[figure] out what Google wants to be when it grows up. It’s now all over the map. What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re dragging you down. They’re turning you into Microsoft. They’re causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great.

Not a week ago Google shot a few projects directly between the eyes and the rest they are going to give to the world via open source. Is Page listening to Jobs?

Today Apple updated iBooks to version 2 which can now display much more interactive books than it did previously. While iBooks has been a terrific reading experience (I use it as my primary way to read books and PDFs) this new version can display textbooks created by Apple’s latest Mac app – iBooks Author.

iBooks Author, which is somehow completely free, is a Mac app that makes it simple to build interactive textbooks for iPad and iBooks 2. Not only does it work a lot like Pages for laying out a page of text, images and other elements, it also includes other interactive features like quizes, slideshows, videos, and more. It even makes it simple to add a glossary to a book. I imagine that iBooks Author has just become the worlds best book publishing application.

The iTunes U application gives teachers and students a way to interact together as well as with the iTunes U content available on the App Store. I don’t have much of an opinion about this application yet but it looks like a useful tool and it is also being offered for free.

These are amazing tools. Now lets see what the world chooses to do with them.

Colourmod is a Dashboard widget for Mac OS X that you’ll end up using much more than you think you would. I’m not a designer but as someone who fiddles around on the web I find myself in need of a hexadecimal color code from time-to-time. And when I do, I use Colourmod.

There are a few ways that I find myself using Colourmod to find the color I’m looking for. The first, and perhaps most obvious way, is to drag the “blue dot” color picker around the main color well and find the color I want making subtle adjustments by using the slider. The second, is to manually enter in the hexadecimal color code that I’m currently tweaking and make small changes until I get exactly what I want.

One nice feature is the blue arrow that will quickly copy the current color code and place that value into your clipboard. This makes finding, selecting and copying a color code into your text editor very, very quick.

Feature suggestions? Sure. One thing I’d like to see is a single text area that gives the proper RGB color values for a color. Although Colourmod supplies these values they aren’t easily selected. I’d also like to see a much easier and more accurate way to use the color picker. It is very tough to make small changes especially to light gray colors.

Oh, and I’d ditch the ‘U’ in Colourmod. But that’s just me.

I may drive a Jeep because I’m a Colorado boy at heart, and I may own a charcoal grill because I like things “pure”, and I may own Apple gadgets because I have an affinity for fine software. So yes, you can tell a lot about me by the things I own. But they are just that — things. They can be stolen, broken, taken, and lost. They should never become distractions to the things that matter most, nor should I ever allow them to define my character, my relationships, and my beliefs.

Knowingly or not his statement rings very true with something Jesus said at Luke 12:15 that a man’s life does not result from the things he possesses. It’s Just Stuff.

Well, here is another widget I suggest taking a look at. Whenever any of us geeks order something online we’re feverishly refreshing the delivery status page of our shipper of choice to see where the package is. Well, not anymore. Now you can use Delivery Status.

Delivery Status is a widget for Mac OS X that makes it pretty simple, and dare I say sexy, to track a few packages at once right from your Dashboard. Junecloud has also made an iOS application for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch so that you can track your packages on the go.

I really like how the widget color-codes the statuses based on the shipper. A nice touch.

See, there are useful Dashboard widgets out there. They’re great. And you should know about them.

First, move older email messages out of your Inbox and into an Archive folder. You should have no trouble doing this. It may take a little while for Mail.app to move all of the messages. If you’re the type of person that has several folders (or Mailboxes) for message categories like family, friends, work, etc. etc. then you may not benefit from this tip. But, if you’re like me, and you leave every single message in your Inbox then you definitely will.

What I’ve done is move every message in my Inbox dated prior to December 1, 2011 into an Archive folder that is locally here on my Mac. This way when I go into my Inbox it is only loading a few months of email. I may do this again in June or wait an entire year if I don’t see much of a slow down. But just doing this has sped up Mail.app a lot.

Second, you could strip the bloat from Mail.app’s Envelope Index. What does this mean? I don’t really know but the layman’s explanation might be this; Mail.app keeps a database and sometimes it gets a little out of control. You can run a few commands via Terminal and it will clean up that mess. Again, do this at your own risk.

Your mileage may vary but with these two tips Mail.app should get just a bit snappier. It has for me.

I’m going to change that.

This article by Kirk McElhearn at Macworld on How to use services in Mac OS X has pushed me over the edge. What are services? McElhearn explains them this way “Simply put, OS X services let you borrow features from other programs.”

/via John “I don’t know” Gruber.

He seems a bit miffed at people mistaking an incubator for an accelerator.

The best argument I could use was that real incubators invest  in people and businesses that will build long term value while the accelerators invested in short term financial opportunities.  Real incubators also don’t have the luxury on focusing only on things described as “mobile/social/sales…whatever”.  We focus on sustainable companies in life sciences, electronics, advanced materials and more.  These companies require a more sustained effort and can’t be built in 3 months.

I love this part he said earlier (which is the whole reason I started real words).”I’m formally registering a complaint to the people in charge of word usage”. Me too Wayne, me too.

We never tire of the drama of sunset. I go forth each afternoon and look into the west a quarter of an hour before sunset, with fresh curiosity, to see what new picture will be painted there, what new panorama exhibited, what new dissolving views. [...] Every day a new picture is painted and framed, held up for half and hour, in such lights as the Great Artist chooses, and then withdrawn, and the curtain falls.

Everyone loves a good sunset.

At the end of his piece he says “Who would you pick?” This may sound like a really, really odd choice but I’d choose Jon Rubinstein to lead Microsoft. He may have not done a great job with running Palm as a business but I think he’d bring a level of taste to Microsoft that has simply never been there above C-level.

Microsoft knows how to run a business. They’ve got that down. What they need is a clear direction to build amazing products instead of just announcing them. So bring on someone who demands good taste. Rubinstein fits that.

One of the benefits I see coming from disabling comments is the number of links you end up getting back to your site.

Almost a year ago I wrote about the fact that blogging was ready for disruption. (I still think it is.) And that the new “pro blog recipe” was a blog without comments.

Lately this topic seems to have risen its head again yet not in the same way as it has in the past. In fact, rather than there being a debate for or against a blog having comments it appears that most independent bloggers have resolved that a blog without comments is simply much more enjoyable and manageable while larger outfits still see the need to engage the community.

Matt Gemmell, who recently shut off comments on his personal blog, added a few reasons to the fray. Here is one of his reasons that I have also enjoyed since turning comments off on my personal blog.

I feel more willing to publish short pieces, and to write more frequently.

When I had comments on I wouldn’t publish anything that I thought may not start a conversation. Which ended up leading me in a direction I simply didn’t want to go in – I was starting conversations for the sake of starting conversations. That isn’t why I have my personal blog and I don’t want it to be. So, off went the comments. And it isn’t because I don’t want to hear the opinions of those that read my blog. It is because I don’t want to write simply for the gratification of receiving comments. It has been very liberating.

There is still a place for comments on blogs. Even personal blogs. Some blogs have very good reasons to have comments on them. In fact, even Jason Kottke turns on comments from time-to-time when they are needed. But there are better examples like Horace Dediu’s Asymco. He has made it plainly clear that he runs Asymco in order to work with his community on figuring out a problem. He wants feedback, questions, answers, rebuttals to his hypothesis and blog comments is his primary way of accomplishing that.

So while the debate rages on – and all debates are good when they furnish constructive conversation – unlike Gemmell I firmly believe it is a matter of choice by the publisher rather than a cut-and-dry answer. There are pros and cons to having comments on or off and, once weighed, the publisher can then make a decision on how he or she would like to run their own blog.

That artisan style bread recipe I published the other day has spurred on a few people to make their own. It really is very, very easy to make this style of bread. It is rewarding and delicious to boot!

So, if you’re reading this and you sorta kinda wanted to try to make your own bread – get on it.

3. The theater experience. Moviegoers above 30 are weary of noisy fanboys and girls. The annoyance of talkers has been joined by the plague of cell-phone users, whose bright screens are a distraction. Worse, some texting addicts get mad when told they can’t use their cell phones. A theater is reportedly opening which will allow and even bless cell phone usage, although that may be an apocryphal story.

I agree with all of his reasons and I’ll add one of my own. Actually, it is sort of an addition to one of Ebert’s reasons. He says that ticket price is a problem. Ticket price wouldn’t be a problem if the movies (and the theater experience) was really, really good. When I see a movie trailer I usually ask myself – “Is that worth driving to the theatre and spending $30 to see?”

The answer to that question could be “No” for several reasons. The movie may not warrant “the big screen experience”. The movie may look funny or entertaining but I’d just as soon watch it in the comfort of my home, on my couch, in my PJs, on Bluray. Or, the movie is in 3D or XD or EXTREMELY OVERRATED ACRONYM – which means I’ll likely not care to see it at all.

I don’t think the theater-going movie industry has a chance to remain as large as it has been in recent past. I think it will see a slow and steady decline and level out right where they should be. People will still watch “larger” movies in theaters or on first dates and will see “smaller” movies at home where they are most comfortable. And that should be OK. The industry simply needs to adapt.

Artisan bread is best described by thinking about the person who makes the bread. An artisan baker is a craftsperson who is trained to the highest ability to mix, ferment, shape and bake a hand crafted loaf of bread. They understand the science behind the chemical reactions of the ingredients and know how to provide the best environment for the bread to develop. – Artisan Bakers.

Eliza and I have a bread machine but for a while I’ve had the desire to fool around with making really, really simple bread recipes. The above loaf consists of salt, flour, water and a bit of yeast. Small variations of those ingredients, the amount you knead the dough, and how you bake it – can wholly change the way the final product comes out.

I’m having a lot of fun trying different things (I also made my own tortillas with nearly the same ingredients) and learning a lot as I go. I recommend making homemade bread to anyone that wants to learn about this process. Here is a recipe which I tailored off of Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois who have authored a book about making artisan bread in five minutes. I happened upon their recipe via YouTube. Smart strategy.

The recipe

• 1 1/2 tablespoons yeast.
• 1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
• 6 1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour, more for dusting dough.
• 3 1/2 cups of water (about)
• Some cornmeal. (optional, you can use flour)

Put yeast and salt into bucket. Dump in lukewarm water. Dump in flour. Mix with wooden spoon until no more dry flour. Do not over mix or knead at all. Let sit in bucket for 2 hours. Rip off grapefruit sized pieces and bend them into a UFO shape (watch this video to see). Place on pizza peel to rest for 40 minutes while the oven preheats to 450. Preheat oven with an empty baking pan under pizza stone on the middle shelf. After dough ball has rested and oven, pizza stone, and baking pan are preheated – place dough ball on center of pizza stone, drop in a few cups of water into baking pan (this will steam to make the crust of the bread) and bake for 30 minutes.

That’s it. Give it a try!

The lack of classical German industries means it is a city with fewer jobs than other parts of Germany. It also means the city has lower wages compared to the rest of Germany and much of Europe. The sprawling nature of the city means that Berlin has lots of real estate. And that means low rents – catnip for artists, musicians and yes, the start-up community.

According to his report the tech start-up scene in Berlin is already doing great things, is poised to do even bigger and better things with a little help, and that we should all be watching.

I’m watching Om.

I recommend reading every word of Om’s report on Berlin but, as a matter of convenience, here are some of the companies he mentions; MyGuidie, 6Wunderkinder (who make the excellent Wunderlist), Amen, Gidsy, Pipe, Uberblic Labs, Upcload, Aupeo, Young Internet, SoundCloud, Txtr.

I’ve seen the pilot for Alcatraz already (shh, don’t tell anyone) and I can say that the show looks like it is going to be really great.

Subscribed.

This problem isn’t limited just to Irish restaurants as I’ve also noticed similar complaints emerging from English tweeters. Understandably, restaurants are annoyed at these no-shows and late cancellations and the Restaurants Association of Ireland started a press campaign to highlight this issue. Many venues are considering implementing a deposit scheme at the time of booking, which will be refunded against the cost of the meal.

The message is simple – if you can’t make your reservation, please get in touch with the venue to cancel, preferably giving as much notice as possible. It’s just manners after all.

You’d never know it unless these restaurants spoke up but this is a big problem. Some of the restaurants that Joanne cites show around half of their reservations end up in no-shows. Not cancelled. Not postponed. They simply do not show up. Why are people doing this?

I don’t know why but this reminds me of this. Opposite problem.

So, please, if you make a reservation, keep your reservation.

Thank you, Internet.

I’m starting to believe that if and when Apple TV is updated the hardware price will be surprisingly low.

As you may very well know Eliza and I use our Apple TV a lot. We don’t use all of the features but we use it daily. For $99 (its current price) I think it a steal. I can’t imagine what would happen if, say, a new Apple TV was priced at $29 (my guess at what “surprisingly low” could be).

This, of course, is besides the notion that Apple will, at some point in the future, debut a brand-new television-related product. Perhaps a TV of their own. Or, perhaps, a really inexpensive Apple TV in addition to a TV of their own. Who knows?

But I can say this… I highly, highly recommend anyone with an iPhone, iPod, iPad or Macintosh to consider the Apple TV a must-have accessory. A must-have accessory. And if a new one is priced lower than today’s models than my recommendation would only be stronger.

So if birds from the city can’t flirt with birds from the country anymore, “those birds are actually going to be less likely to mate with each other,” he says. “I mean, literally they’re going to stop being able to speak the same language.”

I hope that doesn’t happen. Keep tweeting birds!

/via Jason Fried on Twitter.

“That’s not 62 million active users, though — a point that everyone covering these numbers seems to have missed. It’s just the number of total users. And specifically, it’s the number of new surnames that Allen’s team has tracked being created on the service.

Because Google has aggressively integrated G+ into many other properties, including its top navigation bar and the OneBox, one would expect a certain baseline amount of sign-ups from among the hundreds of millions of people using other Google products.

The real question is how many people are returning after creating their accounts, which Allen doesn’t try to answer.”

Precisely. I have absolutely no doubt that Google can get people to sign up to just about anything. They’ve marketed Google+ on all of their existing products, through commercials, by actually replacing features in existing products, etc. These are all ways to market Google+ that a competing service or startup would never be able to leverage.

Getting profiles isn’t Google+’s “problem”. It is keeping active users.

Robert Scoble (on Quora) and Chris Brogan (on Google+) seem to challenge the theory that Google+ is dead by showing that they’ve grown their “number of people who have them in their Circles number” faster than they were able to grow their networks on, say, Twitter or Facebook.  While it took X number of months to get to Y number of followers on Twitter it took far less time on Google+ to do the same or better. I don’t think that is a very good metric to determine whether or not Google+ is successful in retaining an active community. It is simply a metric to determine how many profiles they have. When you first sign up to Google+ you’re taken through a wizard of sorts to add people to your Circles. Brogan is on the suggested user list (or was). Scoble isn’t, by choice, but arguably you’d have to be on Mars to miss Robert’s posts.

Google+ is still very new. It will inevitably cut out its own user base. And I hope it is successful for Google because I think it is a pretty great product. It could be extremely valuable to some uses. But so far I don’t see it sticking for many people as their daily go-to way of sharing. In my Circles Twitter is still winning. And this is coming from someone who likes Google+.

I’m cataloging these in hopes of one day buying Eliza a new Kindle and I inherit her old one. Shh, don’t tell her.

“Much of the sales were generated by the news sites and blogs covering the story. This works great once, but is hard to repeat it. Other comedians, even established ones aren’t going to get as lucky. The publicity was a black swan event. We can’t draw any conclusions from it about how it will play out in the future.”

I agree with this. We’ve all seen it before – in different ways – that when someone is doing something “all new” there is a bunch of news about how they are taking a risk and doing something differently. Notice how most of the news regarding Louis’s video was about how it is new, how it is different, and how much money it made. The news wasn’t about how funny the special was.

I’m not saying the special wasn’t funny. Louis is consistently hilarious anytime I’ve seen him in just about anything. But his act wasn’t what made waves with the media over the last few weeks. It was because he spun this in a way that made everyone believe he was doing something different. And that is, as Mayne pointed out, impossible to repeat.

BTW, what Louis did was nothing different or new. It was new and a bit different for a relatively well established comedian to pay for and distribute their own special via the web – all without charging the customers too much, without putting undue restrictions on the use of the product, and without spamming the people that bought it with email. But this model has worked pretty well for a lot of media on the web including music. (think, Nine-Inch-Nails) But that doesn’t matter. It was new for someone like him to do something like that and he deserves credit for taking the chance that it would have flopped.

I’m fairly certain that Louis is popular enough that, if he should do another special like this, that he’ll sell enough copies to cover his costs within the first few days like he did this time. But it won’t be because the way he’s distributing it is new. It will because people love Louis. It will be because its great and well worth the cost. And those are very good reasons.

So, on the whole, we learned from this experiment something we’ve always known; new, novel ideas that are well executed, inexpensive, of decent quality, and put the customer’s interests first will generally do very well.

“Experian Hitwise has released its yearly search term statistics and once again, Facebook and YouTube top the list. The remainder of the top 10 includes three more Facebook-related terms, a couple of Yahoo! variants, craigslist, eBay, and MapQuest. Of course it’s highly unlikely that all the millions of people putting those terms in the top 10 are actually looking for information or the latest news about them; they just want a quick way to the site without having to clumsily type dots and slashes.”

The fact that people do this boggles my mind. I remember the first time I saw it – when I was doing support for a local ISP as one of my first jobs in IT – someone searched for Google.com using the Yahoo search field. I nearly fell to the ground. I asked them why they searched for Google.com instead of just typing it into the location bar. They said “What’s the difference?”

I agree with Parish that people aren’t searching for information about Facebook, Youtube, etc. They are, in fact, using search as the location bar. But I disagree that people are doing it as a way to get away from the confusing “dots and slashes”. I’ve seen people type in “.com”. They simply do not know the difference between the search field and the location field.

Think about it. Most modern-day web browsers combine the location and search fields. Safari doesn’t but it only maintains a small marketshare. Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox combine the search and location fields into one field that you can type just about anything in and the browser will figure out what you are looking for. So, are they searching for information about Facebook when they type in Facebook? Or are they simply hitting ‘Enter’ too quickly and they really want to navigate to that URL?

I’m sure extensive user testing would be needed to determine the plethora of habits of people; novice and expert alike. One thing is sure, the browsers should be doing a much better job of taking people to web pages instead of search results in different situations. But, why would they? They make their money on searches too.

Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET.

/via CNet.

I want to change that.

I’m going to start featuring well-designed, still in-use Dashboard widgets from time-to-time here on the blog. My personal blog is relatively obscure in today’s tech web but – hopefully – one or two people will find these posts about these widgets. If you’ve run across, or built, any Dashboard widgets you think should get some attention – feel free to email them in.

So lets start out with GAget – a well-designed Google Analytics Dashboard widget by Zoltan Hosszu. (Side note: Zoltan is an awesome name.)

I don’t know about you but logging into any Google Account or any Google product has been troublesome over the last few years. I’ve got personal accounts, Google Apps accounts, work accounts, etc. I get sick of switching. GAget allows me to quickly take a look at any of my site’s statistics by simply swiping (with three-fingers on Lion) over to my Dashboard.

GAget’s HUD shows you exactly what you need to see at a glance; number of visitors today, the trend over the last week, two weeks, or month, the bounce rate, time-on-site, and how many hits were new visitors. Very, very good information if you’re striving to bring up the overall audience for your site.

If you happen to need more information, perhaps for advertising purposes, you can always log into Google Analytics and drill down further.

I have two feature requests: a way to see the top 10 search keywords that people are finding the site with, and the top 10 URLs on the site (besides the homepage). But overall this widget does just enough to keep the stat addict in you well fed.

Oh, and you saw the teaser trailer, right?

/via Coudal Partners.

Tap and hold on an Avatar to quickly Follow, Direct Message, Mute, Add to a List or Report for Spam. #TweetbotTip

— Tweetbot for iPhone (@tweetbot) December 17, 2011

The realword series features words that are often misused.

So, to recap, you can now subscribe to cdevroe.com in the following ways; RSS feed, @cdevroecom on Twitter, Facebook page, Google+ page, and carrier pigeon (coming soon).

Oh, I’ve got a personal account on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ too.

Then, today, he’d have been a guest on Ellen. Then, tomorrow, he would have booked a few interviews and performances on a bunch of local TV and radio stations. Then, in a month or two, would have been featured in a commercial for a company that is trying to re-brand itself as cool among today’s youth by using YouTube stars in their marketing. Then, a few months later, he’d produce a few more viral videos – perhaps even including some traditional celebrities that contacted him on Twitter – earning him a fair monthly sum in advertising revenue for a few months.

Then, about a year or year and a half after he made this first video, he’d have spent all of his earnings from his “overnight” success, gone back to work at the local saw mill, and we’d never hear from him again.

I’m glad Fred lived when he lived.

This video about Teroforma’s whiskey stones by Galen Summer is great. I hope my whiskey stones came from this guy.

/via Coudal Partners.

To begin, and for no reason whatsoever, we’ll start with Communism.

“Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production.”

Now you know.

While the Apple TV Netflix UI is still better this version for iOS is vastly improved.

“Sometimes there’s nothing quite like pizza. And it’s at its absolute best when it’s a homemade pizza – thin and crispy with your own favourite combinations.”

Precisely.

“Cambridge University Library holds the largest and most important collection of the scientific works of Isaac Newton (1642-1727). We present here an initial selection of Newton’s manuscripts, concentrating on his mathematical work in the 1660s. Over the next few months we will be adding further works until the majority of our Newton Papers are available on this site.”

Well, there goes the weekend.

Something must have told the Twitvid team that this is a logical direction to take Twitvid but I don’t see it. Broad category social networks have, more or less, been done and will, more than likely, stay the same as they are now for a long time. The best way to compete in social networking is by creating niche communities. Broad category video sharing is simply not niche enough to cut out a following.

Twitvid was and should have been a utility for sharing videos via Twitter since Twitter doesn’t currently allow that. I’m sure Twitter Photos, which all but negated the need for Twitpic and others, scared Twitvid into this pivot. But what would have been even more sensible is to, like Photobucket, make a deal with Twitter to handle their official service in an unobtrusively and mutually beneficial way.

Millions have used Twitvid and I’m sure many will continue to. However, I’ll go on record as saying that not many of those people will use these new features on Twitvid. I think this move sounds the death knell for Twitvid.

“And lots of DF readers on Twitter are telling me they use Apple TV just for AirPlay and Netflix streaming.”

That is exactly what I use the Apple TV for. I do not buy or rent TV shows or movies from the iTunes store. Ever. Although the Apple TV integrates with the iTunes Store, Home sharing (for sharing files from a computer), the NBA and MLB (and others), Vimeo, YouTube, Flickr, etc. etc. the two features I use on my Apple TV are Netflix with Airplay.

I use Airplay to put videos I find via my iPad on the TV. I do this a lot. (Thanks Devour) Even if the source of these videos is from YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, and other outlets – the integration with any of those platforms goes unused by me since I simply use Airplay. I suppose if I didn’t own an iPad my use of Airplay wouldn’t be nearly as significant. It is just so easy. I’ll also, on occasion, use Airplay to play some music via my Apple TV (this replaced my Airport Express’ purpose) and very, very rarely put some vacation photos on-screen.

Another note about Airplay; if you, like me (and obviously Jason Kottke), sometimes acquire a few TV shows you couldn’t get otherwise by grabbing them via Bittorrent you may be interested in Erica Sadun’s Airflick. Airflick is an application that lets you stream video, audio, or photos from your Mac to your Apple TV. Very handy application.

But all-in-all my Apple TV might as well just be a Netflix box. I’ve used Netflix on the computer, on an Xbox 360, on iPad and iPhone and on Apple TV. By far the very best Netflix application exists on the Apple TV. It is easy to use, looks great, and works nearly every single time without hiccup. I don’t know if I’d even be subscribed to Netflix if I didn’t own an Apple TV.

“someone that loves to get the job done instead of working on their machine”

When I began my switch to the Macintosh nearly a decade ago my single biggest reason that I trumpeted to friends was that I could focus on my work rather than wasting countless hours maintaining my computer. I remember spending far too much time reinstalling my operating system, defragmenting my hard drive, installing virus and malware protection software, and other such tasks. Since switching to the Macintosh I have not had to spend a single minute on any of those things. The Mac lets me do work and get back to life. And I’m a huge fan of life.

/via Marco “Please don’t email me” Arment.