President Obama continued laying what may be more groundwork for his re-election campaign Monday, including a new tax proposal. He calls it the “Buffett rule”: a new tax on people making more than $1million a year, who currently pay a much lower rate than an average middle-class American. The president, in fact, proposed this rule to a group of people with a lot of millionaires in it.
The number of Americans who are millionaires is pretty low — about 1 percent of the population. Members of Congress who are millionaires? Nearly 50 percent.
How to Return the “Bounce Message” Feature to OS X Lion Mail
In previous versions of OS X, Apple’s Mail app included a feature named Bounce. This allowed users to send email back to the sender, making it look like the address wasn’t valid. Here’s what a bounced message looks like. I sent myself an email (from my Mobile account to my email address for this site), then bounced it back:
It was great for spam and emails from the mother-in-law.
Sadly, in Lion, this feature was removed from Mail. Thankfully, with a little AppleScrip work, its functionality can be restored.
- Download this .zip file, containing an Automator document.
- Open it in Automator after un-zipping it.
- From the File menu, select Duplicate To…. Save the new file as a Service.
- At the top of the new document, set the options to no input and Mail.app, so it looks like this:
Hit Save, and name the service something like “Bounce Message.”
Now, in Mail, when a message is selected, there will be a new option in Services under the Mail menu:
Selecting that item will bounce the message to the sender and delete it from the Inbox.
Some have reported that messages deleted this way don’t stay deleted, and jump back into the Inbox after Mail restarts, but I haven’t seen this firsthand.
Happy bouncing.
Apple Donates First-Generation iPads to Teach for America
The Capture Form
As I’ve discussed before, I’m a pretty heavy-duty user of OmniFocus.
Recently, however, I’ve noticed some gaps in my system of managing tasks. Mainly, I struggle getting tasks from “real-life” things into OmniFocus. Tasks that start on my Mac (from Mail, Safari, etc.) are easy to send to the Inbox.
Sadly, most of the time, these “real-life” events are meetings. Say what you will about them, but the reality is that in my day job, meetings are a necessary evil.
I don’t like taking my MacBook Pro to meetings to take notes or capture tasks. I find it distracting, and it can create a barrier between me and other meeting participants.
About a month ago, I started taking my current Field Notes notebook into meetings with me, but I found that I need more space to take notes, and often, tasks get lost among the notes and other things that live in there.
So, I’ve made a form. (Well, I swiped Shawn’s design and re-worked it a bit.)
The single sheet — which I’ve dubbed the “Capture Form” — includes space for four things:
- Reference Information: Info I need to know to put the meeting in context.
- Meeting Notes
- Action Items for Others
- Action Items for Me
I can take the form with me to a meeting, take notes, capture action items, and file them away later in OmniFocus. I have a binder on my desk of past forms, which will (over time) create a nice archive of past meetings and events.
You can download the Capture Form as a PDF. (right-click to download)
Update: I’ve created an alternative version (right-click to download) with an expanded Notes section and no Reference Information section.
Update #2: If you want a TextExpander version of the form, check out this post.
Recipe for Any Android Phone Review Ever
Unlike Apple’s once-a-year release cycle with the iPhone, Android OEMs and carriers have gone crazy, releasing as many new phones as possible, as quickly as possible.
As a result, there are a ton of Android phone reviews written. I want to make it easier for tech writers, so I’ve created a list — a recipe, if you will — to help make this easier.
- The screen is better, brighter and bigger than on previous devices.
- It’s thin, but not iPhone-thin.
- The OEM’s Android skin isn’t awesome, but in some places, it could be.
- The new launcher comes with lots of widgets that do things.
- 4G is cool, unless you like battery life. But damn, those 28 seconds of browsing are fast!
- The camera software still sucks. Also, FRONT-FACING CAMERA! Note: This can be swapped for “3-D!!!!” if the review requires it.
- While Android is open, there’s lots of crapware on this phone. Hello, VZContact Manager FREE!
- This may be the best Android phone yet, but if not, just wait a week or two.
- The current version of Android lacks some polish, but the next version of Android will be the one to have, we promise. It’s going to rival iOS. Granted, this phone probably won’t ever get to run it.
Second Place in a Losing Race
Unlike HP, which last month announced plans to spin off its personal computer line and pull the plug on tablet computing, Mr Dell still believes in selling hardware, despite slowing growth and slim margins. “We are very distinct from some of our competitors,” says Mr Dell in a video interview on FT.com. “We believe the devices and the hardware still matter as part of the complete, end-to-end solution.” The scale of its PC operations, he says, gives Dell an advantage over competitors in the smaller but more lucrative server market.
If HP stopped selling PCs and servers today, Dell would be first and second in those respective markets.
The Price of Amazon
Spencer Soper, in a piece about the Amazon warehouse in Breinigsville, PA:
During summer heat waves, Amazon arranged to have paramedics parked in ambulances outside, ready to treat any workers who dehydrated or suffered other forms of heat stress. Those who couldn’t quickly cool off and return to work were sent home or taken out in stretchers and wheelchairs and transported to area hospitals. And new applicants were ready to begin work at any time.
Terrible.
Instagram v2.0 Launched
Clarity and detail with every shot. By far, the most requested feature from both pros and amateurs alike, we’ve increased our photo size from 612×612 to 1936×1936 on the iPhone 4 (1536×1536 on the iPhone3GS). You’ll capture beautiful moments in all their detailed glory
Also on tap: new filters, a new live preview feature and optional borders. Instagram is one of my favorite iOS apps, and this update — mainly the size increase — may let it replace Camera+ on my iPhone’s homescreen.
On Netflix and Qwikster
After reading Dan Frommer’s article, the announcement from Netflix makes a lot more sense to me.
Hello, AAPL
It’s at $410.93 as of this writing.
The Move
I’ve gotten a bunch of emails from people since re-launching the site under the name 512 Pixels. I thought I’d answer the most popular questions here.
So, why did you change names?
First of all, it had nothing to do with this.
It boils down to this: while I loved the name Forkbombr, I didn’t think it played well, long-term.
What about old links? Aren’t they all broken now?
Old links are fine. Thanks to the magic that is the .htaccess file and mod_rewrite commands, forkbombr.net/anything redirects to 512pixels.net/anything. Here’s the code to make that happen:
RedirectMatch permanent (.*) https://512pixels.net$1
What theme is that?
I wrote the theme for 512 Pixels based on Thematic. Thematic is basically an framework on which to hang your own CSS and PHP.
It wasn’t too much work to get where I wanted to be, thankfully. I’ve still got some kinks to iron out, but everything is rendering, which is great.
It was important to me that the new site look like the old one in some ways — hence the orange links remain. The logo was done by Wet Frog Studios.
How’d you move old posts?
That was actually very easy. WordPress makes it a breeze to import and export content. I did run into this issue, but it wasn’t a big deal to fix it with Media Temple.
It’s vital with WordPress to make sure things like permalink schemes and other settings are the same between the old and new sites, or odd things may happen.
Still no Linked-List items?
There’s no denying that linked-list items are a popular feature on blogs like Daring Fireball, Shawn Blanc.net and The Brooks Review. I know that’s it is easy to make WordPress do it. I just don’t like it.
I don’t think anyone is confused by the way I do things now. I also don’t think I’ll be changing it anytime soon.
What about RSS and Twitter?
To let the 2,500 RSS readers of this site get my content without having to re-subscribe was critical to this being a smooth move for everyone.
Thankfully, FeedBurner is awesome. I simply gave my feed the URL of the built-in, WordPress-generated feed, and like magic, everyone was good to go.
Currently, the URL for my FeedBurner feed includes ‘Forkbombr’ in it. I’m afraid to touch that.
I have FeedBurner auto-tweet links to the site’s Twitter account. I simply changed the name of the account from @forkbombr to @512px and moved on.
Android Apps and Piracy
Piracy isn’t talked about a lot, but it has quietly grown into a major problem for many developers. It’s more of an issue in Android because its open nature and loose authentication tools allow pirates to rip off and distribute paid apps.
“This is one of those problems that seem to have been running under the radar,” said Carl Howe, an analyst at Yankee Group. “Every developer thinks, ‘it must just be me.’”
Developers, you’re not alone. A recent survey conducted by Yankee Group and location-based services and software provider Skyhook found that 27 percent of developers believe piracy in Android is a huge problem, with more than three-quarters saying that it’s easy to copy and republish an Android application. Many point to pirate forums as the largest source of pirated apps.
I don’t understand why Google allows this sort of thing to happen.