Will Peng:
I think the best designers have the greatest empathy for the people they connect with.
I love this attitude. Will’s article reminds me of my own change in attitude as I learned the ropes of doing freelance design work some years ago.
(Thanks, Chris!)
Nice update to the Backblaze app that runs on your Mac (or Windows) machine. It take advantage of your computer’s SSD, assuming you’ve got one, to increase indexing and backup performance. Thing is it’s a manual download and install — you have to grab the Disk Image from here and run the installer yourself.
This afternoon I was interviewing Cameron Moll as part of my upcoming audio book, Delight is in the Details.
During the pre-show conversation we were talking about his old weblog, Authentic Boredom, and Cameron mentioned that he’d been reading an article of his from 2004(!):
If there’s one thing I’ve repeated over the course of my career more than anything else, it’s this simple philosophy: If you have time and talent to care for the smaller details, it almost always means you’ve already cared for the bigger details.
Agreed. Moreover, I would also say details a great product maketh. All the little touches which often go unnoticed, add up to collectively turn something which is pretty good into something fantastic.
David Barnard:
Many have touted iOS 7 as Apple’s break from skeuomorphism, and that’s true if we apply its strictest definition, but in iOS 7 Apple chose to double down on physicality and the use of real world metaphors. Creating a physics engine for the user interface is most certainly not digital authenticity.
Chris Bowler wrote a nice overview of the main differences between Typekit and H&FJ’s Cloud.tyography web font service.
I’ve been using Typekit for quite a while to serve up Warnock Pro and Proxima Nova here, and Proxima Nova Condensed and Chaparral Pro on Tools & Toys.
Among my pals on the web, so far Ben Brooks is the only one I know of who has switched from Typekit to Cloud.typography.
Typekit’s pricing is very affordable and the service has been fast and reliable over the years. But Cloud.typography’s Screensmart fonts are a brilliant innovation. And I have a new website project in the pen-and-paper stages right now, which I’m already imagining in Whitney.
As a nerdy sidebar, I use a dns-prefetch link at the very top of my site’s header to help speed up the process of the user’s browser having to downloading the typefaces from Typekit’s servers:
<link rel="dns-prefetch" href="http://use.typekit.com">
Recently I was talking with a friend who was considering deleting his weblog and starting all over. Tossing his archives into the trash, changing the domain, and re-focusing on the sort of writing that he most wants to do.
His premise was that a new domain and new “brand” would help set the tone for the new voice he wants to write with. And that by trashing his archives of the work he’s written so far, there will be nothing on his new site which he’s embarrassed about. Nothing juvenile or off topic.
I told him he was being silly and then linked him to this article by Zeldman where he writes: “If your old work doesn’t shame you, you’re not growing.”
Looking back at past work and cringing means you’ve grown since then. (Thank goodness!)
I read through my old software reviews and interviews from time to time and though I’m still very proud of them, I also cringe at my massive lack of a grammatical style and my goofy tone.
And then there’s the super-random posts from when I first started writing here. Like my article about mullets (really, Shawn?). I could take them out because they’re pretty off-topic with the now-established nerdy tone of shawnblanc.net, but I leave them in there because they are a part of this site’s history and who reads the archives anyways?
The desire to “start fresh” and get rid of all your old work so that nothing in your archives is of any embarrassment is to assume that your best work is now at a plateau and that you’ll never move to a different interest or topic to write about.
If you think you’ve reached a point where you can create work that never makes you cringe again, then you’re saying that what you do today will be just as good as what you do next month, next year, and in 5 years from now.
And, well, that’s just not fair to your future self.
Seth Godin:
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth not being embarrassed about. And if it’s not worth doing, don’t do it.
John Carey wrote an excellent post which continues the conversation from my Flickr and Instagram article:
I can not stress how important it is not to let the pressure of posting a photo only to have no one pay it any attention stop you from enjoying what you do.
Agreed. John brings some excellent and thoughtful perspective to this whole conversation, and I love it.
It’s great to hear John’s thoughts on the current state of social networks, faves, likes, comments, page views, and how it all relates to the art and craft of photography. His photographs have been a very positive influence on my own work as I’ve been learning what my own photographic “style” and “voice” are over the past several months shooting with the E-PL5.
I fear my article last Friday came across as to negative and/or self-centered. And for that I am bummed. I am loving shooting with my Olympus, editing in Lightroom, and then seeing the finished product. Photography has become a very enjoyable and rewarding hobby for me over the past several months.
My intent isn’t to communicate that I’m sad as a photographer because I don’t see enough activity on my Flickr shots. Nor do I want to communicate that I dislike Flickr.
The point I am hoping to communicate is that I don’t feel Flickr to be the ideal “final resting place” for my best and favorite photos. The network is great, and I will continue to use it — but I am not satisfied with it alone.
Digg (yes, that Digg) has released a new RSS Reader for the web, iPhone, and iPad (Android coming soon). The design is sleek and clean, and the apps are speedy and efficient.
Whether you’re a hardcore RSS junky or simply want all your favorite online reading in one place, Digg Reader is for you. It’s free and available today!
* * *
My thanks to Digg Reader for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. Sponsorship by The Syndicate.
It’s been about 9 months since I bought my Olympus E-PL5, and there is still one thing I’m not satisfied with. That is the final step of my photography workflow: posting and sharing pictures.
It was my iPhone that led me to buy a better camera. Nearly all of my “best” and “favorite” shots over the past 9 months have been taken with the Olympus and now reside on my Flickr page. The iPhone, however, is still the clear winner when it comes to sharing and enjoying photographs and moments between friends and family. Primarily this happens through Instagram and iMessage — it’s easy and it’s where everyone already is.
My iPhone photography “workflow” looks mostly like this: Snap a picture → launch VSCO or Instagram → import the image → apply a filter → maybe also apply a blur → share on Instagram → get several “hearts” and maybe a comment or two.
My Olympus photography workflow looks something like this: Snap pictures → import from SD card into Lightroom 4 → delete the blurry ones → pick out my favorites from the bunch → make edits and adjustments → upload to Flickr → cricket noises.
From an artistic standpoint, I am far more satisfied and excited about the photographs I’m taking with the Olympus.
Shots like this one of Noah and Anna reading or this picture of my iPhone taking a picture of Moscone are just two examples of some really great photographs I’ve gotten with my Olympus over the past 9 months.
And I want to share these photographs with people. I am proud of them and I enjoy looking at them, and I want others to see them and appreciate them as well. But unless one of my Flickr images makes it onto Explore (which has happened twice), I get very little feedback or activity.
On Flickr I have 885 contacts following me. On Instagram I have 2,235. Yet my Instagram photos get far more than just 2.5 times the activity than my Flickr photos.
Here’s a shot I posted to Flickr on June 30. As of this writing the photo has been up for 2 weeks and has received 7 Faves and 1 comment. Which is already more than most of my photos on Flickr gets.
As a little experiment, this morning, while writing this article, I posted that same image to Instagram (which is totally cheating, I know). Within 10 minutes it had the same number of likes as its 2-week-old Flickr counterpart, and within 5 hours it had nearly 8 times the “likes” (55) and thrice as many comments (3).
In short, my Instagram snapshots spark far more feedback, interaction, and conversation than my Flickr photos do. And I bet anyone reading this who has an Instagram and a Flickr account would say the same thing.
The conundrum, for me, at least, is that my Flickr photos — my best photos and the ones I am most proud of — are the shots I want to share with people so we can both appreciate them together. These are the ones I most want conversations to spark around, and yet these are the ones which get the least interaction.
One of my favorite parts of editing through a batch of images is at the end. I’ll ask Anna if she wants to come into the office and see all the best shots (usually they’re mostly pictures of Noah). I enjoy looking over the pictures with Anna because it brings a feeling of satisfaction to my photographic work. I feel closure when an image I’ve taken receives feedback and/or accolades from others (especially friends and family members).
Which is why I feel a bit of pain right now as a hobbyist photographer. My best photos all go to Flickr, yet they sit there, unnoticed, slowly collecting imaginary dust.
Fortunately, Flickr has been doing much to increase the vibrancy of their network. Last December they released a awesome update to their iPhone app. And a few months ago they redesigned their website and added new pricing structures.
Though the activity and interaction of Flickr’s network has clearly grown at least a little bit, it hasn’t grown that much (at least from where I’m shooting in my small corner of the network). It’s been an uphill battle.
After the new version of the Flickr iPhone app shipped, Khoi Vinh wrote about Flickr’s long road back to relevancy:
[Flickr is] 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.
I agree. Flickr doesn’t need to replace or clone Instagram. But if Flickr is where we’re posting our “best” and “favorite” photos, it can be anticlimactic when those photos go mostly unnoticed and unappreciated.
In short, the activity I see on Flickr is disproportionate compared to that of Instagram when I compare the quality of the images on the two networks.
There are, of course, other outlets I have for my favorite photographs. Around our house we have several picture frames, and every few months we’ll swap out the photos with new prints from Shutterfly. And Apple’s photo book proved to be a fantastic Christmas gift for parents and grandparents last year that we’ll no doubt do again.
While those are both extremely satisfying final steps to my photography, they only consist of a fraction of the photos I shoot throughout the year. I’ve considered building my own website where I can post my favorite images, but I’m not sure that’s the answer either.
At the end of the day, Flickr is the only place I’ve got to put my best photographic work. But it doesn’t feel like the right place. As much as I love the service, it’s just not cutting it. And I suspect I’m not alone.
The little bits of animation here and whimsey there are simply fantastic. I love how the IFTTT logo gets mirrored when app’s main screen flips over to the settings pane.
Take Control of LaunchBar is an in-depth “user’s guide” for LaunchBar by Kirk McElhearn that’s part of TidBITS always-amazing Take Control series.
If you use LaunchBar, you’re going to want this book. I’ve been reading through it over the past few days and have learned several new things that I’m putting to good use already. I don’t tinker as much as I used to. Instead I prefer to learn new things about the tools I already use day in and day out.
Also, the Objective Development guys are running a deal: get McElhearn’s book for free if you buy LaunchBar.
The Prompt is one of the coolest new podcasts around. (They also have the most number of unique accents amongst any podcast I’m familiar with.) Yesterday they asked me to join them as a correspondent for one of their segments where we nerded out about photography gear, workflows, and photo management.
Yesterday, Day One for Mac got a significant update. It’s now on feature parity with the iOS version, which means on the Mac you can now add photos, your current location and weather, tags, and more.
I’m personally a huge fan of Day One, and I wrote a review of the 3-app suite last fall. Ever since the iOS app added the ability to include photos in journal entries I now use it often to record memories and moments. The Mac app’s ability to now add photos makes it much easier for me to log and save some of my favorite shots from the E-PL5. Whereas up until now, most of the photos I’ve been putting in Day One have been iPhone shots.
Day One is $10 on the Mac App Store. And on iOS it’s free this week to celebrate the App Store’s 5th anniversary.