Frank Chimero:

This year, I’m practicing a digital jubilee by archiving my inbox, deleting my RSS subscriptions, and unfollowing most everyone on Twitter. These, of course, will fill back up as time passes, but now I have a recurring way to purge. Practices like these have been coined “declaring bankruptcy” by the digital lifestyle blogs, but I think the phrase misrepresents the practice. Cleaning the digital slate is not a practice of giving up. It is one of self-forgiveness.

Great attitude towards something that is usually thought of as an admission of defeat. Instead, why not just consider it a new start?

Speaking of Instacast, version 3 is out and great. It’s now a universal app and there are quite a few improvements over version 2, including a better syncing engine and a more spiffy UI design. I don’t listen to a lot of Podcasts, but when I do it’s always with Instacast and usually while on the road.

Marcelo Marfil, the designer behind the UI and icon designs that adorn 3 of my favorite iOS apps — Instacast, Byword, and Checkmark — also has some classy wallpapers to adorn your Mac Desktop and iOS screens with. I prefer simple, mostly-black wallpapers for use on my big external display and my iPhone Home screen, and these are perfect.

New-to-me tip via Devir Kahan:

Here’s the situation: You go to create a new bookmark in Pinboard using the bookmarklet (or you’re searching your Pinboard for a specific tag, or any other time you’re entering a tag into Pinboard), you type a few of the letters of a tag you’ve used in the past, and you hit Return, thinking it will auto-complete the tag. Instead, however, it simply creates that new bookmark with a weird half-tag.

You might think that you should use Return to complete the tag, but by default, in fact, you have to use the Tab key. That’s the trick. Use Tab, not Return, to complete a tag.

I’ve always hit Down-Arrow then Return, which is not nearly as quick as Tab — you learn something new every day.

To pay it forward, did you know that any text you have highlighted in the browser window will auto populate the “Description” field once you’ve triggered the Pinboard bookmarklet?

Turns out there’s a fix to one of my quibbles with Apple’s photo books. When you’re building the book click “Options” (lower right corner of the iPhoto app) → Book Settings → uncheck, “Include Apple logo at end of book”.

(Via everyone on the Internet.)

QuoteRobot makes it easy to write winning proposals.

Let’s face it, proposal writing generally sucks. It’s unpaid time spent in the hopes of winning a new project. If you’re pitching against other companies, the chances of winning are further diluted. But, it’s a necessary evil.

Here are 3 tips from QuoteRobot to help you win more:

Focus on benefits, not features.
For example, instead of saying you’ll build a WordPress website with a blog (feature), say you’ll attract new customers (benefit) by making a website that’s easier to update.

Provide a timeline.
A detailed timeline with deliverables at key milestones will show that you have a process and have thought about the project from start to finish.

Look fantastic.
A well-designed proposal will convert much better than one authored in Word. If you’re a designer, you gotta represent.

Give QuoteRobot a try and win more clients. Here’s a coupon code for 50% off your first month: YAYQBOT

* * *

My thanks to QuoteRobot for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

Half-and-half meat is brilliant; I plan to do that forever.

But, there’s a problem William doesn’t address (which also just so happens to be a hack). When you order that much food for your burrito the person wrapping it often has trouble and you end up with a split tortilla. If/when that happens, ask them to wrap a second tortilla around your split burrito. Now it’s double insulated, double protected, and, best of all, double tortilla’d.

(Via Kottke. Again.)

I backed this project by Shaun Inman and gang the minute I heard about it. Not only am I a huge fan of Inman’s retro-style video games, but I’m also just a fan of Inman’s work in general. As of this moment, the Kickstarter project has a little more than 48 hours to go and is just over 75-percent funded.

For totally selfish reasons, I hope you’ll consider pitching in a few bucks. The $25-backer level will get you access to all 6 games they make over the project’s lifespan, plus their new awesome game, Super Clew Land. I backed at the $50 level so my name would be in the credits and so I could get a t-shirt.

Earlier this year I spent literally hundreds of hours and dollars testing and reviewing five different clicky keyboards: the Apple Extended Keyboard II, the Matias Tactile Pro 3, the new Das Keyboard for Mac, the Leopold, and the Filco Ninja Majestouch-2. You can read (and listen) all about it here and here.

The short of it is that the Das and the Filco Ninja were my favorites of them all — both these keyboards have incredible build quality, use the Cherry MX Blue Switches, and have a nice click without any hollow ring. I love typing on these keyboards. However, the Das Keyboard was too big and bulky for my taste, and so I landed on the Filco because it’s tenkeyless and I like the look of the “ninja” keycaps. All of these keyboards are pretty ugly, but the Ninja is the best-looking ugly one of the bunch.

For a long time the Filco Ninja has been (ironically) hard to find. But it’s just recently back in stock at Amazon. This is the keyboard I use every single day — literally, I’m using it this very moment to type these words. If you’re looking for a high-quality, tenkeyless, clicky keyboard then this is, in my opinion, the best bang for your buck.