[Sponsor] Terminology for iPad and iPhone  →

Terminology is a dictionary and thesaurus app for people who care about words. Concise definitions, deep word relations — paired with a great, modern user interface — make Terminology the best way to explore language on iOS.

Lookup words in Terminology directly from Instapaper, Elements, Mr. Reader and a growing list of third party apps, or use Terminology’s integrated support for apps and web resources to dig deeper.

Get Terminology for iPad or iPhone during our Back-to-School sale, August 15-21.

Not on iOS? Check out Terminology’s online companion term.ly, the best way to browse and share the language on the web.

[Sponsor] Terminology for iPad and iPhone

The Morning of the Week

A simple observation: the Internet is busiest on Mondays.

Like an alarm clock, the Internet buzzes at us on Monday to wake up from our weekend.

“It is time to get busy,” she says. “It is time to hurry up.”

The Internet thrives on the new and the now. She wants us to be concerned about what is happening, what we missed, and what we should know about. What she doesn’t tell you is that the headlines which matter will still be around on Tuesday.

For those who work with their mind, Mondays should be for dreaming and planning. They are the morning of the week, and each Monday brings with it a new beginning, a fresh start, and a sea of potential.

Mondays are my favorite day of the week for the same reason the morning is my favorite time of the day. The morning is when my mind is most clear — there is not yet the accumulation of “mental clutter” from the activities and worries of the day and the whole day looks like a blank canvas.

Hit snooze on the new and the now for 24 hours. Let Monday be a day for dreaming and thinking. Let the week’s potential sweep our imaginations away like a strong wind on open waters.

What will we dream up today? What can we accomplish this week? Where will the days take us?

The Morning of the Week

Shadoe Huard Reviews a 7-Year-Old 12-Inch PowerBook G4  →

Shadoe Huard, who spends around 3 hours commuting each day, needed a cheap, portable Mac for writing during those commutes. He picked up a 12-inch PowerBook for $200, and his review of this 7-year-old piece of Macintosh history is fantastic:

Using the 12-inch PowerBook for almost a month now, the most striking aspect of its physicality is how reminiscent it is of using a 13-inch MacBook Pro. Like the Pro, it’s an ideal combination of portability and functionality that, while not enough for some, will be particularly pleasing to a lot of people. Aesthetically, the PowerBook is a machine that holds its own today. Perhaps no longer the pinnacle of design and engineering it once was, there is still a lot to appreciate and enjoy. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the 12 inch form factor is still an excellent compromise between physical dimensions and screen resolution that hasn’t yet been recaptured by a Mac notebook. This machine is a pleasure to carry around and type on, setting the stage for a potentially great writing tool.

Shadoe Huard Reviews a 7-Year-Old 12-Inch PowerBook G4

Billings Pro 1.5 with Marketcircle Cloud  →

My thanks to Marketcircle for sponsoring the RSS feed this week to promote Billings Pro and their new cloud sync.

Billings Pro is a Mac app for anyone and everyone in need of tracking tracking and sending invoices — especially those who work on a team. This app is meant to be used by multiple users. It has a timer for tracking billable hours; you can also keep track of expenses, milage, and more. Moreover, Billings Pro comes with some professionally designed invoice templates.

What puts the icing on the cake is Marketcircle’s new cloud sync for Billings Pro. Basically it means you and your entire team can use the Mac apps and the iPhone apps to keep everyone’s billable hours and expenses logged and accounted for. And for those on your team who may not have a Mac or an iPhone, there is a Web interface.

Billings Pro is professional grade. It’s an attractive app that has won several awards and is still being improved upon. If you work with a team that could use an upgrade in how you manage your time, then you should look into Billings Pro with Marketcirlce Cloud.

It’s free to try for a month (you don’t even need a credit card). And if you’re not sure if Billings Pro is right for you, I suggest you check out some of the testimonials and case studies to see how others are using it.

Billings Pro 1.5 with Marketcircle Cloud

T-Shirts Now Available

Computers are for Creating

Buy a shirt and support shawnblanc.net

About the Design

Designed by yours truly. I have always liked the use and look of gears in design. They are a fun way to conceptualize creativity as something which requires work, thought, and momentum. Gears are also a great way to communicate the idea of computers as mechanical hardware.

Also, I very much like the slogan “Computers are for Creating”. It rings true for all walks of creative professionals — writers, podcasters, photographers, musicians, designers, developers, et al. It’s a phrase for folks like us.

About the Shirts

The shirts are dark grey, 50/50 blend, ringspun American Apparel Tees. These are very high-quality shirts (I prefer them over the 100% cotton shirts), and they offer superior screen printing results.

They will be hand-printed at a professional screen-printing shop located right here in Kansas City.

Orders will be taken until 11:59 PM CST on Tuesday, August 23. The batch will then be printed and will ship around the first week in September.

Pick one up today.

T-Shirts Now Available

Revisiting the 101 Ways to Save Apple  →

In June 1997, James Daly wrote a feature for Wired titled: “101 Ways to Save Apple“. Jobs became CEO in September 1997 — three months after Daly’s article — and now that Apple is the most valuable company in the world Rafe Colburn has revisited all 101 of Daly’s suggestions.

Hindsight is always 20/20. There was some good advice, some bad advice, and some sarcastic advice. I like number 91:

Start a new special projects group led by either Jobs or another passionate and creative designer to create the next “insanely great” technology. Good advice. Apple basically just turned the whole company into this special projects group.

(Via Kottke.)

Revisiting the 101 Ways to Save Apple

If Text Editors Were Places in The Lord of the Rings  →

Then TextMate would be Minas Tirith:

A once-great but now decaying city. Only the King has the power to renew it, but he is a long absent, indeed half-legendary figure—though there are persistent rumors that he is alive still in some distant land. In his stead, the city slowly falls in upon itself, kept in some sort of working order by its melancholy people. They can repair but not truly rebuild it, and they pray daily for the Return of the King.

(Via J. Eddie Smith, IV.)

If Text Editors Were Places in The Lord of the Rings

Thoughts on the iPhone 5 Mockups

I rarely link to rumors or leaks because:

  • Who knows if they’re ever true (many rumors are simply sensationalized posts pulled out of thin air in hopes to lure in some page views).

  • New rumors sprout up every day, and I have no interest in playing that game and giving momentum to the rumor mill.

  • Rumors have no effect on what the real product will be, when it will be released, or if it will even exist.

  • Reading rumors is like shaking your Christmas present boxes and trying to guess what’s inside. Sure, there is an element of fun and mystery that comes along with trying to guess what’s inside. But if you do guess then it ruins the surprise. I much prefer surprises.

However, today there is so much flying around about the potential design of the iPhone 5 that I thought it was worth highlighting and sharing a few of my initial impressions.

Today Mac Rumors posted some 3D renderings of what the iPhone 5 might look like. They commissioned CiccareseDesign to do the renderings based on recent leaks of an iPhone case.

Also, a couple days ago this video was posted which claims to demo the leaked iPhone 5 website right on Apple.com.

As cool and polished as the video of the leaked website is, it is a fake. The Mac Rumors 3D rendering doesn’t claim to be a leak at all. In fact, I think what they did is very clever and their renderings look great.

The design of the iPhone 5 seen in the fake video is very similar to the 3D renderings that Mac Rumors commissioned. They are both, more or less, branched off of the original iPhone 5 mockup posted by This is My Next back in April.

In short, the general idea with all these various rumors and mockups is that the next iPhone will: (1) be thinner; (2) have a teardrop-shape making the top-end of the phone thicker than the bottom; and (3) implement new technology and functionality on the front where the Home Screen Button is.

What I like about the rumors of the next iPhone:

  • The idea of a curved back. I think the iPhone 3G and 3G S were much more comfortable to hold than the iPhone 4 is. Though I am significantly more fond of the iPhone 4’s design — it is very classy and sturdy; the iPhone 3G S felt much cheaper.

  • A thinner design. Who doesn’t want thinner and lighter mobile hardware? Though I have a hard time imagining the next iPhone to be as thin as the current iPod touch.

I have an iPod touch and it is thin. In fact, I’d say it’s almost too thin to be a phone. A phone needs to be extremely grip-able because it’s something you are constantly putting in and out of your pocket, waving around, texting with while walking, and more. To me, the iPod touch is not as easy to hold on to as the iPhone 4.

  • The matte black aluminum back. It would be so sweet looking. (But, as you’ll read in a minute, I don’t think it’ll happen.)

  • A more useful and functional home button. I think we’re all agreed that the home button functionality is getting broken and that there could be a better way to quickly switch between apps, especially when there are two or three apps you are using simultaneously.

What I don’t expect to see in the next iPhone:

  • Extreme thinness. The iPod touch is significantly thinner than the iPhone 4, but it comes with tradeoffs such as a lower-quality camera. Combined with the current state of battery technology, the need for a CDMA or GSM chip, and the other bits that the iPhone 4 which the iPod touch does not, and I have a hard time believing the next iPhone will be as thin as an iPod touch.

  • An Aluminum back. As cool as I think it would be, the reason Apple moved away from the aluminum back in 2008 was for the sake of needing better cellular connectivity. Do you really think Steve Jobs wanted a plastic iPhone? No way. But they needed to use plastic on the the 3G and 3G S for the sake of functionality and improving cellular connectivity.

  • A 4-inch screen. With a screen that big, it would no longer be a “retina” display. A 4-inch screen with resolution of 640×960 would have a pixel density of 288 PPI. The current pixel density of the iPhone 4 is 330 PPI. That would mean a 4-inch screen would suffer a 13% loss in pixel density — the same loss that’s found between the 13-inch MacBook Air and the 15-inch MacBook Pro. And if you’e ever set those two laptops side by side the difference is instantly obvious. (I even said in my MacBook Air review that the 15-inch MacBook Pro now looks comically large.)

According to Apple, the whole idea of the Retina Display is that after 300 PPI our eye can’t tell the difference. So, according to that theory, they are technically safe to drop the pixel density just so long as they keep it above 300. If they were going enlarge the screen it would have to be no bigger than 3.8 inches.

If they did go to a 4-inch screen, in order to keep it a Retina Display they would need to increase the pixel resolution to something other than 960×640, and there is no way that’s going to happen.

Thoughts on the iPhone 5 Mockups