My thanks to Inkling for sponsoring the RSS feed this week.

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For years, those who’ve wanted to teach themselves programming have been caught between the trusted content found in books and the ease of use with online materials. Now, O’Reilly Media and Inkling have teamed up to reimagine the world’s most trusted technological resources for iPad, iPhone, and the web.

From embedded coding sandboxes to notes with web links, syntax highlighting, and more, books in the Animal series, Missing Manual series, and others are amplified with Inkling-only features not found in any other e-book version. Copy-and-paste bits of code as you go on your laptop, or drill down into the logic behind the syntax when reading on your iPad or iPhone.

Budding developers and tech enthusiasts alike now have some of the world’s best tech resources right at their fingertips. Watch a video that shows how it all works, and shop for books.

Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

Speaking of displays disappearing and becoming the software underneath, I think this commercial is quite clever.

On this week’s episode of The new B&B Podcast, Ben and I answered a whole bunch of techy and nerdy questions from listeners. We talked about the motivation for our new show format, Google Maps on iOS 6, what laptop bags we use, what we’d change about one another’s websites, what origin of coffee I prefer to roast, and more.

John Moltz adding to the aforelinked conversation bit:

I kind of feel like we in the Apple-preferring world have been ranting about this checkbox mentality for several years now but people in the general tech press still don’t get what makes Apple products exciting. Like the promise of NFC, their understanding is always six months to a year away.

Matt Drance on why the iPhone doesn’t have NFC and why Apple is all about iterating and solving real-world problems that most people face:

It’s not the technology that matters — it’s the utility that the technology provides.

This is very much in line with what I wrote in my iOS 6 and Every-Day Life article:

The mobile phone industry has is no shortage of impressive, whizbang features which sound great and make fun ads but which rarely get used by real people in their day-to-day lives.

The niceties shipping as part if iOS 6 are great because they’re the sorts of little things that will play big, unsung roles in our everyday lives.

See also: Feature checklist dysfunction.

Apple’s Weather app. (Coincidence that Dark Sky is also a weather app?)

For one, the newer layout for the taller screen is a superior layout to that which is on all previous iPhones. Secondly, the intricate artwork that depicts the current weather conditions looks even better on the new iPhone’s more saturated display. This app has become one of the nicest-looking corners of iOS 6.

I’ve already preordered one; I used my iPhone 4S-friendly Glif all the time. (Works great with the Joby GorillaPod, by the way.)

Now just waiting for an iPhone 5-friendly olloclip (which they say is on the way).

Dan Moren:

So, instead of just bellyaching over Maps’s shortcomings, how can you help improve the quality of information? Easy: Report problems to Apple as you encounter them. It only takes a little longer than composing a 140-character complaint, and it’s an investment in a better Maps in the future.

For my own home town I rarely use maps. And in my light usage of the iOS 6 maps app over the past few months I didn’t notice any shortcomings in its data. However, while in Dallas last week, the Maps app couldn’t find my hotel. In fact, it couldn’t even find the address of the hotel. I had to call them and get directions over the phone (gasp!).

I’ve since reported the missing location via the Maps app and will continue to report problems I come across.

Ben Johnson’s got a nice little overview of some of the more clever animations found in some iPhone apps. These little touches are exactly the sort of thing that make iOS so great. I’ve always thought Tweetbot (and Convertbot, especially) are prime examples of apps that add fun little animations to take things over the top.

And though it’s rarely mentioned, I think sound effects can also be a key component of a highly-polished app. Of course not everyone has the sound up on their iPhone.

(Via Jeremy Olson.)

Here’s one more Circles-related link. Something I got to see first-hand during the weekend was a new web service called Tagboard. My long-time and good friend Sean Sperte is one of the co-founders and was at Circles Conference, so I asked him to give me the run down of what exactly Tagboard is all about.

In short, Tagboard does live, real-time searches of hashtags across social networks. (Currently Twitter, Instagram, app.net, and Facebook with Flickr and others in the pipe.)

During the conference all the tweets and ‘grams posted using the #Circles2012 tag were aggregated in realtime on this Tagboard search page.

What Glassboard is for group communication during special events, Tagboard looks to be for event-centric conversations. I know Sean and his co-workers have more in mind than this, but for me I see Tagboard as a great app for things like family reunions, friend get-togethers, conferences, and the like. Because not only does it collect all the activity happening across multiple social networks, but then it’s there for archival purposes if you want to go back to it and archive or save some of the links, quotes, pictures, etc. All you have to do is get everyone to agree upon a common hashtag and Tagboard does the rest.

Dude’s got skills.