Mykl.biz

Tumbling on success

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:00:06 -0500

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 internet startup.

If you don’t know, Tumblr is still the easiest way I know of for anyone to blog.

Duck Duck Go

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:23:53 -0500

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.

"A search engine should be designed to send users quickly and accurately away to whatever sites on..."

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:13:42 -0500

“A search engine should be designed to send users quickly and accurately away to whatever sites on the Internet they’re looking for.”

- John Gruber

"For a long time, illegal file-sharing has been a powerful market and promotional tool for the music..."

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:29:50 -0500

“For a long time, illegal file-sharing has been a powerful market and promotional tool for the music industry.”

- Frédéric Filloux

App Producer

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:00:06 -0500

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

"The solution to piracy must be a market solution, not a government intervention, especially not one..."

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 13:25:00 -0500

“

The solution to piracy must be a market solution, not a government intervention, especially not one as ill-targeted as SOPA….

Policies designed to protect industry players who are unwilling or unable to address unmet market needs are always bad policies.

”

- Tim O’Reilly, publisher

A threshold paywall… is the commercial equivalent of the National Public Radio model, where...

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:00:06 -0500

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

fanboy

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 08:00:06 -0500

|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)

"How would you do it differently if the building were burning down?"

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 13:00:06 -0500

“How would you do it differently if the building were burning down?”

- Seth Godin

"Why bother going to a meeting, if you’re not prepared to change your mind?"

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:00:06 -0500

“Why bother going to a meeting, if you’re not prepared to change your mind?”

- Al Pittampalli

CLIENT: You should have indicated a problem with the app sooner.

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 08:00:06 -0500

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

Mr. Sulu's Rules for Living

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 09:00:05 -0500

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 sucking up to power, however, is a type of “kindness” always to be avoided.

via Politicalprof [adapted from George Takei’s Facebook page]

As web ads become more and more annoying...

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 10:00:05 -0500

“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

When to contact coworkers on vacation - a flow chart by Rian van...

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:00:05 -0500

When to contact coworkers on vacation - a flow chart by Rian van der Merwe.

[click on chart to expand]

inches are for printers

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:00:00 -0500

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 means each square inch of the image is made by printing 300 tiny dots across by 300 tiny dots high.

If you want to print a poster 11 inches wide and 17 inches tall, and your printer is set to print 300 dots per inch, than ideally your digital image should be 3300 pixels wide by 5100 high. If your printer outputs a mere 100 pixels per inch, than the image need only be 1100 x 1700.

But if you’re not printing, don’t worry about, don’t even think about inches. For you, there are no inches.

count the dots

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:00:00 -0500

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 pixels. A photo that fills the entire screen on your laptop might be something like 1280 x 800.

The mental trap to avoid is measuring the images on our screens using inches or centimeters. We’re all looking at different devices, whether it’s a phone in our hand, a tablet on our lap, or a computer on our desk. Different screens fit more or fewer pixels into each inch on that screen. Therefore, an image the size of a postage stamp on my laptop screen, might be the size of a wallet photo when displayed on your older computer monitor, but the size of fingernail on your smartphone.

In a world where we view most images on a screen, there are no inches, there are only pixels — until you print the picture.

"Remix culture is the new Prohibition, with massive media companies as the lone voices calling for..."

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:00:05 -0500

“Remix culture is the new Prohibition, with massive media companies as the lone voices calling for temperance.”

- Andy Baio

#art #quote

bargain apps I actually want

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 08:00:00 -0500

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 delighted to discover that both apps are included in this software bundle for $40 — less than the $50 price of BusyCal.

The bundle also includes LaunchBar (my geeky keyboard shortcut tool of choice), and five other apps: Default Folder X, Tags, Cashculator, Notebook and Home Inventory (in descending order of interest, to me).

This deal expires December 19th. I already ordered and downloaded mine.

"calling the Web ‘dead’ because apps make more money is like reading last rites for water..."

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 08:00:06 -0500

“calling the Web ‘dead’ because apps make more money is like reading last rites for water because beer and soda pop make more money.”

- Doc Searls (paraphrased)

For all modern fans of “Goodnight Moon”. Made me...

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:48:00 -0500

For all modern fans of “Goodnight Moon”. Made me laugh. A lighthearted gift for adults or children.

If you purchase via the links above, Amazon will throw a few pennies my way, helping to fund the free advice I publish here.

(photo by Robin Heath)