Too many software programs create “roach motels” for content and information: the data checks in (via File > Import), but it never checks out.

This is inline with my recent thinking. Particularly after using the “at first glance, awesome, but after the demo expires, not so much” Personal Brain.

The Lo-Fi Manifesto.

Here are a few thoughts:

• The industrial design is great. No big, slightly rickety buttons on the side, just simple nibs, in the same place, on both sides.
• Expandable storage. I don’t think I will ever have the Kindle full, it would be comfort to know that with a Nook, I could archive my books, instead of relying on the cloud.
• The Nook includes wifi, I consider this a big win, a feature that trumps the Kindle 2 international edition. Now if abroad, Nook owners can still get new books without having to worry about the AT&T hegemony.
• Personal Screensaver. I expect Amazon to release and update to the Kindle family that will allow this. It seems like a feature that Amazon left out of their “Experimental” menu.
• The color touch screen at the bottom is nice but I worry about the brightness being a distraction from reading. The e-ink is not backlit, but the color touch screen is.
• The Nook is for people who already go into the book store and browse by cover. As far as I can tell there is no search functionality built in, although theoretically not difficult to do. The Kindle is designed for those who know what author or subject they want to read and want to find new books about, thus the integrated chicklet keyboard.
• eBook lending is a coup. This emulates the paper book experience. During the 14 day lending period, can the ebook owner still read the book or are the effectively locked out?

The only other item to note, which came up in discussion this morning. Will or more accurately, when will the color touchscreen be used for advertising? Free ebooks if you stare at ads for potentially related books or other purchases available at B&N.com?

Overall I am glad to see some competition in the ebook space.

At the same time, I am living more and more on my iPhone, and I want to take my shortened URLs with me. Lessn works fine, but Mobile Safari displays the Lessn site as a full webpage, not very handy for finger-based computing. Below are some modifications I added to my Lessn install to make it a little more iPhone friendly.

This is how the magic happens

/-/stubs/header.php

...
<meta name="generator" content="Lessn <?php echo LESSN_ VERSION;?> (Shaun Inman&#8217;s fingertips)" />
<meta name=viewport content="width=device-width" />
<link media="only screen and (max-device-width: 480px)" href="iPhone.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" />
<style>
...

/-/stubs/iPhone.css


body
{
width:420px;
font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif;
text-align: center;
margin: 32px 0 0;
padding: 0;
color: #333;
background-color: #eee;
}
a,button
{
display: inline-block;
border: none;
font-family: inherit;
font-weight: inherit;
font-size: 24px;
line-height: 30px;
height: 30px;
padding: 0 8px;
-webkit-border-radius: 8px;
-moz-border-radius: 8px;
border-radius: 8px;
cursor: pointer;
text-align: left;
text-decoration: none;
text-transform: uppercase;
letter-spacing: 1px;
vertical-align: middle;
color: #fff;
background-color: #333;
}
input
{
-webkit-text-size-adjust: 140%;
font-family: inherit;
-webkit-border-radius: 2px;
-moz-border-radius: 2px;
border-radius: 2px;
border: none;
padding: 4px;
font-size:24px;
}
span
{
display: block;
margin: 16px 0 0;
font-size: 9px;
color: #999;
}
span code
{
font-size: 24px;
}

/-/pages/done.php

...
<p>
<input type="text" id="url" value="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($new_ url); ?>" onclick="this.focus();this.select();" readonly="readonly" />
→ <strong><?php echo htmlspecialchars($url); ?></strong>
</p>
<?php $browser = strpos($_ SERVER['HTTP_ USER_ AGENT'],"iPhone");
if ($browser == true) { echo "<p><a href=\"javascript:window.location='tweetie:<?php urlencode($new_ url); ?>
'\">Tweetie</a></p>
<p>
Tap and hold to copy:
</p>
<p><strong>";
echo htmlspecialchars($new_ url);
echo "</strong>
</p>
"; } else { echo "<p><a href=\"http://twitter.com/?status=<?php echo urlencode($new_ url); ?>\">Tweet</a></p>"; }
?>
<p>
<a href="mailto:?body=<?php echo urlencode($new_ url); ?>">Mail to</a>
</p>
...

For some weird formatting reason, I had to add spaces after every “_”. To get done.php to work you must remove the following spaces in “$new_url” and “SERVER[‘HTTP_ …”

The edits to /-/pages/done.php replaces the Tweet button with a Tweetie button, the URL in a “copyable” line, and lastly a Mail To button.

Compare to the same site on the desktop:

I know the code I have used probably isn’t very clean, or very correct in some cases, but it works for me right now.

As soon as Apple announce in-app purchasing, I knew it would be a method for developers to nickel and dime end users. Of course, I can see the value of the “feature”. Want to buy an additional level pack for a buck? Sure. Want to buy a new ebook for $5, maybe $10? Fine. Want to buy more rockets to splatter your opponent in some first person shooter? Um, sure, I have to beat him. Want to buy turn-by-turn directions? Um, no!

And what a fee it was. $1 would get you one minute, or $3 for 10, or $10 for a monthly pass.

Let the gouging begin.

You’ve been learnin’, baby, I been learnin’,
All them good times, baby, baby, I’ve been yearnin’,
Way, way down inside honey, you need it,
I’m gonna give you my love,
I’m gonna give you my love.

Wanna whole lotta love?
Wanna whole lotta love?
Wanna whole lotta love?
Wanna whole lotta love?

And while they are singing about a woman, I think that it coffee is a pretty good substitute.

I want to be a “coffee guy”, not just one who likes and consumes it, but one who loves it, understands it and would be considered by others to be a coffee snob.

I recently started making french press with Bodum’s Brazil press and Esther and I have loved it so much that we wanted to experiment with doing away with our drip coffee maker. The Brazil is a little to small to server the two of us on a lazy Sunday morning, it only makes two 6 oz cups.

We bought a press pot from World Market to try and fill the gap, a 8 cup model, that cracked after we made our first pot. Quelle bummer! Esther returned it and ended up buying a 12-cup Bodum Chambord. Today was our first run at a full pot, after a trail run yesterday, and I must say that I have never had better coffee.

Process:

I have been studying the best process to make coffee and have synthesized my own. Currently, I have not had an opportunity to try this technique with fresh roasted beans, but I am sure that it will only make for a better cup than what I have had thus far.

Pre-brew sequence:

1. Boil water and pour into press pot and glasses to warm both.
2. Boil more water, for actual brewing.
3. Once water is at a boil, grind coffee on course grind, 10g per 8 fl oz of water. I realize this is mixing metric and imperial units, but an 8 oz cup is a lot more common and easier to measure than 236.588237ml.
4. Empty press pot and cups

Brew sequence:

1. Remove water from boil for approximately 10 seconds. Boiling water causes the grounds to become sour and bitter.
2. Add ground coffee to press pot
3. Pour water over grounds, soaking them fully
4. Stir ground/water slurry
5. Add remaining water
6. Let sit for 3 minutes

Drink sequence:

1. Pour into warmed cups
2. Enjoy

I work as a generalist. I do a lot of things. New things every day, going beyond what I did the day and week before, but a generalist.

Specializing is a luxury, getting to do the same thing over, refining and honing the day-to-day skills, it is something I really want to be able to do. That is why I am lining myself up to go to law school to study a specific area of the law (intellectual property, technology, consumer rights).

I love the idea of the “body man.” His (or her) sole responsibility is taking care of the president. That is the most specialized generalist there is, he has to know the president’s wants and needs and while being wide and varied, are still only related to one person.

A body man accompanies the politician or candidate virtually everywhere, often arranging lodging, transportation or meals, and providing companionship, snacks, a cellphone, and any other necessary assistance.

Everyone in the White House does their one job, communications specialists answer phones and deal with the media, the treasury secretary only worries about the treasury and related items. You don’t hear the treasury secretary jumping from bank bailouts to roads, back to the economy and then to the environment.

I think there are only three parts of IT that can truly be call specializations: Programming, Database Administration and High end telecommunications. IT is the swiss army knife of everyone else’s daily life, like the iPhone commercials: “There’s an app for that” or “technology can fix that”. Analyst or Systems should read “Jack of All Trades,” and since my job title encompasses both, well, you get the idea. Unfortunately, as long as I am in IT specialization is my white whale.

Last night I couldn’t add an event to my work Google Calendar from my personal Google Calendar. I have done this many times, so I logged into the work calendar to check the settings. My personal email address only had the option to “See Event Details”, not what it had previously been “Make changes AND manage sharing”. Hmm.

A lot of searching later, I found Gordon’s Tech. It appears he was having a similar issue. The true nugget of knowledge came in a comment:

I just fixed this problem on my Google Apps calendar. Here’s what I did:

1. Make the problem calendar fully public.

2. Change the settings for the outside-the-domain address that wouldn’t change before.

3. Make the calendar private again.

Voila. I hope this works for others too.

Thank you April! Since I don’t have comments enabled I thought it would be prudent to post this as it worked. Now may calendar sharing issues are fixed.

It seems odd to me that this is just random. I have not adjusted my sharing settings since I got them setup the first time. I guess this is similar to Facebook losing my Notification Settings… Sigh, such is life in the cloud.

I love travelling. I love seeing new places or visiting family, but I have always hated suitcases. They just don’t seem to work: the handles break, the wheels don’t quite roll, or they go from cuboid to lumpy masses. No matter how well you pack, your clothes are disorganized when to arrive and harder to pack when you leave. They are awkward to roll through the airport, which I think would be a priority for luggage designers.

Wouldn’t that be a cool job? Luggage designer. Has a nice ring to it

Esther and I bought suitcases last year, we had a lot of travelling to do. Before our purchase, I used hand-me downs or backpacks and dufflebags.

You would be amazed at what you can fit in a ALICE pack.

Until we bought our suitcases, I would pack everything, but I learned how to pack lean, and now my issues are not what to put in the suitcase, but the suitcase itself.

While the price tag on the ZUCA is a little high, okay, outrageous, it may appear that you get what you pay for.

ZÜCA Videos.

Image via Wikipedia

WeatherBug

Six word review: Local weather with radar, cams included

The weather app that is included on the iPhone is great, if you like to see the extended forecast. I worry more about what the weather is going to be like tonight or tomorrow, and I love looking at the radar images, probably due to a distrust of meteorologists. Weatherbug does that for me, with several local stations, providing not just the radar, but local webcams showing off the current conditions. The only downside is a limit of three saved “favorite” locations.

WeatherBug is free [iTunes link]

Datacase

Six word review: Use your iPhone as external drive

There are several “store files on your iPhone” apps, Files, FileMagnet, and there are probably more to come. Datacase is by far the slickest implementation so far. No client on the computer required, Mac and PC ready, with a great user interface. Datacase has a slick system of getting the files on the iPhone, using Bonjour on the Mac and FTP on a PC. When transferring my files from my Mac, I launch the app and it appears in the finder, I simply drag and drop, abra-ka-poof, the files are on the iPhone, viewable and everything. Simply sexy.

Datacase is $6.99 [iTunes link]

Feeds

Six word review: Well done, cheap, standalone feed reader

I am always looking for a good way to manage my feeds. I use NetNewsWire, but feed management is my Moby Dick. Feeds is cheap and offers a directory of feeds to choose from, which is a great bonus. The feed rendering is the same as Safari, with the options of opening in Safari. The nice thing about Feeds is that is has a “star” function, allowing me to save an entry for later reading. I would love if Feeds would sync with Google Reader, the star function indicates that is would be moving in that direction, but that could be reading in to things too much.

Feeds is $0.99 [iTunes link]

GuitarToolKit

Six word review: If you play guitar, buy this

As a guitar player, I am always looking up a chord that I don’t commonly use. I also need to have a tuner. GuitarToolKit is a gorgeous implementation of both of these, combined with a metronome and open neck tone representation. There are other tuners, and other chord libraries, but GuitarToolKit is the comprehensive package. If you play guitar and you own an iPhone, this is an app that should be on your phone.

GuitarToolKit is $9.99 [iTunes link]

Evernote

Six word review: Like elephant: never forget anything again.

I am a fan of the Evernote service. I can keep track of notes and to text recognition of photos on Macs, PCs, the web and now my iPhone. Evernote was available from the first day of the App Store, but I couldn’t recommend it until it had the ability to edit notes on the iPhone. Version 1.3 has given us this vital function. Keeping track of everything is important, not only random notes, but business cards that I need to search for later. That is the cool thing about Evernote, it does the text recognition on the photo of a business card, allowing me to pull it up at my desk later. The elephant logo is not a misnomer, it truly lets you never forget.

Evernote is free [iTunes link]

Instapaper

Six word review:Easy to use, read it later

I read a lot of things on the internet. A lot. There are somethings that I want to read, but don’t have time to. Instapaper is an online service that allow me to save items for reading later. Instapaper originally came to my attention as a purely web-based application that was iPhone friendly. It has a very simple look and functions well. That simplicity has been translated to Instapaper for the iPhone, which syncs with the web service and allows offline (read on an airplane) reading. It even converts webpages into text-only, so if the formatting on a website makes it difficult to read, you can read in peace.

Instapaper is free [iTunes link]

Image via Wikipedia

Wednesday is now officially iPhone App-stravaganza. I will download some free, some paid applications for the iPhone and give them a short review. In this first Wednesday App-stravaganza, I am going to recap the first set of apps I have and use regularly and then review the applications I downloaded last night.

The Essentials

OmniFocus

Six word review: mobile GTD with location awareness goodness

I am a hard-core OmniFocus user. It keeps everything that I need to do organized. The only problem that I have had is that I can’t take my tasks with me. I had a convoluted sync that involved some AppleScript, some Automator actions, some FTPing, generally it wasn’t super reliable. But that only kept the home and work computers in sync. Now with OmniFocus version 1.1 and OmniFocus for the iPhone, I can keep my shopping lists, errands, and all of the other projects I have close at hand. The syncing features require either a WebDAV account or MobileMe’s iDisk, but the syncing itself is flawless after setup.

Reviews in the App Store are mixed. It has a high learning curve and it can be used independent of the desktop application but if you aren’t a full-time OmniFocus user, it may not be worth the investment of time. There are plenty of “to do” applications for much less, heck, Notes are free.

OmniFocus costs $19.99 [iTunes link]

Jott

Six word review: Simple voice powered reminders, transcribed automagically

jott.com is a free reminder / call transcription / email service. To reduce the head scratching let me walk you though how I use Jott. Things should be come clearer.

Jered is walking from his car to the grocery store and remembers that he needs to email a coworker about a project. Jered pulls out his phone, taps one of his favorites, is asked who he wants to jott. “Doug” *beep* “Doug, we need to meet tomorrow to talk about the signage project.” and then he hangs up. An email is sent to Doug and Jered with the message transcribed.

The iPhone app takes a slightly different tact focusing more on creating lists and to do items. I use it mainly to remember things that will evaporate before I have a chance to write them down. The jott service is great and I still use it to communicate with coworkers and friends, and it is a pity that the iPhone app doesn’t allow for messaging. Fingers crossed for the next revision.

Jott is free [iTunes link]

Zenbe Lists

Six word review: Sync capable, web editable, sharable lists

Zenbe lists is a list management program that syncs to the Zenbe web services. This allows for editing at any computer that has a browser, meaning data entry isn’t nearly a tedious for those of us with fat thumbs. I know you are thinking: Jered another list program? I use Zenbe as a checklist which is wholly different than a task list. These are things that reoccur, so when I check them, they stay on the list and I can uncheck them later. The thing that is great about Zenbe is the ability to share lists with other Zenbe (and non-Zenbe) users. My grocery lists is shared with Esther, so is a list of things to pack for the baby.

Zenbe Lists is free [iTunes link]

2 Across

Six word review:Slickly implemented crosswords without newsprint smudges

I have never been a fan of Sodoku, maybe it has to do with my semi-irrational fear of numbers, who knows. One thing I do love to keep the grey matter performing well is a good crossword puzzle. 2 Across is just that: a well done application on the iPhone that lets me spend countless hours trying to figure out 38 down. If I were a New York Time subscriber, I could do their puzzles using the premium subscription features, but the list of 11 news sources for available puzzles are fine for me. 2 Across is a well done implementation of something that I had written off as being purely paper and pen (yes, I’m that daring).

2 Across costs $5.99 [iTunes link]

NY Times

Six word review: Pocketable version of the Grey Lady

I used to read the newspaper everyday. My uncle says everyone should read two newspapers everyday. Unfortunately, time is scarce, newspapers are bulky and I prefer to skim to the articles that are of greater interest to me. The NYTimes app makes skimming through the entire paper easy as well as being easy on the eyes. Photos that expand to the page width, the text is well rendered, making reading the news of a dreary world a joy to read.

NYTime is free [iTunes link]

NetNewsWire

Six word review: My feeds synced across all computers

I use NetNewsWire for the Mac and NewsGator when on Windows (read about my feed journey here) and they sync very well, including a iPhone optimized web version, but with the release of NetNewsWire for the iPhone, I now have a nice option to sync my feeds with my iPhone. There are a few features that are missing from the current implementation, but I am sure they are coming in later releases. The most important of which is the ability to mark a story as new. It is nice to have a system that syncs all of my feeds so I don’t have to worry about leaving feeds on a device. Yes, I know there is an iPhone optimized Google Reader, but there is something desirable (I can’t really put my finger on what it is…) about having a client on my desktops.

NetNewsWire for the iPhone is free [iTunes link]