March 2010
38 posts
5 tags
Overcommitted
I’ve known about the apps and good repute of the folks at Overcommitted Apps for a while, but had never used their offerings myself until recently. By chance, I recently purchased two and have been really pleased with the quality.
As always, it’s the little things that make the difference.
TripMix
I love iTunes and the iPod app on my iPhone. But TripMix has been a welcome addition...
2 tags
Desk Phone Dock
Okay, you got me.
[ via Smoking Apples ]
Web Design - HTML5 & CSS3 Checklist →
For devigners embracing CSS3 and HTML5, check out this handy browser comparison chart.
[ via Cameron Moll ]
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Improving Your Process: Establishing Style Guides →
This is a great article by Jonathan Christopher on Monday by Noon. For a beginner like myself, looking at a well organized stylesheet or markup behind a site is inspiring all on its own — I love seeing how the professionals organize their front end code in different ways.
As with anything in technology, documentation is crucial — and just plain being kind — to yourself and your team in the...
4 tags
Xero Personal →
As my first tax season as an entrepreneur comes to an end (thankfully), the realization that a good familiarity of basic accounting principles is a good thing to have when running your own business. Perhaps even a necessity.
From everything I’ve heard, Xero is one of the best options for small business to take care of their accounting. And now Xero is aimed at the home market, allowing...
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ZURB Grid Builder →
Here’s a handy tool for creating your own grid layout on the fly.
[ via Squared Eye ]
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Happy Birthday
It’s the little things that endear you to a service or an application.
[ via email from Tumblr ]
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Solaris Theme
One of the better Tumblr theme creators out there, Matthew Buchanan, has released two new themes today. One is Solaris, shown here.
Overall, a very attractive theme and — like all of Matthew’s work — it displays great attention to the little details. Also, it comes with both a light and a dark option.
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Bold Coffee + Nice Type
Starbucks has a promo going on for their lineup of bold roast coffees. The packaging makes the coffee taste even better.
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“Thinking outside the stream is the new thinking outside the box.”
– Dave Pell in Curation Nation: We Can’t Stop Sharing News.
“There’s an old Yiddish saying: Words should be weighed, not counted.”
– Dave Pell in You’re Boring Your Grandmother.
“If the democratization of publishing is to reap any rewards, it can only do so...”
– Mandy Brown in Ways of writing.
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Stattoo Homebrew
I’ve been a fan of the work of Panic before I even started using a Mac. And while I recently drooled over the Panic Status Board like everyone else, I once again had the feeling that one of my favourite Panic apps is well and truly abandoned. The app in question is Stattoo.
This was one of the first Mac apps I really fell in love with and made the Move from Windows a necessity....
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“The old thing is, ‘If you build it, they will come.’ Our sort of look at it is,...”
– Jim Coudal as heard on The Pipeline with Dan Benjamin
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Down to the River to Pray — Alison Krauss. From...
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TextExpander 3
A new version of my favourite text utility is now available.
Built-in Dropbox Synchronization
Now you can use Dropbox or MobileMe to keep your snippets synched between your Macs.
You had me at Dropbox.
4 tags
The Case FOR Flash
Sebastiaan de With makes some interesting points in favor of Flash. He includes the logic that if your implementation that does not use Flash equates to poor performance, then perhaps a future without Flash does not necessarily equate with progress.
Take a look at the current Macheist page. At the time of this writing, it is using 65 to 70 percent of the processing power in my early 2008 Mac Pro,...
“I can look past the serial comma (so long as the rule is followed consistently...”
– Jen Schuetz in a piece titled Your Friend, the Comma. It’s a good refresher for people who are serious about following the dictates of the English language. I was happy to see that I’m usually in adherence with the rules listed there.
3 tags
OmniFocus Themes
While OmniFocus is definitely too detailed for many folks, I appreciate some of the flexibility it offers. As a long time user of Things, I found that I often wanted to simply nest a few tasks rather than create a new project. This lack finally drove me to switch to the more complex OmniFocus.
One feature that I had no idea was included in OmniFocus is theming. Hidden in the Style Preference...
3 tags
“The most effective ads are the ones placed within a permission-based content...”
– Shawn Blanc gets the virtues of good web based advertising. This is exactly how we want Fusion to operate — we think of ourselves more as a personal recommendation channel, rather than merely an ad network.
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iPad Aesthetics
When the iPad was announced, there seemed to be a lot of people complaining that the UI was a little off and that the icons on the home screen looked a little lonely.
I suspect that a good part of the people making this complaint look at a desktop like this every day:
Or perhaps their iPhone home screen makes the iPad look sparse:
And hey, as long as a person can be productive with...
2 tags
“On the page, the rhythm of the text emerges from both the macro design—the...”
– Mandy Brown
Create a simple timer using LaunchBar and... →
Speaking of elegant Applescripts, Justin Blanton has a great one for creating timed reminders.
[ via Shawn Blanc ]
3 tags
Improvements in Character
One thing I neglected to add to my post yesterday on counting characters was that there is most likely various different ways to achieve what I did with Applescript and Automator. That’s another sometimes positive, sometimes maddening aspect of OS X — there are so many different ways to fiddle.
Along with that fact, I should have added the caveat that there was no doubt a more elegant...
Stand Up While You Read This →
No surprise here — standing appears to be healthier than sitting for long periods of time. Forget that Herman Miller Aeron, get a standing desk instead.
3 tags
Counting Characters
When a client sends in an completed ad to the Fusion mailbox, they include the accompanying text that sits beside the ad graphic. Because we allow a max of 80 characters, care has to be taken to ensure that there is no more than 80 characters included. It sounds obvious, but from time to time, a customer forgets the limit.
And so there are many times when I’ve eyeballed the text and...