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Leica Sofort 2June 13, 2024
Grand Seiko SBGX261February 23, 2023
Casio Duro MDV-106 Re-ReviewDecember 15, 2022

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  • Chris Bowler On File Browsing

    Chris Bowler on managing files in Transmit on OS X: Because it has two panes, each of which can be used for local or remote locations, it’s perfect for moving files from one folder to another. This is certainly faster than using 2 Finder windows. When I asked on Twitter the other day about PathFinder…

    Chris Bowler on managing files in Transmit on OS X:

    Because it has two panes, each of which can be used for local or remote locations, it’s perfect for moving files from one folder to another. This is certainly faster than using 2 Finder windows.

    When I asked on Twitter the other day about PathFinder I received a bunch of responses that were all over the board. Then Chris DM’d me to tell me to use Transmit and that he would be writing it up. So here it is — a great trick and an excellent Program.

  • Send your Instapaper reading log to Readability

    Marco just took the feature live, head on over to your Instapaper account screen to link the two accounts. Well done.

    Marco just took the feature live, head on over to your Instapaper account screen to link the two accounts. Well done.

  • Turn Off the Clock on Your Menu Bar

    Scott Klein has written up a great post on the benefits of removing the clock from your Menubar. A few months back now I did the same thing, but the clock eventually made it back into the menubar. I loved not seeing the time, but I also hated not seeing the time. What I found…

    Scott Klein has written up a great post on the benefits of removing the clock from your Menubar. A few months back now I did the same thing, but the clock eventually made it back into the menubar. I loved not seeing the time, but I also hated not seeing the time.

    What I found is that it became a great way for me to not count how much time I had to do things (e.g. I have only an hour until the meeting!). I decided to put the clock back into the Menubar because sometimes you just need to know how much time you have to do something and sometimes you need a reference point for when things happened during the day.

    I highly encourage you to try removing the clock if you find yourself constantly staring at it. Since putting the clock back in my Menubar I have found that I don’t look at it nearly as much as I used to.

  • Quote of the Day: Marcelo Somers

    “If you go into blogging wanting to make money you will fail (or at least write some terrible content).” —Marcelo Somers I think you can substitute “blogging” for a lot of other endeavors you might take on in your life.

    “If you go into blogging wanting to make money you will fail (or at least write some terrible content).”

    I think you can substitute “blogging” for a lot of other endeavors you might take on in your life.

  • OmniFocus plugin for Mailplane

    Mailplane brings Gmail to your Mac desktop and they also have an OmniFocus plugin, very cool. [Thanks to @Viticci for the tip.]

    Mailplane brings Gmail to your Mac desktop and they also have an OmniFocus plugin, very cool.

    [Thanks to @Viticci for the tip.]

  • Kourosh Dini: On Integrating Email in OmniFocus

    A great tip for Gmail users wanting to create a follow-up task in OmniFocus (or Things) that will link back to a particular email.

    A great tip for Gmail users wanting to create a follow-up task in OmniFocus (or Things) that will link back to a particular email.

  • “Waiting is Death”

    John Gruber on the one minute and twenty seconds it takes to download the day’s content for the Daily: ((Note that while this is downloading you can do nothing else.)) It is significant, because the first minute is the most important minute. That’s the minute where the reader makes their impression of The Daily. Waiting…

    John Gruber on the one minute and twenty seconds it takes to download the day’s content for the Daily: ((Note that while this is downloading you can do nothing else.))

    It is significant, because the first minute is the most important minute. That’s the minute where the reader makes their impression of The Daily. Waiting is death.

    I never got this far to see new content, but the Daily app in general is slower than a Ford Model T straight off the assembly line. In fact that Model T might have had more polish in its first iteration — that though may be a little too harsh.

    No, the Daily feels more like a Flash website scrolling on a PowerPC G4 Mac mini — yeah that’s about right.

  • I Want a Tricorder

    Curt Finch: The second potential tricorder is a hand-held medical scanner.  Harvard Medical School researchers have created a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) imaging machine, replacing cumbersome equipment previously used. We are so close…

    Curt Finch:

    The second potential tricorder is a hand-held medical scanner.  Harvard Medical School researchers have created a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) imaging machine, replacing cumbersome equipment previously used.

    We are so close…

  • Recommended Podcasts

    I received a good amount of email since yesterday’s post mentioning that I listen to podcasts on my way to and from work. Rather than list what I listen to several times in email, here is what I listen to and thus, what I recommend. Die Hard Fan Level Back to Work: Dan Benjamin and…

    I received a good amount of email since yesterday’s post mentioning that I listen to podcasts on my way to and from work. Rather than list what I listen to several times in email, here is what I listen to and thus, what I recommend.

    Die Hard Fan Level

    • Back to Work: Dan Benjamin and Merlin Mann talk about productivity, well they kind of do.
    • Build and Analyze: Dan Benjamin and Marco Arment talk about iOS app development.
    • Hypercritical: Dan Benjamin and John Siracusa talk in depth about stuff. I mean really in depth.
    • Mac Power Users: David Sparks and Katie Floyd talk about workflows and tips for getting more power out of your Mac.
    • The Talk Show: Dan Benjamin and John Gruber talk about movies and baseball.

    I Listen to if the Topic is Good

    • The Big Web Show: Dan Benjamin and Jeffrey Zeldman talk with a guest about all sorts of stuff.
    • Enough / Minimal Mac: Patrick Rhone and Myke Hurley talk about what is an isn’t enough in computing and how you can find that.
    • The Macgasm Podcast: The Macgasm guys talk about all sorts of Apple stuff.
    • The Pipeline: Dan Benjamin interviews a person and talks about how they came to be.
    • WorkAwesome: Mostly interviews with guests about life, work and productivity.

    Only Two Video Podcasts

    • Beautiful Places in HD: Beautifully shot video of places you can really only see off the trail.
    • Chase Jarvis Photography: Chase is a local Seattle photographer, but is internationally recognized as cool. Chase’s work is amazing and his videos rival his photography and are full of great little tips and trick to learn.

  • Reveal Hidden Passwords in All Major Browsers

    A fantastic little bookmarklet from Andrew Worcester that removes those silly black dots so you can actually see the password you are typing. This won’t come in handy much for 1Password users, but I bet we can all relate to a time when we would really like to see what we are typing. [via The…

    A fantastic little bookmarklet from Andrew Worcester that removes those silly black dots so you can actually see the password you are typing. This won’t come in handy much for 1Password users, but I bet we can all relate to a time when we would really like to see what we are typing.

  • Quote of the Day: John Gruber

    “It never ceases to surprise me how different — how much more efficient — face-to-face communication is. You learn things, hear things, say things, and notice things in person that would have gone unlearned, unheard, unsaid, unnoticed otherwise.” —John Gruber

    “It never ceases to surprise me how different — how much more efficient — face-to-face communication is. You learn things, hear things, say things, and notice things in person that would have gone unlearned, unheard, unsaid, unnoticed otherwise.”

  • OneLessDrop

    A killer little widget to keep your charger cables from dropping off your desk. I so want to back it, but alas I am over budget on the amount of Kickstarter projects I allow myself to fund this month (and it is only 3 days into Feb.). Will you guys please fund it? ((Thanks!)) Just…

    A killer little widget to keep your charger cables from dropping off your desk. I so want to back it, but alas I am over budget on the amount of Kickstarter projects I allow myself to fund this month (and it is only 3 days into Feb.). Will you guys please fund it? ((Thanks!))

    Just look at this sexiness:

    Onelessdrophome02KS5602

  • The Daily, The Newspaper, The App, The “Newspaper App”

    Federico Viticci on The Daily app: Where The Daily only needs to get a lot better, though, is the app part. Put simply, The Daily as an iPad application is quite terrible. Not the “terrible” you’d expect from a Vietnamese developer who sells manga apps in the App Store, but the terrible you don’t want…

    Federico Viticci on The Daily app:

    Where The Daily only needs to get a lot better, though, is the app part. Put simply, The Daily as an iPad application is quite terrible. Not the “terrible” you’d expect from a Vietnamese developer who sells manga apps in the App Store, but the terrible you don’t want to see from an app that’s being heavily promoted by Apple, and that has been in the works as a strict collaboration between News Corp and Cupertino for months.

    That bit sums up my thoughts on the Daily quite nicely. In fact I think Viticci is spot on in his look at the app. There are a lot of things that I don’t get and putting aside the actual content, the app just isn’t that good. Will it improve? Who knows. Is the content worth it? Depends if you can bother to use it past the 5 infuriating minutes it takes to scroll a couple of stories.

  • Simplenote: Dropbox Syncing and Lists

    Simplenote is one of the best apps on my iOS devices. It is one of those invaluable tools and this update proves that. Buy the premium membership and thank me later.

    Simplenote is one of the best apps on my iOS devices. It is one of those invaluable tools and this update proves that. Buy the premium membership and thank me later.

  • Thermo

    What a cool app — I downloaded it this morning and paid the $0.99 to remove the ads. It really is beautiful and does just what you need/want it to do.

    What a cool app — I downloaded it this morning and paid the $0.99 to remove the ads. It really is beautiful and does just what you need/want it to do.

  • A Lion with a Vista

    Everyday I listen to podcasts during my commute to and from work and while I was listening to some very smart people talk about Mac OS X Lion, I began to think that Lion may be a lot like Windows Vista. A thought I am sure sparks fear in fanboys worldwide, but bear with me…

    Everyday I listen to podcasts during my commute to and from work and while I was listening to some very smart people talk about Mac OS X Lion, I began to think that Lion may be a lot like Windows Vista. A thought I am sure sparks fear in fanboys worldwide, but bear with me because I do see a striking resemblance.

    Vista was by all accounts a pretty bad operating system. It was buggy. A lot of Windows apps needed to be re-written or modified to run properly on it. There was no option for a user to ‘upgrade’ to the OS that didn’t involve completely wiping their current data from their machine. It was a huge problem for users upgrading, but by all accounts it was also a necessary evil.

    In order for Microsoft to advance the Windows OS platform, they needed to make some major changes to the underlying architecture of Windows itself. All of these changes made Windows 7 possible and Windows 7 by all accounts is a great upgrade for all users — a vast improvement over Vista.

    It is in this same respect that I think the forth coming Mac OS 10.7 ‘Lion’ will be the Vista for Mac users. I need to clear up some things before I talk further about this:

    • I am not saying Lion sales will be weak.
    • I am not saying Lion will offer no easy upgrade path.
    • I am not saying Apple is Microsoft.

    What I am saying is that Lion, like Vista, is going to be a stepping stone OS update for the Mac OS X platform. Which is a rather long way of saying 10.8 should be awesome.

    I think what we should expect to see in Lion is a lot of core iOS technology making its way into the aging desktop OS, along with some of the iOS philosophy. None of these changes are going to bring forth significantly radical OS changes — meaning Apple is not going to remove Finder. What Lion stands to do is to provide a half way point for OS X and where Apple would like to take OS X in the revisions to follow Lion.

    That is (and this is just made up and in no way my actual thinking) if Apple wanted to do something dramatic like removing Finder all together — to obscure the file system in the similar manner that iOS does — Lion would see an inkling of that. That inkling might start by changing the Open/Save dialogs so that they list only files that application can open and only saves those files in a targeted location for each app. Thus removing the Finder view that you get when you go to Open or Save a file.

    In this scenario Finder would still be present, but Apple would be steering users away from needing to look at the file system. 10.8 would then take this idea and further advance it — perhaps by removing Finder all together, or relegating it to a hidden part for power users (meaning it’s gone from the Dock, or so I can dream).

    I don’t see Lion being a crazy mess like Vista was/is, but I do see it as more of a stepping stone update. Apple really wants to bring some of the ideas and technology that they have learned from making iOS to OS X. What they can’t do is spring that on users all at once — that would truly make Lion a Vista mess. The logical thing is to slowly make the transition — much the same as how nicotine patches work to slowly reduce the craving for nicotine (and therefore cigarettes).

    Thus, I have proven Lion is going to be like a nicotine patch. ((In no way did I prove this.))

  • AOL’s Master Plan

    Nicholas Carlson reporting on the ‘AOL Way’: AOL tells its editors to decide what topics to cover based on four considerations: traffic potential, revenue potential, edit quality and turn-around time. Yeah that sounds like a great way to produce quality content. ((Sarcasm.))

    Nicholas Carlson reporting on the ‘AOL Way’:

    AOL tells its editors to decide what topics to cover based on four considerations: traffic potential, revenue potential, edit quality and turn-around time.

    Yeah that sounds like a great way to produce quality content. ((Sarcasm.))

  • Verizon Says It May ‘Throttle’ Heavy Data Users Ahead of iPhone

    Roger Cheng: Verizon Wireless adopted a new policy that gives it the right to slow down the data connection of its heaviest bandwidth users, as the No. 1 U.S. carrier began taking advance orders for the Apple Inc. iPhone. I told you Verizon was evil. Need more proof? Here ya go: Verizon Wireless spokesman Jeffrey…

    Roger Cheng:

    Verizon Wireless adopted a new policy that gives it the right to slow down the data connection of its heaviest bandwidth users, as the No. 1 U.S. carrier began taking advance orders for the Apple Inc. iPhone.

    I told you Verizon was evil. Need more proof?

    Here ya go:

    Verizon Wireless spokesman Jeffrey Nelson said the introduction of the policy wasn’t related to the coming debut of the iPhone. “This is clearly something we’ve been looking at for some time and introducing now,” he said. “There’s nothing magic about the timing.”

    CLEARLY this timing is coincidental.

  • Repeating Tasks in Things for iOS

    Cultured Code has a new version of their iOS app out that adds repeating tasks. In looking at the screenshots it looks like a really nice and clean way to implement repeating tasks — especially compared to the way OmniFocus handles them on the iPhone. What should be telling though is that I didn’t know…

    Cultured Code has a new version of their iOS app out that adds repeating tasks. In looking at the screenshots it looks like a really nice and clean way to implement repeating tasks — especially compared to the way OmniFocus handles them on the iPhone. What should be telling though is that I didn’t know what the repeating task interface looked like for OmniFocus on the iPhone, nor did I know that Things didn’t have one.

    I tend to think that people just don’t really need to set that many repeating tasks on their iPhones. Having said that — don’t you think that OTA sync would have been a much more desired update? ((Come on, you saw that coming.))

  • Automattic Makes Premium Themes Available to 17 Million WordPress.com Blogs

    Matt Brian: With a number of premium themes becoming available later this year, WordPress.com blog owners will initially be able to install one of two premium themes: Headlines by WooThemes and Shelf by The Theme Foundry. The availability of such themes will enable blog owners to stand out from the millions of other websites on the service,…

    Matt Brian:

    With a number of premium themes becoming available later this year, WordPress.com blog owners will initially be able to install one of two premium themes: Headlines by WooThemes and Shelf by The Theme Foundry. The availability of such themes will enable blog owners to stand out from the millions of other websites on the service, that is of course when more themes become available.

    That is great news for WordPress.com users — I really think that you are better off going with a WordPress.com blog right now than you are going with Tumblr — BUT — I think this is only true if you are creating a ton of original content and want to be able to expand the blog in the future. If you just want to post funny pictures of cats and repost quotes you find on other blogs then Tumblr is the way to go. ((I do realize that my personal blog is on Tumblr still. I also still like Tumblr, but I think it is not the platform you should consider if writing is your thing.))