Because some said comparing the PlayBook to an iPad 2 was unfair.
Writing a Weblog Full-Time
When I began writing shawnblanc.net full-time I was worried that I’d run out of things to write about. There are only so many apps I use all the time which I find worthy of in-depth reviews, and I’m not really one for staying on top of posting commentary pieces about every bit of breaking news.
So far I have had no trouble finding topics to write about. In fact, most of what I’ve published since going full-time has not been on the list of what I was planning to write so far. Meaning, hardly any of the articles that I was planning to write when I began have been written yet. There is still much I want to write about and there are new things arising every day.
So I find myself with the opposite problem, in that there is not enough time in the day for me to write all that I want to, and that, my friends, is a very good conundrum.
However, I will say that it has been difficult choosing what to write about. I am good at writing about things I am involved with and have experience using — such as software and hardware reviews — but am not so confident writing about more abstract issues which I am not as intimately familiar with (such as business model and industry analysis). And while I certainly enjoy writing detailed reviews about software, I haven’t yet decided if that is all I ever want to write. Moreover, I have only ever written reviews about apps that I use and enjoy. But that list is somewhat finite, which means I will, at some point, need to begin writing about software that I am not completely sold on as user. Fortunately, since this job is my full-time gig, I can allow myself the time needed to truly live with an app and get acquainted with it — even if that I am only using it for the sake of reviewing it.
As far as links go, I try to only post links to the things I find interesting or entertaining — something that I found worthwhile in one way or another.
Unfortunately, I am finding just how easy it is to over-think what I choose or chose not to link to. Over thinking these nuanced details can strangle the life out of my work. And so I have been working to focus more on the feel of what I write about and link to rather than over thinking those items. Instead of logically deducing based on n number of factors if such-and-such is worthy of a link, I base it on emotion — do I want to link to it?
In a way, I have to pretend that I’m the only site out there. That if someone was interested in the things I’m interested in, how then would they find out about those things unless I wrote about them? I can’t pass by something I find exciting or interesting because I see that others are already talking about it. That would be a road to silence.
Of course, in another way, I have to pretend that I am not the only site out there. There is so much happening in the tech / design / writing / coffee-drinking community every day that there is simply no way I can stay on top of it all. Let alone write thoughtful and in-depth pieces about everything noteworthy. Harder than choosing what to write about has been choosing what not to write about. And then being okay with leaving certain notable topics left untouched.
At the end of the day, the best advice I can give myself is to: (a) put great care and thought into what I write about and how I write it; and (b) don’t take myself or my site too seriously.
The Burning House →
In similar fashion to The Items We Carry, The Burning House is: “what would you grab if your house was burning down?”
Honestly, Anna and I don’t have anything in this home that we couldn’t do without other than one another and the memories, music, and work we have stored on our computers.
This reminds me that since I began working at home two months ago I no longer have an off-site backup of my digital assets. It’s all the stuff that’s on my computer — photos, journal entries, music, financial information, etc. — that is irreplaceable. I think I’ll be looking into a good online backup service so that if anything catastrophic ever does happen all we need to think about is getting out.
How to Avoid or Remove Mac Defender Malware →
A knowledge base article from Apple themselves.
The Hidden Empire of Amazon.com →
Nice slide deck covering the growth and business model of Amazon.com over the past 16 years. Did you know Amazon.com lost $3,000,000,000 between 1995 and 2003 (see slide 35) and that they’ve introduced a new product category every year since 2000 (slide 16)?
Update On the “Previous Entries” Experiment →
Two weeks ago, as an experiment, I removed the “Previous Entries” link on the bottom of the homepage that would take you Page 2 of the site. In its place I put a link to recent articles, reviews, and interviews.
My reasoning for the experiment was to test my hypothesis that those who wind up at the bottom of the homepage are most likely new readers. And therefore, offering a link to the “best of” content would be more relevant for them and more likely to convert them into regular readers. My metrics for success in this experiment were increase in overall site pageviews and an increased rate of growth of RSS subscribers.
Today I compared the analytics of the site for the past two weeks against the two weeks prior to the experiment.
During the two-week experiment visits to the Reviews, Interviews, and Articles archive pages all went up noticeably. Which was to be expected. However, there was virtually no marked increase in overall pageviews or RSS Subscribers.
As a third metric — reader feedback — the vast majority of feedback I did receive was that current readers missed having a link to Page 2.
And so, I’ve put the link to Page 2 back at the bottom of the homepage.
On a side note: the most-clicked-on link of the recent articles, reviews, and interviews was to the Reviews page. Clearly that’s a hot topic, so I added that as a stand-alone link in the footer in addition to the archives.
Issues of Wired Magazine Are Now Half Price on the iPad →
The “newsstand” price for a single issue of Wired on the iPad is $4. You can now subscribe to Wired on your iPad for either $20/year or $2/month. If you subscribe to the print edition (which is also $20/year) you get the iPad issues for free. I think it’s odd that they are even selling such steeply discounted, one-month subscriptions to Wired considering that it is a monthly magazine.
The “newsstand” price for a single issue of The New Yorker is $5. They also have a monthly subscription for $6/month. But The New Yorker is a weekly periodical, and so a monthly subscription option seems to make more sense.
I read Wired, just not every month. But now I’ll be subscribing on a month-by-month basis.
The New Nook →
Light as a feather the Nook lasts forever.
There is no keyboard, the touchscreen is better.
An Average Day at shawnblanc.net HQ
Most days I’m at my desk and starting the work day around 7:00 am. That sounds early when I write it down like that, but each morning I feel like I’m getting to work late. When I wake up at 5:30 or 6:00 my mind is usually buzzing about things to research, write about, or read. And by the time 7:00 comes around it’s likely that I’ve already been anticipating starting my work day for the past 90 minutes.
If I really just cannot wait to get working then I will allow myself to beeline it to my office and start work right away. However, I refuse to turn into one of those guys who work from home and forget to shower. A good way to avoid becoming one of those guys is by not starting a habit of jumping to work as soon as my feet are out of bed.
Chances are good that I’ve already checked email and Twitter for anything important before I get into the office though. I usually do this on my iPhone while waiting for the french press to brew.
When I get into my office I first record Shawn Today. Then, my day is somewhat wide open. There may be articles I read and loved in Instapaper the night before which I want to link to. There may be some emails I need to reply to. There may be an article I’m working on that I want to get back to writing. Or perhaps there is some research I need to do.
The two most productive times of the day for me are early in the morning and late in the night. With each time of day offering it’s own type of productivity. The mornings are when I am most excited about the day and most excited about what there is to plan and work on and link to. However, it’s in the evening that I seem to do my best writing.
Or, put another way, I’m finding that I am more creative in the mornings and more focused in the evenings.
I don’t know if this is a natural effect due to the time of day and the light in the room, or if it’s because I have been writing this site in the evenings for the past four years. Before April shawnblanc.net had always been an evening-time side gig, and so perhaps old habits die hard.
As far as specific times for specific things, I do not keep myself to a rigorous schedule. In part because I am still discovering the best times and patterns for working. Also, since my job is so centered around the web and what is taking place — each day has a life all its own — I enjoy being able to have total flexibility with each day’s schedule.
This is something John Gruber talked about during our interview a few years ago. When I asked John what his average day looked like, he responded:
I’m either writing or reading — or, occasionally, hacking on code for some new feature on the site — all day long.
Ernest Hemingway said this:
> You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.
He was talking about writing books, but I find his advice perfectly apt for what I’m doing with Daring Fireball. Without having a boss or editor, I could do anything at the start of the day. Leaving off the day before with something specific in mind for what to do next is an enormous aid to getting going.
John’s answer made a lot of sense at the time. But now that I find myself in a very similar boat I see not just how logical this is but also how vital it is.
Because there is no senior editor telling me what to write about, nor are there a half-dozen other writers available to cover the topics that I cannot, I have to pick and chose what to write about and what to link to.
Additionally, I have found that it can be quite easy to let the Internet dictate what my hours, topics, and priorities for the site should be. I have a list as long as my arm of articles I want to write — some lengthy, some shorter — but that list can easily get ignored in exchange for what is happening online today.
It is certainly important to stay somewhat on top of any interesting and important news, but it is far more important to keep my own agenda for the site. Today’s latest craze will be old news soon enough, and so the most important thing I can do for the long-term health and growth of this site is to stay focused on writing about the things that excite and interest me.
And the Award for Most Creative Graphics and User Interaction Within an iPad Weather App Goes To… →
An Ode to Software
At any given moment of the work day my monitor probably looks something like this:
Most of the applications I spend my time with throughout the day are the usual suspects: MarsEdit, NetNewsWire, Instapaper, et al. Below is a look at how these apps get used and why.
Safari
I usually have a dozen or more tabs open at any given time. I send a lot of stuff to Instapaper, and read a lot in the browser. Usually I’ll scan RSS or Twitter, open up lots of links at once, and then comb back through and read them. I also spend a significant amount of time reading on my iPad, but more on that below.
Instapaper
Instapaper has become as much of a business tool as it is a reading and entertainment app. I send at least a dozen articles to Instapaper every day because there is always something new flying across my browser, feed reader, or Twitter stream.
I do read quite a bit out of Instapaper but not as much as I put in. And I’m okay with that because, in part, Instapaper works as a placebo for me. Saving it to read later relieves me of any stress about having to deal with the article that minute, and I’ve also found that articles which seemed important at the time are no longer important when I get around to my Instapaper queue. So in that regard Instapaper saves me peace of mind as well as time.
Apple Mail
I have turned into a bit of a poor correspondent. I do read all my incoming email. I get a lot of great feedback from you guys, and many of you send in links to things you’ve built or written. I love that stuff, it’s just that I’m not always able to respond back.
I feel like as I am still finding my rhythm as a full-time writer and blogger so I’ve been more or less ignoring most other things until I get the pace of my day settled. Then, I’ll add things back in — such as better email correspondence.
Something I did not expect is to find such a huge amount of value from Twitter.
Before I was began writing the site full-time, Twitter was a distraction when I should have been getting work done. Or it was a spot to spend some free time. Now, it is a tool.
I’m an extrovert and a verbal processor, and I love using Twitter to bounce ideas and questions around. It’s a great way to get feedback and input that I don’t otherwise get since I’m working alone in an office.
On my Mac and iPad I use the official Twitter clients. On my iPhone I use Tweetbot.
Notational Velocity and Simplenote
I do a lot of writing, random jotting, and note taking in Notational Velocity. I use Simplenote on my iPad and iPhone quite a bit, and so all three are synced.
Some people are super fancy with how they use Notational Velocity. I don’t really tag items or any fancy meta stuff like that. I like that the latest work is always at the top and it’s quite easy to search for things that may be buried.
A great many blog posts start in Simplenote or Notational Velocity when I have an idea for something but it’s not fully formed yet. It goes into this app because then that idea is available to me wherever I am. If inspiration strikes while I’m at the hardware store or in the yard it matters not.
Yojimbo
Yojimbo is the one application on my laptop that is always running. And, aside from the utility apps that live in the Menu Bar, Yojimbo is the only app that launches on startup.
There is no set rule for how I use Yojimbo — it is just the app which I use to toss anything and everything into that may not have a more logical place to be stored. I use it for passwords, bookmarks, quotes, tips, recipes, directions, and more. And I have Yojimbo’s search field set to activate globally whenever I hit Command+K — I search for items in Yojimbo nearly as often as I put them in there.
One question I often get is how I use Yojimbo differently than Notational Velocity / Simplenote. Rest assured that there is a marked difference between what goes in Yojimbo and what goes in Notational Velocity/Simplenote. Primarily it’s that the former is for anything I want to keep long-term; the latter is for anything that is short-term or in-process.
LaunchBar
My application launcher of choice is still LaunchBar. I use it primarily for switching to and activating apps of course, but also for running a few scripts, and looking up words in the Dictionary. And the clipboard history… my, how I love the clipboard history.
TextExpander
I use TextExpander primarily when writing and replying to email. Mostly it helps me with signatures and common replies to common types of emails I get. The big aha moment for me was when I realized that though I could use it to help automate my responses to certain common emails I get, that automation didn’t mean my replies were any less personal.
In the six months or so that I’ve been using TextExpander, I have expanded 568 snippets and saved 55,423 characters.
Droplr
My link shortener and file uploader of choice is Droplr. I share a lot of screenshots and files and text with people via DMs and iChat throughout the day and Droplr is what I use for that. I have the Droplr hotkey set to Control+Option+Command+D. Also, in case you’ve ever noticed and were curious, I use Droplr to create RSS-standards-compliant URLs if I am ever linking to a web page that has a question mark within the web address.
Fantastical
Now that I have a bit more open schedule I don’t need a full-fledged calendar application running all the time or taking up icon space in my Dock. I’ve been using Fantastical for a while now and love how easy it is to use, and how it can pretty much replace my day-to-day usage of iCal.
Keyboard Maestro
I am a newcomer to Keyboard Maestro, but it only took a few short hours before I was converted to a junkie. It is, by far, one of the most powerful, interesting, and helpful apps I have ever used. It is hard to explain in brevity, but as best I can describe it it’s an app for power users whom understand the power of AppleScripts, Automations, and hotkeys — yet who don’t know how — or don’t enjoy — to write AppleScripts.
OmniFocus
I use OmniFocus differently now that I am writing full time. I still add all my to-do items into OmniFocus, but it’s not always the primary to-do list that I work from during my day. There are often things which I want to do for the site that I don’t have time to do now and so I’ll set them as due in a week or two. But — as usually seems to be the case — I am just as busy a week or two later as I was when I was too busy to do that item the first time. Therefore, OmniFocus is primarily full of things that should get done but which are not vital to the survival of this site. I review the list every day (usually on the iPad) and will re-arrange what has shown up as due that day down to only what is necessary and what is reasonable.
However, I usually don’t review my OmniFocus task list until later in the day — often times preparing for what is needed to do tomorrow rather than today. The reason for this is that in the morning when I am first starting out, I usually write down onto paper what I want to get done that day: is there anything I especially want to link to, are there any emails I know need my attention, etc.
The Web is always moving on to the next thing. Something that is hot right now will be cold in a few hours. An article I’ve spent days or weeks working on is only exciting for a day or two, and may not bring any new traffic or readership to the site. There is a constant turning over of projects and goals — things move fast online.
Because of this rhythm I’ve noticed that it is easy to look back at a day spent writing and reading but feel as if I didn’t actually accomplish anything that day. Which is why it’s important for me to have a short list of the things I wanted to do and when I feel as if my day was unproductive I can look at the list and see that I actually accomplished all that I wanted to.
Put another way, writing a weblog full time is not unlike farming. Lots of chores and lots of busy work that take up time every single day, but the fruit of that labor is seasonal. My daily to-do list helps me stay on track, and OmniFocus helps me keep the long-term, seasonal goals from slipping through the cracks.
NetNewsWire and Reeder
I have been rocking back and forth between my usage of Twitter and RSS for finding news, stories, and information. Though I am prone to look for news and content via Twitter, I am finding that it is not the best place for link-worthy content. Sure, I find lots of things that are interesting and easy to spend my time on, but most of the time they are things which are not worth linking to from shawnblanc.net.
The vast majority of link-worthy content I find in my RSS feed. On the Mac I still use NetNewsWire. However, I am most successful at combing through my RSS feed when I’m on my iPad. And on the iPad I use Reeder. Unless I’m really focused on a project I try to take at least one or two breaks in my day to sit down and comb through RSS feeds.
For the curiously nerdy, I am currently subscribed to 152 RSS feeds.
WireTap Studio
I do all my recordings for Shawn Today with WireTap Studio. I have the metadata for file name and audio type and quality pre-set so that once I’m done recording I just add the album artwork and upload to the S3 server.
MarsEdit
By far, the most essential app to my life as a blogger is MarsEdit. This is where I write my site.
I write in Inconsolata, 13 pt, light text on a dark background. I have the custom keyboard shortcuts for markdown all set. And MarsEdit has a helpful bookmarklet which lets me take the current URL in Safari and then throw it into MarsEdit as a link post. And thanks to MarsEdit’s “live preview” ability, I can see exactly how the post will look when published on my website without having to write live to the site.
The iPad
A side-note for the curious: my iPad gets very little use as a writing tool. If and when I write using my iPad it is with Simplenote. However, the iPad is primarily used for reading: reading my Instapaper queue, reading RSS feeds, and reading eBooks. Also, as mentioned above, I use it to review and scrub my OmniFocus lists because OmniFocus on the iPad is killer.
The Missing App
There is one glaring hole of an app that would make my professional life much easier: MarsEdit for iOS. Or something like it. I am not so much in need of a full-fledged blogging app for my iPad and iPhone so much as I am in need of a way to post links to my site from my iPad or iPhone.
I find a lot of link-worthy content away from my laptop. Either when I’m reading on my iPad or surfing the Web on my iPhone. What I need is an app that takes the current Mobile Safari URL, title, and any highlighted text and then populates a post editing window with those items. From there, if I could adjust the title and the slug and hit publish, I’d be happy.
There have been hints of this in various forms, such as modified versions of the WordPress “Press This” bookmarklet and other plugins, but there is nothing ideal just yet. I’ve added it to my to-do list to spend a good amount of time fiddling with the Press This bookmarklet to see if I can turn it into something useful, but I haven’t gotten there yet. I have yet to find a best-of-breed blogging app for the iPhone or iPad that meets my narrow and specific needs.
“The Best Wire Editor on the Planet” →
David Carr, writing about Matt Drudge and Drudge Report:
A big part of the reason he is such an effective aggregator for both audiences and news sites is that he actually acts like one. Behemoth aggregators like Yahoo News and The Huffington Post have become more like fun houses that are easy to get into and tough to get out of. Most of the time, the summary of an article is all people want, and surfers don’t bother to click on the link. But on The Drudge Report, there is just a delicious but bare-bones headline, there for the clicking. It’s the opposite of sticky, which means his links actually kick up significant traffic for other sites.
Drudge Report averages 3 million unique visitors and 30 million page views a day.
Managing Twitter Via Lists →
News to me, thanks to Justin Williams, is that you can add people to a list of your own curating without also having to follow them in your main Twitter timeline. Also, if you follow a list that has been curated by someone else it does not automatically add all those people to your main timeline.
For the past few months I have already been experimenting with following certain weblogs via their Twitter account versus RSS, but there are also a few dozen software brands (companies and apps) which I follow so that I can stay aware of any updates or news related to them. Managing your Twitter stream with intentional lists is a great idea. Especially since Tweetbot treats lists so well.
Here are the two lists I’ve curated so far:
By putting these brands and bots into a list it means I can pare down my main timeline — something I am alway eager to do.
The disadvantage (if you could call it that) is that you cannot exchange DMs with people or brands whom you follow only through a Twitter list. But right now the brands and bots I follow through lists are not real people. They’re impersonal and the exist almost exclusively to give one-way updates news.
A side note along these lines: I’m finding it very interesting to see the differences and nuances of Twitter as a news source (by following brands and bots who only give one-way updates) and as a conversation hub (by following friends and strangers whom we dialogue with).
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