I recently gave an interview to Thomas Borowski on the Think, Make, Sell podcast about how I stumbled into being a publisher.
Board Game Recommendations
While iPads are a lot of fun, nothing beats `an impassioned shouting match with your kids at the kitchen table over a good board game. In recent years, there has been a sort-of renaissance for board games. Discovering and playing new games makes it even more fun. Dave Caolo wrote up some of his favorites at the Fanny Pack Mafia.
Jason’s Dr. Who Guide
For the last six months, I’ve been slowly working through the five seasons of the BBC’s Merlin on Netflix. It is campy and fun and, for most episodes, easy to watch while I’m doing some other low-bandwidth tasks. However, I’ve just got two episodes left and not sure what will replace it.
I listened to the recent Incomparable on Dr. Who and I’ve decided to give it a try. I’m not, however, going to watch 50 years worth of programing. Jason Snell very kindly posted his expert Dr. Who recommendations so once I’m done with Merlin, it looks like I’ll be starting with Season 5 of the 2005 reboot.
Home Screens: Bojan Dordevic
This week’s home screen features Bojan Dordevic (Twitter) from Alpha Efficiency. Did you know that AlphaEfficiency now has a magazine in the App Store? It is a great read and premiered this week. So Bojan, show us your home screen.
What are some of favorite apps?
All the apps you see on my homescreen are either the apps that I really use frequently, or the apps that I aspire to use more often. The way I see it, is out of sight, out of mind. If your app is not on my homescreen (or in my Launch Center Pro), than I won’t be using it most likely. As such, I don’t have a particular app that I find as a favorite, but I have favorites based on the functions: organizational, gateway, consumption and publishing apps.
Regarding organization I have my two personal favorites: Evernote and Omnifocus. Two apps that redefined my whole approach to computing, as well as my personal productivity. They have URL schematics that work well within each other, and because of that, they work extremely well together. My recent addition to this group would be Lift, which salvaged a large chunk of my repetitive tasks from Omnifocus, and allowed me to track my habits, with a layer of added social component, for accountability and extra layer of motivation. Pure genius of an app.
Gateway apps made my life way easier, and allowed me to create simple workflows, that otherwise would be completely impossible, as your previous guest, Mike Vardy, I am a big fan of Drafts and Launch Center Pro.
Consumption apps let me access my media. For a long while I was struggling a battle between Instapaper and Pocket, and Instapaper won, because of the design. The other consumption app would be Reeder, which lets me scan what am I going to read next. Also important in my market leadership, as I buffer the most important productivity news to readers of Alpha Efficiency.
Listening is one of the most important aspects of my iPhone, and for that purpose I use Pocket Casts and Music. All of my podcast consumption is exclusively done on the iPhone, mostly during my commutes. Native Music app became a de facto standard since iRadio was introduced. My relation to music is quite deep, and over the course of the day I spend 4+ hours listening to music while I work or commute.
Publishing apps are Byword and Pressgram, that are completely integrated with my personal blog, which I aim to completely substitute my social networking efforts. With my recent trip to Paris, I became very motivated to shoot and publish amazing photos. Pressgram coupled with Snapseed lets me edit my photography works, and quickly share them with the world on my own terms.
I second the nomination on Snapseed. Amazing app. -David
Which app is your guilty pleasure?
Since I am a big fan of App.net it would definitively be Netbot, despite not being featured on the homescreen. It is lurking hidden in the Launch Center Pro, in hopes and aspirations that I will use it less (which I probably do), followed by Tweetbot, which I use less often.
What are the apps you are still missing?
My iPhone is pretty topped off. Writing a productivity blog, got me covered with review copies of most apps that I was truly aiming for. Those that didn’t reach me as a review copy I bought off. But I do miss some Omnigroup’s children on my iPad. In some time I plan on getting Omni Outliner, as I believe it will enhance my writing workflow.
How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?
Far too many to admit the number. For a “productivity” person, I fidget far to much with my iPhone.
What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?
Being the geek that I am, I must admit I nurture the passion for URL schematics and what they can do. I am very well aware that I am not using these features to their fullest potential, but I like to know that as my needs grow, URL schematics can save me quite some time.
If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?
I’d let pro users do what they want. The lock down of Apple ecosystem often led me to jailbreak my device in order to experience it’s raw power. I like what they are doing for the regular users, but I think their restrictive nature is hurting me as a power user. I understand that some people would tell me to go Android, but that doesn’t make any sense. Jailbreaking community has been responsible for the development of the iOS that we see today, and gets no credit for it. For example the “newest” control center, has been a feature of jailbreak for years now for jailbroken users, since iOS4.
I’d like to see “jailbreak” for power users, as a function and not a hack. It could be hidden or enabled for developer and experimental community. I wouldn’t mind, even if I had to pay for it.
Anything else you’d like to share?
We are in the middle of the launch of Alpha Efficiency Magazine, it is designed for people who want to get the most out of their personal productivity. We aim to blend your brain power and technology, and make them work in sync. Magazine is Apple centric, and features prominent names in productivity field, starting with Daniel Gold and Augusto Pinaud.
Thanks Bojan. Good luck with the magazine.
MPU 167: Workflows with Brett Terpstra
On this week’s Mac Power Users episode, Brett Terpstra joins us to talk about how he gets so much done. We also strayed into tagging in light of the new support in Mavericks. Brett is a smart guy and this is a great episode.
Apple and Indie Publishers
Today the Wall Street Journal did a piece about how the government has been screwing with Apple over the iBooks store. Even though I’m a lawyer, I’ve never practiced anti-trust law and I’m baffled by what is going on. However, I do have some observations from my vantage point as a publisher.
Apple Made it Possible for Me to Make Awesome Books
When I first started writing Paperless, the iBooks store did not exist. There were no snazzy tools for me to incorporate rich-media with text and I was facing up to the fact that I was going to have to Frankenstein ePub and PDF to get what a wanted, a book that not only told you how but also showed you how. I spent weeks researching and testing and still didn’t have it nailed down. Then Apple announced iBooks Author and the iBooks store and I immediately abandoned all prior efforts and jumped to the new platform. iBooks Author gives me exactly what I need to publish the books I want to make.
Apple Treats Indie Authors With Respect
Apple didn’t only give me the authoring tools, they also provided me the ability to distribute the books. Getting hooked into the iBooks store system was not an insurmountable task, even for a small indie publisher like me. I’ve sold a lot more books through the iBooks store than I ever would have going it on my own. Moreover, Apple supports indie authors. Don’t believe me? Here is a screenshot from the iBooks Store home page taken earlier today.
Amazon’s initial author royalty was just 35%. To make $7, I’d need to sell my books for $20. It wasn’t until Apple’s looming arrival that Amazon upped that to 70%, matching the App Store. Amazon’s 70% royalty, however, comes with a catch. Amazon also charges authors a “download fee”. The fee is currently $ 0.15 per MB. With my 1GB sized media-rich books, my download fee would be $150 per book.
That’s right. $150.
So to earn my $7, I would need to sell the book for $160 with $150 in delivery costs payable to Amazon and an additional $3 to Amazon for its cut of the royalty. Looking at this page, it looks as if Amazon has an option where they will waive the delivery cost if I agree to give them 65% of the sale. Both of these options are a raw deal for us authors.
Apple serves up my 1GB book and takes 30% of my sale. There is no wonky accounting and I get my $7 for every $10 book. Moreover, Apple earns that $3 by developing my publishing tool, keeping the lights on at the iBooks Store, and covering the cost of serving 1GB sized books to every customer.
How the United States Government can figure this is anti-competitive is still lost on me. Without Apple entering the market, I simply would not be able to publish the MacSparky Field Guides.
Technical Difficulties Podcast
Gabe and Erik recently re-jiggered the Generational podcast into the “Technical Difficulties” podcast. I really like the new format and this one is worth listening. If that isn’t enough to tempt you, they just did a great interview with Merlin Mann. It looks like my weekend listening is all set now.
Drummer Boy
I’ve never liked the Drummer Boy Christmas carol. I remember playing it as a kid and thinking about how much it made me sleepy. Last year I decided to do my own cover of Drummer Boy so I cooked this up with Garage Band on the iPad and my MIDI keyboard. Enjoy.
Fiddling with Ulysses III
I’ve been working on a bigger-than-usual writing project in Ulysses III the last few weeks and there is a lot to like about this app. It looks amazing. There clearly was a lot of thought put into design. It renders text beautifully and embraces plain text. Ulysses is, thankfully, not a Scrivener clone but something different. In my mind the simplicity and organizational tools make it great for projects of medium size and duration.
My biggest dissapointment is the iOS integration with Daedalus Touch. While it works, it doesn’t really feel right and Daedalus is such a different paradigm that it is off-putting for me. I’d really like to see the developer release an iPad version of Ulysses that brings a large part of the experience over with seemless iCloud syncing.
Moving into 2014, I know there is an iPad version of Scrivener in the works and I suspect there is a version of Ulysses for the iPad coming too. If those two apps ship, us iPad writers are going to have some really great options to choose from.
My Fancy-Pants Camera After a Year
Shawn Blanc wrote about the nerd vision-quest he took that ended up in him buying a mirrorless Olympus E-PL5 camera last years. I followed this quite closely since I was also in the market. At the time I had one of the early Canon Digital Rebels that was still a fine camera but I found I rarely brought it with me on a whim. Sure I’d bring the big bag for planned family gatherings but never for a trip to Disneyland or just a walk through the local park. It wasn’t just the wieght around my neck that held me up but also the camera’s general “bigness”. The camera body plus my lens simply didn’t make it easy for me to jump on the teeter-totter or run after a frisbee. So instead I left it at home.
So when Shawn seized on the Olympus, so did I. I bought the PL5 shortly after he wrote about it (through Shawn’s affiliate link) about a year ago along with the Panasonic 1.7 20mm pancake lens. With the body and the lens, I was in for about $1,000. I’ve been using it for a year nearly exclusively with that lens and can report the camera was a great investment. It fits in my pocket and takes some really great pictures. A year later you’d think that I’d be itching for a new lens but I’m not. The combination of the small body and pancake lens are perfect for me. (The Panasonic lens is even smaller than the stock lens pictured above.)
If you are looking for a new camera, take a look at Shawn’s update post, which I agree with on just about every point. If you are thinking about buying the Olympus, you are making a good choice. Just make sure to buy it through Shawn’s link since he is the one that started us all on this journey.
