Month: June 2013

The Space Between the Notes  →

Great article by Jason Santa Maria on skeuomorphism, innovation, and iOS 7:

I want iOS to grow up. I want it to act like it’s been around for 6 years and that it knows the score. Iteration like this can reduce the need for skeuomorphism; when people become more familiar with an interface, it can be pared down aesthetically over time. Not necessarily flat, just less.

The Space Between the Notes

Inside Pixar’s Leadership  →

Scott Berkun transcribed some of the answers Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar, gave during interview at the 2010 Innovation Summit. There is a lot of excellent advice and insight on leading a creative team, honoring teamwork, empowering managers, and keeping morale high for creatives working within a corporation.

Here’s Catmull’s reply regarding dealing with tough, competing constraints:

If I look at the range, you’ve got one [constraint] that is art school, I’m doing this for arts sake, Ratatouille and WALL-E clearly fall more on that side, the other is the purely commercial side, where you’ve got a lot of films that are made purely for following a trend, if you go entirely for the art side then eventually you fail economically. if you go purely commercially then I think you fail from a soul point of view… we’ve got these elements pulling on both sides, the art side and the commercial side… and the the trick is not to let one side win. That fundamentally successful companies are unstable. And where we have to operate is in that unstable place. And the forces of conservatism which are very strong and they want to go to a safe place. I want to go to the same place for money, I want to go and be wild and creative, or I want to have enough time for this, and each one of those guys are pulling, and if any one of them wins, we lose. And i just want to stay right there in the middle.

Inside Pixar’s Leadership

On the Philosophy of Google Glass  →

Kyle Baxter:

Removing your Glass device will feel very much like losing a limb or sense—something that you’ve grown used to depending on and using is gone. Through this much deeper integration, these devices could fundamentally alter the human experience and what it means to be human.

That might sound alarmist, like science fiction, or—if you own a smartphone—just remind you of that small moment of dread, like something’s wrong, when you leave the house without your phone.

On the Philosophy of Google Glass

Dustin Curtis on Google Glass  →

Dustin Curtis’ impressions of Google Glass after spending some time using the device:

While some of the human <=> computer interface design challenges facing ambient computers are obvious in theory, many of them are very hard to identify until you actually experience using the device as part of your life. These computers are different. They don’t help you accomplish tasks with programs and apps, but rather they very literally augment the experience of living your life. The technical problems facing these devices are tough ones– ambient computers need to be intelligent enough in software and advanced enough technologically to get out of the way. Glass isn’t there yet. Not even close.

Dustin Curtis on Google Glass

Sent From Byword 2

Byword on the Mac is one of the three apps in my writing workflow toolkit — working alongside nvALT and MarsEdit, it is my go-to writing app for anything longer than a few sentences.

And today Byword 2 is out for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

When Byword for iOS first shipped about a year ago I wrote a review of the 3-app suite, and my thoughts regarding the Byword suite still stand: it’s a glorious set of applications that are feature rich and delightfully designed.

On iPhone and iPad, the 2.0 update rocks some nice visual enhancements that really make it the app easier and more enjoyable to use than before. And that’s saying quite a bit since Byword was a handsome app to begin with. Additionally the iOS apps have some stellar improvements to document syncing for the iOS apps which include better offline support, the ability to move files to different folders (you can even move a document that’s in Dropbox to iCloud, and vice versa), and a clever approach to conflict resolution.

Byword can quickly search through the title and contents of hundreds and hundreds of notes. And with the aforementioned improvements to the design and syncing features, it’s fair to say that Byword on iOS now makes an even more compelling option to those looking for a Dropbox-syncing note app.

The paramount feature of Byword 2 is that you can now use the app to publish directly to your site. If this is a feature that interest you, it’s a $4.99 in-app purchase. I can testify that publishing to WordPress works quite well, though I would like to see better support for assigning tags and categories.

To give Byword access to your weblog, you select Publish from the Byword menu and then enter your site’s credentials. Then, when you’re done with an article and are ready to publish you can either select “Publish” from the File menu or you can click the Publish button that presents itself when you’re in Markdown Preview mode.

Once you hit Publish on an article, a popover window appears where you can then set the metadata for your article. For WordPress this includes title, slug, tags, categories, and even custom fields.

Byword 2 Mac Publishing Fields

My only quibble here is that Byword doesn’t pre-load the categories of my site and allow me to select from a dropdown list or something — you need to manually type in the name of each category — and there is no auto-complete for previously used categories. Which means you must remember and then type without error the names of the categories you wish to publish within.

Needless to say, I’m really excited about all the updates to Byword. Since I type all of my long-form articles within Byword, it’ll be nice to circumvent my copy-and-paste-to-MarsEdit routine and publish right from Byword itself.

Sent From Byword 2

What Editing Feels Like  →

Eric Maierson (via David Friedman):

You are alone in a dark room. Across the floor are the scattered pieces of three or four or five floor lamps. You don’t know how many. There are screws and bulbs and fixtures mixed together. You try not to panic as you feel your way across the floor in search of these pieces.

Writing and editing (and most all other creative endeavors) are those things which you never feel like you’re getting any better at.

When I read some of my old work and cringe then it’s proof (to me, at least) that I’m pretty sure I’m a better writer today than I was 5 years ago. But the day-to-day act and work of doing the writing itself? Well, that doesn’t feel any easier at all. It’s still a difficult and lonely endeavor. All we can do is keep on trying our darndest to do our best creative work.

Something I wrote a few years ago:

Suppose one day I do arrive at some level of skill where the ink flows like honey and the prose like fine wine. I wonder if I’d even realize it. It may very well feel just like it does right now — like today — when it seems as if I can’t even put two words together using copy and paste.

What Editing Feels Like