January 2011
9 posts
Catalogs Still Work, Sometimes
I received a Lands’ End catalog yesterday. I normally take these catalogs from the mailbox and deposit them directly into the recycling bin, but this time I took a few minutes to look through it while cooking dinner.
And, you know, it worked on me. As I leafed through the selection of men’s clothes my mind drifted to buying more things from them; by today I was thinking that it might...
One Month with Android
I was planning to write a detailed review of my Android experience, but in lieu of that I’ll summarize: too many compromises, not enough satisfaction.
Pinching on Reeder for iPad
One thing I see both as a blessing and a curse with the iPad is that affordances are mostly gone in the interface. Sometimes I just try stuff to see what happens, and sometimes the results are good.
I use Reeder for RSS (so should you) and discovered a very handy feature: pinching and expanding works in a few ways.
In an article, expanding will get the full article via Readability, even if the...
Moving Pages Documents from Mac to iPad: A Comedy...
I use Pages on my Mac (though I’m going to give Ommwriter a shot) and, for instances when print presentation matters, Pages on my iPad. A few nights ago I was writing stuff on Mac Pages and thought I’d keep all my bases covered by moving or copying them to my iPad, where I could open them with Pages.
This was surprisingly awkward. Here are the steps I took.
First, note that iTunes...
The Daily Ping is 11! →
I’m very proud to announce that The Daily Ping turns 11 years old today! My good friend Ryan MacMichael and I have written 4,016 Pings in that time period - and, awesomely, this is only the fourth aesthetic design for the site.
We upgraded to WordPress, too, so when it’s all-new, we mean it! Except for the content. That’s pretty old.
It’s been an honor working with Ryan...
Neven Mrgan's tumbl: Redundant data in the Weather... →
mrgan:
If you’re a serious weather junkie, you might use a special weather app to get your daily klimate kick. And if you’re Edward Tufte, you might think the iPhone weather app is “a bit thin”. Me, I don’t mind it - it’s a nice, big dashboard view of the weather features I care most about.
But here’s…
Neven brings up a good point: having information on yesterday’s weather is a...
A Few Form Conventions That Must Die in 2011
If your site has them, forms make or break your experience. One lousy validator or error message can disturb the entire process. There are a few standards I, like you, have dealt with long enough. It’s 2011; let’s make these right.
- Requiring slashes on dates (1/2/11).
- Requiring leading zeroes ever on anything (01/02/11).
- Requiring dashes and/or parentheses in US phone number...
First Thoughts on Android
Last week I took possession of a Samsung Intercept. It is not the fastest, most glamorous Android phone on the market but it has one clear advantage: it’s available on Virgin Mobile’s prepaid service, and the monthly cost with unlimited data is $25. Prepaid has been my mobile phone service of choice for a few years now; an iPhone is likely in the future, but not for a couple of...