Since they’ve been buried under the “Me” tab. Oy.
Month: December 2011
Flipboard for iPhone →
And hey, speaking of new iPhone apps, Flipboard released their iPhone version just yesterday. I downloaded it last night and it’s very well done.
The Next New Twitter Design →
A look at the new design for the Twitter website (which will be rolling out to current users over the next two weeks). It hasn’t rolled out to my account yet, but from looking at the video and the screenshots the new design looks great to me. I love the clever design for the new tweet icon.
Version 4.0 of the iOS app is now live as well. The iPhone version is significantly updated; the iPad version is the same as it was.
Twitter Signups up 25% Since Integration with iOS 5 →
From the perspective of a long-time Twitter user, I love the way I can give an iPhone app access to my Twitter account by one tap.
Twitter’s Cost Per Follower (CPF) →
Speaking of business models.
Don’t Be A Free User →
Productive Macs Software Bundle →
This is a great software bundle. I use Fantastical, BusyCal, and LaunchBar every single day. From my point of view, the price is worth it for those apps alone.
(Note: if you grab the bundle via this link then I’ll get a $3 kickback from the guys running the bundle. Of course, I’d be linking to it anyways if only to help promote continued adoption of LaunchBar.)
“We Suffer From Information Overconsumption” →
Mac Slocum has an interview with Clay Johnson that gives some food for thought (no pun intended). The interview is about Johnson’s upcoming new book, The Information Diet. The thesis of Johnson’s book is that the problem of “personal information overload” does’t lie in the plethora of incoming information streams (news, media, blogs, entertainment, etc.), nor does it lie in us using the wrong “tools” to take in all that information. Rather, the problem primarily lies with us and our bad habits:
In other words, we don’t suffer from information overload — we suffer from information overconsumption and poor consumption habits. The solution is just as simple as a successful food diet. It’s about building habits and healthy choices for yourself, and sticking to it.
Learning to work with Auto Save →
David Sparks wrote this piece for Macworld back in October. Basically he preemptively laid out why my old-school workflow that used Save As is now extinct and to just move on with things already.
I know this is true. My main gripe with “Save As” being replaced with “Duplicate” in the menu bar has more to do with the missing keyboard shortcut than anything.
Sponsor: OmniGraffle →
My thanks to the Omni Group for sponsoring the RSS feed this week.
OmniGraffle is the easiest and most elegant way to create website wireframes, process flows, organization hiearachies, and, frankly, almost anything.
Rely on OmniGraffle to create beautifully simple documents to share with anyone. Even through an TV.
Created for both Mac and iPad, OmniGraffle’s smart shapes, stencils and contextual styling elements gracefully guide you from rough outline to pixel perfection.
For ages 5 to 105, and available here.
Morning Tells the Truth →
Since going full time, one of the hardest writing disciplines for me has been to not publish an article as soon as I’ve finished that first edit. Stepping away from the article for an afternoon or even a day or two is hard work. But I almost always find significant ways to improve the piece when I come back after taking a break from it.
(There are exceptions, of course. Such as when a piece is extremely time sensitive, and the sooner it goes up the better.)
Cable Release Trick for iPhone →
Ben Brooks tipped me off to this clever tip on this past week’s episode of the B&B podcast: you can use the volume up button on your iPhone earbuds to snap photos.
Golden Rules to Live by While Travelling the World →
Nice list. Tip number 1 is a no brainer (I try to avoid chain and corner restaurants as much as possible), but tip number 4 is a new idea to me. (Via Kottke.)
Linens ‘n Things →
Jake Marsh wrote this post a month ago about this topic of linen in the Notification Center versus linen in the Multitasking Tray:
Both of these interfaces [Notification Center and Multitasking Tray] have our friendly neighborhood linen as their background texture. On their own, this wouldn’t be too much of an issue but consider what Apple’s goals are with the linen texture. I would argue it is to establish a clear hierarchy of content and controls, from back to front. The linen was used early on as the “underneath” texture of
UIScrollViews
andUIWebViews
.