The Markdown Snowball

There is suddenly influx of Markdown and MultiMarkdown friendly apps on the iPad. While Markdown has provided an easy way to write for the web for years, the arrival of iOS devices and the need for portable text documents with retained formatting creates a perfect storm for widespread adoption of Markdown and MultiMarkdown for this purpose.

iOS developers have jumped on board with several interesting apps including MarkdownMail, Edito, and Elements. There are more. I’m still looking at these apps and making my own decisions about which ones I will incorporate into my workflows. This morning, I discovered a new contender, Trunk Notes (via Practically Efficient and Steven Frank) that allows you to create a Wiki synchronized through your Dropbox account (in an upcoming update) all for $1 (Through Monday). I waxed poetic about Markdown and MultiMarkdown in the upcoming Mac Power Users episode that will release this weekend. We even talked MultiMarkdown author Fletcher Penney to join us for a bit. Stay tuned.

Intuit – Apple Ties

AppleInsider did a piece about how Intuit Chairman (and Apple Board of Directors member) Bill Campbell is cutting ties to Google. I guess that is all fine and dandy but I can’t stop thinking about the fact that if Intuit’s Chairman is on the Apple Board of Directors, why does Quicken and QuickBooks on the Mac suck so badly in comparison to the Windows versions?

Scrivener 2.0 Update

Scrivener 2.0 is finally in the wild and a lot of people are talking about what I’ve always known, Scrivener is brilliant. There is no point in me reviewing Scrivener since I’ve been wetting myself over this app for years now. I’ve started an extended post explaining how I use Scrivener 2.0 and will be posting it in the not too distant future. In the meantime, check out John’s great piece (where you get to learn a new word: logophiliac) and Don’s screencast.

Saying Goodbye

My 81 year old sweet mother, Jeannie Sparks, passed away this week and I wanted to take a moment to reflect on just how amazing she was. She started life when cars were still novelties and yet was the generation that powered the moon shot.

During the depression, she lived in a cabin where my grandfather fed his children by trapping fox in the Massachusetts backwoods and selling their pelts. Throughout her life, my mother took a practical “whatever it takes” attitude toward any challenge she faced, even when she had to stay up hours on end teaching her dense son to read.

Mom lived through the greatest technological revolution in history (from the radio to the internet) and nothing phased her. Even as she laid in intensive care, she smiled as she flipped through family pictures on the iPad. My mother was an amazing woman who taught me, not by lectures and scoldings, but instead by example and she will always live in my heart.