Ken Rockwell on Amazon's rather controversial new patent related to photography:
Amazon was just granted US patent 8,676,045 for a very clever and particular way to arrange a raised Plexiglas platform, lights and backdrop to give instant in-camera images with a 100% white background and a slight reflection below the subject, all with no postprocessing (like Photoshop) needed to make the platform blend into the background.
Clever, and it's funny to see how many other sites reported this wrong.
Fantastic new iOS photo editor which can correct for distortions. Must have for photos of things with straight lines where you care about keep those lines straight.
Dylan Matthews pulls no punches here:
It's worth remembering that the inconvenience and injustice of the TSA's activities exists for literally no reason. If the agency's privacy violations and annoying carry-on regulations were merely the price we paid for reducing the incidence of terrorist attacks, that'd be one thing. But, as security expert Bruce Schneier likes to note, there's no evidence that the TSA has ever prevented a terrorist attack, and there's some research suggesting it could serve to increase non-airborne terrorist attacks. Airline security is, so far as we can tell, totally useless.
I broke my rule today of not backing anything on KickStarter in order to pre-order this book from Dave Powell. He's one of my favorite photographers right now and the thought going into this book is likely to make it very special. Only a few days left to back it. (His site is worth following too.)
So I tweaked it, the result of which is a script that grabs the selected task in OmniFocus and creates a Mail.app message based off the data.
The URLs for downloading the script are now repaired, and I doubled checked it still works in OmniFocus 2. I haven’t used it in ages, but if you work with people that use OmniFocus, then this is as close to ‘collaboration’ as you can get with OmniFocus.
Matthew Ingram on why big companies are dangerous:
Google, Facebook and Amazon have shown us again this week why the combination of a quasi-monopoly, vested interests and an inscrutable algorithm can be a dangerous thing for internet users, since it allows them to influence what we see, know and buy
Good post.
Earlier this week I pushed an update to the design of this site. Visually not a lot has change, but I reworked a bunch of little things. Notably I changed how the site displays the post metadata.
I was never happy with this part of the design before so I’ve been rethinking it. Now you see the post type (e.g. Quote of the Day, Linked, Article) at the top followed by the author (if necessary), reading time (for articles), and date. I really like how this looks — though some tweaks to the space between the metadata and the post title is needed.
Also, if you are wondering, the date serves as the permalink if you need it for quotes and linked items.
In the footer I added a popular post widget and some links to other stuff I am up to. The goal there is just to consolidate my presence and hopefully show some trending stuff — no matter how old the post is. (That home screen organization post is always a top post for some reason, I love it and it may be the geekiest thing I do. I also have an update coming in that front.)
The biggest design change happened on the single post view. Here I added a bunch of, well, crap. This site has been suffering from declining visitors, and declining revenue, and say what you want about it being about the “content” — sometimes you also need to get the word out. That’s my goal. I’m not married to having social buttons, and related post links, BUT thus far these items have tripled incoming social referrers.
So, yeah.
Oh, and I quite like the related posts deal from Jetpack ((A real bitch to style.)) , it’s fun for me to see other posts on a topic. Really fun actually. So whether it helps with traffic or not, I’m keeping it for my own enjoyment.
Let me know what you think of these minor changes and remember this site’s design is always a work in progress. This latest update takes me to my sixth version — or sixth version that I feel wants a version number increase.
Derek Thompson, refuting the aforelinked New Yorker article:
There is little evidence that America, as a country, is working more. Many of us—perhaps most of us—enjoy downtime that would look luxurious to a mid-century time-traveler.
Elizabeth Kolbert:
A second theory that Schulte considers is that “the overwhelm” is a function not so much of how many things Americans have to do but of how much time they spend thinking about how many things they have to do. A doctor who’s running through the list of groceries she needs to pick up on the way home is not actually any busier than one who’s concentrating on the task at hand, but she may feel more beleaguered. Conversely, a lawyer playing with his kids is technically at leisure, but if all the while he’s checking his phone for texts from the office he may feel that he hasn’t had any time off. Schulte terms this the “mental tape-loop phenomenon,” and she argues that it’s sapping our precious energies, so that we can’t even “decide what to think about, worrying about home stuff at work and work stuff at home.”
Jason Kotkke on Amazon’s latest bullshit:
No question about it: this sucks on Amazon’s part and demonstrates the degree to which the company’s top priority isn’t customer service. Better customer service in this case would be to offer these books for sale.
David Sparks on what I think is the most powerful, and underutilized feature of OmniFocus:
Conversely, I rarely use due dates on tasks unless they truly are something with a deadline. Arbitrarily assigning due dates to tasks means that you’re going to be getting lots of alarms for missing due dates on tasks that really aren’t overdue. Eventually you’ll start ignoring the alarms entirely and then you’ll miss a deadline on something that is important. Use your due dates sparingly and make them count.
Start dates, or defer dates as they are now called, are so powerful. Get yourself into the habit of thinking about time spans instead of due dates. Yes, paying your pills needs to be done by the 5th, but it could also be done anytime between the 1st and the 5th. So defer it to the 1st, and make it due the 5th. Then you can see it and maybe act on the action before it becomes urgent.
I am forever grateful to Mr. Sparks for showing me the light on that one.
From Mark Wilson’s interview with Mark Kawano, former Apple designer, has this nugget:
You see companies that have poached Apple designers, and they come up with sexy interfaces or something interesting, but it doesn’t necessarily move the needle for their business or their product. That’s because all the designer did was work on an interface piece, but to have a really well-designed product in the way Steve would say, this ‘holistic’ thing, is everything. It’s not just the interface piece. It’s designing the right business model into it. Designing the right marketing and the copy, and the way to distribute it. All of those pieces are critical.
It’s all too often overlooked that design is more than just the way something looks. Designing a good product is to design a product that is well thought out and consistent through all parts of the product. The business model, the name, the looks, the colors, the target market, etc — every piece matters.
Neat use of Keyboard Maestro, alas I cannot try it as it requires you to use the OmniSync Server (if I am reading it right) — and I am far too paranoid to do that.
Tim Bajarin:
Now, I realize this statement is pure marketing hype and the reality of the Surface Pro 3 replacing all the demand for laptops is absurd. But the message overall that the Surface Pro 3 could replace laptops is going to resonate with many in the enterprise. If Microsoft pushes this message too hard even consumers may start to think this new form factor is a laptop instead of what it really is — a tablet with a keyboard.
I can't get this same thought out of my head. employees may want this and not know it won't (likely) be a good laptop replacement and IT managers will see it as a way to save on costs (laptop + iPad).
Federico Viticci:
The new design modernizes the app, but I feel like usability and legibility have been sacrificed for good looks in some areas of the interface. I'm skeptical about the decision to separate action titles from the checkcircles, and long lists of actions can be difficult to scan quickly. This appears to be a problem in common with many other designs inspired by iOS 7, and I would like The Omni Group to tweak some of their decisions and offer user-configurable settings.
Agreed.
Ben Thompson has a piece up today with his reasoning for killing off the Surface, and even though I disagree with him — I also largely don’t give a shit what Microsoft does with the Surface — far more interesting to me is why Windows 8 failed so miserably.
Windows 8 seemed like everything users wanted, but yet, nope. I’ve been thinking on this for a few days now and I have a theory: Windows 8 failed because of the Windows third party developers. And while I hate to pin the blame there, I do think a large part of the blame should be heaped on them.
When you look at a Mac, or iOS app, you can usually tell that it is a Mac or iOS app. You may not know for sure, but there are telltale signs — and while many of these apps look completely different, you can still tell.
That’s because users of Apple platforms have no tolerance for shitty design.
Windows, on the other hand, has always been chockfull of shitty design. Some of the software that companies rely on the most still looks like they did twenty years ago. And therein lies a major problem.
Windows cannot advance its design and feature set unless it also pushes it developers to do so too.
Imagine a world where Windows 8 launched the same as it is today, but that the top 100(0) Windows apps also launched with fully redesigned UIs to match windows 8 and a touch interface to boot.
Imagine where the Surface and Windows 8 would be today had that happened. It would have been a gold rush if you ask me. Forget the failings of Windows 8, or why you might not use it, and look strictly at what most people use: shitty Windows.
Windows 8 is less shitty looking ((I have a theory that many employees don’t want better software, because then they have less excuses as to why work is done.)) , but imagine if the software that only ran on Windows 8 was substantially less shitty looking. Man would employees be clamoring to get to use that.
In other words, to put this in terms you can relate to, Windows pre-8 was like the iPhone pre retina display, Windows 8 is like iPhone with retina display, larger screen, and iOS 7 all at once. Now imagine barely any apps updated for all three of those issues — you’d hate the iPhone if that were the case because it would be unusable garbage.
The iPhone only made those leaps because developers invested the time to make those leaps. So far, it doesn’t look like the same is happening with Windows developers, and that is a major issue.
Shawn Blanc:
Every one of the design changes in OmniFocus 2 for Mac is an improvement on an app that has been desperate for a visual overhaul for years. The visual overhaul has been worth the wait.
I don't know if I'd go that far, but it is substantially better.
Recently I was printing out a bunch of photos to update pictures around our home. One of them I printed out to replace a photo we had been using in the same frame for the past five years — that pictures resides in our entry. The new picture seemed brighter, it looked better, and I liked it, so I thought it would be a nice change of pace form the black and white image that hung by our entry.
I made a snap decision to print the photo on water color paper, and when it was done I was blown away by how great it looks. The photo is now hanging in our entry way, and I stop and look at it every time I pass. I don’t really like this type of gloating, but this image — when printed — makes me exceedingly happy when I look at it. In fact quite a few visitors to our home have remarked on it, which bring us to this post.
I’d like to offer this image for sale as a limited edition print. I am offering two sizes printed and signed by me on water color paper (this paper) on my Canon PIXMA PRO 9500 mkII. The pricing and sizing is as follows:
The limited edition factor is not quantity based — though I will write the print number on each image with my signature — it’s limited edition because I will guarantee this will be the only time I offer this image for sale on water color paper. The water color paper gives this image a very lovely feel to it, less ‘printed photo’ and more art.
This site is directly supported by you the readers and members, and right now it just breaks even. The goal of this print sale is to raise money for the purchase of items to review. What items, you might ask? I have a long list and once I figure out how much money all of this raises I will be putting those items to a vote. You tell me what you want to see reviewed.
Shipping is hard. Shipping costs $10 for US, and $20 outside of the US. All prints will be handled with cotton gloves and will be packaged with extreme care.
To order, head here. Sale ends June 6th, 2014.
Note about shipping times: I will be shipping on a continual basis. I hope to have prints shipped within 14 days of ordering.
