Blog
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Software update Sunday
Keeping software up-to-date is really important. There are security flaws that get patched, performance and battery improvements that can save both time and energy. Not to mention new features, bug fixes, etc. So why set aside a specific day to get everything up-to-date rather than just doing the updates as they come in? Simple: Software […]
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What I saw this week #12: November 17, 2013
Late again this week. However, I did manage to get this post out the door. Here are some interesting things I saw this week. Noisli – Need some nice background noise while you work? I find myself using this every day now. I love that you can combine more than one sound too. Videos: Roadmap 2013 […]
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What I saw this week #11: November 10, 2013
I’m still amazed at how many great things pass over my desk each week even though we’ve been so busy lately at work. I love how these posts remind me, each week, of how many interesting things there are on this web of ours. Cisco open sources H.264 – This is a geeky link for […]
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A culture of beer and overtime
The experience that Jay Huang had happens far, far too often. It happened to me at two companies. It is absolutely ludicrous. I mean everyone was leaving after 8 hours a day, and sometimes I would work a bit longer than everyone else, but that’s okay, because it’s on my own will and it’s usually […]
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What I saw this week #10: November 1, 2013
It has been a busy few weeks at Plain. But even busy weeks yield interesting things online. Here are a few: Video: Slowmo iPhone 5s video on Instagram – Ryan Pernofski shares some great slow motion videos on Instagram using the new iPhone 5s. Profitless Prosperity – Fred Wilson discusses why Amazon is so valued […]
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Do you need 1Password if you use iCloud Keychain on Mavericks and iOS 7?
Shawn Blanc spends a few minutes chatting about whether or not you still need 1Password after upgrading to iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks? With Mavericks support for storing passwords and credit card info in Safari, combined with the iCloud keychain syncing of that info to our iOS devices, I wanted to share about how […]
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What I saw this week #9: October 25, 2013
This has been an amazing week at work. I’m very much looking forward to sharing what we’re up to in the future but for now, some links. Comet ISON – Did you know there was a comet up there, right now, about to zing passed us and the sun and back out into space? Don’t […]
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Mark Boulton on the case for inline editing
Mark Boulton in the appropriately titled WYSIWTFFTWOMG! One of the other pain points of a complex dynamic website, where ‘pages’ are created with bits of content from all over the place is ‘where the hell do I go to find that bit of content to edit it?’. That is a painful moment in a content […]
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What I saw this week #8: October 18, 2013
I’ve read less on my computer this week than many, many weeks due to travel and busy work getting in the way. So this week might be lighter than others. Our Culture of Exclusion – Ryan Funduk is sick of drink ups. It is nearly impossible to hold a meet up of any kind and […]
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What I saw this week #7: October 11, 2013
Fall is in full swing and the leaves are all but gone. This time of year has been torn between the desire to be outdoors, soaking up what is left of the season, and being indoors around a fireplace in my pub. There is so much awesome happening each week on the web I’m having […]
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Apple naysayers are a good thing for the company
Jean-Louis Gassée postulates that it is a good thing for Apple that pundits and industry types constantly spell out their doom. I recently experienced a small epiphany: I think the never-ending worry about Apple’s future is a good thing for the company. Look at what happened to those who were on top and became comfortable […]
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DistroKid
DistroKid allows anyone to quickly upload a music track to iTunes, Spotify, Google Play and Amazon. First track is free, just $19.99 per year thereafter. This seems like a steal of a deal. If Philip Kaplan can get the word out about this then I think it will be a huge success and (more than […]
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How I hacked Barley and made paintings on The Watercolor Gallery re-orderdable on the home page
I’m not a great programmer. In fact, at this point in my career I wouldn’t advise paying me to write any complex code. But I’m an excellent hacker. I love to chip away at things with my limited programming knowledge and get something working. I wrote the working prototype for Barley. Which Jeff immediately threw […]
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Writing is the how I think
Yesterday Chris Dixon tweeted a link to this thought-provoking blog post by Cal Newport about needing downtime to truly get into deep work. I agree with much of it, such as this nugget: If you’re looking for the next Tao, in other words, ignore the guy checking e-mail while running to his next meeting, and […]
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What I saw this week #6: October 6, 2013
There was no link list last week because I was at the beach. And this week I’m a few days late because our team had a half-day with some festivities. My apologies. I hope this week’s video-heavy list makes up for having none last week. 575 Free Movies Online – A boat load of movies […]
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Windows. Mac. Android. iOS. It no longer matters what device you choose.
Or, at least it shouldn’t. And it is becoming less and less critical which platform you invest in. In a fair review of the iPhone 5S from Andrew Kim whom, as always, pours over the device and provides a great and visual review, I liked this bit best about picking one platform over another. We seem […]
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What I saw this week #5: September 20, 2013
Last week’s list was so rich with links that I had to hold a few back and work them into this week’s post. Some weeks there are just too many great things to link to. Photo: M2-9 "Minkowski’s Butterfly" by Hubble, Edited by Judy Schmidt. /via APOD. 10 Cultural Giants Who Died Coinless – van […]
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Addressing the needs of your market and knowing your competition
Wayne Barz, on knowing your market, the needs of that market and thoroughly understanding your competition and how they address that market and those needs: The fact that a $6 billion market exists is good. Knowing that it is generally growing at 11% per year is a little more meaningful. But for the most part, […]
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The first month of Things I Saw This Week, the magazine, and onto Year 1.
Four weeks ago I decided to follow in Om Malik and Heather Armstrong’s shoes and create a digest of some of the more interesting things I saw throughout the week. After four consecutive weeks of creating these posts, and really having a great time putting them together, I plan to complete as least 52 of […]
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What I saw this week #4: September 13, 2013
Vacations are weird. We work really hard before vacation so that we can, you know, go on vacation, and we work really hard after vacation. I’m doing the latter part of that this week by trying to catch up from being a week away. I’ve been successful! Now, onto this week’s links. Whisky tour of […]
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My take on iWork being free, iOS 7 & the two new iPhones
In case you missed it, Apple just held a press event to showcase the updates to iOS coming next week, two new iPhones, and the fact that iWork for iOS is now free with all new iOS devices. Here are my thoughts on each of these announcements. iWork for iOS being free for all new […]
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Coast, a browser for iPad by Opera
Coast is a new web browser built for the iPad by Opera. (App Store link) Why is there a back button in iPad browsers? The iPad is, after all, designed for touch. You swipe, drag and use gestures to move around. Bringing Chrome or Safari from the desktop to iPad always felt like bringing a […]
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Collaborate on documents using Editorially – a simple web-based Markdown editor
For the last few months our team at Plain has been using Editorially to collaborate on blog posts, newsletters, magazine columns, interviews and much more. Now, we can’t live without it. Editorially is a Markdown editor; which means a simple text-based markup language that allows you to add just enough emphasis and style to your […]
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Things I saw this week #3: September 7, 2013
I’m vacationing on the beach in South Carolina with family so this week’s post is a day late and a little lighter than usual. I’m looking forward to getting back at it next week. Video: The new trailer for Gravity. I’m very much looking forward to this movie if for no other reason than to […]
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It isn’t the medium, it is the content.
This one is an instant gem, folks. Matt Gemmell writes about how the medium through which we devour content has changed from print to web and how publishers seem fixated on ways to push the medium rather than focusing on what is truly most important – the content. We’ve become lost whilst trying to work […]
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Things I saw this week #2: August 30, 2013
This has been a busy week. We’ve just turned on the sales engine at Barley and it has been interesting to go out and talk to potential new customers, resellers, and partners. Even with this busy week, though, I managed to find some interesting things on the web. Here are some of them. I’m on […]
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Relentless Quality by Kyle Neath
My friend Kyle Neath at GitHub writes about Relentless Quality and how shipping early and often doesn’t have to mean a sacrifice of quality. Quality isn’t something to be sacrificed. Move fast and break things, then move fast and fix it. Ship early, ship often, sacrificing features, never quality. Bingo. The entire post is perfect. […]
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An extensive profile of Marissa Mayer’s rise to be CEO of Yahoo
Some of this we’ve read before, but a lot of it we haven’t. Nicolas Carson published a "biography" of Mayer for Business Insider: On Monday, July 16, four days after Levinsohn’s last board meeting, Yahoo made it official: Thirty-seven-year-old Marissa Mayer was Yahoo’s new CEO. It is fascinating to see this type of stuff go […]
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One-third of the apps available on BlackBerry World are from a single developer
John Paczkowski in 120,000 Apps in BlackBerry World (Spoiler: 47,000 Made by One Developer) for AllThingsD: That means more than a third of those apps were published by S4BB, a developer for whom quality doesn’t appear to be a priority. I wouldn’t think they’d be able to focus on quality with that many titles in […]
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What I saw this week #1: August 23, 2013
Inspired by Om Malik’s What I’m Reading Today and Heather B. Armstrong’s Stuff I Found While Looking Around comes my own series of posts; What I saw this week. Video: CarChat with Don Dethlefsen of The WerkShop about the 1970 BMW 3.0si Estate Wagon – If I ever have the resources to restore an old […]
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\”What I am reading today\” by Om Malik
Remember when I said we need more ways to find good blogs and blog posts? Here’s one… the always excellent Om Malik of GigaOm has a series on his personal blog called "What I am reading today". Here are a few of his recent lists. August 20th, 2013
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\”What I am reading today\” by Om Malik
Remember when I said we need more ways to find good blogs and blog posts? Here’s one… the always excellent Om Malik of GigaOm has a series on his personal blog called "What I am reading today". Here are a few of his recent lists. August 20th, 2013
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\”What I am reading today\” by Om Malik
Remember when I said we need more ways to find good blogs and blog posts? Here’s one… the always excellent Om Malik of GigaOm has a series on his personal blog called "What I am reading today". Here are a few of his recent lists. August 20th, 2013
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\”What I am reading today\” by Om Malik
Remember when I said we need more ways to find good blogs and blog posts? Here’s one… the always excellent Om Malik of GigaOm has a series on his personal blog called "What I am reading today". Here are a few of his recent lists. August 20th, 2013
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\”What I am reading today\” by Om Malik
Remember when I said we need more ways to find good blogs and blog posts? Here’s one… the always excellent Om Malik of GigaOm has a series on his personal blog called "What I am reading today". Here are a few of his recent lists. August 20th, 2013
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\”What I am reading today\” by Om Malik
Remember when I said we need more ways to find good blogs and blog posts? Here’s one… the always excellent Om Malik of GigaOm has a series on his personal blog called "What I am reading today". Here are a few of his recent lists. August 20th, 2013
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Paying attention by not automating too early
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, here is Jason Fried from this past July on Why we’re doing things that don’t scale on Signal vs. Noise: But automation can also lead to myopia. And premature-automation can lead to blindness. When you take human interaction out of a system, you’re removing key opportunities to see what […]
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We need more ways to discover great bloggers and blog posts
The Zemanta Tech Circle: Tech Circle is a simple way to recommend highly related content from its members to the whole Circle. We’ve long been fans of a well curated blog roll, but with the shift to content streams and mobile consumption, often the blog roll simply never gets seen. This isn’t really new and […]
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\”What I am reading today\” by Om Malik
Remember when I said we need more ways to find good blogs and blog posts? Here’s one… the always excellent Om Malik of GigaOm has a series on his personal blog called "What I am reading today". Here are a few of his recent lists. August 20th, 2013
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Scaling your business by doing things that don’t scale
Paul Graham in Do Things that Don’t Scale: The most common unscalable thing founders have to do at the start is to recruit users manually. Nearly all startups have to. You can’t wait for users to come to you. You have to go out and get them. The entire piece by Graham is a must-read […]
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Starting your career on the Internet
Pasquale D’Silva on Medium in Starting your career as an Artist on the Internet: Your immediate goal should be getting a good foundation of work in your portfolio. You don’t have clients to report to yet. Learn as much as you can. Experiment. It’s freedom, embrace it. The same should be said for just about […]
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Why I speak at conferences and meet ups
Like Pamela Fox, speaking at conferences and meet ups has generally been part of my job description to help spread the word about the product or company that I’m working for. But also like Pamela I never really stopped to think about why I speak and whether or not I get anything out of it. […]
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How Windows Phone can gain on Android and iOS
Related: I’d love to see Windows Phone become the third horse in the smartphone OS race. Marco Arment in Google Blindness: Developers aren’t fools. We aren’t swayed by charismatic figureheads who try to convince us to develop for their platforms. The formula is quite simple. We’ll develop for a platform if: We use it. A […]
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I’d love to see Windows Phone become the third horse in the smartphone OS race
Fred Wilson, on _Android and iOS_: But I find myself rooting hard for Apple now. I sense the danger they are in and I don’t want either smartphone OS to be so dominant that we lose the level playing field we have now. It’s very important for startups, innovation, and an open mobile ecosystem for […]
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Bret Victor: The Future of Programming
Bret Victor: The Future of Programming is a presentation he did for Dropbox’s DBX conference earlier in July. Victor goes back-in-time to 1973 to give his presentation on what the future of programming could be. A perfect illustration for all of us that work on computers to know that we simply have not figured everything […]
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Everpix
I’m always on the lookout for new ways to deal with my ever-growing library of photos. It used to be that every time I upgraded my camera I had to worry about losing more and more space with each photo I captured. Each update to my camera created larger and larger filesizes making it very […]
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I’m doing terribly. A follow-up to my post on being less distracted by online services.
Two months ago to-the-day I wrote about turning off Push Notifications on my phone, tablet and laptop. In this area I’m still doing really, really well. I recommend this for anyone. I still do not have any applications that send me any notifications. Only if my wife calls me does my phone even ring. And when […]
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Investors; dream, research, bet.
Dave Winer in Solving problems sometimes requires work: I sent my ten steps to first post list to a VC friend. But clearly after the first step (which was go to fargo.io) he ditched the list, and made it up himself, and never got to first post. Now that would be fine if VCs weren’t […]
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Support and build services that are interoperable
Marco Arment finishes Lockdown, his piece on the war Facebook started and its latest casualty Google Reader, this way: We need to keep pushing forward without them, and do what we’ve always done before: route around the obstructions and maintain what’s great about the web. Keep building and supporting new tools, technologies, and platforms to […]
Writing helps me think more clearly and to form or transform my opinions. I write about what interests me such as blogging, photography, technology, social media, and my personal creative projects.
Series archives: Diversions, WIS, typicalday