For the past several years a good friend of mine, Tim Cone, has had a vision to launch a Christian record label which gives away its digital music. This week that dream was realized and Churchyard Records has opened its doors.
Their first release, an EP from Spacesuit, is absolutely fantastic. I mean, it’s really, really good. And it’s 100% free to download and listen to at painfully loud volumes.
And speaking of the Pipeline, Dan’s interview with Andy Ihnatko is likely my favorite episode so far. Jam packed with fantastic Q&A for writers and freelancers.
The Pipeline is such a fantastic podcast. If you’re not already subscribed, you should at least catch Dan’s recent interview with Marco if you want to find out about how Instapaper came to be, what Marco thinks of office hours, and more.
Also, Marco Arment was just interviewed on The Setup (long live the matte display!).
These two ads for the new Windows 7 phone are super clever and funny. But the campaign tagline — “It’s time for a phone to save us from our phones.” — seems odd. It’s cute, but who are they talking to?
I certainly have my iPhone out all too often. But never once have I thought it was due to a problem with my iPhone. (Wouldn’t that be nice?) So why or how could another smart phone relieve me of the constant distraction that is my current smart phone? The answer: it can’t.
Chairman Gruber has the same quibble. His thought?:
Perhaps this message from Microsoft isn’t targeted at existing smartphone owners. It’s for those shopping for the first smartphone, who, because they don’t have one yet, see existing smartphones as something unpleasant — gadgets that turn friends and family into anti-social heads-down faces-underlit jerks. I can see how that message might work.
A forked version of Notational Velocity that brings full-screen mode, a left-hand column for your notes lists, and a few other cool tweaks. I’m using it now and it works great.
Up until this morning the only way to promote a product or a service on this site was through ads placed with Fusion. The Fusion ad network is fantastic, but ads placed there are shown across its entire network. But now, if you have a product or service you’d like to promote directly to the fine readers of shawnblanc.net, you can sponsor the RSS Feed.
Feed sponsorships are week-long, exclusive, and very affordable. Your promotion will reach a handsome audience of tech- and design-savvy Mac nerds. This is a fantastic opportunity for freelancers, developers, designers, and anyone else with a product or service in need of exposure.
More info on pricing, reach, and schedule can all be found on the sponsorship page.
To book your sponsorship, or if you have any questions, please email me.
Gas Cubby is the ultimate tool for tracking gas mileage and vehicle maintenance. Whether you’re a hypermiler, or just want a reminder to change the oil, Gas Cubby will help save you money and keep your vehicle operating at its peak. Buy it on iTunes.
Amen. And my quibble isn’t so much that the WP Touch theme and the default Tumblr mobile theme are both ugly, but that they look just like every other site using them. It’s like placing your resume into a Microsoft Word template.
Clever tip. Works for “Save PDF to Yojimbo…” and “Mail PDF” too. (Via Chris Bowler.)
“If you want to tell the most inner workings of an artist’s mind, then of course the desk is the most telling space for that.”
A nice short film about desks by Imaginary Forces. (Via Kottke.)
I’m Iain Broome and I write fiction. My first novel is called A is for Angelica and is represented by Tibor Jones Associates. They’ll be sending the novel out to publishers soon and I’ll be keeping various things crossed, especially my fingers.
By day I’m a copywriter for The Workshop, a leading UK design company. It’s a little more than writing copy though. Yes, I can give you a tasty strapline or plain English paragraph, but I also work on usability, accessibility and wireframing clients’ websites.
I have a couple of blogs. Write for Your Life offers writing advice for all types of writers. It also has snazzy illustrations provided by the marvellous Matt Pearce. Broomeshtick is my personal blog where I talk about writing, design, technology and, well, more writing.
I bought my first Mac in March 2008. It’s a 20″ iMac which gets backed up wirelessly to a 500gb Time Machine, which in turn connects to an Xbox 360 in the lounge. Or at least it did before the 360’s second bout of RROD. Microsoft, eh? *spits*
I also have a 16gb iPhone 4 and, when my piggy bank is finally full, I’ll be getting a 16gb, wifi-only iPad. I intend to use the iPad for creation as much as consumption.
The idea that you can’t use an iPad to write anything of substance seems ridiculous to me. All you need is a keyboard and a blank screen. The iPad provides both and I can (will) take it anywhere (everywhere).
Finally, I have a Sony A200 Digital SLR camera. One day I will learn how to use it properly.
The iMac provides all I need and more as a novelist and blogger — let’s face it, words are pretty easy to process. But I also use it to edit images, record podcasts and put together video blog entries for Write for Your Life. The iMac has all the power and storage I could ever want for those things too.
Sometimes I think I might have been better off with a MacBook or MacBook Pro, but the extra screen size comes in handy for watching movies, viewing pictures and having multiple windows open. Truth is, it’s become the hub of our home. CDs and DVDs? Long forgotten. This is streaming central.
My iPhone 4 stays with me throughout the day. I primarily use it for email, Twitter, my todo list and reading articles through Instapaper. We also use it to play music and podcasts wherever we are in the house.
Truth is, it’s the perfect techno-companion and unless something catastrophic happens, I can’t see me using anything other than an iPhone for quite some time.
Oh. I sometimes make phone calls.
Okay, this is the important bit. Having a Mac has changed the way I work, that’s for sure. But really, it’s down to the software.
I explained this in a recent post, which I might as well quote:
Drawn by the bright lights and Apple’s promise of all-the-cool-things-I-could-do, I expected dazzlement and wonder with every mouse-swish and keystroke.
But something strange happened. Instead of reveling in the glitz and relative glamour of iMovie, iPhoto and the multimedia posse, I found myself enjoying quiet nights in with my new best friends, strong and silent types like Finder, TextEdit and, more recently, Simplenote.
And the reason was this. I am simply a writer. I don’t need all that other stuff. Or at least, I don’t need it to do what I do best.
So once the dazzlement wore off, what I found was a computer – a word you hear less and less these days – that gave me tools to do things quicker, more efficiently, perhaps even better.
The technology disappeared and left me alone with my words. Just me and them.
That said, my novel was written in Microsoft Word. I know. But only because I had zillions of drafts and edits left over from my pre-Mac days. I use TextEdit for most other writing and have enjoyed WriteRoom on occasion.
In other news: it’s iTunes and Spotify for Music. Safari for browsing. Transmit for transmitting. Acorn for pretty pictures. Adium for chit chat. Simplenote for todo lists and ideas. Alfred for launching. Then 1Password, my trusty online bouncer.
Finally, there is DropBox. The key to it all.
It’s a pretty time-consuming this writing novels, running two blogs while having a full-time job for a design agency business. It means I have to do things whenever and wherever I can. My setup is designed – well, it’s evolved, more accurately – to allow me to do that. It’s all about the sync.
With DropBox, Simplenote and an iPhone 4, I can access everything I need at all times. I can edit files on my work PC at lunch and know they’ll be there when I get home. I can approve comments, make notes or catch up on some reading on my phone while I’m waiting for the bus. And again, when I get home, my Mac is up-to-date.
Novel number one was written on no less than six different computers – a combination of desktop PCs, laptops and my iMac — in even more locations, using goodness knows how many USB drives for transferring and backing up.
Novel two will be written on just my future-iPad and my iMac. That says it all, really.
It’s just the iPad, I think. Everything else works just as I need it to. I might be tempted, when the time comes, to replace the iMac with a MacBook, but it won’t change the way I work. And that’s the most important thing.
It takes a while to get a setup that you’re happy with, but after two years together, me, my Macs and a few third-party apps are getting on tremendously.
Frankly, we don’t need no one else.
Iain’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.
A service that lets you email documents into your Dropbox folder. This could be especially helpful for those who are creating a document on their iPads and wishing for a more integrated way to sync and share. (Via Brian Hoff.)
Cloud service which syncs your Basecamp projects and tasks to OmniFocus. If you don’t use Basecamp Spootnik can still sync OmniFocus for you for free. If you’re a heavy Basecamp user, plans run as high as $30 / month.
The feedback I received after posting my initial thoughts on OmniFocus yesterday can be summed up in two groups: (a) those welcoming me to the “OmniFocus community” (I had no idea there were so many of you over here. Hi, guys.); and (b) those assuming I’m trying out OmniFocus because Things is so lame now. The latter is simply not true.
In my review of Things almost two years ago, I said:
Each of us has our own way of dealing with responsibility and our own expression of productivity. Tinkering and then switching is usually not the fault of the software. We’re not looking for the best app, but rather the best app for us.
My reason for switching to OmniFocus from Things is not the same as buying a new car because my old car blew a head gasket. Things is still a beautiful piece of software which does everything promised on the tin. But for me, today, some of the features are not enough — that does not imply Things has a blown head gasket.