Related to the aforelinked.

This is the sort of thing we all need a good reminder of every once in a while. And by “we all” I mean “I”, and by “every once in a while” I mean “every day”.

My pal, Myke Hurley, invited me back to be a guest on his awesome interview podcast show, CMD+Space. Myke asked me all sorts of questions about The Sweet Setup, and topics include the site’s genesis (I give the whole answer that dates way back to before there was even an iPhone), the site’s goals, and what in the world a dorky guy like me is doing running three different websites.

(Side note: rumor has it that Marco Arment, Jason Snell, and myself are currently tied for most-frequent guest on CMD+Space with 3 appearances each. First one to 5 wins?)

That is one crazy deal for what looks to be a fantastic monitor.

Update: Jason Evangelho over at Forbes has the specs of the monitor. The bad news is that it tops out at 30Hz 3840×2160 and 60Hz for 1920×1080, which means you probably don’t want it for your computer.

Droplr is one of my most-used Mac utility apps. Long-time readers of this site will know that I’m a huge fan of the app and its service — I’ve been using Droplr since it was just a wee little beta.

Today the Droplr guys announced a few big updates: for one, the service is now paid-only. There is a basic plan which runs $5/month and gets you unlimited uploads and file sharing; then there is the Pro plan which is $10/month and gets you extra features like custom branding (use your own short URL instead of the d.pr URL), password-protected drops, the Droplr Inbox, etc.

All current Droplr users can get the basic plan for $3.50/month forever. And they’ve also set up a referral program so that if your friends sign up using your referral link then you both get a 10-percent discount for life.

The second big update is to the Mac app: you can now download the app direct from the Droplr website and the hot-key shortcut for “upload this file I’ve already selected” is back. There are also some very nice visual and functional improvements to the Mac app as well.

Droplr is a great service and utility and as something I use regularly, I’m delighted to see that it has grown into a healthy and sustainable business.

Underscore David Smith:

For many years I have posted a collection of iOS and device statistics collected from my Audiobooks app. Each new year I like to do a bit of a round-up summarizing the trends and details I see.

You can see David’s more detailed breakdown of stats here.

Checking back in, it’s been a month since writing my iPad mini vs iPad Air impressions and everything is still about the same as it was a month ago: I’ve now been trying to use both iPads side-by-side for nearly two months and they’re both awesome.

However, bit by bit I find myself grabbing the iPad mini for almost all the time for almost all the things. Though I prefer the iPad Air when writing, that task only constitutes 20-percent of my iPad usage. The rest — reading, surfing, twittering, RSSing — is better on the mini.

In short, if forced to pick just one today, I’d pick the mini.

The VSCO Journal featured some pictures by photographer Mark Weinberg from his trip to Norway and they’re absolutely stunning.

And I love this answer he gives as advice regarding composition:

Shooting with a large format camera forced me to work slowly and methodically, examining and controlling every variable, especially the frame. I loved contact printing, which is printing with the negative directly on the paper and thus no enlarging or ability to crop the image. What was on the negative was exactly what was in the print. The different movements available on a large format camera also taught me principles about seeing and framing that I wouldn’t have otherwise learned.

My advice would be to slow down. In the film age, we would study the shot, frame it up, and maybe make some test polaroids but rarely shoot 400 variations. Now, with digital, things have shifted a bit to where I feel like we shoot many more images than we would on film. This can be a good thing. Now, we get to actually see each step in our study. It doesn’t matter if we take 2 or 400 images of a scene, but studying and paying attention is what matters. Digital actually allows us more freedom to experiment than ever before and I love that.

We all need to keep learning new skills and improving those we already have. Mijingo helps you learn web design and development topics through our well-crafted video courses.

Right now you can get our 8-course The Happy Cog Way series for only $99. Through this series the experts at Happy Cog teach HTML5, Sass, Responsive Web Design, website deployment, typography, and more.

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My thanks to Mijingo for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. They truly do have some great video courses for learning new skills and topics. If you want to step up your web design/development chops this year, then Mijingo is a great place to start.

Nilay Patel:

It sounds great for consumers on its face — you’ll be able to get more stuff without paying for it! — but in reality it’s a huge blow to the free and vibrant market of the internet economy, and the first step towards a new era of carrier control.

Josh and Levi:

Next week we will release some exciting new features to Droplr that we’ve been working on for a long time and that many of you have been asking us for. At that time, we will be discontinuing our free accounts. All current free accounts and new sign ups will be placed on a 30-day trial. At the end of 30 days, you’ll be asked to pay for a Droplr subscription if you’d like to continue using it. If you don’t want to pay, you won’t be able to upload any more files, but none of your existing data will be deleted, and all of your links will continue to work.

As a special thank you for being a Droplr user we are also going to offer you a 30% lifetime discount on any of our paid plans. We’ll have 2 plans to choose from, Droplr Lite and Droplr Pro. Additionally, we’ll be announcing a new referral program where you can earn Droplr Pro for free.

He likes it. I’ve used the E-M5 and it is a pretty awesome camera, but I prefer the smaller and more compact rangefinder bodies of the E-PL5 or E-P5.