May 2012
3 posts
2 tags
Re-Reading
When my interest in a subject is renewed and I realize I’ve forgotten much of what I’ve already read about that subject, I regret most not having digital versions of books.
I never mark up my paper books, but of I’m reading something digitally I tend to spend a lot more time highlighting and creating notes. It really helps months or years later. If I don’t have my of...
1 tag
There is freedom there—freedom to lead lives definitively of our own choosing. There is joy there—the kind that binds us together in adventures worthy of the lives we’ve been given. And there is grace—the overwhelming sense of beauty and wonder that can elevate our days. - Life Entrepreneurs
This is the closing paragraph from the book and no lie the thing that ran...
April 2012
4 posts
4 tags
The Most Enjoyable Reading Experience
Read it later apps have been around since the iPhone first came out. A few years later when the iPad was released, new news applications were made that hadn’t ever been created or conceived of before. Reading today is different than it was four years ago. And unless you don’t own a smartphone, or don’t use the internet, today’s reading experience encompasses elements of...
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Daily Photo Logging with Google+
Last week Google+ launched a major redesign, unfortunately the Google+ API didn’t change and is still read-only. That means there’s no way for apps like Instagram, Twitter and news readers to publish to Google+. It’s a big obstacle because that means users can only add new items to Google+ by used one of the Google+ apps, the website, or one of Google’s “share” buttons (like they’ve integrated...
2 tags
Three Years of GTD and Things
A few weeks ago I got into the Things Cloud Beta (which has been great), and started using the app again to manage my GTD workflow. I’ve been doing GTD for about three years now so I decided that I wanted to share some of the ways my practice has improved, and some of my thoughts about doing GTD using Things.
Collecting
Since Things has a great iPhone and iPad app, you should get into the...
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Improving How I Use Evernote
In the past month I’ve tightened up my GTD practice, and as part of that have I’ve relied on Evernote as my digital filing system. I want to talk about just some of the new ways I’m using Evernote on a day to day basis.
Creating Many Notebooks
Compared to how I used Evernote before, the biggest change I’ve made has been becoming aggressive with my approach to creating notebooks, tags, and notes....
March 2012
3 posts
3 tags
Clear and Paper
In my last post I talked a bit about how I was disappointed by Sparrow for iOS because I had seen the same interactions in other apps. Now I want to point out two apps that really wow’d me, Clear and Paper.
Clear might not tackle as ambitious a problem as email, but what’s great about this list manager are all the little bits of joy it rewards users with using sound and movement. Clear...
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Using More of Apple's iOS Apps
I’ve always been interested in finding new apps for my iPhone and iPad. It’s a fun distraction to try out new workflows and see what could help me be more productive. Recently I tried Sparrow, an email client for the iPhone. I tried the app, but I wasn’t as impressed as I thought I would be. Afterwards, my attitude towards apps changed and I got rid of all the third party app I...
February 2012
1 post
1 tag
“You are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best...”
– Clement Stone
January 2012
25 posts
3 tags
2 tags
“Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate...”
– Joseph Pulitzer
It's All For Happiness
It’s Just Stuff — Shawn Blanc
…you can tell a lot about me by the things I own. But they are just that — things. They can be stolen, broken, taken, and lost. They should never become distractions to the things that matter most, nor should I ever allow them to define my character, my relationships, and my beliefs.
This blog post from Shawn was a reply to one called The soul of a “consumer...
“When we are clear about our motivations, our actions are much more powerful...”
– Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power
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A Better Facebook Won't Help You
Nobody Goes to Facebook Anymore. It’s Too Crowded. « Uncrunched
So, no, most of us aren’t going to spend the time removing friends on Facebook. Instead many of us are using new social networks, like Path (we’re an investor) and the upcoming Just.Me (we’re also investors, guess how much we like this space) to start fresh. Facebook is for thousands of people you don’t know. The start fresh...
5 tags
Brands Faking Human
Shaun Dakin talks about an experience with the Buffer team:
Buffer’s two Co-founders (Joel and Leo) have more than an MVP going for this start up, they have a AP (Awesome Personality) !
My specific interactions with them started about 6 months ago when I started using the free version and noticed that their referral tool which incents users to refer Buffer to friends and others via word of...
2 tags
Om Malik's 10 Years of Blogging
My 10 years of blogging: Reflections, Lessons & Some Stats Too — Tech News and Analysis:
Today we differentiate between blogging on blogging platforms and sharing on social platforms, but that is just semantics. The essence of blogging is not defined by a platform but by what I learned from Dave and his blogging platform — that media now is raw, collaborative and instantaneous.
The one...
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Gamification Must Be Addictive
ignore the code: Learning from Games:
There are many problems with “gamification” but I don’t think this is one of them. Essentially, all UI design is about manipulating users, whether you’re coming up with the most easily understood button labels that will get people to click on the correct button, the most readable typeface that will get people to read your essay, or design ideas taken from...
4 tags
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A Brand Is Not Your Friend
surroundingsignifiers - Calling “Engagement” into Question: brands, anxiety, and the obscene:
“The worst thing possible is to be obliged to invent one’s own motives for acting, for preferring, for buying. The individual in such circumstances is inevitably brought face to face with his own misapprehensions, his own lack of existence, his own faith and anxiety.” (Baudrillard, “The System of...
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Shut Up and Take My Money!
Don’t Be A Free User -
Someone builds a cool, free product, it gets popular, and that popularity attracts a buyer. The new owner shuts the product down and the founders issue a glowing press release about how excited they are about synergies going forward. They are never heard from again.
I’m getting more and more tired of running into companies offering services that...
1 tag
Why Can The iPad Be Frustrating?
For as long as I’ve owned them, I’ve enjoyed the Apple products I own like my MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iPhone, and my iPad. But unlike my iPhone or Macs, the iPad can get me really frustrated. Occasionally I’ll use my iPad at a cafe and everything will be going fine, then in the next moment things start to fall apart.
Whether it’s trying to get an unresponsive app to...
3 tags
Making Media Easier
Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ changed how we communicate. Now, people are familiar with social networking, and most importantly that means they’re comfortable with liking, retweeting, reblogging and sharing.
One great thing about sharing becoming mainstream is that any good content that’s out there has an easier time flowing to us through our networks.
Compared to the behaviours...
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Email Declining
I was chatting with a friend the other day about if email is really changing. Something I brought up was how hard it is to separate the signal from the “Twitter will replace email in 2012” hype.
The hard part is that mixed within with the hype, there is truth at work which may explain how social media and email will change the way businesses communicate.
Some studies that articles...
4 tags
My Initial Experience With iCloud
Update: What I forgot to mention is that I’m discussing iCloud as it appears in third party applications. I’m not discussing my experience with things such as Photo Stream, iCloud backup, or iCloud contacts/mail.
From what I’ve seen so far, iCloud seams really complicated, enough for it to not be the right solution for my cloud data needs.
I’ve been writing on my blog more frequently...
Thought Process
Last month I attended a showing at Ryerson of a documentary on Ayn Rand and Objectivism. Near the end of the Q&A session, one of the Objectivism representatives gave us advice not to make our decision just based on what they were saying, but to come to our own conclusions by thinking for ourselves.
I don’t like objectivism, but I do like this point the person made about deciding your...
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GameStore
The other day it was revealed that Apple accidentally released a GameStore app into the AppStore. I’m going to jump right ahead and say that in a 2012 we’ll most likely see an update to iOS and OS X that splits games out of the AppStore into their own separate store.
Apple likes to repeat at their events how they have a larger collection of games than any other mobile games platform....
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“1. Find a subject you care about
2. Do not ramble, though
3. Keep it simple...”
– Advice to writers by Vonnegut
It’s time for me to pick up another book on writing and to retune myself again. The last book I read on writing was Bird By Bird which I finished in March of last year. This short piece is a good warm up though.
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What's really behind Twitter's staff exodus - Dec.... →
People who talk about Twitter as being the “wire while it thinks it is the tin can,” Implying that the value in Twitter is the communications network and not in the products they are building, are missing the point about what Twitter is.
Read this story for a reminder about how Twitter is a business. It’s no longer a cute many to many communications platform, or a channel for...
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2011 Accomplishments
I feel weird coming up with a list of my accomplishments in 2011. Last year was the first year I ever took an account of the things I had done in the year before and collect them into a single blog post. So this year I’m comparing 2011 to what was for me a pretty decent 2010. Before I even started making the list, I knew it wasn’t going to be as good.
The list as it stands is:
I...
December 2011
7 posts
3 tags
“My feeling is that the people who make the truly great digital products—the ones...”
– JeffCroft.com: In 2012, let’s stop talking web design and start talking product design
I like this post as it’s the approach that I take. It’s nice to see this especially because I’ve gotten frustrated looking at many job postings and a few interviews in the past few months which...
1 tag
CrossFit Update
The right amount of laughter mixed with agony builds teams
I started doing CrossFit at the end of April 2011, and as soon as I started I began a routine of training five times a week after work. Soon after, once my contract at Microsoft ended in June, I started to pick up on my reading, write more on the blog (in August especially), but I continued training everyday. It’s been a few...
2 tags
Publishing Markdown
I’m doing a end-of-year refresh on my blog and part of that has meant taking a look at the different blogging sevices, themes, and text editors I have active. I want to narrow down the ones that I’m using and make the whole writing->publishing process as simple as possible. (Another thing that comes with it is a bunch of ideas for blog posts about blogging.)
For every blog post...
via Frank: I am Neil deGrasse Tyson. Ask me... →
viafrank:
A few questions and answers from the excellent thread on Reddit:
What is your favorite short science fact you like to tell people to really make them think?
That our bodies’ atoms are traceable to supernova stars that scattered their chemical enrichment across the cosmos, spawning the birth…
November 2011
1 post
October 2011
15 posts
“This video encapsulates everything wrong with Microsoft. Their coolest products...”
– Daring Fireball Linked List: Microsoft’s Productivity Future Vision
1 tag
Eigth Notes
TFM & The Soul Dojo Present: Trebles & Blues - Eighth Notes (Mixed by DJ Phatrick) by Thefindmag on Mixcloud
Sometimes I feel like the hardest part about learning Mandarin is understanding the English explanations.
…The more specific and delimited the action is made by reference to particular context, the greater the need for this verb-suffix -le, to the degree that is is obligatory where precision is given to the object or complement by quantifying it…
