The New Big

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Stuart — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 23:15:30 +0000

This is a test. This is only a test. Please ignore. Sorry for the inconvenience. Really.

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The New Big Screencast, WordPress Tips, Edition One: Create a Portfolio Page

Stuart — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 06:58:59 +0000

So, here’s the start of a new series of Screencasts: WordPress Tips. This ‘cast covers the high-level overview of how to create a custom category page, useful for creating a single portfolio page from all posts in a category.

Show notes In this screencast, I review the following steps for creating a custom portfolio page:

Create a category for your portfolio

Create a custom category page

(optional) Hide portfolio posts from your main page

Create your posts within your portfolio category

Alter the time stamp to change the order in which the posts appear

Add your category page to your navigation

I’m happy to hear any feedback or take your questions either in the comments here or at stuart@thenewbig.com

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The New Big Screencast, OS X Tips, Edition Two: Organize Your Apps

Stuart — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 02:33:45 +0000

Whew! That took a little longer than I had intended. Three weeks… oy! Well, better late than never.

Welcome to Screencast Number Two: a 15-minute look at the various ways to organize your applications in OS X. Just like the first screencast, this one is aimed at switchers and other Mac newcomers, so I tried to strike the right balance of explaining enough while not insulting your intelligence. I’m happy to hear any feedback about how I did either in the comments here or at stuart@thenewbig.com

I used ScreenFlow to record this ‘cast, so if you’re interested in my further thoughts on the screencasting process, I’ll include them in the full post (click the ellipses, if you’re on the home page). Enjoy!

Show notes

The three methods I looked at for organizing my applications were to use folders, Spotlight Comments, or standalone applications.

Lifehacker article Tags: Metadata as a ‘filing system’, by Nick Santilli, discusses how to use Quicksilver and Spotlight Comments to organize your files.

Punakea provides a complete tagging interface for applications.

DockFun lets you swap in customized docks or just use the menu bar icon to access your apps.

DragThing is a very powerful and flexible organizer that lets you access applications both online and on your computer.

TabMeister is a simple slide drawer for files.

Leap is a very interesting and powerful program for drilling down through large file libraries quickly and easily.

I’ll bet I missed some good software. I know I forgot to mention using Smart Folders. Anything else? Leave me a comment.

Things I learned this time:

My workflow was basically the one I described in the after-post for the first screencast. However, I used ScreenFlow as my recording app this time. ScreenFlow is amazing, and once I had tried the demo, I couldn’t see going back to a less-capable app. That decision probably cost me a few hours during the creation process just to learn how to set up and use everything for the new workflow.

I didn’t zoom in far enough most of the time. Once the movie was resized to fit the website, much of the text was too small. Sigh. I’ll make it better next time.

I liked using NoteTaker to handle the display of my notes, but it was a little unwieldy to keep up with clicking through the notes and displaying them properly on the screen. I’ll refine that, too, for next time.

I probably could have cut this into three 5-minute segments. I think I do okay keeping things moving for about 80% of the ‘cast, but I’m pretty sure shorter shows will still be better.

I discovered this cool little online aspect ratio calculator to help me figure the values for re-sizing the movie.

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Ignited, Shot, and Flickd

Stuart — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 05:56:22 +0000

Stuart Maxwell – Ignite Seattle
Originally uploaded by Randy Stewart

I’m not entirely displeased with this photo of me by Randy Stewart. Randy took this and a number of other quality snaps of even better subjects at last night’s Ignite Seattle. (Bryan Zug, in particular, looks as if he’s about to receive a sainthood or something.)

It’s always great seeing my geek posse at this event. I enjoyed catching up with Deepak (thanks for the shout out on the blog, too!) and watching my pal Justin inspire the crowd to come to Six Hour Startup and get something frickin’ out there, already.

Thanks to Brady, Jesse, and everyone else who put on the event. I’m always impressed with the enthusiasm and respect of the audience and the quality of the presentations.

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How I produced my first screencast, and what I learned

Stuart — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:04:20 +0000

As you can see below, I posted a screencast earlier today. I’ve been wanting to get into videoblogging for a while, but video’s a new thing for me and I wasn’t happy with my previous attempts. Screencasting, though, looks like it might be right up my alley. I’m hoping to post more OS X tips, as well as a series on Mac applications and on web-related things.

The whole screencasting process was pretty straightforward; however, I did learn a thing or two along the way that might be useful to others, so I thought I’d get these thoughts down while they’re fresh.

SCREEN CAPTURE SOFTWARE
I started recording using Jing, but abandoned that program because of the limited options available for setting the video size, audio encoding, etc. For down-and-dirty screencasts, I’d definitely give Jing another try, but I just didn’t think it’d work for me for this project.

Instead, I recorded this screencast using Screenflick, which I found to be dead easy to use. Screenflick (formerly Screencast; $29) has all the features I need and a very nice user interface, and even includes Mouseposé-type functionality for showing mouse clicks and screen presses during recording. I recorded at 800×600px, which is a little larger than I might have liked, but ended up as a good balance between file size and viewable screen real estate.

I also have a copy of SnapzProX that I picked up from MacHeist, and I plan to give that a try in the future.

SUPPORTING SOFTWARE
I created my script in Scrivener, but I could have used any other text editor just as well. Scrivener was open on the left side of my screen, just outside the boundaries of my recording area. TextEdit served as my quickie slide display, but I might use Stickies next time for a bit of color and for the simplified window.

After recording, I tried to add titles with iMovie 6, but the new interface has me a flummoxed. The only thing I really wanted to add was my website and email address, so for the sake of getting something posted I figured I’d just roll with the raw video as I shot it and worry about the other bits next time.

VisualHub handled the conversion of the video from .mov to .flv, and WordTube is the plugin I’m using with WordPress to display the flash file.

I used Panic Software’s most excellent Transmit to upload the video to my blog’s uploads directory on Dreamhost.

AUDIO HARDWARE
I used an inexpensive Radio Shack omnidirectional dynamic mic, mounted on a boom mic stand and plugged into a Griffin iMic, which is in turn plugged into my MacBook Pro. I don’t get quite as much gain as I might like out of this setup, but I think the audio is certainly acceptable, and the rig is pretty simple; no mixer or external drives to deal with.

THE PROCESS
I knew I’d want to keep the video as small as possible, but attempts to record at 480×320 just weren’t working. I couldn’t display enough of the preferences panes that people could see what I was talking about. So I settled on 800×600 and 30fps. I’ll probably play with frame rates in the future to keep the file size down, too.

After several failed attempts at recording off the cuff, I had a fairly good idea of what I wanted to say, so I wrote a brief outline of all my talking points in Scrivener. I probably won’t shortcut this process next time as, in essence, my first attempts were research for the final recording. Once that research was done, the final recording was pretty easy.

After I had finished the recording, I set Screenflick’s video compression to H.264 (medium quality, millions of colors, 30fps) and audio settings to AAC (44.100kHz, Mono, 64 kbps). Clicking the Save icon put a Quicktime .mov file on my desktop.

Once I had weighed the different options for hosting, sharing, and displaying the video online (see below), I used VisualHub to convert the mov file to an swf, which I uploaded to WordPress only to find out that that’s not the best format to use with WordTube, as the whole file has to load before it will start playing. I wanted the file to play as it loads, so I re-converted the mov to an flv file, and that worked as I expected.

Note that I also had VisualHub re-size the video to 550×412 to fit the space on my blog. This, I discovered, was actually a little too large when in the single post view, so next time I’m going to shoot for a width of around 500px.

SHARING THE VIDEO
I looked at blip.tv, Vimeo, Viddler, Share pictures and video online or from your mobile”>Kyte, and Ooyala (thank you, Deepak). Each of these are essentially video hosting sites; the first four emphasize their directory and community features, while Ooyala is meant more for the serious videoblogger who’s willing to pay a small amount for hosting in return for some advanced analytics and monetization tools.

In the end, I decided that I wanted to host the files myself and keep the videos on my site exclusively. I could see making a different choice for two reasons: 1) if I start blowing through my bandwidth allocation; and 2) if I decide that facilitating conversation around my video is more important to me. For now, especially because I’m still in a learning mode with this, I want to keep things on my own site.

I also want to say that I think there’s a benefit to keeping my video in the context of my own site. Or, I should say, in NOT having my video as part of a larger pool of videos. Hmmm… this is hard to describe as it’s more a feeling I have than a complete thought. I think what I’m trying to say is that you can get a more complete understanding of the screencast through the images and colors on my blog and through the surrounding content than you can if the screencast is part of a general mishmash of competing content.

Or something. Maybe I’ll return to that thought later. Anyway…

CONCERNS
Even though my site gets a pretty low amount of traffic and Dreamhost has a pretty generous hosting plan, I’m concerned about my bandwidth. If I decide later that I still don’t want to post my screencast on one of the hosting services like blip.tv or Viddler, I’ll probably look into getting an Amazon S3 account.

I’ve also got to be careful about the information I display. I realized after the fact that I opened up Keychain Access for the world to see. I don’t think there’s anything incriminating in there, but unintentionally revealing private data is definitely something I have to be more careful about next time.

At just over 14 minutes, I think the screencast is a little long. In future I’ll try to keep them to around 5 minutes. That should make the whole process faster, which will definitely keep me motivated to produce more.

Finally, the video I end up with isn’t really iPhone friendly. I do most of my video viewing on my iPhone these days, so I want to look into ways to make sure other iPhone users can download this content easily. That might mean using a different screen ratio and posting a link to the quicktime file in addition to embedding the flash file.

WORKFLOW
Even with a lot of starting and stopping and lots of time spent on research and troubleshooting, I started recording at about 7:30 last night and posted the video just after noon today. So the whole process took between 7 and 8 hours… not bad for a first attempt, actually. My goal is to get that down to an hour or so, which I think is definitely possible if I keep the screencasts shorter and refine my technique. Next time, I’ll try the following workflow and let you know how it goes.

Research
Outline
Prepare the environment (hide icons, change background, etc.)
Record (800×600px)
Save as H.264 video (try 15-20 fps), AAC audio (mono)
Transcode from mov to flv using VisualHub (resize to 500×375px)
Upload flv to wp-content/uploads folder and add the file to the WordTube plugin database
Post
Pour a glass of wine and watch an episode of the Thunder Show

I’d love to hear from you: is this useful information? Do you have any ideas or tips for me? Comment here, or email me.

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The New Big Screencast, OS X Tips, Edition One: the Menu Bar

Stuart — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 21:45:59 +0000

Howdy, y’all. I’m trying a little experiment today: a screencast that I whipped up to show switchers and other Mac newcomers how to manage the OS X menu bar. Just click on the embedded player below to check it out. Show notes are located beneath the video, and I’ll post some thoughts about the screencasting process separately.

I’d love to hear what you think. Please leave a comment here, or email me at stuart@thenewbig.com.

Show Notes

Turn off the translucent menu bar in Leopard 10.5.2 by opening the Desktop & Screen Saver Preference Pane and unchecking the box next to “Translucent menu bar.”

Many menu items can be turned off by clicking on the icon and then clicking the bottom-most menu item

Move icons using Command+Drag (left or right). Remove icons by Command+Drag off menu bar. (thanks to this forum thread on MacWorld.)

iStat Menus is available at iSlayer.com

Caffeine (to keep your display awake) is available from Lighthead Software.

Slim Battery Monitor by Colin Henein can be found here.

And you can download Free Ruler from Pascal.com

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Per-keyboard layouts in Leopard

Stuart — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 05:18:33 +0000

Brett Terpstra discovered a wicked cool keyboard tip for those of you running OS X 10.5, something I never would have thought to look for: per-keyboard modifier key settings. Just go to System Preferences, Keyboard & Mouse, the Keyboard tab, and then click the Modifier Keys button at the bottom left. You can then select the keyboard you want to re-map from the top of the page.

I just got a new Logitech cordless ergonomic keyboard and had already resigned myself to mentally swapping the option and command keys. Now, I can save those precious synapse firings.

Which reminds me… why aren’t there any ergonomic Bluetooth keyboards?

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My pen!

Stuart — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 21:03:24 +0000

I’m really not particular about a lot of things, you know? I’m not generally brand-driven or anything, but I do occasionally settle on some things I like. Apple computers, Levi’s jeans, Hershey’s chocolate syrup… these I’m partial to.

And pens. I love my Zebra Jimnie Gel Antique ink pens. I love that instead of blue, black and green, the Jimnie Gel Antiques come in colors like cobalt, earth, and forest. I like writing with these pens because my scrawls looks different than the scrawls of 99% of the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, the Jimnie Gel Antique line has been discontinued, and I’ve been nursing the last of my stock and ordering replacements from the one place online that has any left: Board Room Products. As I placed my order last week, I wondered what I’d do when Board Room’s stock ran out.

So, imagine how pleased I was Friday when my pens arrived and the following message appeared on my invoice:

Because these pens have been discontinued for some time, in some of the pens the ink has evaporated. On the pens which this has happened, we charged you $1.00 for those pens. You might want to try the Sarasa pen in those colors.

How awesome is that? I probably wouldn’t have noticed that some of the ink was missing in these pens, but Board Room Products did me a solid anyway. AND they noticed that I liked these particular colors, and offered me an alternative that I didn’t even know existed.

So, these guys get my business from now on because, as Seth Godin says, they did something remarkable: they personalized an otherwise impersonal experience. It took someone probably three extra minutes out of their day to enter the order and write that note, and it made a loyal customer out of me. Good job, Board Room… and thanks!

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Password Wallet

Stuart — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 00:02:03 +0000

So, I bought the iPhone, but I’ve been hanging onto my Treo 600. There it is, tucked into my Tom Binh bag (it’s the only bag I use to carry my Tom Binh in). The Treo gets to ride shotgun with me for one reason only: it supports a little app called SplashID, which stores my – no lie – 475 different website logins, server credentials, frequent flier numbers, and all the other bits of digital identity that I need to survive in this crazy world. SplashID on the Treo syncs with SplashID on the Mac, so whether I’m at the keyboard or on the go, my important digits are never more than a few keystrokes away. For all its whiz-bangery, my un-hacked iPhone still can’t sport a utility like this.

Or so I thought. The good folks at iPhoneAtlas mentioned a Mac app called Password Wallet the other day that looks like it may let me retire the Treo once and for all. Password Wallet has the ability to send an encrypted bookmarklet to the iPhone that is viewable in Safari. I can’t add to or edit my password list, the way I can with SplashID, but just being able to view the list would be close enough to good for me.

The only gotchas I’ve encountered so far: it takes way too long to display all my passwords through the bookmarklet. Even if I export only a subset of about 150 passwords, the list still takes about 20 – 30 seconds to display fully. I’ll really have to slim down to the bare essentials in order to have a usable experience.

Also, Password Wallet doesn’t support as many fields as SplashID, so the import function didn’t bring over all my info. That means I’ll have to go back and manually update a good portion of the records. Still, I suppose it’ll be worth it to save a few more ounces of bag weight.

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Meet at the Pig: a Seattle geek events blog

Stuart — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 16:55:52 +0000

I’ve been privileged to help organize Seattle Mind Camp over the past couple of years. One of the main reasons that project started was to bring the Seattle tech community together, to create more opportunities for interaction among local entrepreneurs and other passionate technologists. Events like Ignite Seattle, Biznik, and Lunch 2.0, have helped strengthen this sense of community over the past few years.

But in addition to these well-publicized events, there are dozens of other meetups, workshops, and gatherings going on in our fair city. Despite the appearance of services such as Eventful and Upcoming, there is still no single place on the web where you can discover all these smaller gatherings. That’s why I’m pleased to announce a new blog:

Meet at the Pig, a Seattle events blog for geeks, techies, hackers, and makers.

Meet at the Pig is the brainchild and passion of Justin Martenstein, and I’m happy that he asked me to help work on the site. Each week, we’ll track meetups, workshops, lunches, conferences, and other events of interest to the local geek community. We’ll add as many events as we can to Upcoming, and then highlight some of the more interesting events on the main page of Meet at the Pig.

The title of the blog comes from the brass pig at Pike Market, a popular landmark that’s often used as a gathering point for groups heading out to some downtown restaurant, bar, or event. Eventually, we hope that Meet at the Pig will be the one place on the web where Seattle-area geeks gather to find out what’s happening. Hope you’ll join us there.

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blog:Meet at the Pig

Stuart — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 17:05:49 +0000

Meet at the Pig is a Seattle events blog for geeks, techies, hackers, and makers. Justin Martenstein and I track local meetups, workshops, lunches, conferences, and other events of interest to the local geek community. We post as many events as we can at Upcoming, and then highlight some of the more interesting events on the main page.

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Oh, the Humanity 2.0

Stuart — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 18:19:59 +0000

Here’s something to look forward to after Gnomedex: an interactive workshop titled, “Humanity 2.0 -where the tech are we going and do we want to go there?” The workshop takes place on Orcas Island on September 9th. The description on the host’s site, Spark Northwest, says:

As technology permeates our daily lives, it helps, and it hurts. How does our increasing use and dependence on tools such as email, cell phones, iPods, or social networking sites effect our desire for human fulfillment and spiritual transformation? We don’t know… Seriously, we don’t. Do you?

In an age of dizzying technological innovation, one rarely has the time to stop and reflect on these changes. It’s clear that our technologies are getting faster, more powerful and more ubiquitous. However, what’s not so clear is: Does the added value outweigh the often unnoticed costs? Isn’t that an important question?

It is an important question, I think, and one that isn’t explored nearly enough. I’m glad to see someone giving a forum to this issue that promises to be both fun and productive.

My buddy Leif Hansen is the owner of Spark Northwest and the workshop’s co-organizer. I’ve found Leif to be passionate, smart, and thoughtful, so I’m sure there will be some stimulating and thought-provoking discussion at Humanity 2.0. At the very least, it’s an excuse to visit Orcas Island for the weekend. That’s never bad.

Check out all the details at Spark Northwest.

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Fighting the Power

Stuart — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 07:29:57 +0000

This is my brother, Scott. My brother rocks.

My brother has been a loyal, enthusiastic, and productive employee of Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena for years. He built important chunks of the software that lets the robots exploring our solar system and scientists here on earth talk to each other. He’s currently the lead driver of the Mars rovers.

However, Homeland Security Presidential Directive-12 says that my brother has to let “any investigator” at “any federal agency” have access to “any information” about him that they deem the slightest bit interesting. If he doesn’t consent to this egregious violation of his civil liberties, he’ll lose his job.

So, he’s organized HSPD12JPL.org in order to fight back.

I don’t have the words to express how infuriating this situation is. Suffice it to say that I’m as pissed off at this stupid directive as I am proud of my little brother. And that’s saying something.

Do me a favor, would you? Just click to watch this short video, and maybe read a little bit at HSPD12JPL.org, just so you know what’s going on. And then ask yourself: do you want NASA and other publicly funded institutions to lose some of the top engineers and scientists in the world on account of some tinpot dictator with delusions of grandeur? If not, then you know what to do.

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Do NOT Mess with the Chocolate
Robert Scoble and Steve Rubel had a very interesting discussion earlier on whether “social media” is the proper term for the whole big kettle containing blogging, podcasting, etc.

I sure wish I could point you to it so that you could read it yourself. Unfortunately, their discussion was on Twitter, and unless you were subscribed to both fellows’ Twitter streams, you might have missed it.

Fortunately, I was subscribed to both Robert and Steve, so I could follow the conversation. But what if I was only subscribed to Robert? Here’s what I might have read:
- @steverubel: most online media is now two-way at least in part. Agreed. about 6 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to steverubel
- @steverubel: a better example would be my Kyte.tv channel where you can leave your own video as part of my channel. about 6 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to steverubel
- PodTech is different from TV because you can leave comments and interact with the media. about 6 hours ago from twitterrific
- @steverubel: so you think online media should just be shortened to “media?” I’m not so sure. I like “social” because it still connotes 2 way about 6 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to steverubel
- @steverubel: he’s a fake blogger who got caught. about 6 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to steverubel
- @steverubel: what would you suggest using instead of “social media?” about 6 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to steverubel
Oh, did I mention you need to read it bottom-to-top?

Look, here’s what I suggest you do so that it makes sense: open up Scoble’s Twitter feed, open a new tab in your browser, and then open up Rubel’s Twitter feed. Start with about the 6th Twit down for Rubel, about the 7th Twit down on the second page for Scoble, and switch tabs until you’ve read their back-and-forth.

Of course, that assumes that you read this pretty soon after I post it. If it’s a few days later, or a few months later, I’m not sure what to tell you. Just keep scrolling through the Twitter pages until you find something that seems like it matches up, maybe?

Scoble also had a nice rant earlier. I can’t point you to it. Let me go copy and paste it for you. Okay, first I go to Scoble’s Twitter feed, let’s see… starts on the 4th page in. So here’s the first part…
- arikb: yeah, email still has SOME value. But going down all the time. I far prefer people not send me private notes. Scalable communication. about 12 hours ago from twitterrific
- PR people are the worst in the email regard. Speaker planners are close. I don’t answer a lot of my email anymore. If I did, I’d never do. about 12 hours ago from twitterrific
- It’s amazing that in this age of Twitter that people still send email. I hate email. I hate direct Tweets. I hate Facebook messages. about 12 hours ago from twitterrific
The bulk of the rant from the 3rd page…
- @hardaway: Facebook messages are still private. I answer my public “wall” posts first. Public first, private second. That way I get scale. about 12 hours ago from web in reply to hardaway
- @jaxn: very few people call me on my phone. I guess that hasn’t yet turned into a problem. about 12 hours ago from web in reply to jaxn
- @ChrisDoelle: 10 tweets comes because you all keep talking back to me. about 12 hours ago from web in reply to ChrisDoelle
- @webword: Mike Arrington is a hard guy to get ahold of, especially when he’s digging through 100 new hot companies. But he watches Twitter. about 12 hours ago from web in reply to webword
- @dharrels called me a “tool.” OK wiseguy. You want to answer my email? I didn’t think so. about 12 hours ago from web in reply to dharrels
- @maceo87: you miss the point. Email is not as good a communication style as the others. Email sucks BECAUSE it is not in public. about 12 hours ago from web in reply to maceo87
- @tildesley: not really. I can consume and answer Twitters much easier than email. And if I don’t catch them you can help answer too!! Scale! about 12 hours ago from web in reply to tildesley
- @pinkfu is complaining that I mashed a blog post into several Twitters. Heheh. Guilty as charged. about 12 hours ago from web in reply to pinkfu
- @Tildesley: I don’t want to converse with most of the world. There’s no way I can do that. So, the subset on Twitter sounds just fine! about 12 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to tildesley
- @loiclemeur: Twitter has a page called “replies.” I use it often. about 12 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to loiclemeur
- Basically this is my gesture to the world: I am not answering my email and I’m not going to start. I’m overloaded. Tweet me. about 12 hours ago from twitterrific
- @nikf: if I answer a question in public space it is answered for everyone. I bias toward public conversation first. That’s why email sucks. about 12 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to nikf
- @tildesley: the best way to get ahold of me? Blogg comments. Twitter. Pownce. Kyte. Facebook. Phone (my number is always public). about 12 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to tildesley
- @jeffledoux: Twitter IS better than IM already. Far better. about 12 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to jeffledoux
- If I want to get a hold of Mike Arrington, for instance, i know that writing a Tweet about him will get his attention far faster than email. about 12 hours ago from twitterrific
- @dweezel: that’s the whole point. Most of my email does NOT need to be private. It’s far better to do most communication out in public. about 12 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to dweezel
- Or people asking me to blog. Very low quality stuff. If PR people were forced to do their work in public their entire method would change. about 12 hours ago from twitterrific
- @jasonw22: yeah. I’d never get anything done if I answered my email. Most of it is people asking me to speak. about 12 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to jasonw22
- If something really needs to be private than email is great. But most of my email doesn’t need to be private. about 12 hours ago from twitterrific
- I always answer things in public space first. Why? Because those communications scale. about 12 hours ago from twitterrific
...and it finally wraps up on the 2nd page:
- OK, start quiet mode. I’m not ignoring anyone, just gonna quiet down cause I know when I through 20 tweets I piss people off. about 12 hours ago from twitterrific
- @seekground: but the advantage of public messages is even if I ignore you others can answer your questions. A lot of my email is tech suppor about 12 hours ago from twitterrific in reply to seekground
- Translation to the past 20 tweets: I need an assistant to answer my email. Outsource what you hate. I hate email. about 12 hours ago from web
There. Is that readable? You did read each bit bottom to top this time, right?

So, of course the point of all of this is that the value of this kind of conversation is negative, as far as I’m concerned. It isn’t findable, it isn’t shareable, and if you’re not following a Twitter stream all day, it isn’t coherent. It frustrates the heck out of me that I can’t easily capture cool stuff that people say in Twitter and share it with others. There’s a lot of value in Twitter, but as things stand today, its value isn’t as a publishing platform.

I know Robert’s point is about using Twitter as a public alternative to email, but even so, I don’t see how it’s a useful alternative if people need to keep asking the same questions over and over because there’s no way for them to find where it is you answered the question the first time.

I like Twitter. A lot. But it’s a walled garden. It is not a substitute for an open conversation. And it concerns me that smart people and leaders in the blogosphere are increasingly turning to Facebook and Twitter and other closed communication silos in order to express themselves.
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iPhone: What nobody talks about

Stuart — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 21:38:54 +0000

At least, I haven’t heard this stuff about the iPhone mentioned anywhere else…

Cool thing that nobody’s talking about: Built-in speakers. No more passing earbuds or plugging into external speakers when I want to share some song or snippet of a podcast with friends and loved ones. Just unplug the mini jack and crank up the volume. Beauty.

Frustrating as heck thing that nobody’s talking about: Audio seek. I really like the iPods’ scroll wheels for finding my place in podcasts and long songs. With the iPods, you can just vary the speed of your scrolling to find a specific point in the file, but there’s no similar function on the iPhone. You can take big jumps with the file pointer, or hold the forward and reverse buttons to scrub the audio, but this is nowhere near as elegant as the controls on a true iPod. Very frustrating.

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It’s not a phone

Stuart — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 19:01:43 +0000

Seems to me that this post about the iPhone at Investor Village is right on point. You should read the whole thing, but here’s a key bit:

When Apple first started talking about the desktop computer as our digital hub, they weren’t kidding. And the mobile phone companies weren’t listening. Instead of seeing the mobile phone as an extension of the desktop computer, they saw it as a stand alone device, precisely because they weren’t in the computer business. (It’s that well known business issue of knowing what business you’re really in.) If anything, Apple has the required expertise in this market as opposed to the fanciful notion that they are new and inexperienced in the monstrous wireless market.

The activation of the iPhone is an example of the kind of infrastructure that Apple has developed. We plug our iPods into a dock, sync our music and contacts, and update the software. The iPhone is just an iPod that makes phone calls, so it didn’t require a stroke of genius to see that the iPhone activation could be easy and painless with iTunes plus an Apple ID.

Putting key pieces into place until the whole becomes more than the sum of the parts has been an Apple theme for quite some time. We saw Sound Jam evolve into iTunes for ripping, then the iPod, then the iTunes Store. The rest of the industry has nothing to compare to this. Think about it. Every time you charge your iPhone, iTunes has the opportunity to check the software and install fixes and new features.

This elegant, evolving infrastructure should also scare the hell out of Apple’s competitors.

Mobile phone companies have been building wireless analogues to the traditional telephone. They have added features here and there, and have made token stabs at connecting users to the internet, but they were basically designing phones. Apple did something different: they gave us a device that is meant to serve as a conduit to our digital lives, to the entertainment and information we want with us all the time, the things that are relevant to us, that identify us as us. And, oh yeah… it also, if you’re interested, makes phone calls.

In creating this device, Apple not only outflanked the mobile phone makers, they blew the doors off the PDA makers in usability and integration. Finally, a mobile device has the kind of transparent layering of technology that many people crave. I want my movies, music, contacts, lists, reference sources, address book and the rest of my knowledge cloud available at all times, and I don’t want to think about how to find it, collect it, or access it.

This isn’t a phone. If you think that it’s a phone and you evaluate it on that basis, you will miss the bigger picture. This is a new kind of device, and it hints at a new way of thinking about and interacting with the digital world.

More Big Things

Three lives are too many; or, Why I bought an iPhone.

Stuart — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 19:33:19 +0000

I’ve been saying it for a long time: the world is going mobile. It needs to. If information wants to be free, it wants to be free to move. Information shouldn’t just pop up through periodic wormholes; it should be with us anywhere we are.

The major promise of web-based applications is their availability cross-platform, cross-device, and cross-country. My personal contacts, email, bookmarks, calendar, photos, and even voice mail are all either exclusively kept in web-based services or are kept on my computer and mirrored into online services. I’ve gone this route because I want access to all that information at any time regardless of whether I’m in front of my computer or not. I want regular access to this information in order to ease the running of my life.

I’ve carried some sort of Palm PDA with me since 1997. In 2003, I bought a Treo 600, hoping to take advantage of its wireless internet connectivity. While the 600 is a great device in many respects, and was certainly a big step forward for smartphones, I have always been frustrated by the low fidelity of its mobile browsing. (And by AT&T’s outrageously expensive data plans.) When I could connect with the 600 (which wasn’t always), web sites could take a long time to load. And since I never knew if I was going over my alloted data plan, I often avoided using the browser so I wouldn’t have to pay overage charges.

But the 600 still fulfilled my desire for data portability. As long as I synchronized regularly with my computer, I always had my latest contact and calendar information handy. And even though it was clunky, email was at least accessible.

But here’s the thing: it’s not just my personal information that I want access to. What I really want is access to the vast store of information available on the web. When it’s 5:00 on a Friday and my wife and I want to go out to eat, I want the name and address of that restaurant I bookmarked in Menuism. I want to find out what movies are playing downtown. I want to know the name of the actress in Double Indemnity, and put that movie in my Netflix queue. I want driving directions to the Boeing Surplus Store. When I’m in Barnes & Noble, I want to look at my Amazon wish list to get the name of the book I read about on my favorite blog. I want to manage my Backpack to-do lists; what groceries did I need to buy, and where was I going to stop next time I’m in Fremont?

In other words, I’ve been using the tools of Web 2.0 to simplify and organize my life, and to improve my understanding of the world. But those tools are only really useful to me if I happen to be in front of a computer, or if I somehow wrestle the output onto the Treo or onto paper. If I do that, though, my data can rapidly get out of sync; it takes time and energy to reconcile all the bits again.

My buddy, Travis, hit the nail on the head recently on his Crap Monkey Podcast when he mentioned that he had three lives to maintain now: work life, home life, and online life. It shouldn’t be that way. Technology has got to start layering over our lives, enhancing our work and home lives instead of remaining separate; reducing complexity instead of adding it.

The iPod does this with audio. I carry my Nano around my neck, so it’s always available to me. My music and podcasts move with me, allowing me to effortlessly dip into that well whenever I want. The promise of the iPhone is that it will do for information what the iPod does for audio.

After less than a day of use, I can tell you that this first-generation iPhone isn’t perfect. But it is very, very well done, and in many ways it is an astonishingly long jump forward for mobile technology. Whether it actually turns out to be the device of my dreams, the one that actually helps simplify and enhance my first two lives remains to be seen. But so far, it looks to me as if the iPhone lives up to the hype.

More Big Things

It ain’t hype if you can deliver

Stuart — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 19:06:51 +0000

Here are some thoughts and impressions from my first 18 hours with my new best friend:

Surprises & pleasures

The screen is gorgeous. Oh my god. I mean… GORGEOUS! (Did I mention it was gorgeous?)
Apple has a knack for making incredibly intuitive and useful user interfaces. As I’ve been exploring all the nooks and crannies of the phone, I keep muttering, “Nice!” “Oh, very nice.” “I wonder if it… yeah, it does. Nice.”
I’m surprised at how much I like watching videos on the iPhone. I really didn’t get the appeal of the video iPod, but now I do. I think I’ll end up using this a lot while I’m traveling, and I’ll probably watch all my video podcasts this way.
Touch screen typing is a non-issue, at least for me. Someone with larger fingers might have a different feeling on the subject.
AT&T finally got the data plan pricing right. $20 for unlimited web and email, and 200 SMS messages. My bill will actually go down this month!
I’ve read about varying experiences at AT&T stores across the country, but the crew at Pacific Place in Seattle were phenomenal. Jerry and Trish worked the line to let us know what we could expect, folks who needed credit checks were taken care of before 4:30, the door greeters looked me in the eye, asked my name, and shook my hand… everything was done exceedingly well. I was about #80 in line at 6:00 when the phones went on sale and walked out of the store with my iPhone at about 7:10.
Despite an interface hiccup, the activation went brilliantly. Apple really did things right with this rollout.
I can bookmark web pages using the del.icio.us bookmarklet. Woo-hoo!

Disappointments & kvetches

As far as I can tell, you can’t copy and paste text. That seems to me to be a glaring oversight.
I have really gotten used to carrying my iPod Nano around my neck using the headphone/carrying cord. I’d love to have something like that for the iPhone, rather than carrying the headphones separately.
The thing I’ll really miss about my Treo is SplashID, which I use to manage usernames and passwords to my hundreds of online accounts. I don’t know how I’m going to function without that program.
I REALLY wish the period and comma keys were on the same page as all the letters.
On the Palm, I can drop documents into a folder to read on the device. The only way I can figure to do something similar on the iPhone is to email them to myself and read them through my Gmail account. Why couldn’t I have a docs/notes folder synchronized through iTunes?
Web sites that use Ajax have limited functionality on the iPhone, because you can’t hover over text. So, for example, I can add to lists and check off items in Backpack, but I can’t edit or trash an item because those options only appear when I hover the mouse over the text.

More Big Things

No more WarmingSigns

Stuart — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 20:24:34 +0000

I’m letting WarmingSigns.org expire. It was a noble idea: inspired by An Inconvenient Truth, I wanted to put together a site that would track climate data sources. But the fact is that I have a plate full of other projects that barely get attended to, and no particular expertise in climate change to share with the world. So, even though I feel some regret at doing so, I know it’s the right thing to do to let it go. If you’ve really got an itch for that kind of thing, check out one of the numerous blogs on the subject that have sprung up over the last year or so.

Random Posts

Do NOT Mess with the Chocolate

Stuart — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 17:33:30 +0000

My Uncle Jay alerted me to an attempt by the food industry to change the FDA “standard of identity” for chocolate, allowing for the use of fat and milk substitutes instead of the real thing. If this alarms you as much as it does me, you can find out more at Don’tMessWithOurChocolate.com. The site will walk you through an easy 2-minute procedure for leaving a comment on the issue at the FDA’s website.

More Big Things

Fighting the Power