While I don’t understand the excitement about Apple hanging these things up every year, it’s fun to see so many all at once.
The “Redmond, start your photocopiers” banner is still my favorite, but this one is a close second.
posts
On the Kroc Center
Over the past few years, I’ve been rather vague about my place of employment when talking or writing on the Internet. Not that my boss doesn’t know about 512 — he does — but I just felt that my life would be easier if people at work (locally and beyond) didn’t know about my online braaaaaaand.
As I recently announced that I’ve taken a position with a different company, I felt like I was finally able to write about what I’ve been up to for the last four years.
RSS Sponsor: Radium⇢
Radium is a new way to listen to internet radio. It sits in your menu bar and stays out of your way. And it just works.
With its clean user interface and album cover display, you’re always just a click away from beautiful sounds. Add your favorite tracks to the wish list and check them out later on the iTunes Store. Take the sounds with you using Radium’s built-in AirPlay streaming support. It’s all there.
Byword 2.0 Released⇢
Byword — my favorite Markdown-ready text editor for iOS and OS X — received a huge update today.
In addition to better Dropbox syncing (yay, offline!) and a tweaked UI on iOS, Byword 2.0 brings a huge feature: publishing.
Enabled by a $4.99 in-app purchase, Byword can now publish WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger and Scriptogram blogs and Evernote notebooks.
The WordPress support is the most helpful to me, as 512 runs on it. Currently, custom fields can’t be saved for re-use. I created a TextExpander snippet to drop linked_list_url= in place for now, but the developers say that better support for this sort of thing is coming in a future build. While I didn’t ask about in beta — I’m a terrible beta user — caching of categories and tags would be helpful as well.
Feedly Looks Forward⇢
With the death of Google Reader just a few weeks away, the people behind Feedly are hard at work.
In addition to updating their web app, they’re working on something that made me smile:
We have been working behind the curtains with the developers of Reeder, Press, Nextgen Reader, Newsify and gReader as design partners for our Normandy project. Today we are excited to announce that you will be able to access your feedly from all these apps before Google Reader retires and that the access to feedly API will be free. More details soon.
How To Setup iOS To Sync With Google Contacts Via CardDAV
Back in December, I outlined how to hook up Google CardDAV to Contacts in Mountain Lion, but neglected to cover how to do so on iOS.
Sorry about that. Here’s how to do it.
In the Settings app, tap “Mail, Contacts, Calendars,” then tap “Add Account…”
In the Accounts Type screen, select “Other” at the bottom of the list, then select “Add CardDAV Account.”
The next screen is where you enter settings for the account:
Old Mac of the Month: Titanium PowerBook G4
This month’s entry is written by Jared Sorge. Jared’s been a Mac user since 1st grade and sold them from 1999–2003 for an Authorized Reseller in the Seattle area. Currently he’s a developer of FileMaker and iOS apps. You can find him on Twitter and ADN as @jsorge, or at his blog over at jsorge.net.
image via Apple PR
In January 2001, Apple brought out the Titanium PowerBook G4. This was a landmark introduction that would influence generations of designs across the PC industry (and still holds up well today).
One Half Of One Percent⇢
Wayne Hale, 32-year NASA veteran and Space Shuttle Flight Director:
For all our limitations, America is a very rich country. There are many things which America needs to do for the present moment: provide for a strong military to protect us in a dangerous world, educate our children, care for our elderly and infirm, revitalize our transportation infrastructure of roads, bridges, airports, and more. All of these activities are of vital importance today. Space exploration is about the future. Space exploration is possibly the only line item in the federal budget that is all about the future. Currently we spend one half of one percent of our nation’s treasure on the future. Isn’t the future worth that investment? Or more!
On Forgotten Apple Products⇢
I knew about most of these, but I hadn’t come across the Apple Presentation System before.
Chicago Sun-Times Fires Photographers, Trains Reporters on iPhone Photography⇢
AppleInsider:
The Chicago Sun-Times, one of the oldest daily newspapers in America, fired its entire pool of 28 photographers on Friday, and plans to source future graphics from reporters who will be trained to capture print-worthy images with their iPhones.
I’m sure that there’s no way this will backfire.
On the Acer Aspire R7⇢
David Pierce at The Verge:
In a fit of late-night frustration, I picked the R7 up, held it aloft, and shouted at it: “WHAT ARE YOU?!” I still don’t know. It’s too big and cumbersome to be a really useful laptop — even for a 15-inch device it’s pretty enormous. But it’s too small to be an all-in-one, and not powerful enough to really qualify as a desktop or desktop replacement.
The State of Apple’s Mac Software Products
Steve Jobs said on numerous occasions that Apple is primarly a software company.
As Apple Remote Desktop crashed on my MacBook Air yesterday, that came to mind. Then I realized besides some maintenance updates, ARD hasn’t changed all that much in a while.
I decided to take a look at all of the software Apple currently has in the Mac App Store, and see if that was the case for other titles as well.