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Mashable’s Amy-Mae Elliott posted up 10 tips/tricks for iPad users, most of are very basic, but I had no clue that the iPad did this: The spacebar will create as many spaces as there are fingers on it, so one finger will produce one space, two fingers two spaces and so on. Clever.
Mashable’s Amy-Mae Elliott posted up 10 tips/tricks for iPad users, most of are very basic, but I had no clue that the iPad did this:
The spacebar will create as many spaces as there are fingers on it, so one finger will produce one space, two fingers two spaces and so on.
Clever.
Over the weekend I posted about the Angry Birds icon appearance on the Windows Phone 7 website. It turned out that the developer of Angry Birds (Rovio Mobile) has yet to commit to building a Windows Phone 7 version of their popular game. At the time I thought nothing of this, then after watching the…
Over the weekend I posted about the Angry Birds icon appearance on the Windows Phone 7 website. It turned out that the developer of Angry Birds (Rovio Mobile) has yet to commit to building a Windows Phone 7 version of their popular game. At the time I thought nothing of this, then after watching the latest episode of AMC’s Mad Men (Season 4 Episode 12) and seeing this post by John Gruber where he stated:
(I’ll bet five bucks that it’s the same story with that Tap Tap Revenge icon, too.)
All of a sudden with Don Draper fresh in my mind it hit me – this is something Draper would do. As Peggy Olsen said in this last episode of Mad Men (I am paraphrasing big time here) “If you don’t like what people are saying, change the conversation” which isn’t this exactly what Microsoft did by posting apps that have not fully committed to developing for their new Windows Phone 7 platform?
This seems like a classic marketing move to me, they (Microsoft) didn’t have some of the popular app developers from the iOS/Android world lined up so instead they just faked it. Instead of trying to persuade Rovio to get on board Microsoft just decided to pretend like these guys were already on board.
In doing this Microsoft shifted the pressure from Windows Phone 7 to the developers – a dick move to be sure, but it might just pay of in spades for them. Think about it from Rovio Mobile’s point of view, they were not convinced that they should develop for Windows Phone 7 and then this happens and a ton of people start talking to them about how they want to see Angry Birds on Windows Phone 7. That amount of pressure would probably convince a lot of developers to go ahead with plans to make a Windows Phone 7 version.
Now I am not saying that Rovio will make Angry Birds for Windows Phone 7, nor am I saying that they should. After this weekend though, I would guess, that the pressure to make a Windows Phone 7 version is at the very least 100x greater than it was before this all happened.
Please welcome Patrick Rhone, best known for Minimal Mac Patrick was kind enough to take the time to talk iPads with me. Tell me a little about yourself, what do you do, where do you live? I’m likely best known these days as a Writer and Curator at Minimal Mac, where you will find original…
Please welcome Patrick Rhone, best known for Minimal Mac Patrick was kind enough to take the time to talk iPads with me.
Tell me a little about yourself, what do you do, where do you live?
I’m likely best known these days as a Writer and Curator at Minimal Mac, where you will find original writing, links, quotes, photos and submissions around the theme of minimalist practices in the area of technology. An idea I often refer to as ÒenoughÓ.
I also am the proprietor of Machine Methods a firm that assists individuals and micro-businesses get the best out of technology.
What was your reaction when the iPad was launched?
I knew I wanted one immediately. I was an Apple Newton user for many years. In fact, I used one as my main mobile machine for most of those. I knew the iPad was the next logical (and long awaited) progression of that idea. As someone who’s job is often highly mobile, anything I can do to reduce that load is a welcome one.
Which model did you order and why?
I bought the WiFi only 64GB model. I knew this would become my main mobile machine for the next couple of years so I did not want to have to worry about running out of space. As for 3G, well, in every case I might need it I have my iPhone with me and it is better suited for that kind of task, so I saw no need. In hindsight, I don’t use it for much onboard media (music so I likely could have sufficed with the 32GB model.
How are you using the iPad on a daily basis?
As said, I use it for my main mobile machine. When I’m out and about, or even away from my desk at home, I’m on my iPad. Lots of email, browsing, writing, reading, etc. I do take the Apple Wireless Keyboard with me if I know I’m going to be doing a ton of typing (like now, for instance).
Can you give me a quick run down of the apps that you use the most?
I do 95% of all of my writing on the iPad in Simplenote, which syncs with Notational Velocity on the desktop. It is a fantastic app. Instapaper for reading is equally fantastic. In fact, if those were the only two third party apps on my iPad I would probably be just fine. Reeder is used for my RSS feeds. I use Ego, less to see my stats but more to keep track of my multiple Tumblr based sites. Also, Mail.app and Safari get a ton of play. Twitterrific gets more than it should. Don’t even get me started on Angry Birds.
Which app is your favorite?
That would be a hard choice between Instapaper and Simplenote. If forced, under penalty of death, Simplenote would likely win. I am a writer after all.
Do you have any bag/stand/case recommendations for people?
I’m a big fan of Waterfield Design stuff. I have the iPad Ultimate SleeveCase slid into my in my larger briefbag. I also have the Keyboard Sleeve for the wireless keyboard.
What features do you want to see in a future iPad?
The retina display will be very nice once it happens. Otherwise, it really is a near perfect device for me. I can’t think of anything else right now.
Thanks again to Patrick for taking the time to give us a little insight into his iPad life. Be sure to follow him on Twitter he is @patrickrhone.
To see more people’s iPad Lives take a look here.
“I love Mac OS, especially because of the respect Apple shows for my time and attention.” –Marco Arment
So Microsoft out up the Angry Birds icon on the Windows Phone 7 site and Rovio the guys that make Angry Birds tweeted this: We have NOT committed to doing a Windows Phone 7 version. Microsoft put the Angry Birds icon on their site without our permission. Comical.
So Microsoft out up the Angry Birds icon on the Windows Phone 7 site and Rovio the guys that make Angry Birds tweeted this:
We have NOT committed to doing a Windows Phone 7 version. Microsoft put the Angry Birds icon on their site without our permission.
Comical.
MG Siegler with a great translation of Google’s Android chief Andy Rubin talking about how Google could sell an unlocked phone again: Translation: we have to figure out how to do this without pissing off our carrier partners.
MG Siegler with a great translation of Google’s Android chief Andy Rubin talking about how Google could sell an unlocked phone again:
Translation: we have to figure out how to do this without pissing off our carrier partners.
As a WordPress veteran of 4 years or so I constantly check out any post that says things like “10 must have WordPress plugins” or “Tips for WordPress Users”. One thing that seems constant on these lists over the past year or two has been the recommendation to install a WordPress Plugin called “WP-Touch”. This…
As a WordPress veteran of 4 years or so I constantly check out any post that says things like “10 must have WordPress plugins” or “Tips for WordPress Users”. One thing that seems constant on these lists over the past year or two has been the recommendation to install a WordPress Plugin called “WP-Touch”. This plugin reformats the CSS on your WordPress blog to be “optimized” for the iPhone and other mobile devices. WP-Touch has a huge following and a ton of people use it – but that doesn’t make it good.
I am anything but a designer and I too have dabbled in using these plugins. In the end I usually always turn them off, not because they don’t work, rather because they are down right ugly and make the user experience suffer on your site. There is nothing more annoying to me than to be out on my iPhone and hit a link to a blog and be greeted with the WP-Touch theme.
Perhaps I am alone in this thinking, but I think it looks terrible. Instead why not just make sure that your site works on the iPhone in it’s ‘normal’ state? The iPhone (and all iOS devices for that matter) is designed to work with the web the way it is, not for the web to reconfigure itself to work with the device.
In fact I know I am not alone, just take a look at what Ethan Marcotte on A List Apart had to say on the matter of responsive web design. Now he is not talking specifically about the same thing, what he does show though is that you can make a site that looks and acts very similar on all devices. That just may be the key to making blogs more iPhone sized ready – but in the end is it really so hard to double tap of the body of text you want to read?
When a new plugin called PadPressed came out, purporting to take your WordPress blog and make it look like a native iPad app, I went out and bought it and installed it. Today if you view this site on your iPad you won’t see that plugin. It is no longer active or even on my server.
I removed PadPressed not because it was a bad plugin, but because the user experience of the plugin was massively flawed. It looked great, beautiful even to my eyes, but interaction with it and trying to use it to actually read this blogs content was less than ideal. In the end I will stick with this very simple design on the site, readable on all devices.
So I urge everyone with a WordPress blog to turn off your mobile themes – get rid of WP-Touch. If you want to change the look and feel of your site when the screen size shrinks then do so – but respect the user experience because WP-Touch is just ugly:
This morning I saw two posts in my RSS feed, both about speeding up your Mac if you think it is running slow. Post #1 from Cult of Mac (Wired) was terrible and useless. Post #2 from The Next Web was slightly better, but still not all that great, especially for savvy Mac users. So…
This morning I saw two posts in my RSS feed, both about speeding up your Mac if you think it is running slow.
Post #1 from Cult of Mac (Wired) was terrible and useless. Post #2 from The Next Web was slightly better, but still not all that great, especially for savvy Mac users.
So I submit to you the main reason your Mac is running slow: you don’t have an SSD hard drive.
Yes it is that simple.
Get this one (highly recommended) or if you are more budget conscience I hear these offer a great compromise(I have never tested one though).
Once you go SSD you don’t go back.
Honestly Yahoo’s CEO Carol Bartz needs to just keep her mouth shut, just take a look at some of these quotes from her recent interview with USAToday. Q: Who’s your biggest single competitor? A: Facebook — not today, but they could be. If they keep going, they will have the vault of information on everybody…
Honestly Yahoo’s CEO Carol Bartz needs to just keep her mouth shut, just take a look at some of these quotes from her recent interview with USAToday.
Q: Who’s your biggest single competitor?
A: Facebook — not today, but they could be. If they keep going, they will have the vault of information on everybody in the world, and that’s valuable.
Or to translate, let me not answer your actual question and give you a foreshadowing answer that means nothing.
On Yahoo’s advertising push:
Too much of the advertising (on the Internet) is static and feels old-fashioned. So we like to work with the advertisers to say, “Let’s kind of get in there and mix it up. Let’s get people jolted awake again.”
One of my favorites: Purina Puppy Chow has a little puppy walking across the top of the screen. I sit there like an idiot because it’s cute, and I happen to like puppies. It drags the bowl.
She is right there is not enough moving, blinking, loud Flash ads on the web – clearly we need more puppies.
When interviewer David Lieberman says that Yahoo makes him do to much work by him having to click a button that says “don’t show me this again” Bartz responds:
Oh, excuse me, please. You are getting a lot of value. This is not like a free lunch here. We just opened a data center in Buffalo, and in its first phase it has 50,000 servers. That is not cheap. So the very fact that you get all this great information is part of the deal.
Are you fucking serious?
Also this patently untrue statement:
If you want to run an ad on the iPad, it has to be approved by Apple
Or you can just have an ad in a webpage – but you know they don’t allow Flash so cute puppies are out.
Then I stopped reading this after I saw this gem:
Q: In January you gave yourself a B-minus for the first year. How about this year?
A: I’m off the grading thing. I’m just going to declare that we are pass-fail, and I pass.
How does she still have a job? Oh she passed, never mind.
Zeldman: Kids today are more likely to respond to a blog post on Twitter than in the article’s comments section; so we’ve collocated our comments on Twitter. Share a tweet-length response here, and, with your permission, it will go there. If you are moved to respond with more than 140 characters, post the response on…
Zeldman:
Kids today are more likely to respond to a blog post on Twitter than in the article’s comments section; so we’ve collocated our comments on Twitter. Share a tweet-length response here, and, with your permission, it will go there. If you are moved to respond with more than 140 characters, post the response on your website, and it will show up here. Clever, these Americans.
A pretty neat idea, it will be interesting to see how this plays out long term.
Because paying $1900 and making me replace my TV is exactly what I want to do. But hey, there is Google Inside right?
Because paying $1900 and making me replace my TV is exactly what I want to do. But hey, there is Google Inside right?
All I can say is this is really insane. If the sample pics provided are real-world pictures then this is one damn impressive feat by Sony.
All I can say is this is really insane. If the sample pics provided are real-world pictures then this is one damn impressive feat by Sony.
Nick Bilton: Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, recently showed up with a small entourage of deputies at Adobe’s corporate offices in San Francisco to hold a secret meeting with Adobe’s chief executive, Shantanu Narayen. The meeting, which lasted over an hour, covered a number of topics, but one of the main thrusts of the discussion was…
Nick Bilton:
Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, recently showed up with a small entourage of deputies at Adobe’s corporate offices in San Francisco to hold a secret meeting with Adobe’s chief executive, Shantanu Narayen.
The meeting, which lasted over an hour, covered a number of topics, but one of the main thrusts of the discussion was Apple and its control of the mobile phone market and how the two companies could partner in the battle against Apple. A possible acquisition of Adobe by Microsoft were among the options.
And you thought Photoshop couldn’t get any uglier or more crashtastic.
“I think what really bugs me is that so many people undervalue the developers who make their lives easier every single day, taking for granted the amazing user experiences they get with so little investment. They’re the same people who pirate $2 games. Seriously, how did you pay for that iPhone to begin with?” –Brett Terpstra
Remember what I said about the Sony remote the other night? Yeah, well Logitech decided to just give you a keyboard, because every wife wants an f’ing keyboard sitting on the coffee table. Because every person wants to have to type in the dark to be able to change the channel… I’ll stop now.
Remember what I said about the Sony remote the other night? Yeah, well Logitech decided to just give you a keyboard, because every wife wants an f’ing keyboard sitting on the coffee table. Because every person wants to have to type in the dark to be able to change the channel… I’ll stop now.
This whole thing is a must read – it is the epitome of why Windows sucks on a tablet device. But in the interest of saving you time here are a few choice quotes that sum it up. Steve Ballmer talking about optimizing Windows 7 for touch interfaces according to Mark Wilson: Media Center is…
This whole thing is a must read – it is the epitome of why Windows sucks on a tablet device. But in the interest of saving you time here are a few choice quotes that sum it up.
Steve Ballmer talking about optimizing Windows 7 for touch interfaces according to Mark Wilson:
Media Center is big and, when people say ‘hey, we could optimise more for clients’ I think what they generally mean is ‘Big Buttons’. Big Buttons that’s, I think, a codeword for Big Buttons and Media Center is Big Buttons not Little Buttons. I’m not trying to trivialise that – it’s a real issue.
and:
The truth of the matter is the laptop weighs less – you can set it on your lap, it doesn’t weigh anything at that point and then you can type.
That isn’t just marketing talk, it is a completely asinine take on how to build a good tablet.
My Twitter stream lately has had a lot of talk about people switching to OmniFocus from Things and as such I thought it might be helpful to share some of my favorite tips for new and old OmniFocus users. Inside OmniFocus exists this preference pane called ‘style’ and this preference pane may just be the…
My Twitter stream lately has had a lot of talk about people switching to OmniFocus from Things and as such I thought it might be helpful to share some of my favorite tips for new and old OmniFocus users.
Inside OmniFocus exists this preference pane called ‘style’ and this preference pane may just be the least productive part of OmniFocus – one could spend days in here. My advice is to not touch it unless you can’t stand the look and feel of things. If you really must change the look check out OFThemes.com first. If you still can’t find a theme you like then take a moment and make changes, go back and tweak a day later then leave it alone. Honestly don’t waste all of your time in this preference pane.
Set the default due time for your actions. I have mine set at 4:30pm because I work until 5pm and I know that the last half an hour of my day is reserved for getting ready for the next day and wrapping up loose ends. That means everything else needs to be done for the day by 4:30p. Make sure to adjust this to better suit the hours that you keep.
In the quick entry panel both the Project and Context fields will search as you type, you don’t need to know the exact name, just get close. Because of this and the fact that you can tab through the fields you should take the time to fill in all the fields helping to keep your ‘Inbox’ empty (and thus saving you from having to process it later). This of course is not a hard and fast rule, but something that I strongly believe in.
Another quick entry panel tip: the date field can take a lot of different things. Try the following:
Mon/Tue/Wed/Fri/Sat/Sun will all set the due date to the next time that day occurs. Note that for the life of me I cannot figure out a shorthand for Thursday so if anybody knows this please get in touch and let me know. [Updated: 10/7/10 at 10:31 AM] Thursday is abbreviated ‘Thu’ as pointed out by Omni Group’s CEO Ken Case – I have no clue why I never thought to try that.
BTW, you can also use relative intervals like “+2d” (two days from today) or “+3w 4pm” (three weeks from today, at 4pm).
Yukari Iwatani Kane and Ting-i Tsai reporting for the Wall Street Journal: Verizon, in those earlier discussions, balked at Apple’s requirement that Verizon not allow its retail partners to sell the phone, people familiar with the discussion said at the time. Verizon also declined to give up its ability to sell content like music and…
Yukari Iwatani Kane and Ting-i Tsai reporting for the Wall Street Journal:
Verizon, in those earlier discussions, balked at Apple’s requirement that Verizon not allow its retail partners to sell the phone, people familiar with the discussion said at the time. Verizon also declined to give up its ability to sell content like music and videos through its proprietary service, these people said.
And a great point from MG Siegler:
If Apple really does care about U.S. market share — and again, indications are that they actually do — they need Verizon more than Verizon needs them. And that’s a bad place to be in — and one Apple isn’t used to in recent yea
There is zero doubt in my mind that Siegler is right, Apple needs more carriers in the U.S. to continue to grow its market share – that is painfully obvious. The thing that I keep bouncing around in my head though is perhaps there is a CDMA iPhone in January and a GSM phone – both are sold directly from Apple in an unlocked state – a ‘here it is come and get it’ approach.
Wouldn’t that be interesting? Would you pay for an unlocked iPhone – maybe if the price was right. What if Apple keeps AT&T as the only carrier that you can buy directly through but sells phones unlocked that work on any network in the country? That sounds like a pretty good model to me – it would remove a ton of complaints while giving Apple the entire U.S. wireless customer base all at once.
Again though it is all going to come down to $$$.
Statcounter: Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) browser has fallen below 50% of the worldwide market for the first time according to StatCounter. The company’s research arm, StatCounter Global Stats finds that Microsoft IE fell to 49.87% in September followed by Firefox with 31.5%. Google’s Chrome continues to increase market share at an impressive rate and has…
Statcounter:
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) browser has fallen below 50% of the worldwide market for the first time according to StatCounter. The company’s research arm, StatCounter Global Stats finds that Microsoft IE fell to 49.87% in September followed by Firefox with 31.5%. Google’s Chrome continues to increase market share at an impressive rate and has more than tripled from 3.69% in September 2009 to 11.54% in September this year.
That will keep dropping I would suspect – though I am hearing IE 9 is pretty nice.
What a great thought – read a book and spend time with someone you love on Sundays and leave the computer/iPad/iPhone/Web/TV alone. I don’t know that I would be able to do this, but my wife and I do try to spend solid chunks of time together on the weekends not sitting in front of…
What a great thought – read a book and spend time with someone you love on Sundays and leave the computer/iPad/iPhone/Web/TV alone. I don’t know that I would be able to do this, but my wife and I do try to spend solid chunks of time together on the weekends not sitting in front of our computers (usually this means watching TV/Movies together).