The Geek Gene

John Siracusa wrote an inspirational piece about becoming a geek this week. His message is great. Anybody can become a geek at any time. An interesting tangent to this discussion is the question of why certain people have this inclination to dive super-deep on their interests. Like John, I’ve also got my list of things that I obsess on to reach geek status. However, not everyone is a geek. There are many people that go through life and, while they have many interests, never go to the trouble to read every magazine and devour every scrap of information about one topic or another. I’m not judging. Maybe non-geeks have the healthier outlook but I sure am glad that whatever forces are at work in the universe gave me the geek gene.

Google Buys Nest

The big news today is Google’s purchase of Nest, the people that brought me that fancy thermostatSigh. I’m not bagging on Google with my disappointment in this acquisition. I’d be almost as sad if Apple were writing the check.

What I loved about the Nest is that it was an upstart. It was a group of rebels taking a serious look at home automation and coming up with innovative products that they charged money for. There were no complex business models. There were no “downstream monetization” plans. I just bought their thermostat and added some techie magic to my life.

I can’t help but wonder that being a small cog in a big machine makes Nest less useful to me than it was as a big cog in a small machine.

Collaboration with LiveNote

The killer feature in Google Docs is the ability to simultaneously work on the same document with other people. The iWork cloud feature isn’t as good and Google has always, in my opinion, led the pack on this useful feature. It seems to me that this feature will inevitably find its way into Pages and Word. In the meantime, Aditya Patadia and Hardik Pandya have already built a free version of an online text editor that pulls this off at LiveNote.org. If putting your data with Google creeps you out, this is a good solution for one-off text collaborations.

Home Screens: Moisés Chiullan


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This week’s home screen features Moisés Chiullan (Webite) (Twitter), one of my favorite 5by5 hosts with shows includingGiant Size, The Critical Path, and Screen Time. So Moisés, show us your home screen.


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What are some of your favorite apps?

I can’t live without 1Password, to which I have recently converted in a literally religious manner. I say prayers that I added something to it when I desperately need it. I’m dedicating part of this weekend to dumping all my remaining passwords into it. Combined use of TextExpander TouchDraftsSquarespace BlogLaunch Center Pro and Screens is the only reason I can keep up with posting content at ArthouseCowboy.com regularly (or at all), especially with the LayoutEngine integration in Squarespace’s new app. Things is the simple, straightforward, (finally) cloud-syncing to-do app that gets what I need done. The only reason I like Apple’s Mail app is that I can flip switches on or off to hide accounts that movie industry publicists send hundreds of distribution list emails to daily (thanks SXSW!), except for when I need to find a specific one.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

A tie between two games: Letterpress and vConqr (no longer available but you can get RISK). The former is great when people don’t resign or disappear on turn three, and the latter is a really basic ripoff of RISK that gets my brain back into tactical action mode.

What is the app you are still missing?

A podcast app that I don’t want to cast into the darkest corners of hell. Instacast is only there until I export my OPML data into Castro.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

Too many and not efficiently enough. You should have asked my wife. She’d have just said “lost count”.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Over the air data sync and intra-communication of apps as implemented by third-party developers. Technically, I guess that means a wellspring of talented, smart third-party developers who are always trying be miles ahead of the curve. I wish Apple made app-to-app interaction work better from the user perspective.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I used to work for them, and respect NDAs even when I never expect to work for someone again…however I can say it’s inexcusable that listening to audio on my phone drains the battery completely in under a half day. If I could change one thing, it would be the 20-year-olds at the Genius Bar assuming that I have Push enabled on all my apps, a dozen Exchange accounts, and that I’m a liar and/or an idiot. Apple Stores have gotten more like sneering, cattle-wrangling hipster hangout joints and less like the oasis they used to be.

Extrapolating that as a general note, they need to focus on reinvesting into the businesses they’re in across the board before they “redefine” anything like TV and further water down their standard of “it just works”, which is now down to “it generally does what an unspecified significant amount of people will tolerate”.

Anything else you’d like to share?

In addition to The Critical Path, where I’m second banana to the inimitable Horace Dediu, I host two other podcasts on 5by5. Screen Time is a panel show that looks at all parts of the video media ecosystem, from production to consumption.Giant Size is a panel show where John Gholson and I guide new, veteran, and lapsed comics readers through characters, creators, and stories worth reading. We want to make getting into comics less intimidating. Both of them include interviews with people from across the entertainment world, from Guillermo del Toro, Peter Weller, and Star Trek designers Mike and Denise Okuda to Stan Lee and Kelly Sue DeConnick. I also recently did a pilot for a new show about the world of customer service called Thank You For Calling!, and as of this writing, it’s available as 5by5 Special #23.

Thanks Moisés

Matias’s New Clicky Ergonomic Keyboard

Today Matias took the wraps off its latest keyboard. I used a Matias keyboard for several years and it was built like a tank. Now they’ve got a $200 two-piece ergonomic keyboard for sale that looks pretty nice if that is your thing.


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Getting Started with GarageBand

Having GarageBand on your Apple devices without opening it is kind of like having Star Wars in your DVD collection without ever watching it. Even if you’ve never read a note of music or picked up an instrument, there is a lot in there for you. Chris Breen has started a series at Macworld that should be the gateway drug for anyone.

Dictation Sans External Mic

One of the cardinal rules of computer dictation is that you always must have a high quality microphone. This was drilled into me years ago. A funny thing happened though. The software and hardware got a lot better. About six months ago I started dictating frequently on my retina MacBook Pro without an external microphone. Instead, I’m just talking to my computer without anything plugged into it. This works remarkably well. I know that Apple added a noise canceling microphone with this most recent batch of computers. Your mileage may vary depending on what machine you’re driving but if you’re using a recent Mac, and you haven’t tried dictation without a microphone, you should.