Tangible Life
Turntable.fm: Where Did Our Love Go?
Really interesting article about the origins and struggles of a web start up that I have heard a lot about, but never actually used personally (until today). I find that getting the history of how a popular web brand got to where it is fascinating.
Then traffic started falling. By autumn, it dwindled to less than half its peak, and the very same tech watchers started wondering whether it was all over. Goldstein says he can hear the doubt in the voices of his Silicon Valley friends. “I can tell now when people say, ‘How’s it going?’ they mean, ‘You’re flattening, aren’t you?’”
Thinly masked methods of asking if a company is floundering can be an artform.
Starkintosh
This video is nothing short of pure awesome. It combines my love of Ironman, Mac nostalgia and a great drink pour close-up.
How Mad Men Landed the Beatles: All You Need Is Love (and $250,000)
When I watched the May 6th episode of Mad Men, I was literally floored to see Megan Draper hand Don the Revolver album. She flipped the LP jacket over and said “This one.” The next few seconds as Don placed the record in the player and lowered the needle to the right position probably had my brainwave diagram charting like an earthquake analysis. WHAT SONG WILL IT BE!? Tomorrow Never Knows was not my top guess, but it was the right choice for so many reasons.
Mr. Weiner declined to discuss the licensing costs, but said: “Whatever people think, this is not about money. It never is. They are concerned about their legacy and their artistic impact.”
Matthew Weiner gained so many respect points for this statement. Most people focus only on the monetary aspects of The Beatles “business”, and never even consider that this is about legacy. The Beatles is more than just a brand. Luckily for their legacy, they have used that tenant in their decision process as a constant.
Mr. Weiner said he had been trying “for a few years” to get different Beatles songs onto “Mad Men,” but had been rejected by Apple Corps in the past.
While I have no insight into the past attempts, I’ll venture the guess that the treatment of the song in context to both the story and overall series progression was not implemented as flawlessly as it was in “Lady Lazarus” on May 6th.
Byword of Mouth
I have been hearing about the Byword application on countless podcasts for months now. Until today, I had not tried it first-hand or understood how it could be a better distraction-free writing environment for me to draft blog posts.
Now that I am writing this via the application, I can honestly say that I do not anticipate using any other text entry application for drafting posts in the future. I have previously used several apps (including OmmWriter, TextMate and TextEdit), but none of them live up to the features of Byword. OmmWriter does have some nice features that Byword does not, but they don’t make the writing experience more efficient in the same way. Below I’ll call to attention my three favorite features that make Byword the best writing application I’ve used on my iMac.
Click on the feature heading to see an example screenshot.
Line Focus
I’m not even sure why Byword doesn’t have Line Focus on by default. Had I not heard about the feature in one of the podcast reviews, I might not have immediately looked for it in the View menu. Line Focus allows you to have the current line of your writing highlighted by dimming the surrounding lines to a lighter shade. It doesn’t seem like a big thing, until you use it. By having the other text fade to the background of what is already a distraction-free, full-screen, immersive experience, the current line of your writing flows in the same way that thoughts do from your brain. As your your thoughts progress, how you got to your current focus has faded. The feature makes writing less about going back and seeing how you got to where you are, and more about putting down the current thought in your mind and getting to the next in logical succession.
An alternative to Line Focus is Paragraph Focus, which applies the same idea to the entire current paragraph. This could be helpful if what you are writing is structured into very specific sections where the focus needs to be on properly classifying thoughts to the entire section.
Typewriter Mode
Typewriter Mode takes me back. I remember learning to touch-type on an old-school electric typewriter at my grandfather’s desk. My father and mother (who had desks in the same family-owned office) had upgraded to modern electric models, but my grandfather kept the model he had used for years. The keys were chunky and while they didn’t require a great deal of force, the tactile feedback you received as you watched the magic the words being imprinted in the paper as the forged letter slugs swung to action, mounted on their long, thin arms was amazing. In a way it motivated me as a young writer. I wasn’t writing anything of much value, but it created a thirst that is still quenched by putting words on a page (or screen) to this day. The biggest difference between writing in a current word processing application and the typewriter is that the current line is always in focus as far as position for the latter. The paper moves, the placement of where the writing is happening does not. I had never given this much thought before today. None of the other apps I’ve used offered this option (or perhaps I had just never discovered it), but it is nothing short of inspiring. It allows my eyes to remain fixed on the current line being written and they are not required to track down the page as I write more. Using it in combination with Line Focus is just awesome.
Markdown Preview
I’m very new to the wonderful world that is writing in Markdown. The thing that attracted me to it most is that it allows you to perform formatting, while still drafting in plain text. The best way to illustrate this idea is to show you two examples. This is what I see while I am drafting this post. The three hashes before the section title are used to create the HTML heading tag that will be applied when the Markdown text is rendered as HTML script. Here is how the same text will appear when published. Using Markdown Preview allows me to quickly and easily see how my post will look once published to the site. My blog platform (Squarespace) supports Markdown in draft-mode, so all I have to do is export my Byword writing and paste it in. I believe there are even more shortcuts that will save me even more time in the process of getting text out of Byword and into my blog, but I’ll need to research that a bit more.
Word By Word
I am still fighting to build the habit of writing daily. Whether it be working on a blog post for this site, or simply putting down a few thoughts in an app like Day One. In order to become great at something, you have to do it until the process comes naturally. I can’t say that I sit down at the keyboard and instantly have the thoughts flow into a cohesive and illustrative narrative, but I’m trying. What I can definitely assert is that using Byword, process is getting out of the way in a very natural fashion and the words are just flowing. Just like they did sitting at my grandfather’s typewriter, they’ve never been more amazing to watch.
A Little iEnvy
I <3 Android
I really do enjoy Android as a mobile OS. Android offers a world of choice and customization that is painful to implement (at best) on the iOS platform. I started my affair with Android almost two years ago with the Nexus One, and have recently upgraded to a Nexus S. I had an iPod Touch (2nd Gen) when I used a BlackBerry Bold as my phone, but have since gone to just my Android phone and gave the Touch to my son. I am running Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) on my Nexus S, and think that it is a great upgrade from Gingerbread. I also picked up a HP TouchPad during the “fire sale” and have it running ICS as well. ICS made that $150 tablet feel as nice to me as my wife’s 1st generation iPad.
I respect iOS
I enjoyed iOS when I used it on the iPod Touch and when I borrow my wife’s iPad. The app ecosystem that Apple offers is truly unmatched. Not only are the apps on iOS more plentiful for the types of use cases I am concerned with, but they are certainly more beautiful as well. Reeder on the iPad is probably the app I miss most when using my Android tablet, but there are several examples on the phone. I should mention here that I run an iMac as my primary home computer and am in no way an exclusive “fanboy” for any one company or platform. I use what I feel best fits my situation and my preferences. Several factors can play into those criteria. Cost (I wouldn’t have an iPad of my own if I hadn’t gotten the TouchPad for such a steal), workplace restrictions (I am not able to place my work issues SIM card into an iPhone due to carrier billing differences) and variety all play into my choices. My wife uses an iPhone 4 and the 1st generation iPad, so anytime I’d like to play around with a new app or sync my Jawbone UP band, I borrow her devices.
My Current iEnvy
My current “iEnvy” is fueled by two primary factors. First, my wife never worries about her phone’s battery life. I constantly worry about mine. This is the same case with our tablets, however, I don’t use my TouchPad nearly as much as I do my phone. Battery life should be Android’s number one focus with it’s next Nexus device and future operating system decisions. I haven’t talked to any Android lovers who are not taking steps to conserve battery life with apps like Tasker or JuiceDefender. My wife is not as heavy a user of her phone as I am, but she leaves Wifi on always, and her screen timeout is set to some ridiculous value on the high end. I’d have to actually carry an iPhone 4 or 4S for a few days to know if I would be in a better position with it vs. my Nexus S, but I’m 99% sure that I would be based on talking to others that use those devices.
The second driver of my iEnvy is that both the iPhone and iPad now sport Retina displays. Simply put, no one has better mobile device displays than Apple. I read a lot of text on my phone and tablet and know just from helping my wife with things on her iPhone 4 that the experience of a Retina display is unmatched to anything else. I’m in a position now where I question whether I need to have two Android mobile devices, or if I would be getting the best of both worlds by having either an iPhone and my TouchPad or my Nexus S and an iPad. This brings back the criteria limitations I brought up above, but I’m working to determine if either move would be feasible. I think it would change my use patterns a bit. I’d read less on my phone and more on my tablet if I had an iPad. I’d still enjoy the customization and freedom that comes with Android on my more heavily used device… but I’d still have shitty battery life.
Envy is a Deadly Sin
I’m not really thinking along the lines of Ten Commandments… but more the “geek law” variety. So many people are in one camp or the other when it comes to Android vs. iOS (both hardware and software). I find myself looking over the fence and saying, “I should really tear down this fence and eat any colored grass I like.”
Griffin USB Mini Cables
Using is a series on Tangible Life that highlights products that the author personally uses and finds to be nothing short of awesome. Just click the product link below to be taken to an Amazon product page.
My occupation requires me to be be fairly flexible and mobile when it comes to the tech I use. Over the past two years, I’ve worked to downsize the amount of items that I carry in my bag (and the size of the bag itself) to just those things that are necessary to get the job done while working remotely. I’ve read blog posts from various sites that highlight the items in their bags, and this particular item was highlighted in several. I realized that I was carrying three types of USB cables to interact with other items in the bag. All were between 4 and 6 feet in length, and I had wrapped up each using the ‘bull horn’ method of cable management and stuck them into a inner compartment.
After seeing this product, I realized that there were very few times that I had ever needed the 4 to 6 feet of cable when using these connections remotely. The mini-USB cable is for hooking up an external hard drive, which is always in very close proximity to my laptop itself. The 30-pin iPod connector is obvious, and again, never needed to be very far away from the laptop as I was using it to either sync or charge the Apple device in my bag. The micro-USB cable is actually the most used out of the 3 cables, because I have a few gadgets that use this connection. The decision I made in the end is that there was no need to have a long cable for any of these 3 connection types in my bag, and so I picked up a set of the Griffin Mini Cables. They sit very nicely in the inside upper pocket (which is tiny), and take up relatively no space in my bag, but provide all the functionality that their much longer predecessors did.
After using these cables for well over a year, I can state that they are extremely durable. The connections “stay put” when in my devices, which is a very important factor for any mobile cable selection. The only drawback of the cables that I can cite is that when you lend one out, you may have to hunt down the borrower to give it back. Seriously though, the only minor thing I’d like to see integrated into this product would be a color indicator near the non-standard USB tip. When light is low, I sometimes have trouble telling the difference between the mini and micro-USB variants. If you are trying to reduce your mobile tech into a more compact set of tools, these cables are an awesome start.
When I was young, I clearly remember the BIOS screen flashing by, counting it’s now tiny amount of RAM as our first family computer (running Windows 3.1) booted up. I also clearly remember the sounds coming from our kitchen at all times of the day as my father filled the coffee pot with water (from the tap, of course) and then poured it into the reservoir of the Mr. Coffee drip coffee maker.
Completing the template structure and header logo feels kind of like those two memories converging.
C:\> win