Author Chris Bailey joins Mike and me on this episode of Focused to talk about the productivity benefits of meditation, conquering resistance, and the path of least regret.
This episode of Focused is sponsored by:
Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code FOCUSED at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
PDFpen, from Smile: The all-purpose PDF editor for Mac, iPad, and iPhone.
Indeed: Get a free $75 credit to upgrade your job post.
Over the past few years, home security cameras have got better and cheaper. That’s good. Now anyone can set up a home security camera and keep an eye on the front door or the dog. The problem, however, is that all of these cameras are not created equal. There are two issues you need to consider when purchasing a camera that manufacturers don’t often mention: commerce and security.
Commerce
A lot of the camera racket has turned into a razor and blades style business. You get the cameras but then you end up spending around $100/year to have their cloud storage. That may be worth it to you, assuming the vendor knows what they’re doing and they have a good security model. I have trust issues with all of these vendors. How much of a stake do they really have in protecting your privacy? How much effort are they putting into keeping all that video from your house safe?
Security
It’s called a security camera but is it actually secure? This is particularly a concern if you do use the vendor’s cloud storage. Do you want anyone in the world able to look at your front door or your dog? Vendors are slowly coming around on this. Ring just announced that you can add end-to-end encryption to your video on their servers but it is (currently) off by default.
I continue to be happy with my Eufy cameras. They didn’t break the bank. They’re holding up fine and they work with Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video service that gets me encrypted online storage as part of my iCloud account (that I’m already paying for).
John Siracusa joins Stephen and me on the latest episode of Mac Power Users to talk about the 2019 Mac Pro and what Apple silicon may mean for pro users. Then, John talks about his pair of Mac apps and what he wants out of the future of macOS.
This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:
TextExpander from Smile: Get 20% off with this link and type more with less effort! Expand short abbreviations into longer bits of text, even fill-ins, with TextExpander from Smile.
Squarespace: Make your next move. Enter offer code MPU at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
Pingdom: Start monitoring your website performance and availability today, and get instant alerts when an outage occurs or a site transaction fails. Use offer code MPU to get 30% off. Offer expires on January 31, 2022, and can be used only once.
DEVONthink: Get organized—unleash your creativity. Use this link for 10% off.
This week we lost jazz pianist Chick Corea (Wikipedia). I’ve been a Chick Corea fan my entire life. He got his start with several jazz greats (including Miles Davis) but really arrived as an early pioneer of jazz fusion with his band, Return to Forever. LIke so many greats, Chick was constantly trying different things and sounds. At one point he had two bands, one focused on electric instruments and another focused on acoustic instruments.
Regardless, he was amazing when he sat at a keyboard. The thing that always stood out to me was how effortless he’d make it look. Almost like he was barely touching the keys. If you’d like to listen to some Chick Corea music, I really like his Chick Corea Plays album recorded live in Paris a few years ago. Chick talks about some of his favorite music as well as playing.
Chick also did a lot of duet collaborations. One of the best was with vibraphonist Gary Burton. They made several albums together over the decades. Below is a tiny concert they did together giving you a tease of their music.
We’ll miss you, Chick.
The Omni Group has released a remarkable automation platform for their apps, including OmniFocus. In this episode of Automators, automator Joe Buhlig joins us to talk about his automation journey and working with the Omni Group’s new platform.
This episode of Automators is sponsored by:
Sync Up, a OneDrive podcast: Takes you behind the scenes of OneDrive.
PDFpen, from Smile: The all-purpose PDF editor for Mac, iPad & iPhone.
HelloFresh: Click this link and use code automators10 for 10 free meals, including free shipping!
I’m a big advocate for the hyper key. This idea was first introduced to me by Brett Terpstra and involves mapping Shift-Control-Option-Command to the caps lock key. Using the hyper key opens your keyboard up to a ton of new easily triggered shortcuts. Historically, I’ve done this remapping with Karabiner Elements. However, this remapping just got a lot easier. BetterTouchTool has added the a new feature that lets you map the hyper key combination to any key (including caps lock). See the screenshots below for how to set it up. Also, the developer has a walkthrough right here.
Every year, Backblaze, the online backup service I use, publishes its failure rate for the hard drives it uses in its backup servers. The latest report is up and this is useful data. In 2020, they added nearly 40,000 drives and monitored 162,530 drives. With those sorts of numbers, you can get an idea for what hard drive manufacturers are cutting the mustard.
My big take away is that drives are getting better. The overall failure rate is down and big winners were Seagate and HGST. If you need to buy any spinning drives, I’d recommend checking this out.
Ryan Boren, the former lead developer of WordPress, has thought a lot about text, hyperlinking, and contextual computing. His recent post assembles a lot of resources about the importance of text and linking, including my own post on contextual computing.
There is a movement afoot to democratize text and hyperlinking on the web, in apps, and across our computers. For the longest time we’ve been spinning our wheels using computer data (particularly words) as digital approximations of the printed words that came before them. That needs to change. Using hyperlinking and contextual computing, we take the written word (and the underlying paradigm about how we work on a computer) from one dimension and convert it to three dimensions.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this myself and I truly believe dynamic, bi-directional linking across files and apps can dramatically improve the way we use our computers and develop our days. It is the way for computers to truly serve the role as “bicycles for the mind”.
Do you know what a class move is? It’s when you meet someone for the first time and you had them a quality calling card. This week’s sponsor, Hoban Cards, is how you can make that class move. Hoban Cards uses a 1902 letterpress machine to make beautiful cards that people will never forget. (Watch the Hoban letterpress process in action.) Forget discount print centers and laser printers. Instead, get some cards that make a statement. I’ve ordered Hoban Cards and it doesn’t actually take any more of your time to get these cards made. Just go to Hoban Cards and push a few buttons and then they arrive in the mail. I sure love mine and I bet you will too.
Evan and the gang at Hoban Cards are entirely dedicated to making the best possible calling cards. They have some beautiful templates to choose from, or you can roll your own.
There is no doubt I am a geek, but I have to admit that I love handing out letterpress cards. It is always a conversation starter. Put simply, Hoban Cards is where you go for the unique and classy alternative to conventional, mass-produced, soulless business cards. Best of all, use ‘MacSparky’ to get $10 off any order. I’ve been carrying Hoban cards for years and I intend to keep carrying them for the duration. You should too.
DEVONthink got some significant updates today. First, DEVONthink To Go 3.0 is out now. They’ve made no mystery of the fact that they wanted to substantially improve their mobile app and they have. This new version is much closer to DEVONthink on the Mac. The mobile version now has support for multiple windows and the pointer on iPadOS, dark mode, and context menus. They’ve also added a number of new settings to personalize DEVONthink To Go. Other new features include:
OCR converts scans to searchable PDFs on the device.
Shortcuts actions let you automate everyday tasks and integrate DEVONthink To Go with the rest of the iOS ecosystem.
Documents can be opened and edited in other apps directly from the Share sheet.
Version 3.0 supports Mac-style document annotations and ratings, unifies inboxes, tags, and trash groups like on the Mac, and adds new global smart groups.
There’s both monthly and yearly subscription options, as well as a one-time purchase. If you have version 2, you will be able to choose a free upgrade subscription until the end of July, 2021, and receive a discount on the one-time purchase. I also dig the new icon.
They’ve also added CloudKit-based sync and released a new version of DEVONthink for Mac that also supports the new sync protocol. I’ve been using the betas and using the CloudKit sync. In my experience, it’s been noticeably faster and I’ve not had any data loss. Getting data (via sync) onto the mobile versions of DEVONthink faster and more reliably substantially increases the app’s overall utility. I’m so pleased that the DEVONthink team is putting so much effort into the iPhone and iPad.
