Andy Ihnatko:
Overall, you should be looking for features that tie the whole product line together, such as AirPlay, and ways of integrating the Mac OS file system into mobile devices. Apple’s been building the Death Star for quite some time — aka that huge new data center in North Carolina — so honestly, any guess that would require massive storage and infrastructure seems possible.
The latest update to LaunchBar has lots of improvements, bug fixes, and added functionality. LaunchBar is a fantastic little utility. I dropped Quicksilver over a year ago when I upgraded to Snow Leopard and now use LaunchBar and FastScrips.
I’ve begun building a list of recommended, non-fiction, help-you-do-what-you-love-to-do-better types of books. The page lists five books so far. Some for writing, one for leading and creating, and one for iOS developing. I’ve read each one and highly recommend them all. And if you’re kind enough to pick a few of them up, I will get a small kickback which, in turn, helps me to continue writing here.
With attractive and targeted packages for multiple disciplines, Idea Cafe is the perfect stop for the creative professional. Check out all our notebooks from the best brands available. Equip yourself.
The best three-minute case for minimalism in design, marketing, and life you’ll watch today.
One of the greatest assets a publisher has is the attention and trust of their readers. It is something cultivated over time as a person or publication slowly becomes a trusted advisor for the things they write about, link to, and share. In short: my RSS Subscribers are my truest fans. They’re the ones who have volunteered to let me share ideas, links, and more with them anytime I want.
And this is much of what makes an RSS Sponsorship so valuable — the sponsor gets exposure to an audience who’s already paying attention.
Placing ads into RSS feeds is laughable. The ads often look horrendous (if they work at all), and offer a minuscule return on investment for both the publisher and the advertiser. Sponsoring an RSS feed however is a fine idea. It provides the promoter with a high-impact way of getting exposure, and allows the publisher to keep their feed clean from ad clutter.
On Monday I began offering sponsorships to this site’s RSS Feed. Yes, the sponsorships help me to continue writing here, but long-time readers of this site know what an advocate I am for the freelance designer, the 3rd-party developer, et al. I am not exaggerating or lying when I say that part of the reason I set up sponsorships was to offer a top-notch promotional channel for designers, developers, writers, and more.
And so good news: for those looking to promote their product or service, shawnblanc.net is not the only site offering Sponsorships for its RSS Feed.1
Minimal Mac: a site that has taken off like a rocket over the past year. Patrick Rhone is a trusted advisor to many a Mac nerds and minimalists. He is offering you a chance to sponsor his RSS Feed as well. You get a promotion on Monday and a thank-you post on Friday.
The Brooks Review: regular, insightful writing about Apple, technology, and the Web. Ben Brooks is quickly becoming a must-read among many well-known technology sites.
Why am I promoting these other guys? Because sponsorship opportunities are a fabulous channel to promote you app, your book, your freelance business, and more. I get frequent requests from app developers asking me to check out and hopefully promote their app. I get emails from web developers asking me if I know any good designers, and vice versa.
There is certainly no shortage of top-notch products and services worthy of being made known. If you’ve got something you’d like to promote, book a sponsorship on this site. But I also recommend Minimal Mac, Monday by Noon, and The Brooks Review. I believe your promotion would do well there also.
Many thanks to App Cubby for being the debut sponsor of the RSS Feed and promoting their iPhone app, Gas Cubby. David Barnard and the App Cubby team are exceedingly dedicated to building and developing top-notch iPhone applications. They’re an intuitive and detail oriented team, and their work shows it. Gas Cubby is just one in their lineup of fine iPhone apps.
Tyler Hall:
It’s hard to describe how incredibly powerful Perspectives are until you actually spend a few days with them in your workflow. Other task managers have smart folders or dedicated “Today” lists, but they absolutely pale in comparison to the flexibility that Perspectives afford.
I’ve been using OmniFocus for nearly a month now, and I couldn’t agree more. Or, as I wrote last week:
Organization and output is what makes OmniFocus so mind-blowingly powerful. I’m not exaggerating when I say that OmniFocus pretty much organizes your lists for you. It will take your relevant tasks and intelligently order them for you so you only see what you need to see without worrying about other stuff.
My name is Nicholas Felton. I am a graphic designer based in New York City. I focus primarily on data visualizations… making charts and graphs and maps for print and online. I also run a website called Daytum that I founded with Ryan Case to help people count the big and little things in their lives and compile these statistics into pages like my own Annual Reports.
My work machine is a dual quad-core Mac Pro with a 30″ Cinema Display. Away from the office, I use a 13″ aluminum Mac Book.
The first Mac I owned was a Quadra 840AV and I’ve used Mac towers continually since the G3 days. I may migrate to an iMac for the next office machine, but I like having lots of internal drives in the tower. The internal drives are cheaper and seem to last longer than external backups. I also like how easy it is to upgrade the memory, and that I can hang onto the monitor when I swap the computer out.
My favorite laptop was the 12″ G4, so when Apple did the aluminum MacBook refresh, I bought the 13″, and it still holds its own for travel and home use.
In plain terms, it’s fast enough, doesn’t crash too often and tends to not get in the way of what I want to do. Fundamentally, it lets me do my best work because I am familiar and comfortable with the way everything is set up, so I spend very little time looking for things. If it weren’t for email, I would be a very productive person.
If Adobe would kill the feature creep and focus on software that’s fast and doesn’t crash I would be most of the way to an ideal setup. Apart from that, I just need a big monitor, a CPU that can keep up and some decent speakers to be happy.
Nicholas’ setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.
The three photos of Nicholas were taken by Ellen Warfield.
In his brand new book, my friend David Appleyard has distilled an incredible amount of information to help acclimate new iPhone developers to the iPhone App Market.
I have read the whole book, and it truly is a fabulous resource for iOS developers. As I wrote in my endorsement: “iPhone App Entrepreneur will help you to create and sell the sort of app which gets used and talked about in living rooms, back offices, and everywhere in-between.”
And if you grab a copy using this link, I will get a small kickback.
For the past several years a good friend of mine, Tim Cone, has had a vision to launch a Christian record label which gives away its digital music. This week that dream was realized and Churchyard Records has opened its doors.
Their first release, an EP from Spacesuit, is absolutely fantastic. I mean, it’s really, really good. And it’s 100% free to download and listen to at painfully loud volumes.
And speaking of the Pipeline, Dan’s interview with Andy Ihnatko is likely my favorite episode so far. Jam packed with fantastic Q&A for writers and freelancers.
The Pipeline is such a fantastic podcast. If you’re not already subscribed, you should at least catch Dan’s recent interview with Marco if you want to find out about how Instapaper came to be, what Marco thinks of office hours, and more.
Also, Marco Arment was just interviewed on The Setup (long live the matte display!).
These two ads for the new Windows 7 phone are super clever and funny. But the campaign tagline — “It’s time for a phone to save us from our phones.” — seems odd. It’s cute, but who are they talking to?
I certainly have my iPhone out all too often. But never once have I thought it was due to a problem with my iPhone. (Wouldn’t that be nice?) So why or how could another smart phone relieve me of the constant distraction that is my current smart phone? The answer: it can’t.
Chairman Gruber has the same quibble. His thought?:
Perhaps this message from Microsoft isn’t targeted at existing smartphone owners. It’s for those shopping for the first smartphone, who, because they don’t have one yet, see existing smartphones as something unpleasant — gadgets that turn friends and family into anti-social heads-down faces-underlit jerks. I can see how that message might work.