The Sea of Strangers  →

Seth Godin:

Is there anything more frightening than showing up (really showing up) in the place where you are unknown and alone?

All our warning systems are on high alert. From an evolutionary perspective, strangers represent danger. They are not only a direct threat, but carry the risk of rejection and all the insecurity that comes with it.

But the opposite can be true: Strangers can represent opportunity. The opportunity to learn, to make new connections, to build bridges that benefit everyone.

Wow. This post by Seth Godin fits hand-in-glove with the story I shared on today’s episode of Shawn Today, regarding how I overcame one of my own talent ceilings.

The Sea of Strangers

Gestures  →

Patrick Rhone:

I believe Apple should set a standard for what specific gestures should do and what results a customer can expect from them. While I don’t think these should be enforced through the approval process, I do think it should provide developers with a baseline as to what users should expect a gesture to do and that not doing so means you will be working against said expectations and intentions.

Two thoughts:

  • In a way, Apple already created a baseline for how to implement gestures in 3rd-party apps: iOS 7. In the same way that the stock apps in iOS 7 give a baseline for 3rd-party devs as they design their apps, the stock gestures in iOS 7 give a baseline for how 3rd-party devs should consider adding gesture support to their apps.

Right now the main new system-wide gestures are slide left-to-right to go back and slide up from the bottom to bring up Control Center. Which is just 2 more gestures than there used to be (sliding down for Notification Center). So, in short, gestures are being added sparingly. But I bet we’ll see more gesture support in future iOS versions because…

  • As I’ve been using and testing iOS 7 on my iPhone, I find myself wanting to do even more gestures that don’t even exist. Such as a 2-finger pinch to close an app and return to the Home screen.

In short, as you get used to gestures which are implemented right, they feel incredibly natural. Just as swiping a list view gives a quick and jitter-free scroll of that list makes you feel as if you’re actually manipulating the pixels underneath your finger, so too does being able to control the interface with gestures.

Gestures

Facing the Talent Ceiling

I’m working on something, and it’s for people who make things. As part of this project I would love to hear your story about overcoming the ceiling of talent.

If you’re someone who makes things — a designer, developer, writer, photographer, singer, musician, painter, sculptor, entrepreneur, podcaster, et al. — then you know what I mean about hitting the limit of your skills and being in that place where your vision and desire to do amazing work is bigger than your ability to actually create that work.

What do you do when your desire to do good work is bigger than your ability to actually create that work?

I’d love to hear about your own talent ceilings and what you have done / are doing to overcome them. And then, I’d love to share some of your stories here and as a part of this thing I’m working on. (If you’re not okay with your story being shared, or if you want it to remain anonymous, just let me know.)

Send me an email: [email protected]

Thanks!

— Shawn

P.S. You may have noticed that I put this same question to Twitter and ADN yesterday. The emails I got were so inspiring and encouraging that I wanted to cast the net larger.

Facing the Talent Ceiling

Why Doesn’t Apple Enable Sustainable Businesses on the App Store?  →

This is Ben Thompson’s third article in his series on enabling sustainable business in the App Store. (The whole series is quite fantastic, I suggest you start at the beginning: I, II, and IIb.)

In this third piece, Ben talks about the business model and mindset that Apple has towards the iOS App Store, and how it may be the foundation for why it can be difficult to build a sustainable business around productivity apps. In short, he makes the case for why it is that the apps which truly set iOS apart (the killer apps) are not the ones which make money hand over fist. The hand-over-fist money-making apps are casual games. And casual games are not the must-have apps of iOS, nor are they platform differentiators (you can find most popular iOS games on Android as well).

Why Doesn’t Apple Enable Sustainable Businesses on the App Store?

Webfonts by H&FJ  →

Hoefler & Frere-Jones rolled out Cloud.typography today and wowzers. These guys are home to some of the finest typefaces on the planet (I’m a huge fan of Tungsten, Idlewild, Gotham, to name a few).

If you’re a type nerd, at least do yourself the favor of taking a few minutes to peruse the webfont site, and for goodness sake, be sure you read all about the H&FJ Screensmart Fonts and how they designed and engineered them.

Webfonts by H&FJ

On the Original iPhone’s Launch  →

Stephen Hackett, who was a Genius in training, working the sales floor on iPhone launch day:

The demo iPhone I unboxed was the first iPhone I’d ever seen. I just turned it over in my hand, over and over several times before turning it on. When I did, I was blown away.

I remember having that exact same reaction. Everyone did.

When the original iPhone launched, I still had a few months left on my Verizon contract. I wish I had stood in line for an original, but instead I waited until later that fall to avoid paying a $350 cancellation fee.

I did, however, go down to the Plaza Apple Store with a friend later on launch night. The store was open until Midnight, and I think we went down around 11. There were no lines at that point so we had plenty if time to fiddle with the demo units. I still remember just how cool they were. Also: remember those fancy paper bags they came in?

On the Original iPhone’s Launch

This Weekend’s To-Do Item: Download Your Google Feeds List

Come Monday, Google Reader will be gone and you’ll have no access to your old data. Even if you’re not planning on moving to a Google Reader alternative, if you’ve ever had a Google Reader account and a list of feeds, I’d suggest downloading your list just so you’ve got it. And it only takes about a minute.

There is more than one way get your RSS feeds list from Google Reader. Here’s a few — feel free to pick whichever sounds the most exciting to you:

I don’t really care about any of that extra info, except my starred items. But they’ve been auto-imported into Pinboard using IFTTT anyway.

  • Which is why I went a different rout: I just opened up NetNewsWire 3.3.2 and clicked on File → Export Subscriptions. From there I selected to export all of my subscriptions as an OPML file with groups, and now I’ve got a nice backup of all the feeds I was subscribed to in Google Reader.
This Weekend’s To-Do Item: Download Your Google Feeds List

Droplr 3 for iOS [iTunes Link]  →

A big update to the Droplr iOS app shipped yesterday that brings iPad support, a polished UI, and more.

Droplr has been my link-, file-, text-, and screenshot-sharing service of choice ever since its beta days back in 2010. And since I do a fair amount of work from my iPad I’m very glad that I can finally access all my Droplr resources, as well as create new links and upload files to Droplr from my iPad.

Droplr 3 for iOS [iTunes Link]

Feed Wrangler’s Smart Streams

As the dust settles, my feed-reading service of choice continues to be Feed Wrangler.

Feed Wrangler has been out for a few months now, and I’ve been an advocate of the service on this site, on Twitter, ADN, and to just to anyone who asks.

There are two main reservations I’ve heard from people regarding Feed Wrangler, and they are: (1) that the iOS apps and website are ugly; and (2) that Feed Wrangler doesn’t support folders.

Well, I can’t argue with the first point. And I don’t think David Smith (the developer behind Feed Wrangler) would argue with you either. His goal with the apps was simply to have something that worked with the service. His primary goal with Feed Wrangler is to build a killer syncing service with a full-featured API and get the best-in-class 3rd-party apps to support it.

And so far, that’s exactly what’s happening. Just yesterday Mr. Reader for iPad was updated with support for Feed Wrangler. This morning, ReadKit for Mac was updated with Feed Wrangler support. And we know that an update for Reeder is in the works which will also bring support for Feed Wrangler.

So the concern about how Feed Wrangler looks has been, and is being, addressed.

As for the reservation about Feed Wrangler’s use of Smart Streams instead of folders, let me explain how I use these streams and how they can be set up to work like folders.

The Smart Stream

What sets Feed Wrangler apart from so many of the other RSS solutions is its Smart Streams.

As I’ve given accolades to Feed Wrangler over the past weeks since its launch a while back, I’ve received quite a few emails that people don’t fully grasp what all you can do with a Smart Stream.

I, too, had the same hurdle when I was initially beta testing Feed Wrangler, and it took some chatting with the developer behind it, David Smith, before I grasped just how awesome the Smart Streams can be.

Streams as Folders

To set up a smart stream as a “folder” do this:

  • Under the Smart Streams box on Feed Wrangler’s sidebar, click “Create”.
  • Enter a name for your new stream.
  • Leave the search filter blank.
  • Check: “Only include unread”.
  • Uncheck: “Stream should include all feeds?”.
  • After unchecking that last option, you’ll get a list of every RSS feed that’s in Feed Wrangler. From there you can select exactly which feeds you want to be in this stream (a.k.a. folder).
  • Once you’ve selected all the feeds you want in this stream, click the “Create Stream” button and now you’ve got a Smart Stream that acts like a folder. Showing you all the unread items from all those feeds.

Smart Stream Setup in Feed Wrangler

I currently have three “folder” smart streams: One for my favorite sites which I read just about daily, one for photography related sites, and one for Apple news.

Though, in truth, these are not so much traditional folders as much as they are smart collections. Because the same feed can exist in multiple Smart Streams, and read status of items will persist across multiple streams if you have crossover.

Streams as Streams

You can also build a stream based around a topic or keyword. Create a new stream just like outlined above, but this time enter in one or more search terms and your stream will be populated with only articles that match your search criteria. You can set the scope of this stream to cover all your feeds, or, like above, you can pick only certain ones.

I create Smart Streams unreservedly. They are a great way to stay on top of certain hot topics (like iOS 7) as well as more narrow topics I’m interested in (like Mirrorless Cameras).

Leading up to, and then during WWDC, I had a “WWDC” Smart Stream. I used it to see all the sites I follow that were talking about the event. Then, when WWDC was winding down, I deleted the stream. I’ll likely do the same with my iOS 7 stream later this fall.

Filters

The brother to the Smart Stream is the filter. Filters will search your feeds for a keyword you specify, and if that term shows up then the item will be marked as read so you don’t ever have to see it.

In the Feed Wrangler sidebar there is an option to “Manage Filters”. From there you can create your filters. Note that Filters are global — you cannot select which feeds they apply to or don’t.

Some people, I suspect, would use a Filter for the same topics I used a Smart Stream for. Supposed you’d heard enough about WWDC or iOS 7. Just create a filter for it and those topics will, more or less, be muted from you RSS feeds for as long as you leave the filters active.

* * *

So far, most of the Google Reader alternatives I’ve seen and tried seem to be, more or less, a copy of how Google Reader worked.

As I wrote in my link to Feed Wrangler back in April, its Smart Stream versatility is exactly the sort of forward-thinking innovation I hope we’re going to see more of in a post-Google Reader world.

Anyone who has been subscribing to RSS feeds for longer than a few months will know your subscription list regularly needs pruning and adjusting. Well, I want my RSS reader to help me with that task.1 Smart Streams can help by making it easier to wrangle my feeds based on more than just which website they came from. I expect in the long run that they will prove very accommodating and useful as my interests change and as my attention ebbs and flows.

  1. One of the things I loved about NNW 3.x was the Dinosaur list and the ability to sort by attention. These lists would show you, respectively, which feeds hadn’t updated in a long time and which feeds you opened the most and clicked through the most. It was great for unsubscribing from sites that were “retired”, and for re-sorting your folders and subscriptions based on the actual usage data of which feeds you were interacting with. ↵
Feed Wrangler’s Smart Streams