The Log

Beautiful site. And a fantastic use of mapping technology.

Wed, 16 May 2012 16:26:05 -0700

Beautiful site. And a fantastic use of mapping technology.

Weekly Sponsor - Igloo

Wed, 16 May 2012 08:23:43 -0700

Work isn’t a place – it’s what you do.

And you might work on a lot of devices – a Mac, an iPhone, an iPad – in a lot of places. You might work on the road or maybe from home (with your Aeropress and clickity keyboard). And that makes it hard to securely use a shared drive, coordinate with clients and collaborate with your team.

Igloo offers a complete digital workplace – you get full access to all your files, project discussions and plans for world domination. The information you need to work is available anywhere in the world, literally at your fingertips.

Igloo has a space for your team. Each team gets dedicated file sharing, Twitter-like microblogs, activity streams and a host of other collaboration tools in one cloud-based platform. Plans start at just $4/user/month.

Work better, not harder.

Enter to win an Aeropress and try Igloo free for 30 days.

Kirby

Tue, 15 May 2012 16:58:55 -0700

Kirby:

Interesting looking (simple) CMS from Bastian Allgeier. There are days when I wish for something less complex than EE and with slightly more configurability than Tumblr. There are a few simple blogging tools available now, but Kirby is the one that intrigues me most.

Spent a beautiful Mother’s Day having coffee & cakes...

Mon, 14 May 2012 08:22:25 -0700

Spent a beautiful Mother’s Day having coffee & cakes with friends and family amidst the apple trees and gardens.

Why My iPad Is Not My Laptop

Tue, 08 May 2012 08:13:02 -0700

Why My iPad Is Not My Laptop:

John Carey writes the blog post that has been sitting in my head for a while. While the iPad is a marvellous device that can do more each passing month, it’s still limited to being a consumption device for so many creatives. There’s been more than enough posts from writers extolling the virtues of the iPad as a complete work environment. As John points out, while true for writers, it’s not so much the case for most others.

Shawn Blanc has written recently about his Macbook Air being his desktop and his iPad being his new “laptop”. I run the same hardware as Shawn and for me, the iPad is a peripheral — it’s great for reading, planning and organizing. But for web design and development work, I bring around my Air.

Shawn does a good job of listing the advantages of the iPad, but John does an even better job of illustrating how this doesn’t apply beyond writing. Of course, we all know this will change as the iPad — and the software available for it — matures. But for now, the iPad is not my laptop.

Lovely page of type pairings from Dan Eden.

Wed, 02 May 2012 15:47:00 -0700

Lovely page of type pairings from Dan Eden.

Weekly Sponsor - Minigroup

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 08:14:42 -0700

Weekly Sponsor - Minigroup:

An Atlanta design firm uses Minigroup to work smarter and keep its clients happy

Braizen uses Minigroup to manage projects and collaborate and communicate with their clients.

A minigroup is a private, secure online space where members communicate with posts and comments, share large files, and manage projects.

Braizen uses one minigroup like an intranet, to discuss business and assign tasks. They also create separate minigroups for each client, where employees working on various accounts present comp designs and drafts.

“Telling potential clients that we use this tool, where we’ll keep in constant contact with them, definitely helps seal the deal,” says Tyrie, the copywriter at Braizen. Watch the full interview with Braizen.

Minigroups start at just $3 per year for owners, with plans up to 100 minigroups and 100GB of storage. There are no user/member fees.

Find out more or try it free for 30 days.

A big thanks to Minigroup for sponsoring the feed this week.

"Your most reliable work will always be within your range. Go just a bit outside of that to show your..."

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 08:47:00 -0700

“Your most reliable work will always be within your range. Go just a bit outside of that to show your passion and stretch yourself. But go too far beyond that and you’ll be so strained that ultimately the work will suffer.”

- Pat Dryburgh

Fanfare for the Comma Man

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 08:42:31 -0700

Fanfare for the Comma Man:

Do you care about your English? If you do, chances are this piece will interest you.

Of all punctuation options, I find the comma to bring the most flexibility in my writing. The placement of one comma can change the overall tone of any statement. This piece gives a nice overview of the history of the comma and the mistakes people with it (yours truly included), but the author gives room for the idea that language changes over time based on how people use it, not placing to much emphasis on strict adherence to rules if no one follows them.

Fascinating stuff.

Information Buckets

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 08:35:55 -0700

After my post on Pocket as a save-anything-for-later bucket, a distinction is needed. I received a few questions about whether Pocket would replace Gimme Bar for me. The answer: an emphatic no. Pocket is to save for later, Gimme Bar is to save forever.

Forever being a relative term aside, I see Gimme Bar as my permanent archive location for things on the web. It has been designed and developed with this purpose in mind (as described in Orbital Content). When you save items to Gimme Bar, the app does its best to save the content itself, rather than just a pointer to a web page. With the life span of internet items being brief, a tool that can save items for longevity is needed.

Pocket makes a great inbox due to its inclusion in so many apps on iOS, but the items saved there are meant to be processed. Pocket and Gimme Bar may work well side by side.

Our son Matthew turned six this month. When asked what he wanted...

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 08:37:53 -0700

Our son Matthew turned six this month. When asked what he wanted to do for his birthday, the answer was play hockey with his friends. True Canadian.

Content Everywhere

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 08:12:00 -0700

This week’s news of the launch of Pocket — a compelling rebrand and slight change-of-focus of Read It Later — caught my attention. Like all the recent chatter on Instapaper and Readability, Pocket touches on a subject dear to my heart. It’s not surprising that these tools generate a lot of opinion and discussion — services like Pocket give us more control and access to the content we consume and share via the Internet. And we care about that content.

Regarding Pocket, there was plenty of both discussion and opinion on launch day. Federico gave a good overview of the redesigned service. Ben Brooks lamented that we see another free service trying to get users first and profit second (and this one changed from charging to not charging). Marcelo Somers and Kyle Baxter also chimed in.

What excited me about the news was not the monetizing strategy or the overall execution of the design, although I’m not yet sold on the former and the latter was well done. Rather, I was very impressed with the focus on the save-anything-for-later concept. This is an idea that has been on my mind the past year, as there has been a gap in the services available to us.

I also saw a few comments yesterday that don’t make a lot of sense. Ben Brooks couldn’t see how he needed a service like Pocket. Ian Hines felt it was targeted completely at women (á la Pinterest). Ian is just off base — having women in the video doesn’t mean they are excluding the tech-savvy nerd-centric folks from their target audience. As for Ben’s opinion, this could not be less true for myself.

Some Backstory

The lack of a service like Pocket is one I’ve felt for some time. Because of the rise of iOS, plus services that allow me to find new content, I’ve needed an anything bucket for the cloud. There are several requirements that a service like this needs to fulfill:

easy capture
items are capture-able from multiple sources (Twitter, RSS, Safari, email etc)
ubiquity, meaning access from multiple services, apps and devices
logical organization structure

There are a few other items that would be nice to have, but are not necessary:

a nicely designed view of your content
an optimized reading layout for text

Services have come that fit many of these criteria. Instapaper is a good example. It allows for easy capture. It has a good reach across the iOS landscape (what I mean by ubiquity) — I can save items from all the best iOS apps like Reeder, Tweetbot and Flipboard. It has a nice structure, gives a decent interaction with saved items and of course, and gives a lovely view for reading your saved articles.

The issue is that none of the services I’ve seen fit all my requirements. Instapaper is primarily a tool for reading later. Same for Readability. But I come across items on my iOS devices that require another look when I get back to my Mac. Items to archive (whether in Yojimbo, Pinboard or my bucket of choice, Gimme Bar). Designs to explore further. Videos to watch. Technical resources to investigate, then archive. Apps to purchase.

The internet brings me many forms of content, and they do not all require the same action from me. So an anything bucket that lived on the web, with the potential for native interfaces, gets me really excited.

Then, Pinbox

I believed in this idea so much that I took steps towards building my own service. Titled Pinbox, it was an anything bucket that would pull in items from your various streams and services. Likes or faves from the services you specified would show up, as would emailed items or items viewed in Safari and triggered with the Pinboxes bookmarklet.

The most difficult aspect of this project was deciding how to start. There were so many services that come close: Gimme Bar, Stellar.io by Jason Kottke, as well as Instapaper and Readability. The aspect of having so many similar services, combined with the knowledge that that’s a very good chance that someone else is currently working on a solution like this, can be daunting when starting out. But none fit my needs exactly, so I moved forward.

I eventually decided to actually build the service on top of Gimme Bar. After a discussion with Cameron Koczon, I started working on my idea, building out some rough browser mockups to flesh out the concept further.

The overall idea of Pinbox was this: it was a place to capture items from various sources, then to process them. It was not intend to be a permanent storage location. It was an inbox, and inboxes are meant to be cleared out, at some point.

I’m excited about Pocket. Something nicely designed and backed by real money — with a plan for earning revenue as well — will fit nicely in my tool belt.

As I mentioned above, a service of this type needs to be accessible everywhere you access content. With Pinbox, because a brand new app like this would not start out with deep integration in the iOS landscape, I chose the route of pulling in Faves/Likes. But Read-It-Later already had the traction of being included in the major iOS apps. Pocket has a great head start on any newcomers to this space and makes a compelling case for using the service.

As for Pinbox, it’s not going anywhere. Despite having API access to Gimme Bar and a developer friend ready and available to build it out, I decided to shelve the project before Christmas. After the sale of Fusion, I had to decide which projects to pursue. And friends, like many of you, I have way more ideas than time to allot to them all.

At the end of the day, I wanted to spend time making something that aligns tightly with the priorities in my life. A tool that keeps people connected and online more doesn’t quite fit. It’s still a need, and I’m happy to see something like Pocket become available.

I’ll happily use the service while I work on projects that are even closer to my heart.

Weekly Sponsor - World War Hack, A Graphic Novel

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 11:10:00 -0700

Weekly Sponsor - World War Hack, A Graphic Novel:

Inspired by true events, World War Hack is a graphic novel that tells the story of how the U.S. Government gathers top computer hackers from around the country, under the guise of a hacking competition, to unknowingly help solve a pressing national security crisis. Little does the government know that eighteen-year-old hacker, Wyatt Dyer, is both the cause and solution to their crisis.

As a special offer for the readers of this site, you can preview the first full chapter online for free. Pre-order before May 6 and you’ll also receive free shipping.

Thanks to the folks behind World War Hack for sponsoring the feed this week. I had a chance to read the first chapter a week ago and really enjoyed it. I’ve since moved on to the rest of the book and it’s a fun read.

We adopted a 7 year old female rottweiler/lab cross, mostly to...

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:09:47 -0700

We adopted a 7 year old female rottweiler/lab cross, mostly to keep on eye on the kids due to all the wildlife around these parts. Say hi to Nach (as in, nachoooo!).

Lifestyle Business

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:04:36 -0700

Lifestyle Business:

This talk by Matt Haughey is spot on. I love how he describes conversations he has with VCs, comparing the usual Valley model of business to slow growth with a business like MetaFilter:

I’ve had discussions with VC investors where they hear about my business and dismiss it as “just a lifestyle business” and I’ve come back with “hey, it’s a pretty good lifestyle, probably a better lifestyle than yours, probably a better lifestyle than if I accepted five million dollars from you.”

I’d be happy with “just a lifestyle business”. It’s also the kind of business I want to support with my consumer dollars. Read the whole piece.

Aside: big bonus points to sites that provide a transcript for talks, sermons etc. Reading these kinds of content seems so much more efficient than audio or video.

Byword - Weekly Sponsor

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 08:21:41 -0700

Byword - Weekly Sponsor:

Byword is a Mac and iOS app for modern writers.

Modern writers don’t just sit at a desk and write. Sometimes it’s great to be able to write, edit or proofread when and where inspiration strikes and not be restrained by a single device or location. Byword makes this kind of workflow easy by integrating iCloud and Dropbox synchronization.

The flexibility of Byword: An article idea came to your mind last night on the couch and you began working on it on your iPad. This morning, at the office, you picked up where you left off by opening Byword on you MacBook Air — and finding the article was there just as you left it on the iPad. After lunch, on your way to the coffee shop, you pull out your iPhone to proofread and finish the draft.

Byword is available on the Mac App Store for $9.99, and for iOS on the App Store at the introductory price of $2.99. Check it out.

A big thank you to the folks at Metaclassy for sponsoring the feed this week to promote Byword.

Shawn Blanc, Updated

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 06:21:37 -0700

Shawn Blanc, Updated:

Shawnblanc.net has a new look. It’s not a full redesign, but rather a refresh. I like it — the new colour scheme is great and Shawn uses Proxima Nova well.

Now if we can just convince him to bump up the font size a little more.

Finally — I am so ready for green.

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 13:48:00 -0700

Finally — I am so ready for green.

5 Short Years

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 14:20:00 -0700

5 Short Years:

While reading this piece on usability testing from 2007, this paragraph caught my attention:

During one such study I handed out diaries to ten users and asked them to describe incidents, over the ten days that followed, when they felt that their mobile phones had let them down. I asked them to describe a solution – even a magical one – to their situation which would guarantee them a successful outcome to the problems they had. The users sketched out all sorts of solutions: a stylus to take notes on their mobile during a call, a mobile which could text a fax, a mobile which could open word documents or texts whilst in the middle of a phone call.

Here we are, five years later, and people do all the activities he describes on their phones. Not just the tech savvy, but the normals, teens, pre-teens, and baby boomers alike. The magical is now the everyday.

What a shift.

One More Thing iOS Conference - Weekly Sponsor

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:53:00 -0700

Interested in the design, development and business of iOS apps? At One More Thing, our goal is to get developers confident, psyched, and ready to move from dreaming of making apps to just doing it. Learn from awesome developers & designers such as:

- Loren Brichter (Tweetie/ex-Twitter)
- Neven Mrgan (designer at Panic)
- Karl von Randow (lead developer on Camera+)
- Raphael Schaad (engineer at Flipboard)
- Matt Rix (Trainyard)
- Shaun Inman (Last Rocket)
and many more…

They’ll be in Melbourne, Australia on the 25th & 26th of May, 2012. Register before April 12th for discounted early-bird pricing.

A big thank you to the folks at the One More Thing conference for sponsoring the feed this week!