Alfred has always been an aggressively developed app, and the work being put into Alfred 2 looks fascinating and brilliant.
Related: I interviewed Andrew Pepperrell last fall to see what his Mac Setup was and how he goes about developing Alfred.
Month: December 2012
The B&B Podcast: Legacy Twitter Relationships →
This week is Ben’s and my final show for 2012. We did the old-school format for this episode: casual conversation that goes closer to an hour rather than under 30 minutes. It was a fun show, and topics this week include Noah teething, Amazon Prime, OmniFocus, App.net and scaling back on Twitter followers, Time Magazine’s top 10 gadgets of the year, and more.
Open Google Maps Directions With Siri or Launch Center Pro →
URL scheme tricks courtesy of Federico Viticci.
Thomas Hawk’s Review of the New Flickr iPhone App →
Thomas Hawk (via Cameron Moll):
This morning Flickr is rolling out a brand spanking new Flickr iPhone app and it is that good — really, really, really, really mind blowingly fantastic good. It not only smokes every other previous mobile version of Flickr it smokes every other mobile photo sharing app on the market today.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say it smokes every other mobile photo sharing app on the market today (it clearly took a lot of cues from Instagram), but it is a great app, and for any even semi-regular Flickr user it’s a breath of fresh air. Here’s hoping the iPad version is next.
The OmniFocus Mail Drop →
I signed up as soon as I heard about this, and got access about a day later. It’s fantastic. Not only can you add a to-do item from any app that supports email, but you can share this email address with someone you trust (spouse, assistant, etc.) and they can send an email with a to-do item that will drop right into your OmniFocus inbox.
1Password 4.0 for iOS [App Store Link] →
The brand-new version of 1Password for iOS is here and it’s wonderful. Not only is it a massive design overhaul that looks significantly better than the previous version, but it’s far easier to navigate and has a new Favorites tab for your most-accessed stuff. It’s on sale for half-off right now. If you have 1Password on your iPhone/iPad, you’re nuts if you don’t upgrade. And if you’re not using 1Password, why?
The New Flickr
Wow. Flickr has come blazing back on the scene with a huge update to their iPhone app. And what an update it is.
Since getting the E-PL5, I’ve been using Flickr quite a bit more. I’ve long had the Flickr iPhone app and the past version was less than okay, and certainly nothing to write home about. Not to mention it was slow — loading images, recent activity, or just about anything took ages.
But the new app. Well, it’s incredible. It’s significantly faster and quite a bit more fun than the previous Flickr app. And that’s the understatement of the hour.
As someone who has been a paying Flickr Pro user for several years, I am ecstatic to see that someone over at Yahoo is taking Flickr seriously. I hope this new iPhone app is a sign of things to come and that the future holds significant updates to the website, iPad, and Android. And I hope the updates will beget an increase in regular activity, because I’d love to see Flickr rise to relevancy again.
* * *
With today’s new app, Flickr has proven they are taking themselves seriously, and that they aren’t going to continue to ignore mobile:
- Though it yoinks a lot of cues from Instagram, the new app is great as a one-stop app / network for shooting, editing, and uploading images.
- What I think is the best feature of the new app is just how easy it is to browse contacts’ photos and discover new photographers. Flickr already has a healthy community of professional photographers who upload their work, but the discoverability of that work is pathetic. I quipped a few days ago that putting my images on Flickr felt like putting them on a ghost town. Though I’m highly active on Flickr, the interactivity with the photos I’m posting is nothing when compared to Instagram.
- Mobile views of your images now count towards total views.
The emphasis on mobile-friendly discoverability and interaction is great. Flickr needed this type of iPhone experience in 2007. What’s interesting is the app’s massive focus on taking and uploading iPhone photos.
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of pro photographers cried out in terror as millions of filtered photos overrun one of their last bastions of community.
Flickr’s legacy reputation is as a social network and portfolio site for enthusiast and professional photographers. But the iPhone has been the most popular camera on Flickr for quite a while. It’s silly to ignore the iPhone, but just because it’s the most prolific camera on Flickr, doesn’t mean it represents Flickr’s best users.
It will be interesting to see if Flickr differentiates between “pro” photo uploads and “on-the-go” iPhone camera uploads. But can they? Who’s to say iPhone photos are a lesser version of photography? There are photographers who take far better photos with their iPhones than some folks do with their 5D. An expensive camera and a copy of Lightroom do not a good photographer make.
Maybe this is their first step in reinventing themselves for the mobile age. Perhaps their game plan is simply to do all they can to get as many people using the service as possible. I say let the users chose who to follow and what to post, and let Flickr focus on empowering us to discover, follow, favorite, and shoot as much as possible.
iPhone 5 Christmas Wallpapers
Give your iPhone some Christmas cheer. Photos shot and cropped by yours truly. Click each one for full-size, or download them all in a zip.
Digital Jubilee →
Frank Chimero:
This year, I’m practicing a digital jubilee by archiving my inbox, deleting my RSS subscriptions, and unfollowing most everyone on Twitter. These, of course, will fill back up as time passes, but now I have a recurring way to purge. Practices like these have been coined “declaring bankruptcy” by the digital lifestyle blogs, but I think the phrase misrepresents the practice. Cleaning the digital slate is not a practice of giving up. It is one of self-forgiveness.
Great attitude towards something that is usually thought of as an admission of defeat. Instead, why not just consider it a new start?
Instacast 3 →
Speaking of Instacast, version 3 is out and great. It’s now a universal app and there are quite a few improvements over version 2, including a better syncing engine and a more spiffy UI design. I don’t listen to a lot of Podcasts, but when I do it’s always with Instacast and usually while on the road.
Some Simple Wallpapers →
Marcelo Marfil, the designer behind the UI and icon designs that adorn 3 of my favorite iOS apps — Instacast, Byword, and Checkmark — also has some classy wallpapers to adorn your Mac Desktop and iOS screens with. I prefer simple, mostly-black wallpapers for use on my big external display and my iPhone Home screen, and these are perfect.
Use Tab for Tag Completion in Pinboard →
New-to-me tip via Devir Kahan:
Here’s the situation: You go to create a new bookmark in Pinboard using the bookmarklet (or you’re searching your Pinboard for a specific tag, or any other time you’re entering a tag into Pinboard), you type a few of the letters of a tag you’ve used in the past, and you hit Return, thinking it will auto-complete the tag. Instead, however, it simply creates that new bookmark with a weird half-tag.
You might think that you should use Return to complete the tag, but by default, in fact, you have to use the Tab key. That’s the trick. Use Tab, not Return, to complete a tag.
I’ve always hit Down-Arrow then Return, which is not nearly as quick as Tab — you learn something new every day.
To pay it forward, did you know that any text you have highlighted in the browser window will auto populate the “Description” field once you’ve triggered the Pinboard bookmarklet?
How to Remove the Apple Logo From the Back of an iPhoto Photo Book →
Turns out there’s a fix to one of my quibbles with Apple’s photo books. When you’re building the book click “Options” (lower right corner of the iPhoto app) → Book Settings → uncheck, “Include Apple logo at end of book”.
(Via everyone on the Internet.)
Apple’s Photo Book
What with a kid and a new camera, this is the perfect year to give one of Apple’s photo books for Christmas. Anna and I, along with my sister’s family, put one together for my Grandpa. He has very poor eyesight and a book with 20 pages of big, full-sized, 8.5×11 pictures featuring his grandkids and his great grandkids will make an excellent gift.
This is the first time I’ve ordered one of the photo books from Apple and I don’t think it will be the last. It’s a hardcover book, with 20 (or more if you want to add them) full-color pages, printed and shipped for about $32. The pages are full-bleed, the color is brilliant, and the construction quality is top notch.
Not to mention it’s easy to make. You do it within iPhoto by picking the “theme” you want your book to have, dragging and dropping the photos you want, and clicking the button that sends it off to print. A few days later it shows up at your doorstep.
Our book arrived a couple days ago, and when I opened the shipping box I was a bit embarrassed to find the book wrapped in a white cardboard sleeve with nothing but the Apple logo on the front.
Moreover, inside the book on the very last page is the Apple logo again with the tag, “Made on a Mac”.
This is very much like Apple — their logo adorns all their gear — but the book itself is so removed from Apple’s traditional product lineup of consumer electronics that I was surprised to see the logo plastered on the front like that. And then — well — I was surprised that I was surprised.
The photo book isn’t really an Apple product, it’s a product Apple makes. And I am embarrassed to give it as a gift which, when first opened, is an advertisement for Apple. It’s like Apple’s version of a product with “special offers“. People see this book and they see it’s “Made on a Mac” and maybe it gives them one more reason to buy Mac.
The answer is as simple as removing the cardboard sleeve and tossing it in the recycling bin before wrapping the book for Christmas.
Update: Turns out there’s an option to remove the inside logo before sending to print. When you’re building the book click “Options” (lower right corner of the iPhoto app) → Book Settings → uncheck “Include Apple logo at end of book”.