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Chris Bowler Interviews Garrett Murray  →

And asks him the very same question that has been in the front of my mind for months: “Why do you write [Prettify] in plural form?”

Garrett’s Answer:

Hah. It’s amazing how many times I’ve been asked that. Honestly, I don’t know why I did that. I just wrote the first few in plural and it stuck. I guess I imagined in the beginning I would eventually have other people adding content to the site as well, but after a short time I realized (after looking at submissions) that I don’t trust anyone else’s taste enough to give out control over posting. I thought about switching to singular, but it was already the style of the site.

Chris Bowler Interviews Garrett Murray

MagicPrefs  →

A free utility app that adds functionality to the Magic Mouse, allowing you to set actions for clicks and taps based on how many fingertips are on the mouse’s surface. MagicPrefs also allows you to adjust the tracking speed and tap sensitivity. No support for “pinching” yet, but it looks like it’s in the to-do list. Basically, this is the solution to my problem with the Magic Mouse.

MagicPrefs

Backing Up Over Broadband  →

Khoi’s dilemma with finding an online backup solution for his 400GB of data. There’s some good discussion in the comments with many recommendations for DropBox, Backblaze, or Jungle Disk.

My approach for backing up is to keep it simple, and keep it safe. At my home I’ve got a TimeCapsule/TimeMachine backup, and run a nightly SuperDuper clone to an external. At my work office I’ve got another external that I clone weekly.

Having an off-site or online backup is important because, as Khoi says: “Fire or theft would leave me as helpless as any less-conscientious computer user, rendering all my self-congratulatory local backups worthless.”

Backing Up Over Broadband

A Simple Business Model  →

Matt at 37 Signals:

When you choose that path, you get clarity. Everything is simpler. It’s simpler to explain your product. It’s simpler for people to understand. It’s simpler to change it. It’s simpler to maintain it. It’s simpler to start using it. The ingredients are simpler. The packaging is simpler. Supporting it is simpler. The manual is simpler. Figuring out your message is simpler. And most importantly, succeeding is simpler.

A Simple Business Model

How to Achieve Painless Registration  →

Summed up: quick and simple is best.

I might add that if you’re not trying to build your own self-hosted customer base, using a well-known point of sale like eBay, Amazon, or iTunes, or a highly-used, 3rd-party checkout option like PayPal or Google will create much less friction than a home-brewed option. Granted, your per-item profit margin may decrease, but so would tech support and website maintenance. Not to mention, with less friction sales are likely to increase enough to make up for that lost profit margin. (Via Marco.)

How to Achieve Painless Registration