512 Pixels

Very kind, and undeserved words from Seedling. I’m humbled to be included on such a list of superstars.

Earlier today, I asked the hivemind of Twitter what I should set as my homepage in Safari. Google Reader has been my homepage of years, but I’ve switched to using Reeder all the time.

This is what several people suggested, and I have to say, it is perfect:

WSIL Channel 3:

A bizarre Christmas gift mix-up brought a Marion 12-year-old more than she had on her wish list. It was not exactly a lump of coal, but a set of southern Illinois parents may have preferred that to the gift they gave their daughter.

The young girl opened her gift and got an eyeful of porn. They bought what they thought were Coby Kyros pads for their 12 and 15-year-old daughters. They are similar to the Apple iPad and Amazon Kindle. Within a couple minutes, they realized one of the devices had more than just games and email apps.

“She touched it once to switch screens, and all of a sudden something that shouldn’t have been there came up,” Jay Hardin, of Marion, said.

What she saw were two applications already installed on the touch pads. One called “Boobs! Butts! Babes!;” the other called “Undress Me.” His daughter now refers to her Kyros as the PervPad.

[…]

The company does not know how the applications ended up installed on one of the Kyros pads the Hardins bought. One thought is that someone bought the device before the Hardins, downloaded a few extra apps, and returned it to the store.

[via CNN]

The Associated Press:

A top House Republican says GOP lawmakers will go after President Barack Obama’s health care law piece by piece to see if they can make it crumble.

That effort, says Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan, will follow a vote to repeal the health care law outright. Such a vote could come early in the new year after the GOP takes control of the House.

Maybe I should have used “jackass” instead of “moron.”

The Associated Press:

Some users of Microsoft Hotmail are starting off the new year scrambling to get back e-mails of old. A chorus of frantic users has posted complaints on Microsoft’s online forum that all of their messages have disappeared.

[…]

Others complain that the majority of the e-mail in their inboxes was sent to their deleted mail folders instead. It is unclear from the posts how widespread the problem is. The free Web-based e-mail service is the world’s most used with about 360 million users globally, according to comScore Inc.

Happy New Year from Microsoft. Ouch.

My third “photo a day for a year” project is up and running.

See my previous two projects here and here.

Matt Gemmell:

I haven’t felt so thrilled by a new piece of hardware since I bought our first iPad, and the same feeling of experiencing a new class of device is present here too. If you’re tempted by the 11-inch model’s portability but are worried about whether you could get your work done, put your concerns aside – it’s an excellent machine and more than up to the job.

Having owned one for more than a week now, using it every day (including for development work in Xcode) and traveling for most of that time, I can recommend it without hesitation.

Be sure to check out his unboxing photos and screenshots of popular apps running on the 11.6" screen.

I’m pretty set that my next machine will be an 11.6" Air.

[via Ben Brooks, whose website just got a fresh coat of paint]

Looking Back

A year ago today, I shut down this website.

Needless to say, that didn’t last.

Here’s a paragraph a friend emailed me a year ago:

I’ve just got way too much stuff, way too many gadgets, way too many computers, and spend way too much time wasting time on the Internet on things that don’t deserve time out of my life that I can’t ever get back.

My friend is still right, but closing ForkBombr was the wrong answer to my desire to simplify my life. I love writing — I need to write.

That said, I have cut several things out of my life. Even so, I’ve learned that simplifying life is far more complicated than simply cutting things out. It’s hard work to keep distractions at bay.

Looking Forward

Since re-opening it, I’ve made a deliberate shift in my writing here on ForkBombr. In March, I wrote this:

It’s hard to keep up with everything, and the world doesn’t need another site re-posting Apple news. There are 1357 other sites that can do that, if that’s what you’re looking for.

So, you should expect longer, more thoughtful posts, fewer times a week. I don’t promise a new item on the front page every 4 hours. If you’re looking for the latest on all-things Apple, ForkBombr isn’t for you.

I’ve stuck to my word, and have written more reviews and commentary than ever this year. I’ve enjoyed writing it, and my traffic stats tell me you like reading it. 2011 promises to be another year of growth here, and that’s not possible without you.

So, dear reader, thank you. I’m humbled by each incoming link and each new RSS subscriber. I really am.

Marco has written the list of the year, as far as I am concerned.

Cultured Code has a problem. And it isn’t with its products.

Yes, bashing Cultured Code’s Things family of programs has become popular. And not without good reason. The more complex OmniFocus has OTA sync. Simpler to-do managers like Remember the Milk and TeuxDeux do as well.¹ In a world where most people own at least one iOS device, it’s critical to have a solution in place that makes data on all devices stay in sync. Patronizing blog posts and fancy status board updates do not a feature make.

Cultured Code’s biggest problem isn’t a lack of OTA sync, though. It’s a PR problem.

People like Shawn Blanc, Ben Brooks, Ian Hines and myself² will always complain about such things. It’s because we care about synced data states across our apps and devices. But let’s be honest — we’re nerds.

Without OTA sync, Things feels less like an iOS app than it does a PDA program. With most iOS apps, data comes from the cloud, meaning it is (usually) always accurate. With Things, there is always a nagging question in the back of the user’s mind — is my data up-to-date? It feels like we’re all back in the early 2000s, syncing our Palm Pilots to Outlook with USB cradles. Then, no one minded mis-synced data or the occasional missed appointment entry, because no one knew any better. The world has moved on.

The every day person doesn’t know what OTA means, but they do know when things work — and, more importantly, when they don’t work.

App Store reviews tell this story better than anything else. Check out the reviews Things for iPhone and for the iPad version. They are harsh. Words like “rip-off” and “abandonware” are all over the place. For App Store customers, such reviews raise red flags, stalling sales.

Cultured Code is a one-hit wonder. If Things fails, the company fails, assumedly. The company has a lot riding on this, and to have such a massive problem on its hands can’t be good.

So, how does the company fix its PR issues? While I’m not sure, I know that they need to get OTA out the door, and it needs to work flawlessly. I also think making the iPhone app free would go a long way. I fear that Cultured Code will include OTA in a paid update to its apps, or charge a monthly fee to enable syncing with its servers. Both of those moves would be terrible, and only reinforce the feeling that the company cares more about its bottom line than its users.

In an interview with NPR’s Terry Gross:

I think it made me less political and more emotional. The [more] you spend time with the political [world] and media, the less political you become and the more viscerally upset you become at corruption. I don’t consider it political, because ‘political’ I always sort of note as a partisan endeavor. But I have become increasingly unnerved by the depth of corruption that exists at many different levels. I’m less upset with politicians than [with] the media. I feel like politicians — the way I explain it, is when you go to a zoo and a monkey throws feces, it’s a monkey. But when the zookeeper is standing right there and he doesn’t say, ‘Bad monkey’ — somebody’s gotta be the zookeeper. I feel much more strongly about the abdication of responsibility by the media than by political advocates. They’re representing a constituency. Our culture is just a series of checks and balances. The whole idea that we’re in a battle between tyranny and freedom — it’s a series of pendulum swings. And the swings have become less drastic over time. That’s why I feel, not sanguine but at least a little bit less frightful, in that our pendulum swings have become less and less. But what has changed is the media’s sense of their ability to be responsible arbiters. I think they feel fearful. I think there’s this whole idea now that there’s a liberal media conspiracy, and I think they feel if they express any authority or judgment, which is what I imagine is editorial control, they will be vilified.

I’m growing my hair out just so people stop telling me I look like Glenn Beck.

John Paczkowski, on the RIM Playbook:

If Research in Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook is to succeed at market the way the company hopes, there are a few engineering hurdles to overcome. The most significant, according to Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu, is the device’s relatively poor battery life.

Sources tell him the tablet currently lasts just a few hours per charge, compared with rivals like Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, which lasts about six, and the iPad, which lasts upward of 10.