Incredible.
There’s more info on the shuttle and the mission here on NASA’s website, including this video of Endeavour separating from its external fuel tank.
Linked
Link Posts
An App-propriate Price →
J. Eddie Smith regarding the $20 price tag of OmniOutliner for iPad:
It might sound weird coming from a non-seller of apps, but I like seeing higher prices in the App Store. If the market will support higher prices, that’s a really good sign that the App Store is becoming a quality marketplace, not just a snack machine.
I use both free and paid apps that are probably worth hundreds of dollars to me based on what they do for me. Value is worth paying for, and the more profit potential the App Store offers, the better development we’ll see in it.
The Omni Group is helping to raise the perception of app value, and I applaud them for it. If you want apps that are free or cost less than a pack of Juicy Fruit, then you should probably check out another mobile platform. But then again, you won’t find apps like OmniOutliner there.
I couldn’t agree more. For example, the $40 OmniFocus iPad app is, in my opinion, the best of the three-app suite. The Omni Group is not just using the iPad to make apps which act as windows into your documents, their iPad apps are, in some ways, their best apps.
“The Omni Group Just ‘Gets’ the iPad” →
David Sparks’ fine review of OmniOutliner for the iPad:
OmniOutliner is not a simple port of the Mac OS X app. Instead, it is a ground up, outlining application built around the iPad’s strengths (and weaknesses).
ICONGOODS →
Many thanks to ICONGOODS for sponsoring the feed this week. These guys have some new “softwear apparel” t-shirts that look great. The shirts feature the well-designed and minimal Glyphish icons by Joseph Wain — I especially like “Joe“.
And if you use the discount code “SHAWNBLANC” at checkout you’ll get an additional 20% off.
“Never Punch Someone in the Forehead” →
Episode 11 of The B&B Podcast. Ben and I talk about fighting and cloud-synced music.
Indie Devs Threatened by Lodsys Over In-App Purchases →
Darrell Etherington at GigaOM:
The threats accuse devs of patent infringement regarding Apple’s in-app purchase mechanism, but the patent holder appears to be targeting independent developers individually instead of going after Apple itself.
Hopefully Apple steps up to help their 3rd-party developers. In the meantime, as Marco suggests, the rest of us can buy pCalc to help James Thomson out.
Home in Capital Letters →
Joe Posnanski is one of the best sports writers in America. He moved to Kansas City in 1996 to write for The Star. Now Joe writes for Sports Illustrated and is moving back to North Carolina with his family. This post talking about his past 15 years is just the sort of writing that I most enjoy by Joe: full of humor and stories.
Twitter for Mac 2.1 →
Username autocomplete, the ability to “clone” a view into its own window, and other things. Federico Viticci has all the details.
Alfred 0.9 →
Though I don’t get these guys’ version numbering, one thing is for sure: the Alfred team is not leaving any gas in the tank while developing this app. They are working hard to build the fastest, easiest-to-use, and most-feature-rich application launcher for Mac there is.
The latest beta (which is about to be submitted to the Mac App Store?) now includes global hotkeys, and global hotkeys are great. It’s a feature of Quicksilver that I used all the time but that LaunchBar does not have. So when I switched to LaunchBar in 2009 I wrote a few AppleScripts and now use FastScripts to run certain triggers and launch certain apps globally.
I personally am still using LaunchBar and FastScripts, but Alfred could go toe to toe with them now. It’s a very good app. and if you’re not already in a relationship with an application launcher then I’d easily recommend Alfred.
I’m getting ahead of myself here, but if I had to sum up what I see as the main difference between Alfred and LaunchBar it’s that Alfred appeals to a broader range of nerds, and LaunchBar appeals to a smaller range of persnickety power users.
How Aaron Mahnke Writes →
Aaron’s advice about how he wrote his 100,000-word novel and what hurdles he had to overcome sounds almost identical to how I write my long reviews and the hurdles I face when doing them.
Jetman Flies Over Grand Canyon →
Oh, the places you’ll go in a custom-built jet suit!
Chart of the Day: iPad vs PC Usage for Personal Computing →
Compared to six months ago, when doing personal computing people are using their desktops less, their laptops less, and their iPads more. More charts from Business Insider’s survey results here.
Twitter’s Updated Mobile Web App →
It looks like Twitter for iPhone, the screenshots are of it running in Mobile Safari on the iPhone, but surely it’s meant for Android tablets:
This web app allows us to provide a high-quality and consistent Twitter experience on high-end touchscreen devices – whether or not an official Twitter application is available. It was built from the ground up for smartphones and tablets […]
Because: (a) the only native Twitter client for Honeycomb right now is TweetComb, and apparently it’s not very good; and (b) who on iOS is using the web app and not the native app?
[UPDATE: Because of the recent Blogger outage, the original link is broken. I’ve updated the link to simply point to the Twitter blog homepage.]
Using TextExpander to Conquer Email →
Elliot Jay Stocks joins the ranks of TextExpander aficionados:
My completely non-scientific research has found that the number of times one writes the same thing is explicitly tied to the number of emails one receives. In other words, it’s the law of averages. Like many people, I find myself writing the same thing over and over and over again, with very subtle alterations.
I’ve been using TextExpander for the past six months or so. The Big Ah-Ha Moment for me was when I realized that though I could use it to help automate my responses to certain common emails I get, that automation didn’t mean my replies were any less personal. If anything, TextExpander has helped me to become more personal because it allows me time to actually reply to more emails.