Author: Shawn Blanc

Mavericks and Tagging  →

Brett Terpstra:

The core concept behind tagging on a computer is that your documents, photos and other files no longer need to have a specific location in the filesystem in order to create relationships (from the user’s perspective, anyway). Apple has long desired to move away from the idea of deeply-nested folders and an obvious filesystem (an idea that, in reality, probably began at NeXT). Spotlight, Saved Searches and other file-locating tools have been in OS X for a long time. In my opinion they’re still undervalued by most Mac users, but Apple is planning to change that.

Mavericks and Tagging

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My thanks to TextExpander touch for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. I do a lot of writing on my iPhone and iPad, and all the apps I use support TextExpander touch. Highly recommended.

Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

Sponsor: TextExpander touch 2.0

The Writing Process  →

Speaking of Seth Godin and writing:

The biggest takeaway for anyone seeking to write is this: don’t go looking for the way other authors do their work. You won’t find many who are consistent enough to copy, and there are enough variations in approach that it’s obvious that it’s not like hitting home runs or swinging a golf club. There isn’t a standard approach, there’s only what works for you (and what doesn’t). […]

The process advice that makes sense to me is to write. Constantly. At length. Often. Don’t publish everything you write, but the more you write, the more you have to choose from.

The Writing Process

Principles for Responsible Media Moguls  →

Seth Godin:

If you run a media company (and you do—you publish regularly on all sorts of social media, don’t you?) then it’s worth two minutes to consider some basic groundrules, listed here for you to embrace or reject.

One of the best bits of advice for writing this site I stole from this Macworld podcast where John Gruber answers a question about why Daring Fireball is comment free:

I wanted to write a site for someone it’s meant for. That reader I write for is a second version of me. I’m writing for him. He’s interested in the exact same things I’m interested in; he reads the exact same websites I read.

Writing for the second version of me was such a great way to get momentum to my publishing routine — it helped me to find my voice, and it continues to serve as the perfect litmus test for if I should or shouldn’t link to something, or if I’m going to spend time writing a review of an app or gadget.

But writing for the second version of me doesn’t answer every question that comes up in the day-to-day of writing and publishing. Questions like: What should I do when something is interesting to me but I don’t have anything to add to the conversation about it? Or: How often should I mention that this site is primarily funded by paying members?

Some questions you have answer ahead of time and then do your best to be consistent about. Because they’re not questions of style or schedule or voice, they’re questions about principles and values.

Principles for Responsible Media Moguls

Gadgets and Moving Targets

What’s my wish for the next iPhone?

I often think about what I use my gadgets for and try to imagine how they could serve me better. But usually I come back to how all I really want is do better creative work every day.

This is one of the moving targets of my life.

It’s the same moving target all makers have. Regardless of our profession or the tools we use, we all just want to get better at doing better.

While my tools do help me accomplish certain things faster and more efficiently — leaving time for me to do other things — they can’t actually do my creative work for me.

Naturally I want the best tools for the job. And I want something faster, thinner, lighter, and cheaper just as much as the next guy.

But tools do not a craftsman make. If what I have right now isn’t enough, then neither will be what I get next.

Gadgets and Moving Targets

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My thanks to HostGator for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

Sponsor: HostGator

Shawn Today, Episode 400

Today marks episode 400 of my members-only podcast, Shawn Today.

It’s a good milestone to do something fun, so I thought I’d mix things up from my usual 7-minute show. For one, I’m posting today’s episode here for everyone to listen to. Secondly, I asked my good friend Ben Brooks to be the first-ever guest on the show.

Ben and I talk about iOS 7, the march of technology and our resistance to it at first followed by our love for it later, valuing down time and letting our minds rest, and other fun miscellany.

Download the MP3 (15.7 MB; 43:19)

Links:

A huge thanks to all for your support of the site!

Shawn Today, Episode 400

The Fourth Agenda

Today, Agenda 4 is out. It’s a calendar app for the iPhone and it’s awesome.

The core of Agenda is its gesture-based navigation — something that has gone pretty much unchanged since version 1.0. This navigation style makes it so easy to quickly get between the different calendar views. And once iOS 7 makes its debut this fall, we’ll be pining for gesture-based navigation even more.

Agenda’s “left-most” calendar view shows a high-level look, displaying a traditional calendar view with visibility into 6 months at a time. The “center” view is a one-month calendar with view of today’s events. The right-most view is a running list of all your events in chronological order, with dividers separating each day.

My preferred calendar view is the right-most pane in Agenda: the running list. At a glance I can usually see a quick overview of what I’ve got going on today, tomorrow, and maybe even the next day. And I can quickly scroll down the list to see future events, or scroll up the list to see past events.

But, when setting up an appointment, my visual-thinking brain usually wants to see on a traditional calendar where a date lands. Which is why I love that I can quickly swipe over to the month view and see a particular date, or range of dates, in context to the week and month they’re in.

What’s new in Agenda 4?

I’m glad you asked. For one, the app has a brand-new icon and a fresh coat of interior paint. Giving it a nice iOS 7 vibe that will make it feel right at home this fall.

Also new are some options for how you can create new events. In the settings pane you can chose your preferred method for entering a new event. Agenda gives you 4 options:

  • The new “Agenda Mini” pane which lets you type in the name of an event and then quickly select a start and stop time.
  • The Agenda expanded pane which is an improved version of Agenda’s traditional event creation pane. This view lets you pick different alarm times, add notes, adjust which calendar the event belongs to, and more.
  • The default iOS event entry card.
  • And a text box which you can type in natural language and then send to Fantastical. Using URL-schemes, your text is opened in Fantastical, you can then adjust if you need to, and once the event is added you’re sent back to Agenda 4.

At first consideration, all these event entry options may seem like overkill. But a large part of what makes or breaks a calendar app for people is how it handles event creation. Everyone has different need and different taste when it comes to viewing their calendar and adding events.

I for one never liked Agenda’s previous event creation view. Which is why I would often use Siri or Fantastical to create a new event.

However, the new “Agenda Mini” pane for creating a new event is excellent. Since almost all of my events exist on just one calendar, and a default alarm of 15-minutes works well for me, this quick-entry pane is a breeze to use.

Agenda 4 is two bucks in the App Store, and is a paid upgrade for existing Agenda users.

This app has been my primary iPhone calendar app since the day it launched as a 1.0 back in the summer of 2011, and it just keeps getting better. Which is why, two years later, it continues its reign as the calendar app sitting on my home screen.

The Fourth Agenda