Sponsor: Scribe: Copy and paste anything from your Mac to your iPhone, without Wi-Fi  →

Scribe lets you copy and paste snippets of text, web addresses and images from your Mac to your iPhone with a single keystroke. Using Bluetooth LE technology, Scribe keeps your Mac and iOS devices connected without draining your battery.

Unlike other apps with similar functionality, Scribe can copy the sent item in background, so you don’t have to switch apps on your iPhone. Using Bluetooth LE allows you to use Scribe without your devices being on the same network, even without an Internet connection. It’s simply the easiest and safest way to transfer things between your devices.

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My thanks to Scribe for sponsoring the RSS feed this week.

Sponsor: Scribe: Copy and paste anything from your Mac to your iPhone, without Wi-Fi

The Best Calendar App for iPhone  →

We just published our latest review on The Sweet Setup, and it’s for the best calendar app on the iPhone. You probably already know what we picked, but that’s okay.

We spent several months working on this review, and a handful of people pitched in to help (Steven Owens, Federico Viticci, Sam Spurlin, and myself). Even though our top picks for calendar apps seem obvious, I really wanted to have a strong foundation for why those apps are great. And I especially wanted to research the importance of natural language parsing and why it is such a valuable feature for removing the friction of creating new events.

The Best Calendar App for iPhone

Remarkable Things

Good marketing can get customers in the door the first time, but it’s a great product that keeps them coming back (and bringing their friends with them).

When someone tells their friend about a great gadget they’ve been using or a non-profit they’ve been supporting, that word-of-mouth marketing carries far more weight than a hundred advertisements.

Here are a handful of things which I personally find awesome for one reason or another and have recommended to more than one person on more than one occasion:

  • iPhone: A revolution in mobile computing and software.

  • iPad: The new personal computer that you can hold with one hand, gets 12 hours of battery, has an internet connection anywhere there’s cell service, and is easy and simple to use for many tasks.

  • Field Notes: Simple little pocket notebooks that carry a ton of personality.

  • AeroPress: A coffee-making contraption that is easy to use, easy to clean up, fits in your kitchen cabinet (instead of taking up a square foot of counter space) and just so happens to make very delicious coffee.

  • Mirrorless cameras: Small, compact, affordable cameras that are capable of taking photos on par with big, bulky, expensive cameras.

  • Editorial: Took the Geeky iPad Writing Market by storm with all of its powerful and fancy features that make writing for the web easier and faster.

  • Instapaper: Equal parts tool and placebo, Instapaper lets us save things we want to read later. Sometimes we actually get around to reading those articles when we’re in a better setting and/or have the time. Other times we never get around to reading the items we’ve saved, but having a place to save those things in the moment helps us move on with our day, guilt-free.

  • Parisi coffee: A new-ish coffee shop down the road from me that makes consistently delicious coffee and has a very friendly staff.

  • Twitter, Instagram, (and Facebook): Changed the way we communicate, share, and connect with our friends.

  • Netflix: It started out as a cheap service where you could get all the DVDs your heart desired sent right to your house. Then it turned into a cheap service where you could stream a whole bunch of movies any time you wanted (and you didn’t have to have a cable TV subscription).

  • Settlers of Catan: A semi-geeky strategy game that’s geeky enough for board game enthusiasts to enjoy while also being easy enough for everyone else to enjoy as well.

I’ve found that some common factors amongst remarkable things include simplicity, focus, personality, delight, nostalgia, and/or excellence.

There isn’t a 1-2-3 recipe for building something other people will want to talk about. And though it’s certainly not easy, neither is it impossible.

Remarkable Things

Brett Terpstra Goes Indie  →

Brett Terpstra is one of the good guys, and he just recently left his job at AOL to spend more time writing, podcasting, and developing apps.

The leap to working full-time for yourself at home isn’t an easy one (and it’s not for everyone). I applaud Brett for making the move when he felt the time was right. To help make it work, you can support Brett directly though a membership.

I signed up to support Brett for a couple of reasons:

  • For one, I know first hand just how vital the small support of a lot of readers is to making ends meet. There is no way I’d still be here today, three years later, if it weren’t for the subscribing members of this site.

  • Secondly, I signed up to support Brett because he is one of the good guys. He makes some incredible software and services that he gives away for free, and some of the I use every single day (such as nvALT, Text Expander tools, and his App icon grabber). I’d love for him to keep making that software.

Brett Terpstra Goes Indie

MacStories’ Comprehensive Guide to URL Schemes and Drafts Actions  →

This is some epic nerdery right here. I don’t use URL schemes nearly as much as Federico Viticci and company (the extent of my iOS automation is pretty much with my aforementioned Poster workflows), but having an understanding of how URL schemes work can be quite helpful because when you come across a use-case that you think you could automate in iOS you’ll have the understanding to help make that automation a reality.

MacStories’ Comprehensive Guide to URL Schemes and Drafts Actions

The CODE Keyboard with Clear Switches

It’s quite easy to nerd out over mechanical keyboards (I have the blog posts to prove it). There is a type of satisfaction that comes with typing on a mechanical keyboard that is rare in our touch-screen, trackpad, chicklet key world. The thud, the click, the clack — the physical work it takes to type — of a mechanical keyboard is something that hooked me once I experienced it.

My first mechanical keyboard was the Macintosh version of the Das. It’s splendid, but giant. After testing a half-dozen other mechanical keyboards over the course of a few months, I’ve been using a Filco Majestouch-2 Ninja for quite a while now and I think it’s fantastic. The Filco Ninja is tenkeyless, well built, and uses the Blue switches.

I did not order a CODE Keyboard when it went on sale because the keyboard uses Clear switches which I knew I didn’t want.

My cousin, however, did order one, and over the holiday he brought it out to Kansas City so I could use it for a few weeks and then he left it with me to use for a while because he’s cool like that.

I’ve been typing on this keyboard since December 21st and my consensus is this: The CODE is an awesome keyboard, but I don’t like the feel of the Clear switches.

Right off the bat, anyone familiar with a keyboard using the popular Blue switches, will notice that the Clears are quieter. They are more muted and produce a “thud” rather than a click. The keyboard is quieter but not necessarily quiet. If you were in a small office, sitting next to someone, the keyboard is still going to make a bit of a thud and clack as the key caps themselves bottom out when you’re typing, but there isn’t the neighborhood-waking click-clack that accompanies the Blue switches.

The CODE Keyboard has been sold out for a few months primarily because of the difficulty of getting Clear switches. On the keyboard’s website they’ve posted a few updates (one last September and another last November) stating that new keyboards are in production and will include a variety of switches to chose from: Green, Brown, and Blue.

The Green switches are a new switch. They’re pretty much identical in sound and feel to the Blue switches in that they are tactile and clicky, but the Green’s have an actuation force of 80g and a bottom-out force of 105g (the Blue switches are 50g and 65g respectively). Thus, the Greens are going to offer noticeably more resistance than just about any keyboard you’ve ever used.

If/when the CODE keyboard becomes available with Blue switches, I’ll buy it in a heartbeat. Of all the different types of mechanical keyboards I’ve tried, I still remain a fan of the sound, feel, and tactile feedback of the Blue Switches. The CODE keyboard is of equal build quality as my Filco Ninja, but the LED backlighting of the CODE is just fantastic and I love it. It’s unfortunate WASD Keyboards don’t let you build a custom keyboard with LED backlighting as an option.

The CODE Keyboard with Clear Switches

Sponsor: myLook  →

myLook lets you easily manage your real-life wardrobe.

You can create your own perfect outfits, change accessories and colors, find your friends, rate their looks and share yours.

Create your real-life wardrobe

  • mix and match your clothes, test different outfits
  • design tomorrow’s or tonight’s outfit
  • take a look into your wardrobe on your mobile device, anywhere; never forget your clothes again.

Create your avatar and design your current look

  • cycle through haircuts, eye colors, skin colors
  • switch backgrounds and select today’s scenario
  • just dress it up as you’re dressed now!

No in-app purchases, no advertising, iPhone and iPad.

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My thanks to myLook for sponsoring the RSS feed this week.

Sponsor: myLook

My URL Schemes for Posting Links From My iPhone and iPad Using Poster

After publishing my iPad App Playlist, several folks asked me via Twitter and email to share the workflows I use for posting links to this site.

The app I use is Poster, and unfortunately it’s no longer available for sale in the App Store. Thus I didn’t make a big deal out of how I use the app because I assumed many people wouldn’t be able to make use of such nerdy information. But, based on the feedback I’ve been getting lately, perhaps I was wrong.

And so here are the details for how I use Poster on my iPad (and iPhone) to post links to this site.

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There are three places I come across things worth linking to: Safari, my RSS feeds, and my Instapaper queue. (Technically there are four, counting Twitter, but I don’t yet know of a way to get from Tweetbot to Poster, and so often most things I want to link to that I find in Tweetbot I’ll either send to Instapaper or open in Safari.)

Since I use YJ’s Linked List plugin on my site to handle the “swapping” of the permalink URL and the linked-to URL in the RSS feed and on the Home Page, the name of the Custom Field in my WordPress install is linked_list_url. Poster allows you to add the value of a custom field from within the URL scheme by defining it as such: customfield_YOURCUSTOMFIELDNAMEHERE

Also, I have the callback_url set as this site’s homepage. That way once I’ve posted the link from Poster I’m automatically sent over to shawnblanc.net to make sure that the link properly posted.

Safari → Poster

If I’m in Mobile Safari on my iPad or iPhone, I tap this javascript bookmarklet and it will send me to Poster and create a link post with the Title of the website set as the title of my post, and the URL of the web page set as the linked-to URL for my post.

javascript:window.location='posterapp:///create?text='+encodeURIComponent(window.getSelection())+'&title='+(document.title)+'&customfield_YOURCUSTOMFIELDNAME='+(window.location.href)+'&callback_url=http://example.com/';

 

I then can paste in the quote I want to use (if any) into the body, type in my commentary, and hit Publish.

One thing the Poster URL scheme does not allow is the pre-defining of a category. All my link posts are in the “Linked” category; all my articles are in the “Article” category, and I use some custom WordPress hooks for adjusting the style of a post depending on if it is in the linked category of the articles category. In the WordPress admin panel, I’ve selected the Linked category as the default. Thus, if I publish a post without first assigning the proper category, WordPress will automatically assign it to the Linked category. Therefore I don’t even have to set the category for my link posts when sending them from Poster (thus saving me a few extra taps).

Mr. Reader → Poster

I recently discovered that Mr. Reader supports custom actions. I’ve now switched over to Mr. Reader as my RSS reading app of choice, and build a URL scheme that allows me to take the title, URL, author, and any highlighted text and then place it into Poster so I can publish it as a link on shawnblanc.net.

My URL looks like this (with my personal site-specific tidbits swapped out for generic examples):

posterapp://x-callback-url/create?title={[TITLE]}&text={[AUTHOR]: > [TEXT-SELECTED]}&customfield_yourcustomfieldnamegoeshere={[URL]}&callback_url={http://example.com/}

 

To set up a custom action in Mr. Reader you tap on the Settings icon → Services → scroll down to Add → Other App

From there, if you have Poster installed on your iPad, you’ll see it in the list. Add it, insert your custom URL scheme, and you’re good to go. Now, when you’re reading an article in Mr. Reader that you want to link to from your site, just tap the actions button, and then tap Poster.

Instapaper → Drafts → Poster

Within the Instapaper app there is an option to share to Drafts, so I use Drafts as the “middle man” for taking an interesting article and getting the title, author, link, and any quoted text into Poster.

To start, when I’ve come across an article in Instapaper which I want to link to on my site, I highlight any text I want to quote and then tap the “Share” button which appears after highlighting. (If I want to link to the article without highlighting any text from it, simply tap the action button in the top right, then tap Share.)

When the Instapaper share sheet pops up, I chose to create a draft in Drafts.

Instapaper automatically inserts the title of the article on the first line, the URL on the second line, then a line break, and then any text I had selected.

This is where Drafts gets awesome. You can define certain lines, and/or ranges of lines, to be the content for different components when sending the text file into Poster.

So, after my draft is auto-created from Instapaper, I tidy it up a bit, by cleaning up the title (if need be), adding an extra line break between the title and the URL, and then writing out any additional commentary, etc., in the body.

I then send the Draft to Poster, using my custom action which defines the title (the first line) of the Draft as the title of the link post, the 3rd line of the Draft as the URL for the custom field, and then everything from line 5 on as the body text.

posterapp://x-callback-url/create?title=[[title]]&text=[[line|5..]]&customfield_linked_list_url=[[line|3]]&callback_url=https://shawnblanc.net/

 

(Tapping here from your iPhone/iPad should allow you to install this action in Drafts automatically (you’ll then want to tweak it of course to your own usage needs.)

My URL Schemes for Posting Links From My iPhone and iPad Using Poster