Hapy Birthday TRS 80 ▻

In 1978, I learned to program on a TRS-80. It went something like this.

10 Get on orange Schwinn 10-speed bike
20 Ride to Radio Shack
30 Progam many lines of basic including one seriously kick ass text adventure
40 Ride back home when store closed
50 Goto 10

Facebook Shenanigans ▻

One company’s investigation showed 80% of their Facebook ad clicks were bots. What worries me about Facebook is that the only way for them to earn the bucket loads of cash everyone thinks they should is a frontal assault on the privacy rights of their millions and millions of users. Creepy.

TextExpander Expense Snippet

I spent most of yesterday in court. As I fired off my TextExpander expense reporting snippet, it occurred to me, “people may like this.” This snippet creates a fill-in form with all the relevant boxes. I can use it in any text application, I usually do it in a blank Byword or Pages documents and staple receipts and the other relevant pieces of paper. Download it here.


The Verge, Ltd. Pipe

There are two firehose-type websites that I like, The Verge and Ars Technica. While I don’t have time to read everything these sites publish, I do like to check them when time allows. The trouble is that they cover some subjects for which I have zero interest. Things like Windows, Android, and lawsuits get posts. I don’t want to read (or see) them.

So I made a Yahoo Pipe to filter them out. In Monday’s Mac Power Users episode on web automation, I’ll talk about my Verge, Ltd pipe. It isn’t very complicated. I fetch the RSS feed from The Verge and Ars Technica and combine them (with the Union tool). Then I run them through an ever-growing list of filters to spit out a much leaner feed out the other end. Here is the public link.


iPad and iPhone Prototypes ▻

Don’t you think it’s got to be driving Jony Ive and other Apple designers nuts that this stuff is out? It is like releasing the rough draft of a really good novel. I don’t get everyone’s fascination with it. While I can really enjoy a fine bratwurst, I don’t want to watch it made.