Andrew and Sarah Spear, who wrote the wonderful children’s book, My Little Geek, have a Kickstarter campaign for some new books, Nerdy Numbers and Sci-Fi Shapes. To celebrate father’s day, they are giving away a bunch of copies of My Little Geek. If you’re a dad (or know a dad), go sign up.
Today John Gruber, Brent Simmons, and Dave Wiskus jointly released an iPhone app, Vesper. If you were assembling a dream team of people to create a new application, I can’t think of a better roster.
The application is a replacement for the Apple Notes app and all of its yellow paper and marker felt font glory.
The real story about this application is the user interface. If this is an example of the direction we’re heading (I think it is) then I’m ready for the future. There are so many little details of this user interface that I love. For instance, when you slide a Note to the left to add it to the archive, the direction arrow slowly moves in relation to your finger and the color switches from grey to orange when you get far enough to archive. Transition from the main view to the new note view has just enough zoom. The app is flatter but not flat. When you slide the main screen to the right, it exposes a list of all notes that is clearly behind the main view.
It’s these little touches that I’m sure went through many, many iterations. This app helps you as a user without banging you over the head with Corinthian leather.
I’m really enjoying Vesper. It does have limitations. There is no synchronization available and, for that matter, no iPad or Mac version of the app to synchronize with. In a recent interview at Macstories, John Gruber explains they wanted to focus all of their attention on the iPhone application first. I suspect we’ll be getting additional versions for the other platforms and syncing in the future. In the meantime, I really love this app and I will find use for it.
Byword (Mac App Store) (iOS App Store) is one of my writing staples. I work in it every day. Indeed, I’m writing these very words in Byword. Yesterday MetaClassy released version 2.0, which is free to existing users and includes some nice upgrades. Byword now can save a Markdown document to rich text on the clipboard. Now you can write in Markdown and copy to rich text with one keystroke for later pasting in Mail, Pages, or a rich text web interface. Byword also now retains your scroll position in preview mode. This is a small thing but appreciated. There are several other small improvements, like smoother animation, speedier sync, and other under-the-hood improvements. It’s a great upgrade.
This new version also includes an in-app purchase ($5) with one-step blog publishing. You can now publish your Byword documents directly to WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, Evernote or Scriptogram. If you are writing for any of those in platforms with Byword, this is a no brainer. Now it is just three steps: 1. write your text; 2. push a button to publish; 3. go drink like a tortured author. This is a nice upgrade and further solidifies Byword’s prominent position in my writing workflow.
Mac Power Users 140 is live. In this week’s episode, Katie and I blow through a lot of feedback. The outline was far-reaching including security, automation, writing, and a rapidfire section that covered a variety of topics. While this sounds boring, I think there was a lot of good content in the show.
Also, I guested on Adam Christianson’s MacCast where he asked me to pretend I was in charge of Apple and give my WWDC keynote announcement. I fell into the role like I was Sir Laurence Olivier. I even wore hipster clothes while I recorded. You may be surprised by my big announcement.
My friend Jean MacDonald was attending WWDC a few years ago and looked around the room. It dawned on her that she could only find three women in the room (including herself). Most people would say, “somebody should do something about that”. Jean said, “I’m going to fix that”. She’s doing just that. For the last year she has put many hours into creating App Camp for Girls. It’s a fun place where girls put their geek on and make iPhone apps. It’s happening. It’s for real. Jean is now looking for help from the community. We need more women developers and this is your chance to pitch in. Check out the website and consider donating.
It’s just a week until WWDC so Brett Terpstra and I are celebrating with a sale on our book, 60 Mountain Lion Tips. The book includes sixty of our favorite Mac tips with explanations and screencasts. It’s a great book and it can up your game on your Mac. The best part is that now through Sunday, you can get it for just $2.99. Both Brett and I are proud of this book so check it out if you haven’t already and tell your friends.
Sven Fechner, at SimplicityIsBliss, has been running a series of posts about traveling gear and tips. I contributed over the weekend with a post about my precious Pelican 1510LOC.
For the longest time I used Kurt Clifton’s OmniFocus Template. Today I stumbled into Chris Sauve’s updated OmniFocus Template script.
¡Ay, Caramba!
How did I not check this out sooner? This updated template script (which pays homage to Kurt’s original template) brings it. You can set default dates, folders, listed variable, conditional tasks, and more. It goes on and on. If you do any sort of repeated projects in OmniFocus, take 20 minutes out of your life to set this up and learn the syntax. So worth it.
Sixteen-year-olds Connor Koehler and Max Greenwald wanted a stop watch that could start, stop, and reset without them having to look at their iPhone screens. So they built one. The app doesn’t look like a high school project. I’m hearing increasingly from young developers. As an old guy I’m always impressed by the gumption required to create a product when you are in high school. I’m equally amazed how it is even possible for a few teenagers to have a good idea and get it in front of a global audience.
The latest patent attack is against podcasters. A patent holder is claiming that any distribution of episodic content requires a patent license and is now enforcing that against podcasters. I can tell you from experience that podcasting is something you do for love, not money. If producing a podcast starts meaning you are going to have to deal with patent litigation, a lot of good podcasts will go away.
If you enjoy podcasts, please skip your next meal out and contribute to the EFF. I just contributed quite a bit more than a meal.
