Yes, none of these icons will make sense to my daughter if she stops to try and figure what each picture is, but it also won’t matter. All that really matters is that people know that a floppy disk picture means `save` — so while us “old people” may be the only ones that have seen the real life objects these icons depict, it doesn’t matter as long as people know what they mean.
Still, interesting to think about.
It’s $149 in the Mac App Store and it is *the* RAW photo editor that I use. Aperture is nice, but Lightroom is great. I have only been on version 4 for a little while, but it is a nice upgrade. Lightroom is still the absolute best tool to use for reducing noise in your images — hands down.
One important note (that I didn’t know) is that buying the Mac App Store version only grants you a license to use it on a Mac, whereas buying the downloadable version from Adobe (same price) grants you a license to use it on Mac or Windows. So if you like to use Macs and *have* to use Windows, this is something to think about.
Update: [Jim Dalrymple notes some more caveats](http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/05/10/lightroom-4-available-on-mac-app-store-with-caveats/) with Lightroom 4 in the Mac App Store — so many I would recommend that you buy it from Adobe’s website instead.
A very eye-opening post by Dustin Curtis on how to properly scale images for use on the web by ‘pixel-fitting’. His examples are great and this is a must read for anyone who puts graphics on the web.
Looks great and I think it is really neat that Amazon is wanting offices in downtown Seattle instead of moving out of the city core — which I am sure would be cheaper.
A fantastic post that asks what journalism really is today, and if defining journalism matters anymore. The post is a must read and there are so many good bits to quote that I have to limit myself to just this one:
>The younger the person you ask, the less likely it is you’ll find that link between wanting to know what’s going on and grabbing a paper or opening up a news website. They use Pinterest to figure out what’s fashionable and Facebook to see if there’s anything fun going on next weekend. They use Facebook just the same to figure out whether there’s anything they need to be upset about and need to protest against.
Michael Lopp:
>This is about how these two universes should collide and that means what I’m really talking about is gamification. There’s a reason I didn’t mention this until paragraph 17 because there are a lot of folks who think gamification means pulling the worst aspects out of games and shoving them into an application. It’s not. Don’t think of gamification as anything other than clever strategies to motivate someone to learn so they can have fun being productive.
Great point, and one that I hadn’t thought of when we talk about gamification. The type of gamification that Lopp is referring to sounds fantastic, but rare.
David Sparks is *the man* when it comes to getting to paperless and automating that workflow. Haven’t had a chance to read this book, but his description made it an instant buy for me:
>Paperless takes the mystery (and fear) out of going paperless with your Apple technology. The book includes 32 screencasts, 4 movies, over 26,000 words, and other rich-media assets to turn you into a paperless ninja.
Sold.
Great post by Craig Grannell that [responds to Jason Pontin’s thoughts](http://www.technologyreview.com/business/40319/) about magazines creating native apps. Most magazine apps are just terrible to use, plain and simple. When something is terrible to us, people don’t use it.
If I was a magazine publisher I would figure out how to get an iPad app that updated to the latest content in less than 30 seconds.
That’d be goal one.
Goal two would be to whittle that time down to 10 seconds.
Most current iPad magazines fail before readers even get a chance to view them.
Today the [TSA groped a congressman’s balls enough that he pushed the agents hands away, claiming](http://www.kens5.com/home/I-TEAM-EXCLUSIVE–Video-of-TSAs-aggressive-pat-down-of-Congressman-Canseco-150109935.html):
>The agent was very aggressive in his pat down and he was patting me down where no one is suppose to go and it got very uncomfortable, so I moved his hand away
That sounds like it would cost extra.
[In Salt Lake City a Type One Diabetic](http://www.abc4.com/content/news/state/story/TSA-diabetes-salt-lake-insulin-savannah/Az-QjubuEUeXMX7LAbC1Xw.cspx) (hat tip to [Douglas Stephen](http://twitter.com/DougStephenJr/status/200207539315556354)) — the type that wears an Insulin pump 24/7 — was forced to go through the body scanner, even after she showed TSA “officers” a note from her doctor explaining the pump should *not* go through such scanners. No worries, it ended up a-OK, well if you consider a broken $10,000 Insulin pump, and putting a teenagers health at risk to be an a-OK outcome.
I don’t. Also when you have a 16 year-old calling for a government agency to be better educated, well then you kind of know you failed.
As a result of the CIA, not the TSA, foiling a bomb plot — well the TSA took it upon themselves [to send a “security guidance” to other countries](http://www.semissourian.com/story/1846854.html). No word yet on whether the other countries have stopped laughing.
Oh and speaking of that foiled bomb plot — [yeah looks like the TSA wouldn’t have even noticed the bomb had the person wearing the bomb been scanned with a body scanner](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/body-scanners-would-not-detect-underwear-bomb-2012-05-09) — so there’s that.
And that is your TSA update for today.
On Monday I asked [in my linked post](https://brooksreview.net/2012/05/evernote-huh/) to the Evernote acquisition of Penultimate:
>Anybody else confused about Evernote’s endgame?
I genuinely am confused by what their goal is, but [Federico Viticci points out](http://ticci.org/wheres-evernote-going) their goal on the [Evernote site](http://evernote.com/), quoting:
>Save your ideas, things you like, things you hear, and things you see.
That’s really only one part, as Evernote claims it has three goals: capture anything, access anywhere, find things fast.
So where do Skitch and Penultimate come in?
Evernote says Penultimate will help with handwriting recognition, ok. I just don’t see the value in these acquisitions at all. A few others chimed in with thoughts on Evernote’s endgame too.
[Michael Schechter guesses](http://bettermess.com/a-guess-at-evernotes-end-game/):
>Evernote wants to be our external brain and our brain tends to capture a variety of media in a variety of ways. That doesn’t always lend itself to a single application. As it continues to evolve, I see a world where Evernote’s prime offering becomes less about capture more about storage and recall.
Schechter sees Evernote needing more apps to accomplish this goal, but [Gabe (ye, Macdrifter) points out](http://www.macdrifter.com/2012/05/evernote-acquisitions/) something I certainly feel:
>I’d like Evernote to stop buying sharing buttons and start buying Evernote enhancements.
I’m with Gabe on that one — even though I am not currently an Evernote user, I do try it from time to time because [it can be a powerful tool](http://nerdgap.com/landing/evernote-essentials/).
All of this brings me to the one glaring problem that I have always had with Evernote, and [it is noted by Viticci](http://ticci.org/wheres-evernote-going):
>If Evernote really wants to stay around for the next 100 years, they have to build a solid foundation of connected apps *now*.
Agreed, but more than that — they absolutely must make their tools excellent, because right now they only have good tools. There’s a big difference between good and excellent.
If Evernote truly wants to be the place that I “capture anything” then it has to make it seamless for me to do so. Every time I give Evernote a go, I get held up on the capture process — and it is a process.
Entering text should be as easy as it is in [Drafts](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/drafts/id502385074?mt=8) if Evernote truly wants me to use it as a capture tool. Until you reach that level you just have a tool that captures things, but in a cumbersome manner.
Evernote does a good job at “access anywhere”, but really they should have been the Dropbox in this category. If I was Evernote I would have squashed the Dropbox powered text editor movement on iOS by opening and pushing the Evernote engine as *the* sync engine. That’s truly access anywhere, because right now — truthfully — they are “access anywhere we have an app, and only in our apps”. Again, there’s an important difference here.
Lastly we have “find things fast”. I can’t comment very well on this because I don’t have enough data in the app, so let’s just say this is acceptable since I don’t remember having complaints about it — or hearing complaints.
Even if Evernote succeeds at “find things fast” I think it largely does just an average job at its first two goals. Which brings me back to my question: what’s their end game with these acquisitions?
How does Skitch and Penultimate tie in to make “capture” and “access” better? There are some obvious areas where these two help the capture aspect, but then why require users to download, install, and use multiple apps if the goal is “capture anything”?
Evernote, in my head, has always been billed as a tool of that nature of: “you only need this tool, it does everything.” In that sense Evernote is a lot like a Leatherman — very handy, but not the best at anything other than being really handy.
That’s not to say it doesn’t have its place — I own three Leatherman tools — but it is to say that what makes a Leatherman handy is that all the tools are in one package. What Evernote is doing is selling the Leatherman, but also saying there is a neat hammer and a neat drill that you can buy to go along with it — which makes the entire package a bit *less* handy.
Paul Ford:
>Facebook also has a CEO concerned about rivals usurping it. If you had a huge pile of data about websites and services that might pose a competitive threat and billions of dollars in cash at hand, what would you do? Right: You’d buy Instagram. And you’d be able to make a very informed decision without consulting anyone, because, well, math.
Great article.
Remember [this statement](http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/business-of-it/2012/04/25/apples-cook-i-hate-litigation-40155095/) by Apple CEO, Tim Cook:
>I’ve always hated litigation, and I continue to hate it
A lot of people took that to mean that perhaps Cook was more open to settling a lawsuit than Jobs was.
Here’s Florian Mueller, [today](http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/05/apple-and-samsung-drop-claims-against.html), quoting an Apple legal filing against Samsung:
>Samsung’s infringement of Apple’s intellectual property has already resulted in damages that reach billions of dollars. […] It is critical to Apple to start trial on July 30, to put an end to Samsung’s continuing infringement.
So, yes, perhaps Cook is willing to settle, but if this filing is any indication — the settlement amount and terms will be massive to Samsung.
Stephen Hackett in response to [my post](https://brooksreview.net/2012/05/greed-free-and-change/):
>Advertising-supported writing might leave a bad taste in some people’s mouths, but it’s been this way for a long time for a reason — because it works.
I’d argue it’s not working at all, as evidenced by the race to the bottom nature of advertising revenues, the exploration of pay-wall systems in big publishers to help pad advertising revenue (because ad revenue isn’t enough), the fact that more than a few blogs I know need the extra money from members to make writing work full-time, and the overall on-the-verge-of-bankruptcy nature of most news publications.
No, I don’t think advertising works any longer as the sole revenue stream.
It may not have failed, but it’s only a matter of time.
I bought this exact fan (refurb too) from Woot! last week for $99. It’s a great fan and works like a factory new fan — now I just need to find a reason to buy more of them (and I need to find the cash to do so).
It’s interesting that rather than comply, Twitter is now looking to “stand up” for this particular user. I think this is great, but I wonder how it will be held up in courts, either way as the ACLU’s Aden Fine points out, it is important:
>If Internet users cannot protect their own constitutional rights, the only hope is that Internet companies do so.
A great post from Henry Blodget that looks at the CEO side of Mark Zuckerberg, I particularly like this quote from a former executive at Facebook:
>“He is not a bad guy,” the executive says. “Maybe he’s not a good guy, but he’s not a bad guy.”
I don’t like it because it bashes Zuckerberg, so much as I like it because that’s the very real sense you get about Zuckerberg from this post.
An interesting new service that seeks to maintain permissions and controls on files once they have been shared. It’s not perfect, but I can see it being very handy in corporate settings that deal with sensitive files — or just files they don’t want the public to see.
One use case that I think is really interesting, as reported by Matthew Braga:
>Or, if your boss has a new version of the document to distribute, access to the old file can be revoked.
That feature alone could make a great tool for teams that are collaborating.
We all love reading on the web, it’s the greatest treasure trove of interestingness that we as humans have ever been given. We can get news, moments after it happened — often before the big news sites know about it. Or we can laugh all day at people doing incredibly stupid things.
We can read and watch inspiring content all year long without running dry.
But who is paying for it?
In a [popular article by the editor-in-chief of *Technology Review*, Jason Pontin lays out how this problem of free content arose](http://www.technologyreview.com/business/40319/#.T6fn_4Jf8dg.twitter):
>For publishers whose businesses evolved during the long day of print newspapers and magazines, the expansion of the Internet was tremendously disorienting. [The Internet taught readers](http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/pontin/23489/) they might read stories whenever they liked without charge, and it offered companies more efficient ways to advertise. Both parties spent less.
Publishers didn’t see a potential problem with going free and because of that, content creators on the web are paying for it.
The problem is further exacerbated by the fondness that publishers have with advertisements. They are everywhere on the web. But they are simply not the solution to the problem of paying the bills. They are a band aid that we have all been wearing for far too long.
I say this as someone who makes money from writing that is *solely* supported by advertisements.
The reason advertisements don’t work in the long run is because of the open nature of the web. It’s not hard to install a plugin that blocks ads (even easier if you buy a Mac given the fondness advertisers have for Flash based ads). ((New Macs don’t ship with Flash installed.))
Ads are likely not the future, or the answer, because as readers we have many, *many*, tools that allow us to ignore, gloss over, or outright remove ads from content. Even if an advertiser still registers a page view on their ad, when they stop seeing returns on their advertisements they will no longer desire to pay publishers. This is where the market is beginning to head — the race to the bottom.
### The Often Asked, Often Ignored, Question
The most frequent question I get, is also the one I most frequently ignore: are you planning on going “full-time”? By that readers simply want to know if and/or when I will start writing this site full-time.
The reality is that the landscape is so competitive and experiencing such a race to the bottom, that to go full-time is no easy task. I have much respect for those that have gone full-time with a site that was only a hobby before, but it is no easy task because its about so much more than ads, money, readers, or page views.
Ads in the sidebar simply don’t pay that well — which is why so many sites have more than one ad. RSS Sponsorships pay better, but are very difficult to fill unless you are a Tier One blog ((Think *The Loop* or *Daring Fireball*)) . And so back to the often asked, often ignored question, of when I will go full-time: when my income from writing matches or surpasses my income from my day job.
And thus, we have a problem, because as readers on the web we are conditioned to not have to pay with anything more than (sometimes) looking at advertising. But that’s wrong — it’s destructive — and it needs to change.
Contractors don’t build houses for free, just so long as you look at ads on your walls for the rest of your occupancy — they charge real money, because it takes real money to build a house. So too does it take real money to write a site like this.
To support writing this site full-time I need income to pay for many different things, not the least of which is paying *me*.
### The Way Forward
I could sit here all day and talk about why I think the current model is broken, but that solves nothing. I personally only see one way forward: asking readers to support you.
It’s the direct model, it’s old-fashioned, but it works. If blogs are no longer driven by page views, then we — as a whole — get better content ((This site included.)) , content we as readers deserve.
Because I personally don’t see what [Pontin saw back in 2009](http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/pontin/23489/) as being a web that I want:
>Editors can charge readers for content that is uniquely intelligent; that relies on proprietary data, investigation, or analysis; that helps readers with their jobs, investments, or personal consumption; or that is very expensively designed. Everything else should be available free, because it is news or opinion, which are commodities and must be offered up to the aggregators, social networks, and feeds. Such content can be monetized (to use the ugly jargon of our industry) only through traffic, which drives ad impressions. Here, although the quality of the editorial should meet the minimal standards of a publication, editors shouldn’t invest too much time or money: good enough is best.
We see this model now, it’s the jackasstic type of writing that propelled Mike Daisey to fame, keeps The Macalope from running out of content to mock day in and day out.
When the metric for how much money you will make writing on the web becomes how much traffic you can drive, then the metric for the level of quality and truth needed in your writing is severely diminished.
*This* is not the web I want.
I can see a future where the readers of the web find the writers that they love to read and decide that it is worth supporting those writers so that they may continue their craft. It’s not utopia, it’s not impractical — it’s just hard to see through the dust cloud that has been formed by a stampede rush to the free content — a model that was created by the very companies that are now on the verge of bankruptcy because of it. Expectations were set, and unfortunately for us all, they were the wrong expectations.
I’ve long held contempt for free, and while ads are not free — they are also positioned in an incredibly competitive landscape with many people willing to take much less money for the same work — until of course they realize they should be paid more, by which time someone else will be willing to be paid less.
That’s a nasty cycle.
There is a place for ads on the web, but it should no longer be the default revenue model.
As content creators on the web, we need to decide who we, individually, want to pay us.
When I stop to think about asking a reader to pay me directly, I often worry that such an ask comes across as greedy.
However, when *you* stop to think about it, is it that I am being greedy for asking you to support my content — my writing — or is it that society has condition web users to be greedy by asking — no demanding — that content on the web be free for all?
A race to the bottom is occurring, yet I don’t want to stop writing, but I also am not willing to write for free.
[As a wise duo once said](http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/I-Can’t-Go-For-That-No-Can-Do-lyrics-Hall-Oates/CE1E9808A7434E5748256A92001193CD):
“I can’t go for that, no”
“No can do”
*Note from Ben: this is my account, that Smile asked me to share in lieu of normal RSS sponsorship text.*
I had a stack of a hundred of pages of paper. Nothing too important, but everything important enough that it needed to be kept. I could scan it all, but that gives me a bunch of files that needed renaming and sorting. So I worked up a little foo.
All scans go into a folder called OCR from my ScanSnap, that part was easy enough.
From there, this [handy AppleScript from David Sparks](http://www.macsparky.com/blog/2009/5/24/pdfpen-ocr-folder-action-script.html) does the heavy lifting. The Script opens each PDF in PDFpen and does OCR on the document, then saves the file back. Now that my document is fully searchable I don’t need to worry about sorting or naming.
From there, Hazel moves the PDF into my PDF archive folder.
All of this is done without me touching a thing. It’s like magic and I doubt I will ever run into a build up of paper again.
I use PDFpen daily, it’s the default PDF application on my Mac. It’s a great app, add to it the iCloud sync with the iPad version of the app (which I really love), and you can begin to get a clear picture of how I keep minimal paper in my office.
PDFpen is $60, PDFpenPro (which I use) is $100. As a reader of The Brooks Review Smile on my Mac is offering you a special code: [*$15 off* PDFpen or PDFpenPro](http://sites.fastspring.com/smile/product/pdfpen5new?coupon=TBR0512). That means that you can buy PDFpen (or PDFpenPro) and PDFpen for the iPad, for the same price that non-TBR readers would pay for just PDFpen. *(Expires May 15, 2012. Does not apply to upgrades.)*
These two apps are essential to my daily workflow.
What does it say about the U.S. political system that Franken seems to be the most level headed and “on the voters side” of any politician — he who started his career writing for SNL?
I think it says just about everything, both the good and the bad of the system.