May 2012
4 posts
4 tags
“Repetition, sequels, copies and automation are cheap commodities. It is the...”
– Kevin Kelly (paraphrased)
2 tags
Bonnie Paper Works →
good use of Tumblr to make a basic, professional web site.
3 tags
2 tags
“There is no adversary called customer. We have scaled up human interaction...”
– Haydn Shaughnessy
April 2012
1 post
6 tags
reprogramming your Windows brain for Macintosh
If you’re accustomed to Windows and bought a Mac, these basic “translations” should help ease your transition:
1) Remember, keyboard shortcuts that were [Control][Something] in Windows are now [Command][Something] on the Mac. It usually takes a 40 hour work week (or equivalent) to retrain your muscle memory to put your thumb on the [Command] key.
2) If you don’t have a...
March 2012
1 post
3 tags
WatchThis exemplifies how and why so many people are intimidated by their traditional personal computers, while Apple sells iPads as fast as Chinese workers can assemble them.
February 2012
5 posts
4 tags
Your Guide to Cutting the Cord to Cable TV →
without cutting yourself off from your favorite shows and channels
“a special in-depth report on who’s doing it, why and how”
2012 Edition - by Mark Glaser - MediaShift
4 tags
“Cathedrals were built over hundreds of years by thousands of nameless people...”
–
3 tags
“Microsoft’s biggest miss was allowing the world to finally see the truth behind...”
– Patrick Rhone’s wife
2 tags
“Who can beat Amazon on price? The companies whose products are sold on Amazon.”
– Chris Dixon on #ecommerce
4 tags
Tumbling on success →
Tom Cheshire’s article How Tumblr’s David Karp built a £500 million empire is a good retrospective of how my favorite blogging platform grew to have more page views than Wikipedia or Twitter.
Having raved about and avidly used Tumblr since it first appeared, I can say he gets the facts right, as I know them, while telling me more I didn’t know about the history of a favorite...
January 2012
7 posts
2 tags
Duck Duck Go →
I set this as my default search engine a couple weeks ago, and have rarely missed Google.
“More instant answers, less spam, real privacy”, results ordered without bias.
1 tag
“A search engine should be designed to send users quickly and accurately away to...”
– John Gruber
4 tags
“For a long time, illegal file-sharing has been a powerful market and promotional...”
– Frédéric Filloux
2 tags
App Producer
THEM: So, what do you do?
ME: I develop software.
THEM: Software?
ME: iPhone apps.
THEM: Oh! I’ve got this great idea…
ME: [listens patiently]
THEM: So, you’re a programmer?
ME: No.
THEM: So, you’re a designer?
ME: No.
THEM: What do you do then?
ME: A lot, actually.
source: http://DavidBarnard.com/post/9673929463
4 tags
“The solution to piracy must be a market solution, not a government intervention,...”
– Tim O’Reilly, publisher
4 tags
A threshold paywall… is the commercial equivalent of the National Public Radio model, where sponsors reach all listeners, but direct suport only comes from donors… Newspapers with thresholds now aspire to NPR’s persuasiveness.
- Clay Shirky
2 tags
fanboy
|noun| a derogatory term that means someone who is blindly and irrationally devoted to a product that I believe is inferior to what I bought when faced with a similar choice, and whose opinions and arguments can therefore be completely disregarded.
(according to Marco Arment)
December 2011
11 posts
1 tag
“How would you do it differently if the building were burning down?”
– Seth Godin
2 tags
“Why bother going to a meeting, if you’re not prepared to change your mind?”
– Al Pittampalli
2 tags
CLIENT: You should have indicated a problem with the app sooner.
CONTRACTOR: It was only just made available to me at launch. As soon as I saw the problem, I flagged it.
CLIENT: But you should have looked for a problem sooner.
CONTRACTOR: I just saw it for the first time. I wasn’t involved with the project until now. You just hired me.
CLIENT: That’s not true - I sent you an e-mail three months ago about it. Where I said I found someone to make the app at a lower price. Remember?
CONTRACTOR: I think so. How’d that work out?
VIA: http://ClientsFromHell.net
1 tag
Mr. Sulu's Rules for Living
1. Show up 2. On time 3. Work hard 4. Be kind
I do wish many of my students understood just how far the first three of these rules will get you. Number four is a bonus, and at the least should always be practiced DOWN: be nice to office staff, building service workers, groundskeepers, wait staff, and the like, since they are essential and doing what are quite often terrible jobs. Sycophantic...
5 tags
As web ads become more and more annoying...
“I’m doing the majority of my reading in RSS and Instapaper where I can read in peace without being pummeled by distractions.”
- Rian van der Merwe
5 tags
6 tags
inches are for printers
There’s only one situation in which inches are a useful measure of digital images: when you print them. We measure the size of the paper it is printed on, such as a 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of letter-size paper, or a 4 x 6 inch photograph.
While the quality of a printed image can be measured by counting how many dots-per-inch (DPI) were used to print it. Dots-per-inch means what is says: 300 DPI...
5 tags
count the dots
A lot of folks get confused about how to measure the visual size of photos and other images that are created or viewed on their computers.
The simplest way is by counting how many pixels (tiny dots) were used to make that image. A thumbnail-size photo, like those in your Friends List on Facebook, might only be 50 pixels wide by 50 pixels high. The video you watch on YouTube might be 560 x 315...
4 tags
“Remix culture is the new Prohibition, with massive media companies as the lone...”
– Andy Baio
#art #quote
4 tags
bargain apps I actually want
Having concluded that the two best calendar applications for the Mac seem to be BusyCal and Fantastical… Having realized that they can each be used alone, or in combination with the other… Telling you that they can also be used with or instead of iCal or Outlook… Planning to synchronize my professional and personal calendars to “the cloud”, using BusyCal…
I was...
2 tags
“calling the Web ‘dead’ because apps make more money is like reading...”
– Doc Searls (paraphrased)
November 2011
8 posts
3 tags
2 tags
Pub Rules →
“if I were to run a publication, I’d have a few rules… just avoiding stuff that’s stupid, but that lots of publications do.”
Brent Simmons - 23 November 2011
2 tags
“I know my father would have understood it. But his father? I don’t think...”
– Dave Winer
1 tag
“We lacked the ‘benefits’ of age and experience. We didn’t know...”
– Ed Roberts, who DID invent the first personal computer
2 tags
“For most people, every other computer in their life feels like work, and they don’t need another one.”
- Marco Arment on Amazon’s Kindle Fire
2 tags
The Mystery of Jobs
A Facebook friend is curious why Steve Job’s life has gotten so very much attention, with his untimely death. This was my personal response:
As a lifelong student of history and technology, I’m fascinated by Jobs, because historians yet unborn will be writing about him (and school children will read about him) the way we still study Edison or Ford. Although human advancement is a...
2 tags
2 tags
“Apple undertakes major new initiatives only after figuring out a new way that...”
– John Gruber
October 2011
1 post
4 tags
WatchThis is the future.
September 2011
2 posts
3 tags
Your Toddler's Personal Computer
I can’t think of any reason to teach little children to use a Windows or Mac computer. Introduce them to the future with a truly personal computer: iPad.
Why not teach them to use a “real” computer? Well, why not teach them to use a typewriter? Looking at the combination of hardware and software which we’ve come to think of as a normal computer, I think it will feel like...
4 tags
QuickBooks for Mac 2012
If you’re already using QuickBooks for your business accounting, it may interest you to know that Intuit is about to release a new version for Mac (as others have reported).
It’s too soon to see actual reviews of this application, but I haven’t heard anything about Intuit fixing the biggest problem with QuickBooks: lock in. QuickBooks provides no real export option for your...
August 2011
2 posts
2 tags
Watch“Computers are like a bicycle for our minds.” - Steve Jobs
3 tags
What's the difference between an idea and an...
An idea is something you can write about in a science fiction book. An invention is when you build something that people (who read about it in the science fiction book) said was impossible.
- Seth Goden
You’re not making money from your ideas — you’re making money because of them.
- Doc Searls
July 2011
4 posts
2 tags
“It isn’t until a technology becomes boring that it becomes truly useful....”
– Dave Winer
3 tags
“If you care about your online presence, you must own it. I do, and that’s why my...”
– Marco Arment
4 tags
Who is the customer?
Who’s Google’s customer? You? Really? When’s the last time you paid Google for anything?
Advertisers are Google’s customer. What do they sell to advertisers? They sell you. Or, at least, they rent you out, or provide access to you.
- Mike Elgan
If you aren’t paying for it, you aren’t the customer. You are the product. Keep this in mind, as you use and rely on free services...
2 tags
“Find things that you’re attached to that are slowing you down, realize...”
– Seth Godin
June 2011
8 posts
2 tags
LMGTFY →
Did you check a search engine before you asked a human to be your search engine? You’d be surprised how often people ask people for help where much better answers are available in writing.
- Dave Winer
3 tags
“When we speak of the future we cannot escape speaking of the present. We are...”
– Kevin Kelly
1 tag
Browsers should be like the lens in my glasses. If you’re thinking about it, your attention is in the wrong place. You use a browser to look through, at other things.
— Dave Winer
2 tags
Accelerate Android With Tips and Tricks →
12 tips you should know, if you own an Android phone.
(by Paul Boutin)