This is a killer implementation of Basecamp on my iPhone — beats any of the apps that you can buy for iOS in the App Store by a mile. I now have everything but a good Backpack client for my iPhone. I hope this is a the route they take with Backpack as well.
Category: Links
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Readability’s new service
Marco Arment on Readbility’s new service:
Today, they launched an entirely new Readability service: you pay a small fee each month, and they give most of the proceeds to the authors of the pages you choose (by using the Readability bookmarklet on them, or adding them in other ways). It’s a great way for readers to support web publishers, big and small, directly and automatically.
I am signed up to pay $5 a month right now and The Brooks Review is setup to receive funds on Readability. ((My ultimate goal is to end up paying a subscription for whatever I bring in to TBR a month, back to the sites I read. I don’t know what, if anything, that will be right now so I am starting with $5/mo.)) This is so new and I was so excited about it I had to get it setup up right away. You will also notice that the Instapaper buttons are gone — replaced with Readability’s new buttons. On any article that I write you will see a button that says ‘Read’ and gives you two options: now and later. Later saves the article in the Readability back-end and Now gives you a great view of just the content. I am a huge fan and it helps that the colors somewhat match TBR’s colors.
Marco is working on an iOS app that uses Instapaper’s back-end for ultimate awesomeness. Let me know if you hit any problems, until then hit the link and sign up to use the service and sign up as a publisher if you haven’t already.
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USAA App for iPad
Remember how I was saying that USAA is the best bank you can get — well check out their new iPad app. I can tell you from first hand experience that this app is killer.
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How Apple and Google Probably Won’t Kill the Password
Mike Elgan wrote an exhaustive piece full of technology day dreams for a world where we can rid the password. He talks about how Apple is presumable pursuing NFC technology and how Android is set to include it.
NFC is a word that is going to be annoying for the next few years — it stands for Near Field Communication. Basically it is like a Bluetooth/RFID system.
Google likely isn’t going to transform this — adding support for NFC in Android leaves it up to developers to implement the system, which is just asking for crap.
Apple doesn’t care to do this unless they are getting 30% of every NFC transaction. They do have incentive to use NFC to make interacting between iOS devices and Macs better.
I like Elgan’s grand thoughts, but they are all pipe dreams that are more than 5 years out (at best).
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The next Nokia OS: Android or Windows?
Fabrizio Capobianco debating Nokia’s mobile OS options:
The big question is: will there ever be a lot of MeeGo developers? Hard to say, the ship has sailed a long time ago. Developers today build for iPhone first, then Android. If they have a good reason (i.e. Microsoft paying) they build for Windows Phone 7. If they are in the enterprise, maybe they look at BlackBerry. If they want to support the existing bunch of devices, they suffer and go with Symbian as well. Hard to think they will pick yet-another-OS…
Capobianco is right, MeeGo has no developers and that means that there will be little consumer interest. I would guess that Nokia tries to launch a Windows Phone 7 and Android phone to see which sells better. As much as I would like them to pursue MeeGo and not license Windows Phone 7 or Android I just don’t see the benefit to it.
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Egypt. Internet. Stupidity.
Christopher Mims:
In a country where users are ahead of the authorities in terms of their ability to exploit the relatively new “social” media, blunt instruments must be used, and the economic consequences for Egypt could be profound.
A fascinating look at Internet filtering versus turning off the Internet completely.
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Marco Arment’s Speculation on the Next MacBook Pro
Marco has a hard time seeing Apple dropping the Ethernet and FireWire ports in the 15″ MacBook Pro in order to obtain a wedge shape. ((Like what the current Airs have.)) What if Apple decided that USB 3.0 was the way to go, thus theoretically allowing a Gigabit USB Ethernet adapter and FireWire speeds?
I don’t know if you could do Gigabit over USB 3.0 and the standard is very new, but I do know that it is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 devices — you wouldn’t need any more ports.
Personally I think Apple ditches the Ethernet and platter based hard drives. Though USB 3 would be a compelling reason to get the ‘Pro’ lineup of Apple portables.
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Researchers Enable Mesh WiFi Networking for Android Smartphones
Casey Johnston:
Individual phones can also act as relay points, and theoretically should be able to bridge together a phone in a remote area with no service to one with access to the cellular network, where the call can finally be relayed to its intended recipient.
This is really cool — as many of us know, when a disaster hits the cellphone networks start getting overloaded. This is a huge problem for emergency responders as they have to begin to rely on older technology to keep in touch. I could see this being a huge draw from agencies like FEMA to us in the field — as well as search and rescue operations that often happen well outside the coverage area.
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The Times’s Dealings With Julian Assange
I finally had a chance to read this very long article from the NYT about their interactions with Assange and WikiLeaks. I found these two bits fascinating, as reported by Bill Keller:
On the fourth day of the London meeting, Assange slouched into The Guardian office, a day late. Schmitt took his first measure of the man who would be a large presence in our lives. “He’s tall — probably 6-foot-2 or 6-3 — and lanky, with pale skin, gray eyes and a shock of white hair that seizes your attention,” Schmitt wrote to me later. “He was alert but disheveled, like a bag lady walking in off the street, wearing a dingy, light-colored sport coat and cargo pants, dirty white shirt, beat-up sneakers and filthy white socks that collapsed around his ankles. He smelled as if he hadn’t bathed in days.”
Keller later says:
Assange was transformed by his outlaw celebrity. The derelict with the backpack and the sagging socks now wore his hair dyed and styled, and he favored fashionably skinny suits and ties. He became a kind of cult figure for the European young and leftish and was evidently a magnet for women.
Gee I wonder why, oh wait:
The flow of donations to WikiLeaks, which he claimed hit 100,000 euros a day at its peak…
If you think for one-second that Assange is doing this solely to open up the world of corporate deceit a political games then you are a fool. While those are most certainly part of his motivation, the larger part is fame. Otherwise why dye your hair and start changing how you present yourself?
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Three Great Apple StackExchange Threads
There are three really great threads going on at the AskDifferent StackExchange site:
- Terminal Tips and Tricks where people are listing out a ton of terminal tricks for Mac users. Even if you don’t know anything about the Terminal, I bet you can find some neat stuff here.
- Mac OS X Hidden Features and Tricks is another great thread where people are sharing little things about OS X that you may not have discovered yet.
- My personal favoritue os the Mac OS X Keyboard Shortcut thread — I am sucker for more keyboard shortcuts.
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Texting While Working
Seth Godin on why you shouldn’t text, eat chips, or update social networks while you are working:
After all, if you sit for an hour and do exactly nothing, not one thing, you’ll be ashamed of yourself.
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OmniFocus Aid
Shawn Blanc elaborating on an idea from Ian Hines:
OmniFocus Aid would be lightweight, easy to use, and built for the sole purpose of throwing tasks into your OmniFocus database when at your Mac.
I am plus one to that idea. I think for many people the cost of OmniFocus for the Mac is a huge amount of money to come up with. If you are just starting out with OmniFocus I recommend you purchase in this order:
- OmniFocus for iPad (if you have an iPad).
- OmniFocus for iPhone (if you don’t have an iPhone this would be your excuse to go get one).
- OmniFocus for Mac Trial.
The best version for organizing and reviewing your tasks is the iPad version, the iPhone version is a must have for on the go entry and the Mac version is a must have for anyone working on the Mac. I recommend getting the Mac version last — even though the trial is free — because this will give you an idea as to whether or not you actually need the Mac version. There is a large subset of people who will be just fine without the Mac version — personally I couldn’t live without all three. ((Ok I *could* live without all three, but I don’t know if I would ever be able to get out of bed.))
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Ask Different
A new site from Stack Exchange for Apple related questions and answers.
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10 Awesome but Impolite Email Filters
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten writing for The Next Web:
I know it is very polite to say thanks when I answer your question offline and face to face. But in email, when you ask me a question, I answer it and you are happy with it, there really is no need to send an email with nothing but “Thanks!” in it. Want to thank me? Keep my inbox clean. Really NEED to thank me? Send me a bottle of champagne or some flowers.
Agreed also to his first rule about the CCs, I have that in place.
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David Karp Has a Short Fuse
PostDesk reporting on a response that a Tumblr user received from co-founder David Karp:
Karp responded abruptly, saying that “…we have no interest in customers that will go out of their way to discourage our entire team” continuing to say that this is a “…team that regularly spends their nights and weekends working feverishly to provide the best service we can against extraordinary challenges”. He signed off saying that “Plenty of services will import Tumblr blogs. Please go away.”
If this is true (and no real evidence is provided that it is) then it is a massive failure on Tumblrs part. Karp needs to go on record denying this or apologizing for this lapse in judgment. Either way Tumblr is losing my respect and I may just close the personal blog I host on the service.
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Unexpected SMS From Mobile Carrier
Ryan Singel:
The would-be suicide bomber was planning to detonate a suicide belt bomb near Red Square, a plan that was foiled when her wireless carrier sent her an SMS while she was still at a safe house, setting off the bomb and killing her.
Death is never funny, but…well I guess thank God for that text. It was reportedly wishing her a ‘Happy New Year’ — no joke.
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Perfect Place to Write
E.B. White:
A hotel room is the perfect place to write. You’re cut off from all the routine and is so convenient, the way they’ll send you anything you want.
I could not agree more with this. When I was in Miami I got a ton of stuff done sitting at an incredibly uncomfortable table, using a massively slow Internet connection.
[via Liz Danzico] -
“Smart” Phone Market Shares
Dina Bass:
Microsoft’s share of the smartphone operating-system market declined to 2.8 percent in the third quarter, from 7.9 percent a year earlier, according to Gartner Inc. Android’s share increased to 25.5 percent from 3.5 percent, while Apple’s iOS share declined to 16.7 percent from 17.1 percent.
That is an incredibly small market share for Microsoft — for whatever reason that number blows my mind.
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CNN’s 8 Least Evil Banks In America
I am linking to the Consumerist post about this because they list out the banks so you don’t have to click through a slideshow. I am posting this not because it is ground breaking news, but to promote the bank I use: USAA.
You don’t have to be military to use it, but if you love the experience you get with using Apple, then you will love USAA. They don’t have branches, but they do have a killer iOS app. The few times I have called in for help I was blown away by how great the customer service is.
Maybe you think I am just full of it and if you do go to their site. Now where it says ‘free checking’, do you see the star ratings — yes USAA is so confident they allow users to rate their services and almost 8,000 members have rated their free checking at 4.7 stars out of a possible 5. Read that sentence again. Can you imagine your crappy bank allowing its members to rate any part of the bank and then being confident enough to display that rating on the front page? You need to flip to past page 600 to start reading the negative reviews.
Honestly I cannot recommend USAA enough, it is the Apple of the banking world.
(Note: There are services that you cannot get through them without being a retired or active Military individual. This includes depositing from the iOS app. A major bummer, but even without that, I recommend this bank.)
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iPhone 4 “Glassgate” Lawsuit
Matt Brian:
LA resident Donald LeBuhn has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple, accusing the company of misleading customers as to the strength of the glass used in its iPhone 4…
Except for the fact that it is called “glass” — which inherent to the word glass means that something is fragile. This bit though really pisses me off:
The claimant is asking the court to get Apple to refund the price paid for the iPhone 4 to all of those in the class action lawsuit and to reimburse any repair fees charged, making Apple accountable for its actions.
Apple should tell these idiots that they will give them their money back if they give Apple the phones back. My guess: not to many of these people would be willing to give up their iPhones.