I’m on Twitter, tonight thinking out-loud during my setup and migration to a new MacBook Pro.
Asides
Sperte With the Funny
iLT: Web Typography Guide
A Guide to Web Typography by i love typography –
A good list of some rule-of-thumb web type layouts. Particularly: “Remember the line-height CSS property; a good rule of thumb is line-spacing that’s at least 140% of your text size.”
Line height is one of the easiest things to set, yet is so often neglected.
My Apologies
I want to apologized for my note yesterday regarding the now free NewsFire. Though I didn’t mean to, what I said clearly came across as smug and anti-NewsFire. That is not what I intended, nor is it an attitude I ever want to see in my writing.
I am sorry if I offended any NewsFire users. I have edited yesterday’s note to be more on par with the attitude I expect from myself.
Everyone has their opinions about the things they like and dislike. But casting something in a poor light simply because we prefer its alternative is not the most mature way to go about sharing our views.
Fluid: Site Specific Browser for Web Apps
Piggy backing on the Top 10 Web Apps results, I thought it was worth mentioning Fluid.
Fluid is a pretty intuitive desktop application for Mac, which helps you run your web based apps as if they were desktop apps. Basically, Fluid puts the site’s favicon in your dock, and clicking it will open that web app into its own site specific browser.
Free NewsFire
NewsFire joined in with many other desktop feed readers for Mac in that it is now free.
Though I prefer NetNewsWire, NewsFire does have a very slick interface and offers some great features — such as shorter refresh times, direct feed discovery, and the ever popular unfolding menus. Probably what I like most about NewsFire is when you select the “New Items” list it displays all the unread articles grouped together by feed.
The World’s Most Popular Web Apps
The World’s Most Popular Web Apps (according to 3,000 people).
On Feel
I love this quote from a recent article by Chris Bowler:
The enjoyment I get from my Mac is in part due to the operating system – the ease of use, the intuitiveness and the look of OS X all add to the experience. But my enjoyment is enhanced greatly by the third party software that I use every day. At any time, one look at my dock shows that applications created by Apple are always outnumbered by those I have purchased from the Mac developer community. Applications such as NetNewsWire, Coda, Yojimbo and Things make the hours fly by.
And off topic a bit, but am I the only person left not using Yojimbo?
Server Updates
I’m doing a few updates to the server and database. If you’re seeing this then so far so good, though it’s highly possible that things may be a bit “glitchy” for some people today.
onething : Sacramento
Part of my job is the opportunity to travel around the country putting on Christian conferences targeted at “young adults” (18 – 25 year olds).
I love to travel. And 16 of us just flew in to Sacramento last night for our first conference of 2008. I’m looking forward to 18 hour days, uncomfortable hotel beds, Pete’s Coffee and (most importantly) the chance to make a difference in 1,200 young adult’s lives.
NewsGator subscriber counts
Greg Reinacker explains the skinny on how NewsGator subscriber (and NetNewsWire, FeedDemon, NewsGator Inbox, and NewsGator Go!) counts are reported. Basically saying that if you sync your newsreaders then your subscriber count is reported to FeedBurner as one person using NewsGator online.
Before this I tought that individual apps were pinging in addition to the NewsGator online count, and therefore skewing the actual numbers; but that’s not true.
For example, yesterday my FeedBurner stats report 445 subscribers use NetNewsWire and 739 use NewsGator Online. According to Greg, there is no overlap of users in those numbers; 445 subscribers only use NNW on one computer and 739 use more than one computer with syncing turned on. Of course, you always have to take subscriber numbers with a grain of salt. It would be easy for someone with more than one mac to not have syncing turned on, thus counting as two subscribers when they’re actually just one.
NNW hack – Show web page instead of feed
Oliver Boermans put together a style sheet hack for NetNewsWire which will show the actual web page for an article instead of just its contents.
I think articles should be read in context to the design of the site they’re published on. It’s like art: looking at a picture a painting is not quite the same as looking at the painting itself. When I checking through NNW and come across an article I’d like to read I’ll arrow out to the article’s permalink and read on the site. Ollie’s little hack may be a good solution for those who insist on doing 100% of their reading directly in NetNewsWire (and who don’t like to use NNW’s tabbed browsing).
A Short shawnblanc.net Survey
I’m taking advantage of Google Docs’ new spreadsheet forms and put together a short, seven-question multiple-choice survey. It will take you about 30 seconds to fill out. The last question on there is my favorite.
UPDATE: Survey Says…
Joe Posnanski: The Last Second
Joe Posnanski:
I was thinking that since New England football coach Bill Belichick missed the final second of Super Bowl XLII, since he had already stormed off the field* in what we back in high school might have described as a “hissy fit,†he might want a quick recap. Here’s what happened
Even if you didn’t watch the game, and even if you don’t like football read Joe’s post. You’ll like it.