Dave Caolo, on why the library is a better place to work than Starbucks:
Starbucks is erupting with distractions. The first is the music. I like to listen to music when I work, but it’s got to be instrumental. If a song has lyrics, I’ll pay attention to them. Don’t get me wrong, the music at these places is great, but not while I’m concentrating. On the other hand, the library is as quiet as…well, a library.
In iFixit’s teardown of the Verizon iPhone 4, the company notes that the new phone has a redesigned vibrator:
Our tests show vibrator has quieter, softer feel, and makes a better sound when on a table.
Only Apple cares about such details.
On Friday, I had a bit of a computing crisis.
My Apple Extended II at work crapped out.
Well, I thought it did. It started when hitting the space bar wouldn’t wake my MacBook Pro up while it was in clamshell mode.
The Magic Mouse woke the machine up, but then I noticed it. I could only type in caps.1
Toggling the Caps Lock key on and off made no difference. Neither did unplugging and replugging the iMate didn’t work. Rebooting didn’t work.
Ben Brooks called me a keyboard snob this morning. While he meant it as a compliment, he’s right. I’m a snob when it comes to my keyboards. It’s a gift … and a curse.1
I’ve been watching Monk on Netflix. Obviously, its filtering into my brain. ↩︎
Now, you can support publishers automatically from Instapaper: simply link your Readability account in Instapaper’s Account screen. Instapaper will notify Readability whenever you save articles, and they’ll be included in the publisher calculations for your Readability account.
You’ll be directly supporting the sites that you save to Instapaper, automatically.
You can contribute whatever you want, starting at $5 per month. What are you waiting for?
I just linked mine — it took about 15 seconds. This lets me continue to use Instapaper,1 and support the sites I love. This is great news.
Update: It seems that Robert Handrow was a genius back in June.
Dan Pfeiffer at the White House:
As valuable as the internet can be in helping to spread information, most people know that you can’t believe everything you read, and they should check the source before relaying every alarming story they read. One such story is going around the internet over the past two days claiming that the Obama Administration is somehow responsible for the rolling blackouts in Texas that have caused terrible hardship for so many Texans. The source is questionable and the story is unquestionably false.
The hospital has posted a great little slideshow of how the campus has changed over the years.
Editors’ Note: This is the first interview in my new “Writers I Read” series.
Joshua Schnell is the Editor-n-Chief of Macgasm, a Mac-centric blog based in Ottawa. I currently moonlight as the Senior Contributing Editor for Macgasm, and have enjoyed working with Josh closely on the site. However, I’ve read Macgasm for years, enjoying Josh’s writing style and no-nonsense attitude towards some of the silliness in which other Mac sites partake. Stephen: Josh, thanks for being agreed to be interviewed. I know you keep busy running your Mac-centric news site, Macgasm. It’s been in my RSS reader for a long time. What got you started in the tech writing world? Joshua: It was probably a little bit of a personal perfect storm. I was pretty enamored with ZDTV and TechTV growing up. Around the time that G4 started bastardizing the network, I began to lose interest in their programming, and I found myself trying to keep up with the original TechTV personalities online. It’s kind of weird, but once TechTV collapsed, it kind of left a technology void to be filled.
Starting tomorrow, I’ll be sharing some interviews with some of my favorite writers on the web. My goal with these interviews is to peak behind the HTML and get to know the humans whose words I enjoy.
I’ve got several great writers onboard, and can’t wait to share our conversations. Stay tuned — the first one drops tomorrow.
