The news routine
Twitter, Facebook, RSS, all wonderful services, all bombarding us with information, all taking time and attention away from things we should be doing. In order to remain productive, I have moved these services onto the iPad and created a reading routine to eliminate the temptation to waste hours on these services. Two screens are now one Previously, I did all my work on my Mac Pro with dual 24" Dell monitors.
Augmented Paper
Matt Gemmell wrote yet another brilliant post on what makes a great application interface (with examples) in Augmented Paper: For me, software experiences that feel like Augmented Paper are those that second-guess our (developers’) natural tendency to put functionality first, or to think of our apps as software. Apps are only incidentally software; software is an implementation detail. Instead, apps are experiences. Honestly, if you are an app designer, this is a must-read.
Another view of the TSA problem
We all read TSA previous head Kip Hawley’s WSJ essay on the weekend entitled Why Airport Security Is Broken—And How To Fix It (you may hit the paywall, sorry). If not, read it now, then come back. We’ll wait. Ben Brooks makes a great point in ‘Why Airport Security Is Broken—and How to Fix It’, that it’s the people too: Because even if we succeed in getting rid of porno scanners and allowing liquid through, we still face the issue of TSA “officers” over stepping their bounds.
Text Notes - Going Electronic
One of the big changes I made in the last year is how I take and store text notes. By text notes, I mean meeting notes, book lists, blog ideas, thoughts, even project estimates. I’ve finally gone paperless.
tl;dr (too long; didn’t read): I write notes in Markdown, in files named using TextExpander macros, using nvALT with Dropbox sync on the Mac and Elements or Byword on iOS sharing the same Dropbox folder. I still keep project development logs in separate Markdown files within each product’s folder because I format and deliver them. I don’t use Evernote because I cannot stand it.
Don't Panic - Flashback Trojan
Please read the following list in its entirety before acting: 600,000+ OS X Computers have been infected by the Flashback Trojan In percentage terms, that’s more than the largest virus infection on Windows ever You should panic, the “running down a corridor screaming with your hair on fire” kind of panic You should download, install and run all the Flashback removal tools (Links: here or here) You should buy and install at least one anti-virus package immediately, maybe two.
Marked 1.4
If you are a fans of the The Markdown Mindset, then the must-have Markdown preview app Marked has just been updated to V1.4 by Brett Terpstra. Marked has gone from a simple preview app that always sits to the right of my writing window to an integral part of my writing, checking, publishing and delivery process. As you know, I already do all my writing in Markdown. I use Marked to preview the results using the formatting I intend to deliver it (Kifu format, blog format, report format), and then use it’s great export features to generate the HTML or PDFs I send out.
The Candle Problem
Graham Morehead, writing in nature.com in CEOs and the Candle Problem starts: In America we have a motivation problem : money. I’m not a communist. I love capitalism (I even love money), but here’s a simple fact we’ve known since 1962: using money as a motivator makes us less capable at problem-solving. It actually makes us dumber. Then he goes on to talk about the Candle problem and Functional fixedness, using them to explain how some CEO’s who are improperly motivated by money drive their businesses into ruin, something we have all seen in action.
Explaining the Internet to Old Powerbrokers
Ben Hammersley gave a speech to the IAAC and reproduced it online at Check Against Delivery. My speech to the IAAC. Instapaper it and read the whole thing, it’s one of the best things I have read in a while. In short, he explains the importance of the internet to a bunch of old, pre-internet security politicians. He points out how their ignorance is viewed by the rest of us, and how their decisions, while correct by their lights, are completely wrong and insipid.
Spike Solutions
I am a huge fan of throwing together a few spike solutions at the start of a project. I get the biggest technical problems solved early, I gain understanding of any pitfalls I may encounter and I can estimate the time and work better. I highly recommend the practice. A few days spent spiking solutions saves weeks and months later. Get your geek on, were diving in. A spike solution is a software project to figure out a tough technical or design problem (note: singular).
Adjusting the Cap
Alex Knight, writing in his own blog Zero Distraction in The Disparity between Smartphones And Mobile Carriers sets the scene exactly as I see it: There’s a massive disparity between data sucking smartphones and data plans offered by carriers. Customers know this, and the carriers are fully cognizant of it. The problem is they make a ton of money from you already, and since you probably don’t have a lot of choice as far as competition is concerned, they can charge whatever they see fit.