitter DM notification, tell you the weather, etc.

The Pebble is certainly on the right track. Their Kickstarter project alone proves that there is a market for watches that connect to our phones. And, the Pebble is useful without a smartphone to connect to as well, due to its built-in functionality and SDK. But for those picking up a Pebble so they can pair it with their iPhone, I can’t help but wonder if the Pebble will prove to be more novelty than utility.

Though it never stopped me, I always thought using a higher-wattage power adapter for my laptop was a bad idea. Turns out, according to this Apple knowledge base article, it’s no big deal at all.

Although you should always use the proper wattage adapter for your Apple portable, you can use an adapter of a higher wattage without issue.

Also, the AC plug that can be used in place of the cord? It’s called a “Duckhead”. You learn something new every day.

(Via Chris Bowler.)

Though personally I think the the vast array of Batmobile designs are far cooler.

Greg McKeown writing at the HBR blog:

Apple doesn’t enjoy product and customer clarity because they’re lucky. They didn’t drift into simplicity: they selected it by design. And by ‘selected,’ I mean they wrestled with the complexity, debated the issues, threw out hundreds of possible directions, and eventually arrived on the other side of complexity with the kind of sophisticated simplicity people know and love.

His article is about CEOs and big companies, but it’s just as relevant for department heads, small companies, and even sole proprietorships.

Today, Randy Murray also wrote about saying no, or at least saying not right now:

Why say no? Because I have other great ideas in play and actively being worked on. If I say yes to something else, everything will suffer.

As a company of one, what I like about saying “not right now” to my ideas and/or opportunities is that it requires less mental energy than saying “no”. When an idea comes I let myself flesh out all the concepts, details, bunny trails, and other possibilities related to it, and then let it sit in my digital notebook until it resurfaces for whatever reason (if it ever does).

Relatedly, I learned a lot about simplicity and focus in business by reading Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great.

Nate Jackson, a former Denver Bronco, wrote an open letter to Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III (the number 1 and 2 draft picks this year) about what life is like as a football player in the NFL:

Once the whistle blows on Sundays, you’ll be released from captivity, and you’ll be free for three hours to truly live your dreams on the grandest scale you can imagine, against the best athletes on the planet. You will win or you will lose, but then the football game will end. The NFL game never will. Godspeed, boys.

(Via Kottke.)

Marco Arment, back in 2010:

A common fallacy is assuming that any new platform in an exciting market — recently, smartphones and tablet computers — will be flooded with developers as soon as it’s released, as if developers are just waiting outside the gates, hungrily waiting to storm in.

The more things change the more they stay the same.

RIM handed out alpha prototype phones of BlackBerry 10 to 2,000 developers today. The prototypes can’t yet make phone calls or connect to Wi-Fi. The hardware is still “pokey” and there is still much software optimization to do.

So why give out these devices in their current sad state? Alec Saunders, VP of Dev. Relations, has the answer:

The reason why we’re doing this — which is unprecedented for us and it’s quite uncommon in the industry — is because we want to create a wave of application support behind the new BlackBerrys before we bring them to market. If we launch without applications, well, it will be slow.

What else is odd is that the operating system on the phones isn’t even BlackBerry 10. As Dieter Bohn reports with his hands on review of the device:

As far as the OS goes, this is almost entirely the PlayBook OS, not BlackBerry 10. Although RIM says that it has built-in some of the hooks and calls that will be part of BB10. The idea is for developers to begin building their apps now and test them on phone hardware so they’re ready when RIM releases actual hardware.

The Verge has the sneak peek video from today’s keynote, along with some screenshots of the new BlackBerry 10 OS.

Lex Friedman’s review of the new Big Jambox from Jawbone:

When I reviewed the original Jambox, I marveled at the volume such a small speaker could generate. The airtight Big Jambox houses a pair of proprietary active drivers along with a passive bass radiator, and when it comes to audio, blows its predecessor out of the water. Compared to the basic Jambox, the new version can play much, much louder than the original, and produces audio with a well implemented balance between lows and highs. And while I was impressed by the original Jambox’s bass, the Big Jambox really kicks out impressive low-end presence. In addition, at lower volumes the Big Jambox uses a loudness-compensation algorithm so that sounds we perceive as quieter, such as bass frequencies, sound relatively balanced. In my listening tests, this worked well.

See also Lex’s hands-on video of the Big Jambox over at the TechHive Beta Blog.

Did you know NASA has been posting an astronomy picture every day since June 16, 1995? Prepare to spend some time here. Like here, and here, and here. Oh, and here. (Via Coudal.)

You learn something new (from Brett Terpstra) every day.

Peter Bregman’s approach to email is very similar to the new routine I established for myself about 2 weeks ago. And I’ll say this: after 14 days it seems to be working very well.

The whole article is an ultra-geeky rundown of all the various apps and services he uses for writing. Personally, I can’t get enough from this stuff. Since I too write for a living, I learn something new every time I read about other people’s setups.

What I especially liked was Viticci’s concluding paragraph:

In thinking about a proper conclusion for this post, it occurred to me that the best way to sum up the possibilities offered by Dropbox to writers and note-takers is this: with just a folder, you can fine-tune your workflow using the apps you prefer. It’s a liberating effect: the text is there, and it will be there no matter how many apps you try or how much you tinker.

As detailed and geeky as the Dropbox-connected-writing-apps discussion may get, it’s still just plain text files saved in a folder.

Reminds me of my high school math class.

Nothing internet-related at all, starting today:

In my wild fantasies, leaving the internet will make me better with my time, vastly more creative, a better friend, a better son and brother… a better Paul. In reality, I’ll still be the same person, just with a huge professional and personal handicap.

It sounds fun and challenging. I love his reasoning behind the trek:

Now I want to see the internet at a distance. By separating myself from the constant connectivity, I can see which aspects are truly valuable, which are distractions for me, and which parts are corrupting my very soul. What I worry is that I’m so “adept” at the internet that I’ve found ways to fill every crevice of my life with it, and I’m pretty sure the internet has invaded some places where it doesn’t belong.

Growing up, my best friend’s family and my family would do what we called “Pilgrim Month” every November. For 30 days we used electricity as little as possible (considering we lived in a suburban home). We kept the refrigerator plugged in, but otherwise we used no lights, no microwave, no stereo, no television, no computer, etc. It took only a few days to adapt, and the month was filled with much reading and playing of board games by candlelight.

There is no way I could get by without the internet for a year because my entire career is tied to the Web. Giving up the Internet would mean quitting my job.

If, however, that were not the case, the challenge and change of pace to give up the Internet for a year, or even just a month, sounds fun. It would be a lot like giving up electricity.