If you like Instagram, which I do, this video interview with the CEO, Kevin Systrom, is depressing.

Sara Lacy of PandoDaily asks him how Instagram plans to make money. Based on his answer it sounds like: (a) their current user-base of 30 million-ish people is not yet big enough to start monetizing the service; and (b) their plan is to build a tool that advertisers can use so they don’t have to go through the “terrible experience” of using their iPhone to post an image to Instagram.

Instagram’s Business Model?

My thanks to the One More Thing Conference for sponsoring the RSS feed this week.


Interested in the design, development and business of iOS apps? At One More Thing, our goal is to get developers confident, psyched, and ready to move from dreaming of making apps to just doing it. Learn from awesome developers & designers such as:

  • Loren Brichter (Tweetie/ex-Twitter)
  • Neven Mrgan (designer at Panic)
  • Karl von Randow (lead developer on Camera+)
  • Raphael Schaad (engineer at Flipboard)
  • Matt Rix (Trainyard)
  • Shaun Inman (Last Rocket)
    and many more…

They’ll be in Melbourne, Australia on the 25th & 26th of May, 2012. Register before April 12th for discounted early-bird pricing.

Sponsor: One More Thing – iOS Conference

New project by Iain Broome:

An independent directory of online writing resources, from blogs, advice and news outlets to writing applications, bookshops and workspaces.

Subscribed. Though it’s hard to take serious the writing-related suggestions from someone who doesn’t use the Oxford comma.

Websites for Writers

Breezi is a new website design and hosting service that lets you set up a site design based on their templates and then customize until your heart’s content. One thing that’s different about Breezi is that you can edit in place, rather than in an admin panel. And there seems to be quite a bit of granular control over your site’s design and the exact placement of text and images, but without requiring coding.

You can watch a quick walkthrough video here.

Breezi

Fixing the AirPrint Conundrum

I own two printers and neither of them support AirPrint. Which means even though iOS supports printing, I haven’t been able to print to any of the printers in my house.

However, there are some 3rd-party applications which you can install on your Mac to enable printing from your iPhone or iPad. These apps work by sharing the printers it has access to and tricking iOS into seeing those printers as being AirPrint enabled.

If you don’t own an AirPrint-enabled printer, yet you want to print from your iPhone or iPad, you will need to install a 3rd-party app. But, which one? I found that with certain 3rd-party apps you get additional functionality and benefits beyond just being able to print from your iPhone.

Here is a quick look at some of those 3rd-party apps:

Fingerprint

Fingerprint was the first app I came across that could solve the AirPrint conundrum. And the reason I came across this application is because initially I was helping a friend set up AirPrint with his Windows-equipped office. We were searching for AirPrint enablers that worked on Windows.

Fingerprint has both a Mac and a Windows version, and so if you’re on Windows this may be the ideal solution for you.

It costs $10 and not only does it allow you to print to your printers, but it also lets you set up folders and print to a folder on your computer.

But there was one critical deal breaker for me: Fingerprint runs in the Menu Bar. I am ardent about having as few icons in my Menu Bar as possible, and therefore I kept searching for alternatives.

AirPrint Activator

If all you want to do is print, then AirPrint Activator may be the app for you. It is a free application (donations are encouraged) that does just one thing: take the printers your Mac is connected to and share them as AirPrint enabled printers.

The latest version — 1.1.3 — requires that the application be open and running in the Dock in order to work. Background utility apps like this should not require being run in the Dock. It’s even more of a deal breaker for me than being run in the Menu Bar.

The developer is currently in active development on version 2, and there is a public beta available. I gave the latest beta version a try (2.1b7 as of this writing) and it seems that AirPrint Activator can now run in the background without showing it’s Dock or Menu Bar icon.

However, this latest beta of AirPrint Activator seems finicky for me. I could get it to work a few times, but not every time. If you’re looking for the least expensive and simplest way to enable AirPrint for your iOS devices, then I would keep an eye on AirPrint Activator.

Printopia

Printopia is the app I ended up going with, for several reasons:

  • Lives in System Preferences;
  • runs in the background with no Menu Bar or Dock icon;
  • allows me to print to my home printers;
  • prints to any folder on my Mac;
  • allows me to “print” directly to an application (such as Yojimbo or PDFpen);
  • and it works very well, very quickly, and very consistently.

Printing to a folder is just like the “Save as PDF…” options in your Mac’s print dialog box. Using Printopia to print to a folder means that whatever it is your printing gets saved as a PDF to that folder on your Mac. You can save it to a standard folder, a Dropbox folder, or send the file to an application (such as iPhoto, Yojimbo, Evernote, etc.)

If my Mac is running, I can now send an email or a photo or a SimpleNote note directly to my computer. I’ve set up a few folders with Folder Actions that will allow me to import directly into Yojimbo and assign tags for those imports.

Though I mostly use Printopia for actually printing out documents, it’s helpful to have its additional features. If you want to read more, Dan Frakes wrote a review for Macworld last November.

Fixing the AirPrint Conundrum

This is a great update to Simplenote’s iOS app. It’s not an aesthetic update so much as it is an engine swap — Simplenote’s performance and speed have been massively improved. You can tell right away that the whole app is faster — all the interactions, transitions, scrolling, and searching are noticeably more snappy. And it now has a URL scheme which means it can tie in with other apps, such as Launch Center.

Some apps come and go on my iPhone’s Home screen, but I’ve been a die-hard Simplenote user since it first debuted on the iPhone back in 2008 (I currently have nearly 500 notes). Here’s the review I wrote about the app back in 2010.

Simplenote 3.2

Michael Surtees:

The first observation is that I see the two devices more as one connected system than ever before. I think this has to do with the screen parity. I’ll write something on my iPhone and push it to my iPad. I might sketch something on my iPad and send it my iPhone.

My iPad and iPhone feel like more of a “pair” now, too. I realized this when about a week and a half ago I started being bugged by the fact that my iPad and iPhone’s Home screens didn’t match. For two years they’ve never matched, but until now I never noticed or cared.

Observations With the New iPad & iPhone 4s Working Together After a Week