The Brooks Review

Month: January 2011

  • What the Verizon iPhone Means for AT&T iPhone Users

    Since 2007 AT&T has held one massive competitive advantage over their biggest rival Verizon: the iPhone. Nothing else mattered, if you wanted the hottest phone the market has ever seen in the U.S. then you needed to be on AT&T. Verizon had nothing to compete with it and even now the Android phones are only just starting to keep up.

    Now though for the first time we essentially have two different iPhones: Verizon’s and AT&T’s.

    I fully expect many people to argue with me on this, but there are only two reasons to choose the Verizon iPhone over AT&T:

    1. You already have a contract with Verizon and you don’t want to break it.
    2. You get terrible AT&T service where you live.

    Mobile Hot Spotting

    In the coming months there is going to be a lot of advertising from Verizon showing off how great their iPhone is because you can create a mobile hot spot with it. Likewise AT&T will start promoting the fact that you can do data and voice simultaneously on their iPhone.

    So naturally one would think that you should choose the Verizon iPhone, because after all how often do you really use data while you talk on the phone?

    Well you are wrong to choose Verizon just to get the mobile hot spot. The reason being: AT&T can add a mobile hot spot feature, Verizon on the other hand can’t magically make their network so that it can do voice and data at the same time.

    My bet: come June AT&T has the competitive advantage once again. (Meaning they get the mobile hot spot and still allow simultaneous data and voice transmissions.)

    June

    One more thing about June. Say you buy the Verizon iPhone on 2.10.11 when it comes out — what do you do if the iPhone 5 is launched in June? Pay a penalty to upgrade or wait another 1.5 years to get the latest iPhone?

    Patience

    Patient Verizon diehards finally got what they wanted, an iPhone. AT&T users may also get what they want: less network congestion. Likely patient AT&T users will also get the same features as Verizon iPhone owners in just a few short months (rather than waiting 3+ years).

    Basically AT&T users will get the mobile hotspot.

  • Verizon iPhone Can’t Handle Data and Voice Simultaneously

    Huge reason for me not to go Verizon. That mobile hotspot thing will be great until it stops a blog post in the middle of its tracks to receive a text message. Also I realize that AT&T doesn’t have that mobile hotspot feature, but do you honestly think that come the next version of the iPhone they won’t have it?

    Also the existing iPhone cases may not fit the Verizon iPhone (WTF is that?).

    [h/t to Ian Hines for pointing at the case differences (via IM)]

  • Verizon Announces End of ‘DROID’ Advertising, World Thanks Them

    You don’t honestly think they are going to waste more money on Android now that they have the iPhone do you?

  • Mac App Store & Trials

    I wanted to try out a new calendar program called “Caliander” and when I visited their site just now I saw this:

    Screen shot 2011-01-11 at 6.19.20 AM.png

    I thought that was a rather clever way of circumventing a major Mac App Store flaw.

  • Twitter for Mac, Worth the Wait?

    What happens when a user base that has been begging a developer everyday since they shipped version 1.0 for a version 2.0 release finally gets the 2.0 version? Well, there is a lot of rejoicing followed by a general feeling of being let down. At least that is how it has played out for Twitter for Mac (aka Tweetie 2.0).

    Screen shot 2011-01-10 at 9.40.38 PM.png

    In this review the only time you will see me write ‘HIG’ is in this sentence.

    Real-Time

    When I did my Tweetie competitor round up a while back I found that a lot of new Twitter clients are providing access to the ‘streaming API’, giving you a ‘real-time’ Twitter feed. Now instead of checking every 10 minutes you get tweets as they are sent out. In theory this sounds great, but when I tested most other apps I hated it.

    I still dislike it. I like to read all tweets that come through my feed and Twitter for Mac’s real-time streaming of tweets means that I am constantly reading tweets — real-time tweets are very distracting. I much preferred checking only 5-6 times and hour, not 30-40 times to read 1 or 2 tweets at a time. (On another note turn off that auto scroll to the top crap [there’s an option for it] — that is a massive place loser.)

    For me I have found that the best way to work with Tweetie 2 is to leave the window closed while you work and check on our own schedule. This is the complete opposite of how I worked with Tweetie 1, but I asked for Tweetie 2 ((A lot.)) so this is a minor thing to complain about. ((I have plenty of other complaints.))

    Hidden Features

    By now I am sure that a good many of your have heard that Twitter for Mac has a ‘super secret’ preference pane that you can enable if you bought into the MacHiest Bundle. ((Said bundle promised buyers an advance copy of Tweetie 2.0.)) To be honest I would still be using Tweetie 1 if it was not for this menu.

    You can see the menu options here:

    Screen shot 2011-01-10 at 4.22.00 PM.png

    You can see the options that I have checked. For me the critical option is ‘ESC closes compose windows’. The option that I would hate to not have is: Type Anywhere. Type anywhere is a great feature for Tweetie to implement.

    Dragging the Window

    Much has been made about the difficulty that people have when they need to move the window. There is no title bar on the app, so grabbing the window at the top won’t work. You need to click the black areas along the left side — but only in the black areas that don’t have actionable click zones. ((Spots that do stuff when you click them.))

    [Updated: 1/11/11 at 9:06 AM] Actually even clicking on the buttons on the black sidebar (as long as you hold the click) will allow you to move the window — nice touch.

    Is this annoying? Yes.

    Do you get over it after 5 minutes? Yep.

    I guess my question is this: how often are you moving this window? I find a place that I like it and there is stays. If you are someone that constantly moves stuff around I am sure that you would get used to it after a bit. Either way this issue has been way over blown.

    Direct Messages

    I have a love-hate relationship with the direct message implementation on Twitter for Mac. On the one hand I love that it has auto completion for usernames when you start a new DM, and that it asks specifically if you want a new DM or Public Reply — that is always good.

    What I hate is two fold:

    1. The flow is backwards. In the Twitter stream new stuff is at the top, old near the bottom. In the DM view the opposite is true. Don’t change that up within the same app, I mean read the HI… (oh yeah never mind). ((Also I don’t even know what is in the H*G.)) It would make sense to put the new DMs on the bottom if you responded with from a text box on the bottom, but you don’t. You respond in a window that isn’t even really connected to the DM list.
    2. Why do my sent messages display at the top of all the DM conversations? What could I possibly want with that view? Seriously, this makes no sense to me.

    These aren’t deal breakers, but they certainly annoy the crap out of me.

    Searches

    Tweetie used to auto check for new search results — one of the better features of the app. Twitter for Mac doesn’t do jack to check for new results until you click on the saved search. Guess what Twitter? I save searches because — wait for it — I want to revisit them to see what new results are there. Foreign concept I am sure.

    I just can’t fathom why you wouldn’t update saved searches, even hourly would be great.

    Indicators

    You know what sucks? The dock indicators that Mac 10.6 uses on the 3D dock that runs along the bottom. You know what the new tweet indicators in Twitter for Mac look like? Yeah, they are not so great.

    Perhaps it is my advanced age, but they are very difficult to notice. I keep wanting them to be brighter and just pop a little more. Especially for the Twitter account that is not active (if you use more than one account you know what I mean).

    t.co BS

    I get adding auto shortening using Twitter’s super short t.co URLs. What I don’t get is shortening my already short URLs (like TBR.mx and d.pr), that kind of stuff is just lame. ((I call on Ian Hines to elaborate on this.))

    Free

    I must have complained a lot about wanting Tweetie 2.0 because I have never gotten so many app recommendations from people before (thanks BTW). I feel pretty confident in saying that I have tried most all Twitter apps available for the Mac. And even with the annoyances that Twitter for Mac brings there are a few things that you just can’t argue with:

    1. It is beautiful looking.
    2. It is free.
    3. It interfaces with Twitter perfectly.

    Take it from a guy who has spent a lot of time with other Twitter clients: Twitter for Mac may have annoyances, but they are minor in comparison to what the others apps are missing.

  • Nintendo’s Bonkers 3DS Price-Points

    Craig Grannell on the price points for new games on Nintendo’s forthcoming 3DS:

    Even better, the games are expected to sell between 4800 yen ($57/£38) and 6090 yen ($73/£50). Even with some serious discounting (and Japanese games often being more expensive than in the US and Europe), these prices are obliterated by the App Store, which usually ranges from $1 (59p) to $9.99 (£5.99) per item.

    That is a huge price disparity, though I wonder how many kids these days see the iPod touch and DS as direct competitors.

  • Mac App Store Says “@@errorNum@@”

    Log out, log back in. Wait. This would be a frustrating error to get and that is coming from a guy who spent hours working with AppleCare to find a solution to his Mac App Store problems.

  • Quote of 2007: Paul Graham

    “Microsoft’s biggest weakness is that they still don’t realize how much they suck. They still think they can write software in house. Maybe they can, by the standards of the desktop world. But that world ended a few years ago.”
    — Paul Graham, in 2007.

  • Farewell to WWII hero Maj. Dick Winters

    Major Richard D. Winters passed away on January 2nd, 2011. He was one of the primary characters in HBO’s miniseries ‘Band of Brothers‘ ((An excellent miniseries BTW.)) and most importantly he was a true American Hero. Winters, as quoted by MSNBC:

    I’m not sure whether they were fortunate or unfortunate to get out of the war so early. So many men died so that others could live. No one understands why.

  • iPhone 4 + Water = Oh God!

    Thursday night I was frantically looking for my USB restore drive for my MacBook Air — my wife in the other room was rushing to get ready for dinner with some friends. The next thing I hear from my wife is:

    Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!

    I rushed into the room after asking what was going on and getting no response. Her iPhone 4 had just gone for a wee little swim. Oh God indeed. I quickly dried the phone off with a paper towel and tried to get it to force off (the screen wasn’t working and I had no way to tell if it was on or off). Next I popped the SIM card out and the tray, filled a Ziploc bag with uncooked rice and buried the phone in the rice.

    We left the phone like that while we went to dinner, when we came back the camera flash LED was stuck on and nothing else on the phone worked. Again I tried to force the phone off and got nothing. Back into the rice it went.

    Fast forward to the next morning: I checked the phone and it was working, but there was visible condensation in the camera lens. The screen was functional and the touch based input was working well. I powered off the phone, cleaned rice out of the open ports. Scavenged up some old silica gel packets that I keep in my camera bags ((Great way to store your camera gear BTW.)) and I wrapped the silica gel packets against the phone with a paper towel. Again I put the entire thing back in some rice.

    Friday night, about 24 hours after the phone was gasping for air while drowning in a pool of water, we pulled out the phone. We put in the SIM card and powered it up. 10% battery life left, but no side effects that we could see. Cool.

    That night when we both went to bed and the iPhone started to act up. The screen wouldn’t stay on and started flickering. Not good. I took a look at it and noticed the the WiFi radio read in Settings as “Not Available”. Ugh.

    We turned off the phone and put it back in rice for the night. The next morning the screen worked fine, but still no WiFi. Again on Saturday night the screen started to act up, but Sunday morning everything was fine again. I didn’t think much of it, figuring it was just the last bits of water drying out.

    Then Sunday night it started to act up again, but you could always get the lock screen to display. Upon unlocking the device the screen would go black. Hmmm, seemed to me like it might be the light sensor acting up. We went into a bright room and unlocked the phone and the screen worked fine. I had my wife turn off the auto-backlight adjustments and the black screen and flickering issues ceased.

    Her iPhone is anything but perfect after taking that swim, but so far the only things not functioning are the WiFi and the light sensor. All in all that is not the worst outcome we could have had. Rice: never dry a gadget without it.

  • iWork.com Updates

    Apple emailed users to inform them of iWork.com updates. You can see the email here:

    Screen shot 2011-01-10 at 8.38.32 AM.png

    The storage bit is great, but too little too late. The Keynote playback though looks like a great way to quickly get a Keynote file to playback on your iPad for presentations. Better than iTunes syncing for sure.

    [Updated: 1/10/11 at 8:48 AM]

    MacStories has some lovely screenshots.

  • Are We Making the Web A Bit Bland?

    The Internet consensus is that your blog’s design should represent your personality and voice. Perhaps Shawn Blanc describes this notion best:

    First of all, when you read someone’s site you are imagining their voice. Not only is that voice influenced by the style of their writing, but also by the design of the site itself. Drastically changing the colors and fonts of a site can have serious impact on the reader’s pre-established and familiar voice of your site.

    When I first started this site the body text was set in Georgia, a serif font, and I used Helvetica and Verdana in other spots, both sans-serif. Since that time I have moved to sans-serif and one single font across the entire site, save the logo. I have also changed the site logo, but the look and feel of the site has stayed pretty close to what it was on day one. Some readers were a bit bothered when I moved away from Georgia, but most of those complaints have trailed off since I made the switch.

    It was important for me to make that change because by and large I am not a serif font type of guy. Most everything I do revolves around great sans-serif fonts and I wanted TBR to reflect that aspect of my personality — I wanted to stay true to who I am. I chose Georgia originally because I found it to be more readable that other options and I didn’t want TBR to be another site set in Helvetica. FF Meta WebPro came about after playing around with the font I found it to be just as comfortable for long reading and damned nice looking to boot.

    Messing with Other People’s Sites

    The other day John Gruber posted a link to a site that would not only allow you to change the color scheme and layout of his site, but also allow you to create a custom CSS file for any other site. I was a bit surprised he posted this to be honest with you — then listening to the latest episode of The Talk Show he and Dan Benjamin spoke about site design and what it conveys to them.

    It would seem that everyone has a relationship with the way a writers site is designed — be it dark text on light backgrounds or light text on dark backgrounds. We get emotionally attached to these bits and channel that design while we read the articles. A site’s design helps to convey the message of the written words.

    This is great, but what about people who never read the articles on the actual sites?

    Making the Web a Bland Singular Voice

    I am about to say something and I really don’t want it to be construed the wrong way because I love Instapaper with a passion. What I fear though, is that perhaps Instapaper, Reeder, Safari Reader, Readability, NetNewsWire, Google Reader, Flipboard, and any other app that allows you to read a site without seeing the actual site are starting to chip away at the personalities each site offers.

    They are making the web a bit bland.

    I am going to talk about Instapaper, solely because it is such a fantastic service that I use daily, I worry that it may be changing the way I ‘hear’ my favorite writers. Let’s go back to Daring Fireball and John Gruber for a bit, he has his site set to display a lovely dark gray background with light text over it, in a small sans-serif font face. However, when I read a post by John Gruber I am likely reading it in Instapaper with a white background and larger dark gray serif text (unless it is night time then reverse the colors — thanks for that by the way Marco), this is a stark contrast to the personality Gruber (and others) has decided to convey with their design.

    Does taking the personality of the site’s design out of the equation make the material better or worse?

    …

    I never thought this mattered, but now I am starting to think that you lose something when you don’t read the content in the environment it was intended to be read in. I am not saying we should all abandon Instapaper and other services like it, but I am saying that we need to make sure we know what the sites we read actually look like.

    I am not trying to pick a fight on some pedantic point — this stuff should matter. Imagine taking all of Apple’s stuff and selling it in a generic, bland, electronics store. Actually it looks like this, compared to this. ((And that isn’t even the best picture one can find of an Apple Store, but probably the best one you can find of Apple in Best Buy.))

    Sure the computers and writing are still great when they are out of their element, but it’s just not the same. Going to the Apple section of Best Buy is hardly as compelling as going to the Apple Store. I would spend an extra $20 is gas to buy a new Mac from an Apple Store over buying it in Best Buy.

    Instapaper & Me

    I have been thinking a lot about what that means for my love affair with Instapaper. Moving forward I am going to try and read most all content on the actual site it was written on, under the following conditions:

    • The site is not hideous.
    • I have a web connection (otherwise Instapaper on the iPad).
    • The article will take more time to read than it would take to open the page on the web starting from the iOS Instapaper app.

    Basically I am going to read 100% of stuff in its native context when I do so on my Mac, and only read long form stuff in its native context on the iPad (the short stuff will remain in Instapaper).

    My goal, or my hope, is that I get a better sense of who the writer is by doing this. I tested this out with Daring Fireball and Shawn Blanc’s site over the past few days (luckily both have been posting a lot lately). I wanted to see if I got a different feel from the same article if I first read it in Instapaper, then read it on their site and vice versa.

    What I found is that both sites felt vastly different when read in Instapaper and not on the actual site. Perhaps this is in part due to the natural flaws in the experiment (meaning I was aware of the experiment), but I did not expect such a difference. After all I have been reading Shawn and John for a very long time and thought that I knew what they “sounded” like without needing to see their site.

    This Would be Neat

    Wouldn’t it be neat if Instapaper saved the site color and font information. Basically if in addition to pulling down the article text it also checked to see if the font was dark on light or light on dark and whether the site used serif or sans-serif on the body text? I think that would be a great comprise to helping readers maintain a semblance of the authors ‘voice’.

    Just stop and think the next time you decide to read your favorite authors in a bland sterile environment.

  • Apple TV 2 and the: “Ready to Play in Xxx Minutes” Bug

    A couple of nights ago my wife and I decided to rent our first movie from our new Apple TV 2. The movie started playing right away and had no troubles whatsoever. Last night we decided to rent another movie and when we tried to play it we were greeted with this message: “Ready to play in xxx minutes”. Except for us it said that we could start watching in 1 hour and 40 minutes. This naturally pissed me off.

    After waiting 10 minutes and not seeing the time change I started searching for the answer. I came across this discussion thread, where there are currently 8 pages of complaints about the problem. Not looking good for Apple. The last page contains a post by “UKGreg” that claims:

    Hi All,

    After experiencing the same issue and trying different changes ie DNS settings, wireless position, channels etc the solution was the following:

    1) Switch off “Send Data to Apple”. This is under Settings-General. Give it a few minutes.

    Interesting, I did as he instructed and I saw no change after 3 minutes. I decided to just restart the Apple TV and see what happened. When it came back on I selected the movie that I rented and what do you know? It worked just fine and very fast.

    Problem solved. If you are having this problem give this solution a try, it is quick and painless to fix.

  • Reasons to Keep Your App out of the Mac App Store

    The OmniGroup:

    Through our website, we can offer much more flexible terms and options: trial and beta downloads, upgrade pricing, and discounts for volume, bundle, and educational purchases.

    Apple needs to address this in all its app stores.

  • Sophiestication Software

    Sophia of Sophiestication Software explaining why she violated her promise:

    First of all I‘m sorry for the confusion about the upgrade policy and version number. The License dialog clearly states 3.0, whereas the new version is labeled as 2.5.

    However, this is the first paid upgrade ever in the four years that CoverSutra exists. My intent is not to make some quick dollars, it‘s to sustain the development costs of an app I love and use daily.

    Now if you don’t know what this is about, basically she promised users free upgrades until version 3.0. Now though she is going back on that and making users pay for upgrades past 2.5 (though lowering the price by $15), all of this because she wants to maintain only one version of the software — that Mac App Store version. This is all well and good, except: you should never break a promise to your users.

    Sophia:

    If I thought of that license text I would have simply declared this new version 3.0. Calling me a liar is simply wrong and way over the top.

    Over the top? Perhaps. Wrong? No way. Sophia, I don’t know you, but you did indeed lie. If the truth is that you forgot about your promise, then you need to state that up front and apologize, then find a solution.

    Sophia again:

    But seriously, what kind of reputation did I have if it‘s lost so easily? Didn‘t I prove often enough that I‘m fair and not interested in any fishy marketing tactics?

    You did prove that, which is why people are so pissed about what you just did — I thought that was obvious. What really should irk users though is the way she ended it:

    It‘s obvious that many of you are simply overreacting. Overreacting to some text I wrote over three years ago and forgot about until this thursday.

    Where the fuck is the apology?

  • Or Not: Distorting the News in Cafes Around the World

    Looks like it was all a hoax. Bastards.

    Zdzislaw Kotla as reported by Lisa Miller:

    They’re essentially manipulating public perception of world events and facts, as reported by dedicated journalists, and there’s not much we can do about it.

    Basically, there is a little box, that when plugged in, finds open wireless networks and allows a remote hacker to distort news that people on that network sees. This is both awesome and more than a tad worrisome.

  • Behind the Scenes

    I don’t know if there is a lot of interest in this, but judging from how many times I get email about different aspects of the site I thought it worth writing up this post. I want to give a good overview and some insight into how I have this site set up — allowing me to reference this post when people ask questions in the future.

    Back End Server & Backups

    This entire site runs on Media Temple’s Grid Service (gs). It is an excellent service, both fast and affordable. My plan is to upgrade to the (dv) plan in a few months, but you can’t go wrong starting with the (gs) plan. One addition I have made to the (gs) plan is buying what Media Temple calls a grid container for the MySQL server on this site.

    I was experiencing about 10 seconds of database down-time, before I purchased the container, whenever I would publish a new post — since adding this container I have had no problems. This adds to the cost of the monthly service, but for me it was worth it. I also use Media Temple’s built in email solution for the TBR email system.

    I am a paranoid person when it comes to backing up the site, so I use the following:

    • Transmit synchronizes the server files with a local backup on my computer every Saturday.
    • VaultPress does real-time backups of the site.
    • WP Backup provides emailed backups of the database file twice a day.

    WordPress Plugins

    I have a slew of plugins running in WordPress so let’s just list them out:

    • All in One SEO Pack: I doubt this is needed any more with the way search engines work, but it provides a quick way to customize the way your site displays the title at the top of web browsers.
    • Customizable Search Widget: That is what you see over on the right hand side. This allows me to change the look of the search box a bit.
    • DF-Style Linked List: This is how I control the linked list and put a glyph in front of all non-linked posts.
    • Google XML Sitemaps: Like the SEO plugin I don’t think this is really needed any longer, but what the hell.
    • Instapaper Read Later Links: Allows me to put the little ‘read later’ buttons on articles.
    • Markdown for WordPress and bbPress: Just in case I forget to convert my writing into HTML, this plugin will keep it from looking bad.
    • MintPopularPostsWP: Integrates with Mint (more on that in a bit).
    • Optimize DB: Keeps my database file nice and small.
    • Redirection: Allows me to set 301 redirects from within WP, I use it to send people looking for certain pages (blind guessing) to a more relevant page.
    • Simple URL Shortener: Did you ever notice how if you try to use Bit.ly to shorten a link on this site, you end up with a http://tbr.mx link? That is what this plugin does. See here for details.
    • Simple Yearly Archive: builds the archive page that allows me to exclude the links category.
    • Title Case: For the most part this will properly capitalize my post titles.
    • Twitter Tools: Auto-tweets new posts, using the Bit.ly custom URL.
    • VaultPress: Interface for backing up.
    • WordPress Database Backup: The above mentioned plugin that emails me database backup files.
    • WP-Footnotes: Allows me to create and style the footnote system.
    • WP Super Cache: John Gruber loves to make fun of WP sites that crash when he links to them — don’t let that be your site.
    • WP to Twitter: Anytime I update a post from the web interface this will send out an [UPDATED] style tweet using my custom Bit.ly domain. ((I tried using only this instead of Twitter Tools, but it will not send a tweet when you post from a client like MarsEdit.))

    Ok that is all the plugins that I use, so let’s talk about a couple that I get a ton of questions on.

    Linked List

    I feel like I get asked questions about this daily. I try to respond the best I can, but here is how this works.

    When you install the linked list plugin you need to add code to your PHP files, as well customizing the options. This plugin does not just work out of the box. You will also need to use the custom fields in WordPress when you want to make a new post.

    Once you set your options for the plugin head over to create a new post — from here you need a custom field that looks like this:

    Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 3.12.28 PM.png

    This field will set the linked URL, in this case we are linking back to this sites main page.

    You are not done yet — now you need to determine how you want your posts to act on your main blog page by editing the PHP files in your theme. This is by far the most confusing part for everyone. I am not going to tell you which files to edit, if do know which files to edit and just want to see how my site works, take a look here. That is the relevant code that I use to make link posts behave the way I want.

    If you email me asking for further support, you likely will get no response. Contacting the developer is a better place to go, he’s a good guy.

    Instapaper Buttons

    Like with the linked list questions, I get email about this fairly often too. I have set this up in the plugin options so that the buttons are not displayed anywhere automatically. Then I inserted the PHP template tag that is provided into my PHP files where needed.

    You may have noticed that I don’t provide these links at the permalink location for linked items — that is just an ‘if, then’ statement much like how I did the above linked list. Play around with it, but again don’t ask me how to do these things. I am happy to help when it is fast and easy, but I won’t develop/design your site for you.

    I get emails on how I do the link posts about once a week. First things first you cannot do this from the WordPress iOS apps so don’t even bother. I mostly post links using MarsEdit 3, though when on the iPad I use a custom version of the ‘Press This’ bookmarklet.

    MarsEdit

    This one is easy: go to the Blog menu item and select “Edit Settings”. From there click on “Custom Fields”. Add this:

    Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 3.26.22 PM.png

    Now when you create a new post, if you put a URL in that custom field it will populate that linkedlisturl field in WordPress that you created before. Short, simple, sweet.

    Bookmarklet

    This is a touch trickier, luckily Shawn Blanc has it all written up on his site. Thanks, Shawn!

    Article Posting

    I have mentioned this elsewhere but I start my posts on my Mac in either Ulysses or in TextMate. I use Writer on the iPad and I don’t even bother on the iPhone. From there everything is converted to HTML in TextMate, then shipped to MarsEdit to post.

    Design

    There is no custom design job here, I just took this theme and customized the CSS and PHP files to my liking. The fonts are served by the excellent TypeKit service. Site logo is by Wet Frog Studios.

    Notes

    Please don’t take this as me telling anyone how to run their site — this is just how I run mine. I am writing this to eliminate some of the email I regularly get, not to spur more — if you have questions about a particular plugin please ask the developer, Google, or the WordPress.org forums. Those sources will be far better equipped to handle your questions.

    Lastly I use Mint and Google Analytics to track my statistics for this site. The former is highly recommended.

  • Shawn Blanc on the Mac App Store

    Shawn brings up some great points and I agree with most of them. One thing that I don’t quite agree with though is the implied motivation for Apple to launch the App Store. Many think Apple launched it for profits, or to simplify their software — I don’t think I agree with those notions.

    I think Apple launched the Mac App Store because they felt forced to open one. Perhaps that is silly sounding to most — they are a huge company and rarely listen to any one, so why would they feel forced to do anything? My guess is that if they truly did this as a simplification of the OS they would have waited until 10.7 — giving everyone a clean breaking point for making the transition. ((Not to mention a great bit of marketing material to push a new OS update.))

    Apple felt forced because they wanted to keep their fantastic iOS developers in the Apple family.

    They wanted to get them on the Mac.

    Apple reached a fork in the road: they could have gambled on iOS developers being willing to develop for the Mac when they release 10.7; instead they chose a safer path of launching now, at the very moment interest in such a distribution channel was at its peak.

    Sure Apple wants users to find great software, yes they want a cut of developers profits — all of that though could have waited until 10.7.

    After all Apple isn’t hurting for cash right now and their users have been pretty happy without a Mac App Store.

  • VZ iPhone

    It is not just me saying this, a lot of people are saying 1/11 is Verizon iPhone day. I don’t want one, screw Verizon. If you think AT&T is bad I can’t wait to hear what you think of Verizon. Oh and this also means AT&Ts service will be better ((Less people on the network presumably)) , see ya suckers.

  • QuickCursor in the Mac App Store

    I haven’t had the app long, but I love it so far.