Category: Links

Tapping the link is just going to download the zipped file for my Keyboard Maestro macro, so let me explain what you are getting.

First, credit where credit is due, a big thanks to [Greg Pierce for getting me a working AppleScript for this](https://twitter.com/agiletortoise/status/207954077345267712) (I was using an Automator action before, which was pretty slow).

All you have to do to make this work is to grab the path to your image and plug it in to the AppleScript and you are done. From there you can adjust the time and days that your image changes.

I use this to change the image:

– In the morning when I get up.
– Mid-morning
– Evening
– Late night
– When I launch iA Writer

The first four are pretty simple, I just trigger with the time and have a new macro for each desktop image and time that I want it to change the background. I set it so the late night image is very dark, and the morning is bright, therefore slowly moving from bright to dark throughout the day.

*(Bonus tip: save the images as something like `morning.jpg` all in the same directory so that you only need to type the path once. Another bonus to this is that if you ever want to change the image you only need to replace the image with a new one of the same name — no touching the macro.)*

For the iA Writer background change I have the macro set to activate when I launch iA Writer and another set to switch back to a predetermined background when I quit iA Writer.

One final note: you will notice that I assigned a hotkey to this macro as well, that’s because this script changes the background of your *current* main display. Therefore if you hook a laptop to a monitor, the image will not change on your laptop — the hotkey is so that I can manually change the image if I please.

Danny Sullivan:
>Eight years ago, Google viewed paid inclusion in general as some type of evil the company should avoid and in particular something that could cause shopping search to have poor relevancy or be biased.

>What happened to cause such a change?

Oh, me, me, me! Google changed the definition of paid inclusion. Clever.

I don’t really care about this because my ‘shopping search engine’ is Amazon.com, but this is just another change (among many) from the Google that we all *used* to know and love.

New update for Dark Sky is out and it adds 24-hour forecasts. I was worried they might be cluttering up the UI too much, but it was done very well. A nice slide up or to the side depending on your device and you get the 24-hour forecast nicely broken down. A really nice addition to the app.

Tim Cook on Apple:
>It’s my oxygen.

Nice reporting by Macworld.

Neat site with a lot of Coda 2 themes. I particularly like that the site’s design switches to the coloring of the selected theme so that you can preview it.

Also, [here is a link to another site](http://justinhileman.info/coda-colors/) with Coda 2 themes — this one has the excellent Solarized themes.

Mark Lukach takes a look at standing desks for *The Wirecutter* and points out the [Kangaroo Pro Junior](http://www.ergodesktop.com/content/kangaroo-pro-junior). I had never heard of this desk that modifies any desk and converts it to a stand/sit desk. I think I am going to order one, but would like to hear from you guys if you have one first — looks neat to me.

This isn’t the best Nerf gun in the world, but I just use it to shoot at my cat when he starts scratching the furniture. It’s an effective deterrent (though it only has an effective range of about 15 feet) and shoots accurately.

Oh, and it’s less than $9 with Prime shipping. If you own a cat, get this.

Ki Mae Heussner for GigaOm on the AdKeeper site that allows web readers to save an ad for later (yeah, I know):
>But they’re finding that consumer behavior isn’t changing as fast as they’d hoped.

Well, color me surprised.

>[…]they’ve decided to spread some of the $40 million they’ve raised on other ways of connecting consumers and brands.

Woah, woah, woah, Heussner, you just toss that out there like it should be obvious what clown put up $40 million to back a service for users to save ads for later — the same ads that users actively try to ignore and block — oh wait, just saw this at the bottom of the post:

>Disclosure: True Ventures, which invested in AdKeeper, is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

Cool beans, now I know it’s not just AdKeeper that is drinking the Kool-AID.

Here’s what the president of the AdKeeper parent company thinks of the product:

>“I believe it will be a behavior that we all know and love in the future,” she said. “It will just take time.”

Don’t hold your breath on that one.

Lastly:

>Keep Holdings also recently launched Swizzle, an email-based service that lets consumers manage all brand-related messages from a consolidated location. The service ports all of a consumer’s brand-related content out of their normal inbox, lets them unsubscribe from the ones they no longer wish to receive and organize the ones they do care about.

In case you missed what that was saying, the best I can tell, they created a service for you to organize your SPAM. No, like, really.

>Last week it opened in beta to its first few thousand users.

I bet people were lined up for days. DAYS.

Micah Lee and Peter Eckersley writing for EFF.org on the ‘crystal prison’ that is a locked os (like iOS) and the excuses given by companies that do this:

>When technology and phone companies defend the restrictions that they are imposing on their customers, the most frequent defense they offer is that it’s actually in their customers’ interest to be deprived of liberty: “If we let people do what they want with their pocket computers, they will do stupid things with them. You will be safer and happier in our walled compound than you would be outside.”

This is an over simplification of the problem. The EFF calls for a ‘bill of rights’ that would allow users to choose to have an open device. There’s three important things I want to say here:

1. One of the best reasons for a closed system is privacy and security. I don’t know about you but my iPhone contains massive amounts of very private data. From bank passwords, credit card numbers, and access to all my bank accounts. If the system were open I would have no guarantee that that data was still safe — hell even with Apple my address book is occasionally uploaded for no reason. If Apple has a hard time policing every app when they go through the approval process, how would I as an individual approve an app to make sure it was on the up and up?
2. The EFF doesn’t lay out why a closed system *is* bad for a user. The best argument is that it makes it hard for apps under the GNU to be posted (think VLC), but even then that’s hardly a downside when compared to what I lay out in point one.
3. Using iOS is not forced on people, it is a choice. If you want open you choose Android, if you want closed you choose iOS. It’s not something people bully you into using (well maybe Android is if you go to a cell carrier store), you are actively choosing to use a platform knowing the downsides. So how is it the responsibility of Apple to go open, when the user is saying: “I’m fine with closed”? The EFF isn’t fighting the good fight, they are just fighting to fight. Using iOS at all is a privilege, not a right — that alone gives Apple the right to do with it as they please.

>Microsoft, like Apple, is moving toward a dangerous future where users have less freedom to do what they want with their computers, where developers are restricted in what they can accomplish, and where competition and innovation is stifled.

Less freedom? I’m sorry is Microsoft and Apple now asking to approve what website I visit? Is linux suddenly gone? I mean, come on.

Oliver Reichenstein:
>Promising to make you look wired and magically promote your content in social networks, the Like, Retweet, and +1 buttons occupy a good spot on pretty much every page of the World Wide Web. Because of this, almost every major site and world brand is providing free advertising for Twitter and Facebook. But do these buttons work?

When I had the Twitter buttons on this site I can tell you that they did very little. More importantly with tweeting features being baked into Apple’s Safari browser, these buttons are going to mean even less.

Don’t bother putting them on your site — I wish I hadn’t.

Marcelo Somers:
>Facebook advertising doesn’t work because they focus on showing you ads based on who you are, not what problem you are trying to solve.

Great post about advertising in general. What people are learning is that “targeting” and “click-throughs” aren’t nearly as important as “buying”. That’s why Google rakes in the dough: they present ads when you are ready and willing to buy. Facebook presents ads when you are stalking.

As of this writing, Facebook is trading at $29.32 — down again for the day.

Andy Ihnatko:
>But damn, yes, the Store makes life so much easier for every user.

I can’t tell you how many hours I have spent trying to dig through old emails and guess at old passwords to get registration credentials for old software. That used to be the sole reason that I never deleted software from my Mac.

Just before the Mac App Store I started to store this data in Yojimbo so that I could delete apps, but the Mac App Store just makes deleting apps you don’t want anymore a no-brainer. So what if I have to pay for upgrades, at least I have a full, working, archive of every app I bought.

Pat Dryburgh on his experience trying to upgrade to Adobe’s cloud program so that he can finish important client work (like mine, geez):

>I asked the support person when I should expect my serial number. Expecting an answer somewhere in the neighbourhood of 5-10 minutes, you can imagine my surprise when I was told “in the next 24–48 hours.”

It’s been over 48 hours and he still didn’t get his serial numbers so he cancelled and received his refund. Contrast this to Amazon where I can order a physical good that is sent to my doorstep in less than 24 hours. Good job Adobe.

**Update:** [Turns out](http://patdryburgh.com/blog/no-serial-number-needed/), Pat didn’t need a serial number for the “cloud” version of Photoshop. Funny thing is: Pat spoke to four Adobe customer service reps and not a single one told him this. So the question now is: is it the user’s fault for not being able to figure out how to register your software, or the UX designers fault. ((Hint: It’s never the user’s fault.))

Nick Bilton reporting on the long rumored Facebook phone:

>“Mark is worried that if he doesn’t create a mobile phone in the near future that Facebook will simply become an app on other mobile platforms,” a Facebook employee said.

News flash: Facebook is already just an app on other mobile platforms. Facebook’s real challenge is to not *stay* just an app, because that’s all they currently are on mobile.