512 Pixels

At least that version didn’t insist on installing Silverlight.

via @monkbent

I was honored to be on Tim Smith’s excellent podcast, For the Record. We spoke about work, side projects and why I don’t work for myself full-time.

Robert McGinley Myers, over on The Sweet Setup:

RSS arguably had its perfect device when the iPad was introduced in 2010. Suddenly, you could read the entire Internet comfortably on the couch. You could use RSS to bring the web to you. That’s why our pick for the best RSS reader on the iPad is the $5 Unread, an app designed to help you slow down, lean back, and enjoy good writing.

If you aren’t using Unread on your iOS devices, you really should check out this review.

John Gruber, commenting on Jean-Louis Gassée’s essay about the possibility of ARM-powered Macs:

The delay in truly-new Mac hardware while waiting for Broadwell chips is exactly the sort of reason why Apple wants to own the whole stack. Anything they depend upon, they want under their control — and on the Mac, they depend upon Intel for CPUs. Maybe Apple will never pull it off and thus won’t ever make such a switch, but I’d be shocked if there isn’t a team inside Apple working on it already.

His comments reminded me of this clip of Steve Jobs announcing the switch to Intel:

When I hopped on Skype earlier today to record a podcast and was greeted with a surprise:

Turns out:

We want everyone to experience the best Skype has to offer – from enhanced quality to better reliability to improved security – and the newest version of Skype is the way to do that. So everyone can benefit from the latest improvements, from time to time we retire older versions of Skype across all platforms, including mobile devices. It’s easy to update Skype; once you do, you’ll have access to the latest features our team has worked hard to deliver.

When we retire older versions of Skype, if you are still on an older version, you would be signed out of Skype automatically and won’t be able to sign in again until you upgrade to a new version. Simply follow the steps below to download, install, and sign in to the latest version, and you’ll be back in Skype in no time.

(In fact, Skype 2.8 was unable to make video calls as of months ago.)

As FaceTime Audio isn’t suitable for podcasts in my opinion, I’m at Microsoft’s mercy for a critical tool in my workflow. While I know that holding onto an ancient piece of software is a sure-fire way to be heartbroken, recent versions of Skype are rather miserable. The UI is bloated, the app is slow and can cause odd audio issues even on modern hardware.

Thankfully, Call Recorder works well with the newest versions of Skype, so podcasters should be set as far as recording, but I’m still cranky.

Yikes.

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Support is responsive and available 7 days a week via email with lots of great tutorials available to answer any questions.

History And Trust

FeedPress now serves more than 30 million requests per month and is trusted by many popular blogs and podcasting networks such as: ESN, Mule Radio, Unprofessional, The New Disruptors, Beautiful Pixels, Inessential, Macgasm, The Brooks Review, and of course 512Pixels.

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FeedPress: RSS analytics done right.

Sure seems like these Android Wear devices were rushed to market.

I’ve been very happy with 512 Pixels running on Squarespace, but the platform’s lack of options when it comes to sorting a list of categories has always left me a little annoyed when I see my 404 page. Thanks to jQuery and this script from Ben Morrow, my categories are nice and alphabetical, as God intended.

Apple:

Today we are excited to officially welcome Beats Music and Beats Electronics to the Apple family. Music has always held a special place in our hearts, and we’re thrilled to join forces with a group of people who love it as much as we do. Beats cofounders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre have created beautiful products that have helped millions of people deepen their connection to music. We’re delighted to be working with the team to elevate that experience even further.

Here’s Beats’ announcement, which I couldn’t paste as it’s not actually text on the page.

Dan Rayburn:

Since last year, Apple’s been hard at work building out their own CDN and now those efforts are paying off. Recently, Apple’s CDN has gone live in the U.S. and Europe and the company is now delivering some of their own content, directly to consumers. In addition, Apple has interconnect deals in place with multiple ISPs, including Comcast and others, and has paid to get direct access to their networks.

Early tests show Apple is using this $100 million CDN to distribute OS X upgrades to customers as directly as possible.

This investment is another example of Apple liking to control the whole stack, but the company isn’t an ISP. Paying for direct access (not unlike Netflix) puts Apple in better standing with companies like Comcast, but the net neutrality implications are a little icky.

That said, with Comcast, Time Warner and others having the ability to slow down any one body of traffic and hold it hostage isn’t Apple or Netflix’s fault they have to play the interconnect game. It’s the federal government’s.

Two thoughts came to mind when I saw this link:

1. My childhood sucked.
2. Would my wife let me build one in our bedroom?