Blog

YouTube will not allow me to comment without a Google+ account so I’m putting my comment for Sam Soffes’ daily vlog post right here: “I think I like personalsam for the same reasons I’ve always enjoyed reading personal blogs. Living and working online since I was 14 could have been a lonely endeavor but tweets, […]

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Mark Gurman, as per usual, has the skinny on the next Apple TV. We have two Apple TV’s in the house and two at work. At home we use the Apple TV every single day. If that Mark is laying out ends up being the reality of what ships we’ll buy two immediately.

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Eliza and I visited with a few friends in Brooklyn PA a month or so ago. Nice place to go for a walk but man oh man there were a lot of dead things on the road.

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WordCamp Scranton happened in mid-July. I mentioned it once or twice.

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SelfControl: Just set a period of time to block for, add sites to your blacklist, and click "Start." Until that timer expires, you will be unable to access those sites–even if you restart your computer or delete the application. Emphasis mine. /via Mike Rundle on Twitter.

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I use Evernote on my desktop, tablet, and phone. I don’t particularly care for their applications* but the service and structure works well enough that I’ve been productive using them. Jeremy Brown, a local designer and developer and frequent Coalworker, recently wrote about Alternote: It’s clean, and it’s generally nice to use. What’s good is […]

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I shared a photo on Instagram/Facebook of a recent paddle on White Oak Pond and within seconds a perfect stranger suggested I paddle Dunn Pond due to its similarities. I love White Oak Pond so the first opportunity I had I went to paddle Dunn Pond. I’m glad I did. I ended up shooting more […]

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This is what can happen when two little girls grab your camera and shoot over 100 photos in a matter of minutes. 🙂

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Last week a few of us walked to Ale Mary’s — which I recommend if you haven’t tried it yet — and I took my GoPro along. I’m digging these.

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Bradley Chambers, commenting on a new feature in the latest beta of iOS 9 that will allow the iPhone to switch to cellular data when a Wi-Fi connection gets weak: This is going to be huge for Siri. One of the places that I typically use Siri is backing out of the driveway at home […]

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The Sweet Setup: The Belkin Qode Pro is the Cadillac of iPad keyboards. It comes with a shell for the iPad to clip into that works in conjunction with the keyboard itself. When you’re done working, simply pull the iPad away from the magnets in the base and supporting piece in the back, and the […]

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In this “year of the smartwatch” I’m happy I stumbled across the Timex Datalink. From Wikipedia: The Datalink line was introduced in 1994 and it was co-developed with Microsoft as a wearable alternative to mainstream PDAs with additional attributes such as water resistance, that PDAs lacked, and easy programmability. Microsoft would give these watches away […]

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Will Freeborn, whom I’ve featured on The Watercolor Gallery, recently put together a bit of stencil work for a local bakery in Scotland. I thought it was a cool post on his blog. They also ask artists to make stencils for their bread, I was asked if I wanted to join in. The way the […]

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Walter Chang traveled the world for 3 years and then made this video and wrote this on Medium: Yet, traveling in this manner is really an educational experience and an investment in yourself. You get to see how other people live and how they view life. You also get time to reflect on your own […]

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Leo Marini on Quartz: Indonesians surveyed by Galpaya told her that they didn’t use the internet. But in focus groups, they would talk enthusiastically about how much time they spent on Facebook.  When AOL was at its height many thought it was the internet. Now, those using Facebook don’t even know they are using the […]

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Paul Stamatiou, on 10 years of blogging: For me blogging here is an outlet for creativity and an eternal personal project where I can tinker with design ideas and various web technologies. As good as any reasons to have your own blog. He also notes this about personal sites: The era of the personal website […]

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Kurt Wagner on Re/code: Trevor O’Brien, who joined Twitter a year and a half ago from YouTube and oversees product for Twitter’s iOS and Android apps, is departing the company, according to multiple sources. Based on the application updates I’ve seen these last few months I’d say O’Brien wasn’t overseeing much of anything. The state […]

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Jeffery Milstein specializes in aerial photography. Here is his collection of cruise ships. /via iGNANT.

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Jay Torres discusses the Apple Watch on Mark Miller’s series Watchscreen: I now always have my phone on silent and rely on my Watch to let me know of any texts. It’s subtle so it doesn’t interrupt anything, and the haptic touch is strong enough to let me know someone has texted me. As someone […]

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Maria Popova on her incredibly good blog Brain Pickings: Indeed, he knew value of undisturbed creative labor and protected it fiercely, unafraid to stand up to the most powerful man in Europe. Unable to bear the interruptions any longer and determined to do his work on his own terms, he left Rome and returned to […]

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This is great. ~karlen on tilde.town reads aloud bits on the web that says “no one will ever read this but”. My only wish was that this site linked to the source. /via Andy Baio.

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Interesting write-up on Medium by Pasquale D’Silva Creative Director at Elepath. He says this about Spotify: One of the most spatially confusing, while popular pieces of consumer software. To describe how Spotify’s interface makes use of space, would be to describe a rat’s nest of wires. I challenge you to effectively sketch it on a […]

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Kyle Eschenroeder over at The Art of Manliness: Then there is the person scrolling through Lifehacker collecting listicles. Reading and re-reading the same hacks spewed out a thousand times. This is the person who won’t go to the gym until they know for a fact that they have the “perfect” workout regimen. This is the […]

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Maciej Ceglowski, operator over at Pinboard, in a talk in 2014: The Web belongs to us all, and those of us in this room are going to spend the rest of our lives working there. So we need to make it our home. You’ve likely already read the transcript of his talk but I thought […]

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Good move from GoPro. They’ve created a licensing platform for stock videos made by GoPro users. Christopher Heine for Adweek: At launch, GoPro Licensing will feature more than 600 videos from amateur and professional videographers with whom the San Mateo, Calif.-based company has struck licensing agreements. It plans to continuously expand the number of clips […]

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Kyle Ruane, on his personal blog: It’s no secret that the more this region (Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, everywhere in-between) becomes comfortable with technology and success within that industry, the greater our ability will be to develop and keep homegrown talent as well as attract entrepreneurs from other areas. This conference was another big step in the right […]

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Jason Major, writing for Universe Today: More than just a pretty picture of our blue marble, this image will be used by the EPIC team to help calibrate the instrument to remove some of the blue atmospheric haze from subsequent images. Once the camera is fully set to begin operations daily images of our planet will […]

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Manton Reece, on his personal blog about quitting his “day job” and going full time indie:  I thought it would be fun to do a series of blog posts about the early part of this transition. For the next couple weeks, as I wind down one set of projects and ramp up new ones, I’m […]

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S. Somasegar on his own blog at Microsoft: Visual Studio 2015 and .NET 4.6 are an exciting next step for developer tools from Microsoft – combining new productivity for existing Visual Studio users with new platform support for developers targeting a wider range of platforms and programming models.  Huge update to Visual Studio but most […]

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I watch Casey Neistat every day. Today he and his team released Beme. (App Store Link) Mike Isaac for Bits: Users capture four-second bursts of video by covering a sensor directly above the earpiece of the iPhone. During an interview in his Manhattan office on Thursday, Mr. Neistat demonstrated this by pressing the phone to […]

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Mark this app down as one of the apps that will make iOS become a platform that rivals the Macintosh for creators over the next few years. This is just the beginning. iOS 9 will open the door for much, much more apps like this. Also, kudos to Panic for their hat tip to Dennis […]

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Rich Cicci writing for the excellent NEPA Scene: San Diego Comic Con has come and gone, but unless you kept your face inches away from your cell phone, tablet, PC, or laptop this past weekend, you may not have known. That fact is shocking considering how much nerd culture has permeated everything nowadays. I mean, […]

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Disclosure: I’m not an organizer of WordCamp Scranton, though two of my companies; Plain and Coalwork are sponsors, nor am I speaking for anyone involved with the event. I’m personally grateful for the coverage on WNEP about WordCamp Scranton but I believe it could have been so much better. I believe WordCamp’s organizers could have […]

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Tal F commutes to NYC on a bicycle and has done so for years. He decided to shake things up and use a kayak to commute into work — and not just any kayak, an Oru Kayak. Tal F, on his excellent blog: Predictably, the process of setting up and dismantling the boat in Manhattan […]

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Luca G, from the Netherlands, on Medium: I’ve compared the two and came to the conclusion that Evernote is the best option for me. I always carry my phone around, and it’s always charged. I’m much the same. I’ve defaulted to Evernote for almost everything. I say almost because I find that having a notebook […]

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In 2008 seven investors were approached to buy 10% of Airbnb for $150,000. Five of them turned them down flat, two never responded. Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, on Medium: Next time you have an idea and it gets rejected, I want you to think of these emails. Airbnb is currently valued at a $25.5 […]

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Since we’re on the subject of hitting milestones around things done daily and the number 100… this one is a doozy. Casey Neistat just hit 100 episodes of daily video blog episodes. A huge accomplishment given the quality of Casey’s videos. I watch an episode every single day at lunch and catch up on the […]

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Carl T. Holscher on growing up at a slower pace: I wasn’t ignorant. I read voraciously. I wrote and thought. I shared my thoughts in that fledgling collection of wires and computers. I talked to classmates and spent hours on the phone with a friend talking to the wee hours of the morning. No matter […]

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Jared Sinclair: Here’s a little secret for newbie app developers out there: a fun app has nothing to do with clean code. You can replace “fun” with anything here. Shipping is better than not shipping. Manton Reece: Most programmers try to improve their code a little from one project to the next. But obsessing about how […]

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It has been a whirlwind this last week or so. I’m writing this while 35,000 feet in the air as Kyle and I are off to San Francisco on a business trip. A trip we didn’t know we were taking until late last week. Isn’t flying amazing? The process of flying, however, is about as […]

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Today was a beatiful day. After lunch I went for a 2.5 mile walk around the city. Each time I venture out, either alone or with a Coalwork member or two, I try a new route. I’m surprised by the number of routes that can be made in such a short distance from our space. […]

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Noah Read, on his blog, on why he is posting “snippets” to his site which then get distributed to the social networks of his choice. Some of the content is so great that it seems a shame to be dumping it into 3rd party services, which may be gone within a few years. Microblogging and social […]

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