A great tip from Adam King: Drag a PDF onto Notational Velocity’s icon and NV will parse the text in the PDF and create a new note with it.
“The Special Relationship” →
A fun piece by Andy Ihnatko on the good and bad of Apple’s iterative approach to software features:
I recently read something about Walt Disney that seemed very familiar. A man who worked with him said (I’m paraphrasing) Walt wanted to make sure that if you came to Disney World, you would have a fantastic time. And he succeeded. But he also wanted to make sure that you wouldn’t even have the option of having a bad time.
If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Switch →
Rob, writing about switching to OmniFocus from Things, makes great point against tinkering in general:
The point of all this is simple: if the tool you are currently using works well for you, consider yourself all set. Shiny new tools will always come along with new features. You can go learn new tools, or keep using your tried and true tools that have never let you down.
I couldn’t agree with Rob more. It’s the age-old saying, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. For Rob, Things is an app which still works great and he has no need for switching. So he’s not.
I’m a big fan of this type of attitude. It’s so easy to spend your time tinkering with something new rather than learning what you currently have. My reason for switching from Things was not because I wanted to try something different just for the sake of trying it. I switched because wi-fi syncing was no longer practical.
Ed’s Stratego Site →
Whoah. This has got to be the mother of all Stratego sites.
Ed has a ton of tips, ideas, and other strategies here. Don’t tell your friends about it and you’re certain kick butt every time you play.
[Sponsor] Seedling →
Seedling is a curated gallery of online content, meant to help you find new sites that you should be reading.
Wondering what sites others are reading? Know about a little-known blog (perhaps your own) that you’d like to share with the world? Want to find a new site to read, and a new author to connect with? You’ll love Seedling.
A Few Apps You May Want to Get for That New iPod or iPad of Yours
- Astronut. I rarely play any games on my iPhone or iPad, but the funnest one I’ve bought lately is Astronut. The graphics are superb and it’s a lot of fun when you’ve got 5 or 10 minutes and need a break.
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Simplenote is a note-taking app that runs on your iPod touch and iPad. It’s free and syncs your notes over the air. I use Simplenote all the time and wrote more about it here.
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1Password is a fantastic tool for keeping any and all top-secret info available on my iPhone or iPad, and it syncs over the air via Dropbox.
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Pastebot is a fantastic clipboard manager for your iPod touch. And it will pair with your Mac to make a dead-simple way for transfering text and images back and forth between the two. I wrote more about Pastebot here.
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Twitter is the free and “official” twitter app for your iPhone and iPad. It also happens to be iOS’s best-of-breed Twitter app.
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Reeder is a top-notch app for reading your RSS feeds. It syncs with your Google Reader account and has a clever and delightful GUI.
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NetNewsWire is also a top-notch app for reading your RSS feeds. It also syncs with your Google Reader account. I absolutely adore NNW for my Mac, and the iPad version is fantastic as well.
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ESV Study Bible + is my favorite Bible app for my iPhone and iPad. The free version is great as well, but this version comes with more content for studying, audio of the Bible, and a significantly better UX for taking notes within the app itself.
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Instapaper is the best way to read the Internet. If you’re not already using Instapaper then you can sign up for free online, then buy the pro app (though there is a free version) and all the articles you elect to read later will show up in your Instapaper app.
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Canned is an iPhone app that lets you pre-write the text messages you send often, and even pre-assign them to the individuals or groups of people whom you often send that text message to.
And if you didn’t actually get an iPad for Christmas but you got some cash and now you’re in the market, you may want to check out my iPad Buyer’s Guide.
‘The Muppet Christmas Carol’ [iTunes Link] →
A Blanc family tradition.
Seedling →
Many thanks to Seedling for sponsoring the RSS Feed this week. Seedling is a brand new site full of recommended websites worth reading. It’s user contributed, yet each listed site is hand chosen by a small team of curators. I was excited to see that some of my favorite sites are already listed, and I’ve discovered some sites that I’d never heard of before.
Explore Seedling to discover some new fireside reading for your holiday break. And while you’re at it, submit all of your favorite sites for the rest of us to discover.
“I Want to Believe” →
Jürgen Schweizer’s first post in what he says will be a series of articles regarding Culture Code’s yet-to-be-released cloud sync solution for Things:
Driven by ambitions that were almost too high, it has taken us much longer than we expected. On a path lined with unanticipated obstacles and letdowns, it felt at times as if we would never get there – but we kept believing that we would be able to create a fine solution; a foundation for many cool things to come.
In his blog post, Jürgen doesn’t announce cloud sync but states that it is now just a few months away. The post seems to come as a response to all the chatter from frustrated users, letting them know that cloud syncing in Things has been a long time in the making because building a cloud sync solution is hard.
Cultured Code has been promising a cloud sync solution for quite a while. But lately they have been getting some bad press from frustrated users. And the frustration is understandable. Things is a well-built app, and its large user base has paid a lot of money for the software and has become familiar with it.
But those same folks who use Things also use apps that have learned to sync data over the cloud. Therefore many of those who use Things are at a crossroads: (a) keep using the software despite its pain points; or (b) find something new that answers those pain points.
Choice A is tough because for some people the pain point of over-the-air sync is getting increasingly more painful. But B is tough too, because it means buying and learning new software.
For me? Well, a few months ago I opted for the latter and switched to OmniFocus.
Attention To Detail is Not a To-Do Item →
Marco Arment regarding the lack of polish in certain areas of Android OS:
Attention to detail, like most facets of truly good design, can’t be (and never is) added later. It’s an entire development philosophy, methodology, and culture.
In the 4-hour drive back to Denver from Vail yesterday my cousin and I were talking about this. Not related to Android OS specifically, but to design and development work in general.
My cousin is a programmer for an IT consulting company. He does web development for clients that hire his company. He calls consulting work The Art of the 85 Percent. Meaning, many companies which hire a 3rd-party to build their website or web app only care about getting it 85% completed. They want it good enough to ship in the least amount of time possible for the least amount of money possible.
Which means, most web apps and sites ship at only 85% finished and never see improvements again.
Once an app or a site is 85% completed then it’s usually good enough to be launched. Even though it still has bugs, typos, misalignments, and inconsistencies, it’s good enough.
For a lot of people and companies good enough is good enough.
Taking a project from being good enough to being polished will take more than twice the time, twice the energy, and twice the money. And that second half is the harder half because, compared to the first stage, progress seems slower and less noticeable yet the time and energy spent is the same.
Many companies see that as a waste. Why spend more time and energy to fine-tune a product that’s already good enough? If attention to detail is not a part of your company’s culture, then good enough will always be good enough.
“Daring Fireball: Title Junk” →
John Gruber on poorly designed web page titles:
An awful lot of websites use patterns for page titles that are ugly, hard-to-scan, and/or just plain stupid.
Cameron Moll’s 11-inch MacBook Air Review →
Would the 11-inch MacBook Air hold up as a primary computer for a full-time designer? Cameron Moll gave it a shot for 24 hours.
Bruce Schneier on IT Security →
What a well-written, intelligent article by Bruce Schneier. He touches on the past and future state of IT security, internet companies’ business models, consumers versus customers, and more. It is a great overview on how things have changed over the past ten years and where they’re going in the next decade:
IT security in 2020 will be less about protecting you from traditional bad guys, and more about protecting corporate business models from you.
Bruce’s essay raises a lot of questions for me. If many of the future’s security issues will be centered around protecting consumer’s time and attention just as much as they are about protecting people’s data, then how will it effect those of us with online products? (Big and small?) What are some steps we can take in the right direction now so as to have a scalable and viable business model in the days to come when our reader’s attention is at an even greater premium than it already is?
[Sponsor] Seedling →
Seedling is a curated gallery of online content, meant to help you find new sites that you should be reading.
Wondering what sites others are reading? Know about a little-known blog (perhaps your own) that you’d like to share with the world? Want to find a new site to read, and a new author to connect with? You’ll love Seedling.