Category: Articles

[Alan Henry][1]:

> In a blog post today, Twitter announced that they’re “experimenting with new ways of targeting ads,” which is their way of saying they’re planning to track you around the web—even when you leave Twitter—and relay that information to advertisers to craft better ads. Here’s how to opt out.

Just another pain in the ass step you have to take, with no assurances they are being honest about those checkboxes, all to use a service for *free*. Yay.

[1]: http://lifehacker.com/twitter-wants-to-start-tracking-you-on-the-web-heres-661569459?utm_source=recirculation&utm_medium=recirculation&utm_campaign=afternoon

There’s a ton of apps that I have been playing with, but that I simply won’t have the time to write up full thoughts on. Here’s a few that I really want to mention to you.

## Sunstroke 1.5

Anthony Drendel launched version 1.5 of his fantastic Fever° client, [Sunstroke][1]. The biggest change to this version is the UI — as it has been refreshed and looks quite nice. This is an app I am keeping a close eye on to see how it is adapted to iOS 7.

[Drendel wrote up his thoughts][2] on the change here, worth a read if you are interested in the back story of apps.

## First Years

This is a [neat little app][3], like the Everyday app, for snapping photos. Except instead of snapping photos of yourself, you get a much cuter target: your child. It’s a neat app, but I’m not sure how long the habit will last — or the value of using it over something like Day One.

## Dispatch

[This might be][4] the first third-party email client for iOS that sticks — hell not just for iOS, for any computing platform. I like the snippets, I like the design. I like the Instapaper and OmniFocus integration and many many other things. I *just* started using it, expect more later, but I am happy with it so far. ((It doesn’t hurt that it feels very iOS 7 too.))

## Supr — Slim

That rubber band KickStarter wallet, no link provided on purpose? Been using it for a while, sucks balls. Just thought I’d get that out there.

[1]: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id488564806
[2]: http://anthonydrendel.com/blog/2013/6/22/sunstroke-past-and-present.html
[3]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/first-years/id545230312?mt=8
[4]: http://www.dispatchapp.net

[Some good rules to email by][1]:

> You don’t need to reply to every email, especially not those that are themselves clear responses. An email saying “Thanks for your note. I’m in.” does not need you to reply “Great.” That just cost someone another 30 seconds.

[1]: http://emailcharter.org/index.html

[Fascinating post from David Pell][1], talking about how digital photography (among other things) is potentially (read: likely) changing the way we remember ourselves:

> Snapping and sharing photos from meaningful events is nothing new. But the frequency with which we take pictures and the immediacy with which we view them will clearly have a deep impact on the way we remember.

I distinctly remember *not* seeing many pictures of myself when I was a kid. I know there are a ton of them out there, I have albums full from my parents and grandparents, but I don’t ever remember *looking* at them. I really wonder what the long term effect will be, or if there is a long term effect of this immediacy with which kids view photos.

It’s also interesting to me that, perhaps because of the time I grew up, I don’t feel an immediate need to review photos. I often snap pictures on my iPhone, and then put my phone away. No editing, not reviewing, just snap-snap, and go about my day.

[1]: https://medium.com/click-the-shutter/d76bf316c4dc

Today the United States celebrates Independence Day. We celebrate our freedom by exploding small dangerous things with our kids — there is no better holiday.

This year feels a bit bittersweet to me.

I don’t blame the NSA, CIA, or any of the government contractors for the massive privacy invasions revealed through Edward Snowden — in my opinion these agencies were doing their jobs and operating inside the law — or so they are/were told by those that hired them (the ones that make the law). That’s not criminal in my book.

Lying in front of Congress is a different story, but the directors of these agencies are politicians installed by the White House — they aren’t the people following orders of the powers that be, slaving to protect a nation they so very much believe in.

I blame the politicians. I blame Congress for not investigating when they should have. I blame President Obama for not living up to the message that he sold the country on when he ran and won the election. These are tough problems, but the way that these problems were handled are the way that a parent handles a small child. “We know better, it’s not open for debate or discussion, go back to playing with your friends.”

Of course *we* put these people in power, and I still believe they did a good job [making this program in the image of Internet users][1].

It’s hard to think that today we celebrate freedom, when we now know:

– Our emails are being tracked, traced, trapped, and recorded by our own government and shared with foreign governments.
– Ditto our text messages, phone calls, etc…
– We will get scrutinized *more* if we try to be more private by using readily available methods to protect ourselves from our governments spying on us.
– [Our snail mail is even being monitored and copied][2].
– Cellular carriers and mobile OS makers our making money off of us by [selling our data][3].

We may, yet again, need to fight for our freedoms that we won long ago. This time we aren’t trying to wrest control from foreign rulers, we are trying to right our own ship, we won’t need guns, but we will need sharp tongues.

For now, I’m going to go shoot off a cannon, and get dangerously close to dubiously made “entertainment explosives”.

[1]: https://brooksreview.net/2013/06/privacy-secrecy-the-web-and-ads/
[2]: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html?hp&_r=2&
[3]: http://gigaom.com/2013/07/03/heres-a-big-shock-att-will-start-selling-customers-usage-data/

[Matthew J.X. Malady][1]:

> “Damn, hell, shit, and fuck are not what an anthropologist observing us would classify as ‘taboo,’ ” says linguist John McWhorter, author of What Language Is: And What It Isn’t and What It Could Be, among other books. “We all say them all the time. Those words are not profane in what our modern culture is—they are, rather, salty. That’s all. Anyone who objects would be surprised to go back 50 years and try to use those words as casually as we do now and ever be asked again to parties.”

No *shit* — that’s *fucking* great news.

[1]: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2013/07/swear_words_old_and_new_sexual_and_religious_profanity_giving_way_to_sociological.single.html%23pagebreak_anchor_2

[Jon Vlachogiannis took a stab at estimating the cost of building][1] PRISM on commercial hardware:

> Total Hardware & Personnel Costs: €12M Per Month (€144M Per Year) = $187M Per Year

That’s not even a blip on the “defense” budget — though I would triple that number to figure out what the government would actually pay to make such a system.

[1]: http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/7/1/prism-the-amazingly-low-cost-of-using-bigdata-to-know-more-a.html

[I’ve been seeing this OmniFocus for iPhone redesign float around this morning][1] (done by Chris Sauvé). I must be the only one that thinks it doesn’t look great. I like the layout of the new task sheet, as I think it streamlines a rather cumbersome process for OmniFocus. That’s about the one of the few points of the design that I like.

The action bars look crappy, and the overall iconography of the design looks silly to me. Most of all, this app doesn’t look like it would fit well with iOS 7, and given that OmniFocus *is* made by an Apple only development company, I figure they are interested in looking more native that unique.

Sauvé has some great ideas surrounding things like notes and templates (and the input sheet mentioned above) but the overall look isn’t much improved.

[1]: http://cmsauve.com/projects/omnifocus/

[Ben Lincoln did some digging on his Motorola phone][1] and found that it was calling home. Worse yet, the wholly owned Google subsidiary is sending your usernames and passwords to Motorola/Google servers. Now what would Google want with all this non-metadata?

Gee, why would Google/Motorola care what apps are on your Home screen, what percentage of contacts come from which service — I mean why would any of that be valuable to the largest and most ruthless advertising company? *It’ll come to me…*

[1]: http://www.beneaththewaves.net/Projects/Motorola_Is_Listening.html?source=hn

Thomas Brand on Apple's choice of wallpapers:

You don’t have to be a Mac user to appreciate a good desktops pattern, but the attention to detail Apple takes towards choosing a default wallpaper means excitement for Mavericks will build long before it hits the shore.

What I like best about the Mavericks Wave photo is not the photo itself, but that the photo is bright. The space photos were gorgeous, but dark. I like bright images because they feel light — they feel happy — and this Wave photo does just that.

(Of course I change my wallpaper automatically based on the time of day, so that my eyes aren't seared by blinding brightness late at night.)

I’m getting reports that member feeds (and only member feeds) are not migrating to some RSS services properly. This seems to happen when you go to migrate, with some having success manually adding the member feed after the migration.

Please let me know if you are having any troubles.

[Reuters][1]:

> Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, said that if the report was correct, it would have a “severe impact” on relations between the EU and the United States.
> “On behalf of the European Parliament, I demand full clarification and require further information speedily from the U.S. authorities with regard to these allegations,” he said in an emailed statement.

So maybe if we can’t get *our* Government to answer us another Government can get answers for us. Sad, but likely.

[1]: http://news.yahoo.com/u-bugged-eu-offices-computer-networks-german-magazine-162017024.html

[From The Washington Post on new information about how PRISM works][1]:

> The FBI uses government equipment on private company property to retrieve matching information from a participating company, such as Microsoft or Yahoo and pass it without further review to the NSA.

This sounds a lot like “direct access” to me.

[1]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collection-documents/

[Eyder Peralta][1]:

> A Defense Department spokesman tells us that the DoD is “not blocking any websites.”
> Instead, it is blocking offending content.

That content which is being blocked is anything that is classified — but once something is published publicly how can it still be classified?

Additionally, wouldn’t this make those whom we trust to protect us the least informed?

On another note: good to see that the U.S. and China agree on [some things][2].

[1]: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/06/28/196571320/u-s-army-restricts-access-to-the-guardian-website
[2]: http://greatfirewallofchina.org

Dalton Caldwell [has written up some likely scenarios on the Google Reader shut down][1], as it pertains to publishers on the web. The scenarios he offers are mostly ‘meh’ situations, but I have a completely different take. ((*Shocking.*))

I actually think this shut down parallels well with implementing a paywall on your site, because both are creating natural obstacles for people. Every alternative RSS reader I have seen and tried isn’t as simple as Google Reader. What made Google Reader simple is that everyone already had a Google account so they could naturally discover this other “thing” and start using it, Google made discovery, use, and signup easy.

Now that same group is going to switch? Yeah right.

More likely: this is going to be a reality check for a lot of websites. Sure, the numbers (RSS subscribers) will be boosted in the days immediately following as many try multiple services at once, but in a month or two? My guess is the numbers will be way down.

My thinking is:

1. A lot of people got sucked into RSS by Google, but don’t really care about RSS. Maybe they check it here and there, but they won’t miss it when it’s gone.
2. A lot of people will simply find other ways that they think sufficient — ways that would not be sufficient for a nerd. (Twitter, Facebook, Friends, etc.)
3. This presents itself as a really great time for nerds to clean out their subscriptions — and many sites won’t make the cut. “I still subscribe to that site? Not anymore.”

So we have users that just don’t care enough to continue with RSS and the more nerdy set that does care enough, but may, or may not, keep subscribing to your site — because they do care about what they read, they will likely take this moment to reevaluate their subscribed feeds.

## Side Note

The most lucrative way to run a blog is with RSS Sponsors. You can charge quite a bit — people paid me about $500 per week with only 8,200 subscribers before I stopped — this is the best source of money for a blogger. That money is in jeopardy here not because of Google Reader, but because of Feed Wrangler.

Feed Wrangler offers Filters that can filter out keywords. This is great if you are tired of iWatch rumors, and typically doesn’t hurt bloggers.

But you know what will hurt? Filtering out sponsored RSS posts. The reason you get paid more for RSS sponsorships than for “banner” style ads is because the blogger can more or less assure you that your post *will* be seen by X-many subscribers. Google Reader showed it all to you. But with new RSS readers hell bent on making things better for users, well it’s only a matter of time before an RSS reader comes to market with an automatic “sponsored posts blocker”. I think that’s a killer feature for users, and an income killer for bloggers.

[1]: http://daltoncaldwell.com/where-will-google-reader-traffic-go

I’ll be honest, he needs a more badass voice, but still worth [watching this short video on Seattle’s Phoenix Jones][1].

[1]: https://vimeo.com/69041352

One of my bigger complaints with the Tom Bihn Smart Alec is that I have a bit of friction getting the strap on and off my body. That’s good in that it means the strap fits well and comfortably when on, but it’s cumbersome. I received a response from Tom Bihn about this that detailed how he loosens the strap when he takes it off and tightens when he puts it back on — I’ve been doing that same trick too.

Tom Bihn promised me a video on this a while ago and a couple of days ago they sent it over. [Here’s the video][1], but as you will notice (as apparent by the title of this post) this is not just about taking a backpack on and off. No this is about packing the Smart Alec for a hike. I didn’t think much of that until I watched the video — because holy cow does he fit a lot in that backpack. (The strap trick is right in the last 30 seconds or so of the video.)

Worth a watch if you want to see just how much a backpack like this will hold.

[1]: http://www.tombihn.com/blog/smartalechikevideo

[Marco Arment][1]:

> Since WWDC, every iOS-imitating UI looks ancient. Soon, they’ll start to feel obsolete. Most imitating efforts will need to be redone or abandoned to look current. And what will happen if people try to imitate iOS 7?

This is a great post from Marco, well worth a read as it is going to affect everyone with a phone. While I don’t think “defense” was the motivation behind the redesign, I do think it’s a nice fringe benefit.

I doubt it drove the design, but if the design could lend a hand — why not?

What I will tell you is that I will have very little tolerance for apps that don’t feel native on iOS 7. What that means is that my home screen is effectively up for grabs.

Every app on it feels old and gross on iOS — make your app feel native and I’ll switch to it just to get something that looks modern. That’s a big deal, because I certainly won’t be alone. ((This is similar to what happened when phones went retina and when the iPhone 5 came out needing taller apps. Similar, but not as big of a potential.))

[1]: http://www.marco.org/2013/06/27/ios7-as-defense

Speaking of Shawn Blanc, [he has a great overview of how to use Smart Streams in Feed Wrangler][1]. I think that’s one of the neatest features of all the new RSS readers and likely to be very powerful in the long run.

[1]: http://shawnblanc.net/2013/06/feed-wrangler-smart-streams/

[Shawn Blanc on his assumed departure from NetNewsWire][1]:

> And I know I’m not the only one. This weekend a lot of us will say goodbye to an old friend. You’ll forgive me if I’m a little sentimental, but if you’ve been reading this site for longer than a day you know I’ve got an affinity for fine software.

NetNewsWire was the first client I ever got for RSS and it introduced me to the medium. With the beta of version 4, and the pre-lease price of $10, I went ahead and bought [NetNewsWire 4][2]. I am a huge fan of [Fever°][3] and [Sunstroke][4]. They are great tools for RSS, but lately when I am out and about I have found I don’t have time for RSS — it’s too much. Instead I rely on App.net and (yes) Digg.com to stay up to date on what’s going on. That’s less overwhelming and faster.

So for the moment I am using NetNewsWire 4, un-synced to the web, and just checking my feeds when I happen to be at my Mac. So far I am loving the heck out of it.

[1]: http://shawnblanc.net/2013/06/nnw/
[2]: http://netnewswireapp.com
[3]: http://feedafever.com
[4]: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id488564806