Simplenote has become my main venue for thoughts, project notes and just about anything else text-based. This update includes tags, sharing and a great full-screen editing mode for the iPhone and iPad.
New features come with APIs, so tag syncing and more should hopefully show up in apps like Notational Velocity before long.
If you use an iPhone or iPad and need someplace for words to live, you’ve got to check it out.
John Carey, at the wonderful fiftyfootshadows.net:
I find that I sit somewhere between the ultra minimal lifestyle that many tout on their blogs and social networks and those attached to older, kitschy nostalgia. I like having old books on my bookshelf and small trinkets from my travels scattered around my living space. I like both the minimal forms of modern trends in product design and the warm feeling an old wooden bookshelf can bring.
From the video:
We’ll take a document and print it out with Word for Windows and with Word for Macintosh. Take the two sheets of paper, overlay them…hold them up to the light. If we see any difference, we consider that a bug that we have to fix.
It’s taken them this long to decide that printing differences between versions is a bug?
This explains a lot about how Microsoft views products, sadly.
Panic cofounder Steven Frank (yes, that Steven Frank) is building a Retro Room:
I went insane and decided to start collecting computer and video game paraphernalia from my youth.
He is also cataloging his finds over on Tumblr. My favorite may be the literature for the 20th Anniversary Mac.
It’s a great look at the technology that defined a generation. It makes me a little sad that I’m too young to have experienced the PC Revolution. By the time I was old enough to care about computers, the world was dominated by Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, and Apple was churning out lots of garbage.
Textbooks don’t have to be text. They don’t have to be books.
Stunning. The future of textbooks aren’t in dead trees.
Brian Lam lost his phone. A lady turned it in to the restaurant.
[ via DF]
Update: Here’s Google’s cache on Lam’s now-locked Twitter account.
As for mobile platforms, the NPR News iPhone app has a slight bump in traffic in the mid-morning and evens out throughout the day. Curiously, this is a unique pattern among NPR mobile platforms, and may indicate a strong use of that particular app during the morning commute.
[…]
The Android app, iPad app and mobile website all see more steady use throughout the day until late evening, when the mobile site and iPad app experience a bit of a second wind of traffic, perhaps as people get their last dose of news before bed.
After spending time playing with Flash Player 10.1 on the new Droid 2, the first Android 2.2 phone to come with the player pre-installed, I’m sad to admit that Steve Jobs was right. Adobe’s offering seems like it’s too little, too late.
Please note the date. People were complaining about the iPhone’ lack of Flash way back in 2007. Three years later, Adobe’s mobile implementation is still rubbish.
It seems as if every day I bump into things while reading feeds, Twitter, the Web, or email — things I want to download, buy, research, and etcetera. But often I’m unable to take action at that moment. How then can I save it for later?
When on my Mac I use AppleScripts and built-in triggers to throw these items directly into Things. But on my iPhone and iPad there is no such solution. And since even the smallest pebble will make expensive Reeboks uncomfortable to run in, this sore spot of how to handle all the tasks I bump into when on my iPhone or iPad has got me thinking…
That’s how many words it took Engadget’s Joshua Topolsky to explain the site’s new commenting system.
Engadget’s comments system needed an overhaul, but as before, I’ll simply ignore the whole thing. Comments just give me headaches. Life is simpler without them, don’t you think?
(You can always email me or ping ForkBombr on Twitter. I view that as better than comments, as it leads to actual conversations, not just yelling.)
Craig Hockenberry, for A List Apart:
With such great tools available and talented developers that know how to exploit them, the iPhone should be overflowing with web applications, right? Actually, the opposite is true: there are over 100,000 titles on iTunes and only a handful of popular applications have been created with web standards.
Apple has promoted both the App Store and web browser as ways for developers to get their creations into the hands of customers. They even gave the web a year-long head start before beginning to sell apps in the store. Clearly there’s more at play here: what attracts developers to iTunes instead of the web?
The bad news? The new discs are based on the edited versions, so Greedo still shoots first.
The good news? A new opening scene to Return of the Jedi that’ was cut in post-production that’s really, really great.