Year: 2013

[Kevin Fanning, writing about failure and passion](http://kfan.tumblr.com/post/45910246222/ok-by-now-youve-seen-this-article-in-the-onion):

>Maybe the self-obsessed celebrity artist culture isn’t that helpful or useful. Maybe eventually we get to a place where we see that books and music and art are created by us, people who have school and day jobs and other shit we care about.

I encourage you to read this post, especially if you are feeling like you have failed to find your calling. Fanning is spot on.

I work a lot, more so now than ever in life. I’ve never thought, or felt particularly successful in a general sense — more often I feel like am failing or close to failing in some aspect of my life…

Being in an industry that is entrenched in Windows based software means that I am constantly looking for a solution that is both robust and not terrible looking. We chose Yardi’s Genesis software for our property management needs because it was the only offering that offered everything we needed and did so without cutting corners.

Unfortunately Yardi is stuck in the dark ages of local servers and Windows 95 — seriously — and makes Excel look like cutting edge UI design.

This means that I routinely search around the web to see if other software offerings have caught up, or surpassed what we use. Usually I end the day having tried a few other pieces of software and finding nothing remotely close.

Today I needed some work-order software that was web-based, and I ran into something I see often: “request a demo” links.

Could there be anything more hostile towards new users than refusing to give pricing, screenshots, videos, or access to a demo site?

I came up with a new rule today: If your site won’t give me pricing and a view of your product without me having to give you my contact info — in other words if you are saying “fuck you” to me — then, well, fuck you too.

*I’m wrong a lot.

Uncharacteristically, I didn’t order an iPad mini when it came out. Truthfully, as I’ve said many times, I really didn’t want a device without a retina display. For most of the last year I have primarily used my iPad for reading and writing — not much else.

For most of 2013 I’ve been toting my iPad everywhere with me and using it for a ton of things, including handwriting notes, looking up building plans, and so on. This small shift has become immensely annoying because I find the iPad only useful if I carry it in my hand, so that it’s available immediately when I need to use it. But hand-carrying the iPad is very frustrating at times, because:

1. The iPad is too heavy to carry around for a few hours in your hand everyday.
2. It requires an entire hand and arm to carry, making other tasks difficult. (Fumble for keys, shake hands while holding a coffee, take a piss, etc.)
3. It’s very difficult to use an iPad while standing unless you have something to rest the iPad on. Writing in Mail, or writing by hand in Notability is doable without support, but not fun, or realistic for more than a minute or two.

About the twentieth time I precariously balanced my iPad on a ledge while I fumbled for some keys I realized that I should consider an iPad mini. Luckily, Stephen Hackett was selling his (and it was setup how I would buy one), only less expensive than a new one. So I picked up Stephen’s iPad mini and have now been using it long enough to draw some conclusions.

## The Mini

The iPad mini, like the first iPad and the first iPhone before it, is one of those devices that feels almost impossible. It’s *too* snappy, its battery life lasts *too* long, and does *too much* to be *this small*. It seems to defy logic.

In my week-plus with the iPad mini, here’s what I’ve found (in no particular order):

– I like the size a lot, but not for typing — the full-size iPad on-screen keyboard is still a much better keyboard for writing.
– But you can actually use the device without having to rest it. It’s easy for me to palm the iPad and draw with a Cosmonaut, or use my thumbs to tap out a quick email reply.
– I really, really, miss the retina display. I’m not bothered under most tasks, but Notability looks much worse when you are writing, as does any activity where you might want to read for long periods. This is a shame, because the iPad mini truly is ideal for reading.
– The one thing that really drives me nuts though: the passcode unlock on the iPad mini. It’s scaled down, like everything else, to accommodate the smaller footprint, but it really shouldn’t be. There is no reason for that display to be smaller, when the full-size passcode screen from the iPad would fit. I’m not sure the true reasoning behind this, but it’s not a user friendly thing on the mini.
– I’ve yet to get used to the smaller bezel along the sides. Which has led to many accidental page turns in iBooks.

## Overall

The iPad mini, as many have been saying for months, is truly a fantastic iPad. I can see, that for the majority of people, it *is* the ideal iPad size. The only things I wanted a larger display for were games and writing. Everything else is better done on the iPad mini. If you toss in a retina display, then I can’t think of a reason to buy a full-size iPad at all.

Using an iPad mini was like switching from a 17″ MacBook Pro to an 11″ MacBook Air — all of a sudden you can use the device in far more places than you ever thought possible and still do almost everything you wanted to do on it. I can fumble for keys and easily find a safe place to tuck the mini — often in my jacket pocket or jeans back pocket — or do countless other things that would have me stumbling over the size of the iPad.

The utility of this size iPad is damned hard to dispute. I think the computer setup I have right now is very close to ideal:

– 15″ retina MacBook Pro at work, only travels between my home and office.
– iPad 3 for traveling.
– iPad mini for roaming about during the day (which I do a lot of).
– iPhone 5 as my go-everywhere device.

The iPad mini isn’t like the iPod mini, it’s more like the 11″ MacBook Air to the 13″ MacBook Air. Both are equally useable, but the size of the smaller version is often all you need, and more often a better fit.

### Quick Note About the Smart Cover

Since the iPad mini is smaller, the smart cover can’t quite roll completely into a triangle for use. It still does make a little triangle stand, but it’s not as good of a stand as on the full-sized iPad. A minor point, but one I hadn’t considered before using it.

[Jean-Louis Gassée](http://www.mondaynote.com/2013/03/17/apple-is-losing-the-war-of-words/):

> Why were Samsung’s mean-spirited ads seen as fun and creative, while Schiller’s slight misstep is called “defensive”?

And:

> Because of its position at the top, Apple should have the grace to not trash its competitors, especially when the digs are humorless and further weakened by error.

Gassee’s article is getting a lot of mentions today. When I read it, I stopped after I saw those two stupid statements one after another. ((I finished reading it before posting about it here though.)) Gassee’s off the mark.

The Samsung ads aren’t “fun and creative” and to state that they are shows how far out of his mind he is, but the second remark is just plain stupid. Why exactly should Apple have more grace? How exactly is Apple to compete with any other company if they must play by a different, more limiting, set of rules?

“I’m sorry, Mr. President, only the challenging politicians are allowed to use attack ads. You’ll have to exercise more grace.”

Of all the things I love about Dropbox—incredibly seamless integration with OS X and Windows; automated back up and revision history; access to my files on multiple devices, wherever I am; sharing photos with my parents through the free account I set up for them—there is one I value the most: that every year Dropbox charges me $99 to use their service.

When Gmail launched in 2004, it [invited 1,000 people][1] they felt were influencers. They allowed these influencers to invite a limited number of their friends and family to the service, and continued to increase the invitation limit until eventually a market that had had enough time to build to the point where invitations were being sold for $100 each [collapsed][2].

While Google was slowly scaling its product, it continued to improve one of its key offerings: [an unheard of storage limit][5]. Initially 25× their competitors’ storage capacities, the number continued to increase until it had decupled.

Today, few people worry about sending the photos they shot on their DSLR to their grandparents. One email can contain multiple Photoshop documents, rather than multiple emails containing single Photoshop documents. Documents can be retrieved years after they were received.

Google changed the way email works in the world. I no longer approach email the same way I did seven years ago. But, I’m uncomfortable. I don’t pay for Gmail. And while—unlike [some products][6] as of late—I do not fear it will be shut down any time soon, I do not like who holds the power in this relationship. I agreed to Gmail’s Terms of Service, and like everyone else I am sure, I did not like what I read.¹

My point is, Google has all of the control. Should they decide their product would benefit its customers by providing, say, more personal information gleaned from my daily correspondences, that is what they will do. I, too, receive benefit from this relationship. But I do not have control over what the cost of that benefit will be.

[Mailbox][3] is interesting. No, [I’m not using it][4], but I sure get why people are. The approach it takes is so human. I can imagine my brother and sister, two prototypical computer users, getting a lot of benefit from using Mailbox.

Today, Mailbox holds little appeal to me. This is because I don’t need a new front-end for my email. I need a new back-end.

To me, the most interesting element of Mailbox’s current offering is its server. Sure, right now it is simply facilitating the sorting of email, but imagine if it became smart. If it could read my email and perform actions based on its understanding of my behaviours, turning the way I naturally approach my email into my very own digital secretary. If it interfaced with other services I use, preventing me from missing that email regarding a task I have in my task management tool, or forwarding the address to a party I was invited to on Facebook to my Google Maps iPhone app.

And that’s before Dropbox enters the equation; with the ability to store all of my photo attachments in my Photos folder, backed up on Dropbox’s servers and available in gallery form to anyone I share them with. Or referencing a document saved in Dropbox rather than adding a file attachment, tracking its changes and backing up each revision. Or sharing a file larger than any other email service could pass through its servers.

Dropbox gives its users 2 GB of free storage. That is certainly more than most email users today need to archive all of their email attachments. Combining that 2 GB of file storage capacity with a full-fledged cloud-based email service would attract a lot of casual users. Dropbox has established its own referral/invitation strategy, which benefits all three parties involved in the transaction. Implementing the same strategy to a product as compelling as *ad-free email* could surely drive their growth over the next few years, if not longer.

And then, of course, we come to the most exciting part. Dropbox would charge for it. In my mind, it would make sense to simply add the email service to their existing pricing tiers in an effort to improve their overall product. Adding lower tiers, more consumer-friendly tiers, could convert many free-mail users into paying email customers.

I could see my parents paying for it.

And I would be comfortable, knowing that Dropbox—a company I pay money to host, sync, and back up my files *and* emails—would not want to fuck up and lose me as a customer.

1. Of course I didn’t actually read it. Come on, now. ↩

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Gmail#Extended_beta_phase
[2]: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2004/06/63786
[3]: http://www.mailboxapp.com
[4]: https://brooksreview.net/2013/02/emails-broke-yo/
[5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail#Storage
[6]: https://brooksreview.net/2013/03/billlllllllions/

[Peter Matthaei has penned a response to](http://mobivangelist.com/post/45363132528/why-ben-brooks-is-totally-wrong-about-the-reader) [my post](https://brooksreview.net/2013/03/billlllllllions/) about the Reader shut down. I wanted to dissect his argument a bit, because it is very much on the exact opposite side of the spectrum from my argument.

Matthaei:

> The truth is, user-RSS is slowly dying. While I, and many of my friends, are true info-addicts who love the river-of-information approach of cross-device synchronised RSS feeds, news consumption is shifting to apps like Flipboard and Zite, and powered and filtered by social sharing.

I’d ask for the proof here. Where are the numbers, the graph, that shows that RSS is dwindling? *[Daring Fireball](http://daringfireball.net)* boasts “over 400,000” RSS readers — and that’s a number that hasn’t changed in a while, but also a number that has *never* decreased. This site’s non-paid RSS readership still *grows* every month.

Is RSS a nerd tool? Yes.

Does that mean that its growth is stagnant by default? No.

Let’s get some proof to back up the claim that RSS usage is almost dead.

> It’s not about free versus paid, and how that fits or doesn’t fit with Google’s business model. It’s about the reality that even if (or especially if) a company has tens of thousands of employees, it needs to focus on where the puck is going.

I agree, but that’s not the whole picture.

> The reason Google is shutting Reader down is the same reason Apple is slowly but surely sunsetting the Mac Pro range. (And Mac Pros are priced, if I may remind Ben, at the extreme opposite of free.)

What the fuck? We are now going to make the leap from RSS to desktop computing? We have concrete proof that desktop computing is a decreasing business from a multitude of sources. Further, you simply cannot equate one with the other. You buy a Mac Pro because you need one for work, you use RSS because you *want* to keep up with sites you like.

Apple is ignoring the Mac Pro (which is still sold, mind you) because despite charging for it, the profit potential isn’t there. Google is shutting down Reader instead of even trying to charge for it — maybe it would break even, or make some money if they stopped ignoring it — who knows.

> Contrary to Ben’s argument, Google isn’t just willy-nilly dabbling in Maps and keeping it alive for free because it can do so because of a formidable user base. Google maintains and grows Maps because it directly and tightly fits into Google’s re-invigorated mission of improving people’s lives through relevant information.

My point wasn’t that Google Maps just has a large user base, but that it is a strategic tool that also, wait for it, shows you ads. Huh, they make money off of Maps from Ads and aren’t considering shutting it down — imagine that.

> So if Glass is Google’s unified vision of the future, there really isn’t a place for an antiquated service like an RSS reader in Google’s ecosystem. […]
> And as anybody who has worked at a company with more than a hundred employees can attest: it’s not about how many developers you can spare working on cool but ultimately doomed side-projects but how well the entire company is pulling towards one concrete vision of the future.

Not true. As anybody who has ever run a company can attest it’s not about what you do, but how much money you make doing it. Let’s not forget that Google is publicly traded and has a fiduciary duty to the shareholders to make money. Giving away Reader for free didn’t work, vision or no vision and instead of trying to make it a profit center Google shit-canned it.

If Reader made money, or just broke even, then there’d be no reason to get rid of Reader — again, vision or no vision.

> Srsly ppl, the whole cynical “Google cares about nothing but serving you ads” meme amongst sections of the tech elite is starting to wear thin.

The sad fact is that the evidence points to the fact that showing Ads is what Google cares about, the proof to the contrary simply isn’t compelling and is sparse.

[Two years ago I wrote](https://brooksreview.net/2011/03/fragility-free/):

> Sticking with Gmail for another example, imagine if Google decided that Gmail was a money loser and that it was to be shut down. Doesn’t matter what you offer to pay, in a week it’s gone.

> This happens with free software and services, sometimes with paid services (but that is far less likely). Sometimes the funding for free just runs out — perhaps it was just someones hobby, a hobby that you depended on — doesn’t matter because it is gone now.

I received tons of email telling me there was no way that Twitter or Gmail would *ever* shut down. I still stand behind what I said, I didn’t need the news today of Google Reader being shut down to know that my long and expensive move to pay for everything I use is, was, and will be the right decision.

Free is fickle, free is fragile, and now tons of users and developers are paying the price for relying on a free service.

***

The more interesting part about this move from Google is not that they prove my theory, but that they’ve now shown their hand to all of us. Google can no longer afford, or is no longer willing, to give shit away for free with no monetization in sight.

What does that mean for:

– Third party access to Gmail?
– Google Maps
– Android
– Chrome
– Chrome OS
– Google Translate
– And on and on.

Google has built a cult-like following around the idea that you can use what they provide for *free*. Now Google is telling us that if the following isn’t great enough, or the project not lucrative enough, they’ll abandon it and consider it a favor to you if they give you a three month heads up.

*Nice*.

To think that this was Google’s only option though is shortsighted. It wouldn’t have been hard for Google to make the API to access Reader a paid service, where developers paid X percent of their sales for access to the API, and Google makes the API an officially supported part of Reader. That would have been easy for Google, but Google chose to shut down the service instead.

Why?

I think the why is self-evident. The why is that Google doesn’t want to make anyone spend cash for their services (there are exceptions to this). So if faced with charging for Reader or shutting down Reader, shutting down Reader fits the Google mantra better than the former.

That’s scary to think about.

How much does Google make off of Gmail? Is it enough to support the ever growing service? Because if the past is any indication of the future, Google would rather shut down Gmail than let you give them your money to use it.

[Alan Green announcing the “sun setting” of Google Reader](http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2013/03/powering-down-google-reader.html):

> There are two simple reasons for this: usage of Google Reader has declined, and as a company we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience.

That’s a crock of shit. The real problem is that you can’t monetize Google Reader when no one actually goes to the web interface.

I personally use [Fever](http://feedafever.com/) and highly recommend it if you have your own web server.

If you don’t, [NewsBlur](http://newsblur.com/) is probably your best option.

If you are a developer who makes a living off of selling an app that re-packages Google Reader, this is a huge blow, but you had to see it coming. Reeder for iPhone syncs with Fever, and I have to believe that is not a coincidence.

The level-headed [Dr. Drang on daylight savings time](http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-like-dst/) and studies that seek to prove the waste of DST:

>Second, do these “studies” ever look into the productivity of people who can’t get a good night’s sleep from May through July because the sun streams into their bedroom at an ungodly hour and the birds start singing outside their window at three-fucking-thirty in the morning? No, they do not.

Dr. Drang makes some fantastic points in favor of DST, but I still can’t get on board with the notion that *we* should have DST. Even though it would mean sunrise at an [ungodly 4:18a](http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneYear.php) here in June, that seems like a small tradeoff for fucking with my internal clock.

Drang’s solution is for better programming to make the transition easier, but what about easing into the transition. If we take into account that we, in fact, have most of our clocks internet connected then shouldn’t we be able to slowly shift time every month so that 6:00a (or whatever time) always aligns with sunrise?

Now, unless every clock everywhere was internet connected, this would be a horrible experience. ((That’s an understatement.)) And so would shifting by fifteen minutes every Saturday night for a month, but there *are* other options rather than a twice a year hour reset.

At least I think it is worth exploring and debating those options, so [I signed the petition](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/eliminate-bi-annual-time-change-caused-daylight-savings-time/ShChxpKh).

One of the things I used to love about doing all of my writing in TextMate was publishing directly to this site using the “blogging” bundle. iA Writer is a better writing app than TextMate, so the tradeoff when I switched seemed fair, but I still get annoyed every time I copy and paste the latest post into MarsEdit.

This is further complicated by linked-list style posting: When I did *Daring Fireball* style linked lists, with one-line comments, it was easy to quickly post a link with a pull-quote by hitting `CMD+1`. That shortcut dumped all the data I grabbed into MarsEdit. But it sucks for my Kottke-style links where I try to write a bit more — often not in the same sitting.

Bottom line: My most irritating workflow problem *used to be* the amount of copying and pasting going on just to post something to this site.

That’s now changed.

## The Research

The biggest stumbling block was getting the text to WordPress from Writer. I found ways to do it via PHP, Python, and a command line interface — but none of these were solutions that I could figure out, or wanted use. Additionally these solutions require detailed documentation to reinstall, should I start on a fresh computer. ((This is something I have recently done, so I’m a bit sensitive to it.))

I wanted something easier. Actually I wanted an AppleScript that would send the post, but I’ve yet to figure that out.

MarsEdit was out of the running due to it having categories under check boxes that I can’t easily set using the keyboard.

Welcome back TextMate, old friend.

## The Macro

You can see the macro on the side there. It’s not overly complicated, just lots of actions.

Here’s what the macro does (simplified):

1. Grabs the title, which it places at the top of the post, prefixed with a `#` and followed by a carriage return.
2. Grabs the body text.
3. Asks me for metadata.
4. Opens a new TextMate document and dumps all that information in, formatted for the TextMate blogging bundle.
5. Waits for me to publish the post (so I can check everything looks correct).
6. When I hit the shortcut to publish in TextMate, the post publishes. The changes to the Writer file are reverted and saved, then the windows for all the programs used are closed.

Pretty simple.

Another thing I wanted was to set the scheduled publish date, which meant adding a field in TextMate containing a correctly formatted date string. I used a TextExpander snippet to speed things up (`;bdate`).

*(Here’s the detail view of some of the actions that you may find useful. [Pause action](https://f3a98a5aca88d28ed629-2f664c0697d743fb9a738111ab4002bd.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/pause-km.JPG). [Meta data questionnaire](https://f3a98a5aca88d28ed629-2f664c0697d743fb9a738111ab4002bd.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/meta-data.JPG). [Text insertion to TextMate](https://f3a98a5aca88d28ed629-2f664c0697d743fb9a738111ab4002bd.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/insert-txt-km.JPG).)*

## End Result

Now I can publish from iA Writer via a series of simple actions, triggered by a single keystroke.

Because I install this macro’s only dependencies — Writer and TextMate — on every Mac I own, the solution is simple to reinstall and portable.

You can download the macro [here](https://f3a98a5aca88d28ed629-2f664c0697d743fb9a738111ab4002bd.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/Blog%20Post%20to%20WordPress.kmmacros.zip).