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On Fremium Apps  →

David Barnard:

The future of sustainable app development is to give away as much value as possible and empower those who receive more value to pay more for it.

He states later in his article:

I don’t think freemium makes sense for every app in every situation, but it’s time to get serious about finding ways to make it work for more than just games.

And he’s putting his money where his mouth is: his Timer app (which I use every time I grill) is now free.

I like how Seth Godin put it: Free ideas spread better than non-free ideas, and you monetize it by selling souvenirs.

That is effectively the business model I have here at shawnblanc.net. The site is free (with ads) to anyone and everyone, but for the “pro users” who want more, I have a daily podcast. And it’s the member support of those pro users that tipped the scales and made this site profitable enough that I over a year and a half ago I turned it into my full-time gig.

On Fremium Apps

The Life and Times of Jeffrey Zeldman  →

One of the best The Great Discontent interviews yet:

Then Warner Bros. came to us because they were going to do a Batman movie. At the time, there were 3 million users on the web and we were using Netscape 1.0 or Mosaic. Don Buckley, the marketing director for Warner Bros. in New York, was really smart and asked if we could make a website for the movie. Our agency president lied and said, “Yes, of course.” Then he came to Steve McCarron, Alec Pollak, and me and said, “Boys, can you make a website?” We also lied and said, “Sure.”

I had only experienced AOL and this was before your time, but AOL was pretty dumbed down compared to the Internet; it was a cute, easy to understand interface. The first time I looked at the web, I said, “Well, this won’t succeed.” AOL was so much better—they had avatars and everything. The web looked horrible. Think about HTML websites in Netscape 1.0—it was very grim.

The Life and Times of Jeffrey Zeldman

AppleScript for Sending Frontmost Safari Tabs to OmniFocus  →

Sometimes the number of tabs I have open in Safari gets ahead of me, and I find myself with a few dozen sites waiting for my attention but I’m out of time. Or perhaps I’ve got several tabs open for a current project I’m working on but I need a break from working on that project. Or maybe I’ve got so many tabs open that Safari starts taking up more than its fair share of CPU resources.

Well, here’s a clever little AppleScript that grabs all the open tabs in Safari’s frontmost window and creates a new to-do item in your OmniFocus Inbox with the Title and URL of each tab listed out within the task’s note.

This script is far easier and faster than Instapapering or otherwise bookmarking them one by one. (And yes I know that I can reopen the windows from the previous session, but sometimes that’s not practical, desirable, or possible.)

Since I use Command+4 to clip the current URL into its own OmniFocus Quick Entry panel, I set this other script to execute via Keyboard Maestro when I hit Option+4 if Safari is the frontmost application.

Moreover, since I like confirmation when a script has been successfully executed, I added this Growl notification to the end:


tell application "Growl"
    set the allNotificationsList to {"Success Notification", "Failure Notification"}
    set the enabledNotificationsList to {"Success Notification", "Failure Notification"}
    
    register as application ¬
        "Safari Tabs to OmniFocus Script" all notifications allNotificationsList ¬
        default notifications enabledNotificationsList ¬
        icon of application "Safari"
    
    notify with name ¬
        "Success Notification" title ¬
        "Successfully Logged" description ¬
        "All Safari tabs have been sent tot OmniFocus" application name ¬
        "Safari Tabs to OmniFocus Script"
end tell
AppleScript for Sending Frontmost Safari Tabs to OmniFocus

Glassboard: The Anti-Facebook  →

For me, Glassboard has proven to be a great conference attendee tool. Got a bunch of pals all in town for an event? Put together a board and you’ve got a mobile group messaging app that makes communicating with the group super easy. But for 49 weeks I’m not out of town for an event, I never had much use for this otherwise great app.

That’s why I like Gabe’s writeup of how he’s using Glassboard instead of Facebook to communicate and share with friends and family. Clever.

Glassboard: The Anti-Facebook

The Innovation Argument  →

Jim Dalrymple:

If Samsung is forced to stop copying Apple, there is only one option left — innovate. Instead of sitting back and making their phones and tablets look exactly like the iPhone and iPad, Samsung will now have to do some work. The hardware and software will have to be different, unique and innovative.

The Innovation Argument

Sponsor: Checkmark  →

My thanks to Checkmark for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. I reviewed this iPhone app last month and heartily recommend it. I’ve found it to be far better than Apple’s built-in reminders app when it comes to the accuracy and reliability of location-based reminders.

 

Checkmark is the fastest way to create location- or time-based reminders for iPhone.

In just a few seconds you can create new reminders — it only takes 3 taps! You can watch this little movie we made to see it in action.

In only 3 taps you can remind yourself to:

  • Do laundry when you get home
  • Pick up milk next time you’re at the grocery store
  • Call your wife when you leave work
  • Remember to pick up a cake at 3 pm tomorrow
  • Make a haircut appointment on Tuesday at 10 am

You can even add a timer to location-based reminders so the alert goes off when you’re ready to get it done — like 15 minutes after you arrive home.

Checkmark is available in the App Store for $2.99.

––
Sponsorship by The Syndicate

Sponsor: Checkmark

Marco Arment’s Review of the Retina MacBook Pro  →

When Phil Schiller introduced the new MacBook Pro with Retina display at WWDC, he said it was most beautiful computer Apple had ever made. In the promo video, Jony Ive said “it’s without doubt, the very best computer we’ve ever built.”

But I mean, they have to say that, right?

No. I think they get to say it.

When Apple compliments their products with such high praise as “this is the very best and most beautiful computer we’ve ever made” they mean it. I have yet to read a review of the Retina MacBook Pro that didn’t say something along the lines of this is the best computer ever.

When Apple says something that sounds like marketing hype, it’s usually not hype or exaggeration. Apple’s products now tend to live up to the claims Apple puts on them — if they don’t surpass those claims.

Marco Arment’s Review of the Retina MacBook Pro