Paul Kafasis (via DF):
…AutoRip is painfully close to something I’ve found myself pining for since starting to use a Kindle e-reader: free Kindle copies of purchased physical books.
No kidding. We’ve probably all been pining for that since the first day we bought our first Kindle.
Andrew Kim reviews his iPad mini (with some fantastic pictures) and compares it to his 3rd-gen iPad, his original iPad, his Nexus 7, and his Kindle Keyboard:
To really appreciate what the iPad is doing, it’s worth remembering what the iPad used to be. The mini gives me the same feeling that I get when I hold a beautifully engineered Japanese pen with a tiny diameter. It’s a product that has been reduced to its essence and concentrated to an extract. The iPad mini won’t be the right choice for everyone. It’s like a Moleskine or a paperback novel, where the larger iPad is like a magazine. If you watch movies or do a lot of photo work on the iPad, the 9.7” display will be better for you. When the mini first came out, I was skeptical. But after a month of use, I haven’t felt the need to pick up my Retina iPad once. In fact, I’ve given it to my mother.
Pushpin is a new-to-me Pinboard app for iPhone. I’ll continue to use Pinbook on my iPad because Pushpin is not a universal binary. But the latter wins on the iPhone because: (a) it has quite a few more features, such as browsing your tag list, editing a bookmark, and browsing the Popular list; and (b) thanks to this bookmarklet you can use Pushpin to add a new bookmark. And for (b) alone Pushpin is worth the price because it’s a workflow that beats the pants off Pinboard’s mobile-hostile web site.
Pushpin is $10 in the app store. If you’re an avid Pinboard user it’s worth it because, frankly, it’s the only option out there for a full-featured Pinboard experience on the iPhone.
Update: Turns out you can edit a bookmark within Pinbook. You do so by opening the bookmark and then there is an “edit” button (lower-left on iPhone, upper-right on iPad). Somehow this obvious element has eluded me for the past several months I’ve been using the app.
Also, here is a bookmarklet that works with Pinbook, allowing you to use the app to create a Pinboard bookmark from your iPhone or iPad. This bookmarklet differs from Pushpins in that it doesn’t send you back to Safari once you’ve created the bookmark.
Needless to say, this new-to-me functionality of Pinbook is a pretty big deal — the app is obviously much more feature rich than I knew. My apologies.
Megan Garber (via, appropriately, Dave Pell’s NextDraft email newsletter):
Those 41,000 words are 41,000 words’ worth of time and effort and creativity that we’ve invested in manufacturing the industrial product that is email — the social artifact that is made to be shared and yet that is ultimately defined by privacy.
This reminds me of something John Gruber said in my interview with him a few years back. I had asked about his history in writing and how he found his voice as a writer and got into publishing DF, and he replied:
I was working for Bare Bones Software, and there was a question on the Mailsmith-Talk mailing list from a customer asking for help with a script that would count the number of words in all the messages in a mailbox. So I wrote a script that did that, and I ran it against my own outgoing message archives. The script was smart enough to count only words that weren’t in quoted passages, ignored signatures, etc. I forget the exact result, but the result was just preposterously high. Based on some common rules-of-thumb, I’d written several books worth of email messages over the previous five years — posts to mailing lists and a ton of personal correspondence, all of which I tried to write the hell out of.
Around that same time, it became obvious that the outlet I’d been waiting for was available: I needed to start my own weblog.
Stewart Butterfield, Flickr co-founder:
Because the guy who owned the domain http://flicker.com wouldn’t sell it and we loved the name.
And here I always thought it was because Web 2.0.
One of the ten things Kai Brach learned over the past year of launching and shipping Offscreen magazine:
Print is dead is dead
While newspapers are shutting up shop one after another, new independent magazines are popping up like daisies all around the world. Print may be having a hard time in areas that rely on traditional advertising models, but there’s never been a better time to produce high quality print products for niche audiences. Offscreen was born in the midst of this change and (in my opinion) more than any other magazine understands this technological shift by embracing the constraints of the printed format in a very unique way.
If anything, the future of print isn’t death but new life. Sure, the commodity print items like newspapers, paperback books, and magazine-stand periodicals are all in a metamorphosis. But there is certainly a long life ahead for higher-quality, well-designed, long-shelf-life, niche publications like Offscreen, 8 Faces, The Manual, and the like.
Woohoo! The NYT reports that Jerry Seinfeld and Sony Pictures Television plan to do a second season of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
Tyler Reinhard wrote about his system for notes:
I needed something with a long lifespan, that requires little maintenance, and allows for an efficient weekly review. A system I can trust with my low-rent schemes, project-related brainstorms, and moments of epiphany. And, it has to prime those things for future use and next-actions.
This is an extremely nerdy article.I loved it. What really hit home for me was this bit:
I only keep about 50-100 notes in circulation at a time. When I’m done with a note, I archive it. If you find that you need a substantially larger number of notes (a swipe and a tap away at all times) you should permit yourself to have them. Certainly, Semantic Notes can handle it. However, if you merely decide you need thousands of notes, without really considering the ramifications thereof, or GTD method, or to your ability to review them … well, to be frank: you may unknowingly be subtracting years from the end of your life.
Those who follow me on Twitter, or who listened to this past Friday’s episode of Shawn Today, know I’m in the midst of a note system rework or my own. In part due to some syncing bugs I’ve been encountering between Simplenote and nvALT and also because I just think it’s smart to look at your workflows and systems from time to time and see if what you’re doing is the best (then, put your head back down and get to work).
My main goal has been to research and possibly find a new set of apps for mobile and desktop note syncing. But Tyler’s article has also given me some ideas for rethinking much more than just the apps I use, but my whole system. I make a lot of little notes, and any improvement to this area of my life would surely reap stellar dividends. I’ve got nearly 400 notes in my Simplenote database right now, and I know for a fact that many of them could be archived into a folder of plain text files.
I don’t know if all the details and obsessives of Tyler’s incredible system are quite what I’m looking for, but there are some great ideas that have me thinking of definite ways I can improve and clean up my whole notes system.
Khoi Vinh:
It’s not just an additional place to post photos, but a different kind of venue for different kinds of expressions and interactions. In fact, it’s a reminder that competition, when it is robust, directly translates into added functionality at the consumer’s disposal.
Agreed. Flickr doesn’t have to replace Instagram, and I for one don’t really want it to. I check Instagram for random photos of my friends’ kids and pets; I check Flickr for high-quality photos (usually). Respectively, that’s where I post those same types of photos myself — the photos I’m proud of are all on Flickr.
What Flickr needs is a strong mobile presence and proof that it’s a thriving, relevant service. The new iPhone app is a fantastic step in that direction.
Great piece by Ellis Hamburger for The Verge comparing the consumer-paid costs of using free apps to that of paid:
Free apps are dangerous, yet free is the dominant business model most mobile apps are taking these days. The roadmap is simple: grow as quickly as possible, then insert ads of some kind or get acquired. For consumers it offers a crummy set of choices: either losing the countless hours you put into the app or have your private data sold to marketers — since as well all know, when the product is free, you are the product
I am a big advocate of paying for the apps, services, art, and content streams I get value from — as are most of you, I presume. You’re probably familiar with Kevin Kelly’s famous article on 1,000 true fans. In short, the hypothesis is that if an artist can gain 1,000 true fans who will support his or her work, then that artist can keep on making art for their fans — everybody wins:
One thousand is a feasible number. You could count to 1,000. If you added one fan a day, it would take only three years. True Fanship is doable. Pleasing a True Fan is pleasurable, and invigorating. It rewards the artist to remain true, to focus on the unique aspects of their work, the qualities that True Fans appreciate.
As an artist myself, I believe this is a reachable and sustainable goal. And as a fan of other people’s work, I do what I can to rally behind a few folks whom I get great value and enjoyment from the work and art they produce and become one of their “true fans” by throwing my financial and vocal support behind them so they can keep on being awesome.
We’re back from the holidays… slightly heavier; slightly more determined. We have goals. We have resolutions. And we will make them happen.
… we think.
Sure, clearing out your inbox is a great intention — but finding a sustainable solution for business collaboration is better. While it might be tough to change the way your teams work together, now is the right time to move past the frustrations of yesteryear.
Bring your documents, versions and conversations together in one place. Get an intranet you’ll actually like.
Try Igloo.
* * *
My thanks to Igloo for once again sponsoring the RSS feed. Sponsorship by The Syndicate.
Mike Vardy and Mike Schechter were kind enough to have me as a guest on their aptly named podcast. We talked about “intentional living” which really just boils down to having a goal and making it happen.
How fun does this look? Almost enough to make me want to move to Canada.
A couple years ago Matthew B. Crawford wrote this great essay for The New York Times as an adaptation of his book: Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work. I haven’t yet read the book, but the NYT essay is just fantastic. In the process of sharing his story of how, after finishing his Ph.D. in political philosophy, he decided to start a motorcycle repair shop, Crawford talks about the good, the bad, and the stereotypes of a trade job versus “knowledge work”.
And, though this block quote certainly doesn’t “encapsulate” Crawford’s essay, it is too clever not to highlight:
It is a rare person, male or female, who is naturally inclined to sit still for 17 years in school, and then indefinitely at work.
(Thanks to reader, Justin.)