As I pondered that, a bigger question started to take shape. I’ve used a lot of services over the years. Some of them rose to the top as the best of breed in their category, whether it be social networking, music, whatever. But more often than not, I’ve used two or more services to accomplish the same task because each service offered its own strengths in the category. The question became: how many services do I regularly use that duplicate functionality?
Take photos for example. I like Flickr for pictures I put effort into (which happens less frequently these days). I use Instagram for quick shots that I want my friends to see. And I can easily cross post from Instagram to Facebook and Tumblr so my family and other friends can see them. But I also like sharing to App.net occasionally, which uses that service’s storage. And Dropbox is looking like an increasingly viable competitor to Photo Streams. Oh right! Then there’s Photo Streams.
So, I made a list. And as the list grew–and grow it did–I started to get angry. All of the overlap, all of the scattered data–MY scattered data–is mind boggling. Here’s the list. In it, I’ve included all of the services in each category that I’ve used over the last few years.
In many cases, I’ll never be able to have one solution, one app to rule them all. But why?
Using my photo sharing example from above, the answer is pretty clear. It comes down to staying in touch with the people I care about. And because those folks also share this problem of fragmentation, there’s no one way for me to stay in touch with all of them. We’ve been split into factions by service providers. The Facebookers. The Tumblrs. The Tweeters. The AppDotNetters.
This is intensely frustrating to me. Looking at the list above, I realize my online life is too cluttered. I’d like to simplify things. But the decision to simplify by cutting out one service in favor of another often means cutting out a conversation that includes family and/or friends–people I care about. People I want to communicate and share with. Simplicity vs. family or friends is a pretty sad corner to be backed into.
I know I’m not alone in my want to stay connected. Dan Benjamin left Instagram after their sell-out to Facebook, but he returned because he was “tired of missing out on what some of my Instagram-only friends are doing.” I’ve sorta left Twitter a couple of times, but ultimately, I missed a handful of the voices that had become familiar. And those voices were never going to be available in my App.net stream, not only because those people will never jump ship, but also because Twitter’s terms of service prevent people from extracting value from the service (e.g., piping streams from Twitter to another site, combining a Twitter feed with a feed from another service like Facebook or App.net, etc.). And Twitter’s onerous TOS isn’t an anomaly.
The Verge published an article after Google I/O about the increasingly fragmented state of messaging, and the future is pretty bleak. Instead of moving toward interoperability, service providers are moving farther apart without giving a damn about what this means for their customers. They want to lock you in, and if they’re successful, you’ll bring your friends and family with you. Yay, more customers. But they’ve now convinced all of you to use n+1 services (because, as I mentioned, not everyone likes to jump ship), which complicates your life, your friends’ lives, and probably the lives of other people they stay in contact with on the web. That service providers show a complete disregard for the implications of their actions is, to me, almost a bigger slap in the face than the selfishness of trying to achieve lock-in.
I think what bothers me most is that I don’t have a solution to this problem. In a lot of situations, I could make life pretty simple by using Google’s services for just about everything, which would be fine if Google didn’t come off as the creepiest company in existence right now. I’d rather rely on Apple for most things, but they suck–and always have sucked–at online services. I doubt that will ever change.
We can’t count on companies to act responsibly, and expecting one of them to step up as a hero to successfully unify our online lives is silly. Which leaves one choice if you’re bent on simplicity: whose voices can you live without? Who are you comfortable cutting out of your online life? Since I’m not comfortable answering that question—and you probably aren’t, either—things will have to continue to be messy.
]]>Riposte got an awesome update with optional pro features that are absolutely worth the $5. This app gets more beautiful (and useful!) with each release.
Kaleidoscope has become more useful since I set up an alias to review the changes between my current branch and the master branch. Put this in your .gitconfig and give it a shot by running git review on a feature branch:
alias.review=difftool master..
As much as I despised Internet Explorer for Windows, and what its simultaneous stagnation and dominance did to the web, I don’t think it’s the correct historical analog in this case. WebKit is not a web browser. It’s not even a product. It’s much more analogous to Linux, an open-source project that any company or individual is free to build on and enhance.
John Siracusa hits the nail on the head.
]]>Last night, I duplicated a bunch of code, put it in its own repository, and posted about it here. This was stupid. What I should have done is genericized the code I was using in the original project. Less duplication, more flexibility, easier to implement, etc. So that’s what I did.
Now, you can easily add any RSS feed to your Octopress sidebar. Here’s how:
For Instapaper, log in, scroll to the bottom of the page, and copy the link in the footer labeled This folder’s RSS.
For Pocket, replace USERNAME with your pocket username:
http://getpocket.com/users/USERNAME/feed/unread
You’ll also have to make your Pocket feeds publicly viewable. Log into
Pocket and visit the
Privacy Controls page. Click the
Turn off RSS Feed password protection link.
Place the files in this GitHub repo into the corresponding directories.
rss_feed.js -> source/javascripts/rss_feed.js
rss_feed.html -> source/_includes/custom/asides/rss_feed.html
_rss_feed.scss -> sass/partials/sidebar/_rss_feed.scss
_config.yml fileYou’ll need to add a few variables for the plugin to function. Here’s an example that uses Pocket:
# RSS Feed
rss_feed_url: http://getpocket.com/users/jeffmueller/feed/unread
rss_feed_title: "My Pocket Queue"
rss_feed_include_link_to_feed: true
rss_feed_link_title: "My Pocket Feed"
Also, update your default_asides array to include the rss_feed.html aside. Example:
default_asides: [asides/recent_posts.html, custom/asides/rss_feed.html, asides/github.html ]
Add the following line to sass/partials/_sidebar.scss.
@import "sidebar/rss_feed";
Run rake generate to rebuild your site, run rake preview, and you should see your RSS feed in the sidebar when you refresh the page.
At maximum, the widget will show the 5 most recent unread items. You can tweak that value in rss_feed.js if you want the widget to display fewer (or more!) unread items.
Again according to Appnetizens there are only somewhere around 2.3k unique users posting to the service each day.
Ouch.
I’ve been a supporter and a big fan of App.net since it launched. My next iOS project is going to use App.net for infrastructure. I really want the service to succeed, but with only 2,300 active daily users, it’s hard to see how that’s going to be possible. Sucks.
]]>A combination of boredom, a baby that won’t sleep, and a recent switch from Instapaper to Pocket led me to create a tweaked version of my Instapaper sidebar for Octopress. The code is nearly identical, but the installation process is a bit different.
This part’s easy. Replace USERNAME with your pocket username:
http://getpocket.com/users/USERNAME/feed/unread
In order for rsstojson to parse your RSS feed, it
needs to be publicly viewable. Log into Pocket and
visit the Privacy Controls page.
Click the Turn off RSS Feed password protection link.
Place the files in this GitHub repo into the corresponding directories.
pocket.js -> source/javascripts/pocket.js
pocket.html -> source/_includes/custom/asides/pocket.html
_pocket.scss -> sass/partials/sidebar/_pocket.scss
_config.yml fileAdd a line for pocket_rss_url, and set it equal to the RSS url you copied in step 0.
# Pocket
pocket_rss_url: http://getpocket.com/users/jeffmueller/feed/unread
Also, update your default_asides array to include the pocket.html aside. Example:
default_asides: [asides/recent_posts.html, **custom/asides/pocket.html**, asides/github.html ]
Add the following line to sass/partials/_sidebar.scss.
@import "sidebar/pocket";
Run rake generate to rebuild your site, run rake preview, and you should see your Pocket feed in the sidebar when you refresh the page.
At maximum, the widget will show the 5 most recent unread items. You can tweak that value in pocket.js if you want the widget to display fewer (or more!) unread items.
The Instapaper and Pocket variants of this code show how simple it is to use rsstojson to display the contents of an RSS feed in your sidebar. You could easily fork this code and point it at another feed if you so desired.
]]>It’s so good, in fact, that I’ve wanted to use it more and more, but typing anything longer than a short email with the on-screen keyboard is a chore. So, when Logitech announced they were bringing their highly regarded Ultrathin Keyboard to the mini, I decided to give it a shot.
Here’s what I found after using it off and on for a day.
It’s surprisingly heavy. Logitech claims three months of battery life, and I think it’s probably the battery that adds most of the heft. It’s so heavy, in fact, that gripping the iPad and holding it at an angle with the keyboard attached will cause the keyboard to drop off without warning. The magnets can’t overcome the weight.
In use, three keys have been troublesome: the delete key, the apostrophe key (which is half the width of the rest of the keys on the keyboard), and the tab key. Having to hit the FN key to insert a tab? Ouch. Especially if you’re coding.1
And when you make a mistake because those keys are hard to hit? No autocorrect. To be fair, this isn’t Logitech’s fault; it’s Apple’s. Autocorrect doesn’t work with any external keyboard, which makes that kinda-hard-to-hit delete key even more painful.2
Even though it’s heavy, it’s very sturdy and feels like a high-quality accessory. And typing isn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. I’m actually quite fast with it; not as fast as with a full-size keyboard, but much faster than I ever was with the on-screen keyboard. Selecting, copying, cutting, and pasting text are also delightfully easy compared to using the touch screen.
The iPad-specific function keys have proven to be the biggest surprise. Being able to bring up the app switcher, the home screen, and Siri AND being able to control audio means your hands leave the keyboard much less often than you would expect. For a VIM nerd like myself, this is great news.
The addition of a keyboard goes a long way toward making the iPad feel like a “real” computer. That said, the keyboard itself, in this context, feels like a holdover from a previous time. A crutch. And I wish I didn’t have to use it to feel more productive on the iPad.
In using it, I’ve also become acutely aware of how many apps don’t let you dismiss their sidebar in landscape mode (e.g., Day One). Your writing area is pretty cramped in those situations. IA Writer, however, is fantastic (I’m writing this article with it), especially in focus mode. It feels like a typewriter–in a good way.
Finally, one big win for me: I can still fit my iPad into the Waterfield Bags slip case I use for toting it around. I thought the keyboard would add too much depth, but while it’s definitely snug, I can still insert and remove the iPad with ease.
I honestly think that–if push came to shove–I could do some extended coding using this keyboard and VIM through a copy of Panic’s Prompt or Diet Coda. It’s been fun to use so far, and it makes me wish I had a way to easily create and publish new Octopress entries from my iPad. It still can’t replace my MacBook, but this keyboard makes it even less likely that I’ll turn to my laptop when I need to get some work done.
]]>I think the most important point is that WebKit is “a shared codebase that a number of corporations contribute to.” We’re not looking at the sort of hegemony that Microsoft established with IE back in the 90s.
]]>Hey, check it out, Instapaper queue in my sidebar! How? A convoluted Rube Goldberg machine of web services, one of which I created just for this task.
If you’re using Octopress and want this functionality, follow the steps below.
Log in to Instapaper, scroll to the bottom of the page, and copy the link in the footer labeled This folder’s RSS.
Place the files in this GitHub repo into the corresponding directories.
instapaper.js -> source/javascripts/instapaper.js
instapaper.html -> source/_includes/custom/asides/instapaper.html
_instapaper.scss -> sass/partials/sidebar/_instapaper.scss
_config.yml fileAdd a line for instapaper_rss_url, and set it equal to the RSS url you copied in step 0.
# Instapaper
instapaper_rss_url: http://www.instapaper.com/rss/8196/WvzOPRb6V0bdTP0oBGAzXHjAeI
Also, update your default_asides array to include the instapaper.html aside. Example:
default_asides: [asides/recent_posts.html, **custom/asides/instapaper.html**, asides/github.html ]
Add the following line to sass/partials/_sidebar.scss.
@import "sidebar/instapaper";
Run rake generate to rebuild your site, run rake preview, and you should see your Instapaper feed in the sidebar when you refresh the page.
At maximum, the widget will show the 5 most recent unread items. You can tweak that value in instapaper.js if you want the widget to display fewer (or more!) unread items.
The problem comes in when January 1 of the new year ends up falling on a date that doesn’t get along well with the ISO week format. The first day of 2013 started on a Tuesday, whereas (as noted by TUAW) the ISO standard expects the first week of the year to start on “the Monday that contains the first Thursday in January.” In this case, that would be January 7, 2013.
If you–like me–were wondering why this bug occurred, Ars has written up a very detailed explanation of it.
]]>I’m taking the ads off The Brief and switching to a membership model.
I’d love to see The Brief offered on iOS a la Next Draft or The Magazine. This trend of turning to micropayments is intriguing. I especially like how he closed the post.
The Brief is in your hands now.
I hope this works. We need more succesful publications that don’t rely on advertising to pay the bills. Ads are not the future.
]]>Just pass in a feed url, and it returns the feed as JSON.
http://rsstojson.herokuapp.com/?feed=http://www.reddit.com/.rss
That’s it. Nothing fancy.
]]>Sorta. Maybe. We don’t have a timeline, we don’t have new jobs, and we don’t have housing lined up.
So, I guess we’re hoping to move to Portland. The only hurdle is employment, which is the point of this post.
If you, or someone you know, is looking for a Web developer, technical project manager, or junior iOS developer in the Portland area, .
I’m also available for contract work and consulting, and I’m comfortable (and even prefer) working remotely.
A lot of folks we knew in Austin have relocated to Portland, it’s seemingly a great place to raise kids, the food there can’t be beat, and it has an interesting and rapidly developing tech culture. My wife and I are pretty stoked on the place. Can’t wait to call it home.
]]>The only known issues are:
Pull requests are welcome! Hope someone else finds this useful.
I’m already regretting using camel case in the name.↩
This quick (4-minute) screencast shows a really cool way to live-edit JavaScript in the browser (and save the results locally).
]]>Requirements: zsh (obviously), git, and an Octopress blog.
]]>