Jason Clarke

How Apple could fix iMessage notifications across devices

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 19:20:05 -0800

Apple recently released a beta version of Messages for OS X, as part of the unveiling of the preview of Mountain Lion. While I think most people are happy to have the ability to send iMessage messages from their computer to their contacts that are on phones or iPads, one universal complaint I’ve heard is that if you have multiple devices with Messages on them, for example a Mac, an iPhone, and an iPad, you get notifications of incoming messages on all of them. For. Every. Incoming. Message.

Apple does go so far as to mark messages read on the other devices once they’re read on one device, but it’s much harder to solve the notification problem since there’s no reliable way to know which device the user happens to be using.

But I have a proposal that I think would help the situation a lot.

What if iMessage (the service) tracked the last device the user used, and delivered any incoming messages to it first. Then, if after a 10 or 15 second delay the message had not been read, the message gets delivered to all of the user’s other iMessage devices.

In practice this would mean that new messages would most often get delivered to all devices, but once a conversation started on a given device, the extra notifications on the other devices would stop. Further, the user could still feel confident walking away from one device and carrying on the conversation on another device, with the worst-case scenario being that a single message could be delayed by at most 15 seconds at the time of the device switch.

WorldWideWeb wide-area hypertext app available - comp.sys.next.announce | Google Groups

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:21:06 -0800

WorldWideWeb wide-area hypertext app available - comp.sys.next.announce | Google Groups:

This is is the newsgroup posting announcing the invention of the www, or “world wide web”. The internet already existed in terms of a network of computers, but this was the invention of the concept of publishing text, then rich text, then pictures with text, then formatted pages that became what we now know as the web.

This project is experimental and of course comes without any warranty whatsoever. However, it could start a revolution in information access.

Uh, no shit.

Hard to believe I was going into grade 11 when this happened.

[via Horace Dediu]

“It’s A Brick” – Tesla Motors’ Devastating Design Problem

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:20:05 -0800

“It’s A Brick” – Tesla Motors’ Devastating Design Problem:

After reading this article from theunderstatement.com, my desire to own a Tesla Roadster went from 100 to 0 in 10 seconds flat:

Tesla Motors’ lineup of all-electric vehicles — its existing Roadster, almost certainly its impending Model S, and possibly its future Model X — apparently suffer from a severe limitation that can largely destroy the value of the vehicle. If the battery is ever totally discharged, the owner is left with what Tesla describes as a “brick”: a completely immobile vehicle that cannot be started or even pushed down the street. The only known remedy is for the owner to pay Tesla approximately $40,000 to replace the entire battery. Unlike practically every other modern car problem, neither Tesla’s warranty nor typical car insurance policies provide any protection from this major financial loss.

How to control Twitter so it doesn't control you

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:41:05 -0800

There are many ways to use Twitter, and I’m not about to tell you that my way is the only way, or even the best way. But I have refined my usage and feel pretty confident that it’s an efficient way to use the service, particular if you enjoy reading tweets as much or more than writing them.

My particular workflow prioritizes a few elements. If your priorities align with mine, then I think you’ll get quite a bit of value out of this post.

I’m interested in far more accounts than I can reasonably keep current on
Some of the accounts I follow post timely information that I want to see ASAP
For the accounts I follow that are higher-priority, I want to make sure I don’t miss any updates

Most Twitter users use the “stream of tweets” approach, that is to say that they dip into it here and there and read a few tweets, but make no effort to read all the tweets from any particular user as it’s just too overwhelming to try to do so. In fact, I think that’s how Twitter the company wants their users to use the service.

The benefit of the stream approach is simplicity: simply follow interesting Twitter accounts. The downside is a lack of control.

If—like me—you want to exert more control over your Twitter experience, the good news is that the tools to do so exist, and they’re really quite good. And don’t worry, it’s not really all that complicated.

What you’ll need

You’re going to need a few things to set this up properly. Basically, we’re going to make use of Twitter Lists, a free service called Tweet Marker, and some great Twitter clients that make good use of both of those things.

Twitter Lists

This is arguably the hardest step, which is that you’re going to need to think about the various Twitter accounts that you follow, and determine some high-level categories that you can group them into, then create Twitter Lists for those groupings. Don’t go crazy here, but do try to group them logically. Here are my groupings, for example:

Apps
Funny
General
Probation

Apps is for following the accounts of apps and services that I use, so that I get timely information when they release updates or new information about the product. Funny is for humorous accounts that I follow—for me this is a bit like the Sunday comics; light reading for when I feel like being amused. General is for accounts I follow that I’m interested in, but don’t care if I happen to miss some of their tweets. And Probation is for accounts that I think I might be interested in, but I’m not yet sure about.

Tweetbe.at

So how do you move everything around? Though Twitter doesn’t offer any mass-editing tools for managing the accounts you follow, there’s a 3rd-party website called Tweetbe.at that is pretty powerful, and can make the act of reorganizing your Twitter follows pretty painless.

First, you need to go to https://twitter.com/#!/yourusername/lists to make your lists (replace “yourusername” with your actual user name). I prefer to use private lists, but whether you want other people to be able to browse your lists is up to you. Once the lists have been created, head right over to Tweetbe.at.

Once you connect Tweetbe.at with you Twitter account, it will show you a list of the accounts you currently follow, which they call your “Following” list. From there, it’s a simple matter to go through and check the box beside the names of accounts that you’d like to move into lists, then click the “Add or Remove From Lists” button, and do select the list name that you’d like to add them to. Wait a few moments, and it will report back that it has completed the action. Then in the blue top bar, click Lists, then the name of the list you just added the accounts to, then click the Refresh button on the top right of the page. If the account names you added to this list successfully show up, you are now safe to select them all and click the Unfollow button so that they no longer show up in your main Twitter feed.

Once this is complete, you’re all set to read the Twitter accounts you follow grouped as you’ve categorized them, simply by reading the lists you’ve set up.

Tweet Marker

We’re going to switch gears for a second here, but bear with me.

Tweet Marker is a web service that adds a form of place-marking to Twitter. Basically, if you have a Twitter client that supports it, you can turn on the Tweet Marker feature, and it will automatically mark your position in your Twitter feed any time you stop reading. But what’s even cooler than that is that when you start reading your feed again—from any client (on any device) that supports Tweet Marker—you will automatically jump right to where you left off. It’s almost magical, and it makes staying on top of every post easily doable, provided you’re following a reasonable number of accounts.

Tweet Marker also works in Twitter Lists, so you can safely ignore your “Funny” list for a few days, then sit down and catch up on all the hilarity when you have time. Or you can treat your lists as streams and dip into them occasionally, without feeling the pressure to read everything.

Twitter clients that support lists and Tweet Marker

For all of this to work well, you need a Twitter client that has both Tweet Marker support, and solid Twitter Lists support. Here are my favourites in descending order of preference. All of them can do the trick, but the ones at the top of each list do it most elegantly, in my opinion. There are others listed at Tweet Marker, but if I haven’t listed them it’s either because I haven’t tried them, or I tried them and found their functionality lacking in some way.

iPhone

iPad

Mac

Web

WebMarker

Noticeably absent from this list are any of the official Twitter apps. It’s unlikely that they will add support for a 3rd party service like Tweet Marker. Further, with the departure of Loren Brichter (the original developer behind Tweetie, which was purchased and became the official iPhone Twitter app), Twitter has already made some changes to the iPhone Twitter that have made it uglier and less elegant, so much so that they just released another new version to try to fix it up a bit. In my opinion you’re better off finding a Twitter client by a good 3rd party developer that is dedicated to serving their user’s needs rather than the needs of the venture capitalists looking to recover their investment.

How to add a list of categories or tags to your Tumblr sidebar

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 22:47:05 -0800

Tumblr is a fantastic platform for building a quick blog, but it lacks some of the organizational features of more full-featured blog engines. In particular, it lacks the ability to categorize posts. The best you can do is add tags to them, but then Tumblr doesn’t make it easy to view all the posts with a given tag. No sidebar list is generated.

If you’d like to add a list of the tags you’ve used to your sidebar, you can use the Tumblr Tag Clouds tool to do so.

By default, it generates a regular tag cloud, which is a squarish block of your tag words in varying sizes depending on how often you’ve used them. The default code looks like this:

To make it look like a category list in my theme, I modified it in the following way:

Categories

All I’ve done here is add the word “Categories” above it, since I think most users think of post groupings as categories of posts, and that’s how I plan to use them. Then below, I set the following properties:

css=custom (this makes it use your blog’s formatting)

order=frequency (since I’m not using size to show how many posts are in a category, I want the most frequently used ones at the top)

minsize=80 and maxsize=80 (this keeps all of them the same size, and smaller than the Categories heading)

I was worried that the plugin would try to fit as many tags on a line as it can, but I think the custom css command is making it put each one on its own line – either that, or it’s because my sidebar is so narrow.

I took the modified code above, and pasted in at the bottom of the Description field in my blog’s customization page, and that’s all that was necessary to add a list of post “categories” to the sidebar of my Tumblr site.

Your mileage may vary. Good luck.

It's time for Google to DuckDuckGo

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 11:05:05 -0800

If you’re getting more and more uncomfortable with Google, like I am, let me suggest giving DuckDuckGo a try for your searching needs.

Why am I getting uncomfortable with Google? Firstly, they’re playing around with their privacy policy. While I don’t necessarily believe that the latest change is a bad one, what I don’t like is when companies move the goalposts on its users, particularly when it comes to something as important as privacy.

But far worse, in my opinion, is that Google is messing with their search results. Specifically, they’ve started pushing Google+ results that are not only unwanted, but inferior to other information that is available on the web. Google used to be able delivering the best search results. Now it’s about using any means necessary to push its way into the social realm that Facebook and Twitter dominate.

DuckDuckGo, on the other hand, is purely about serving up great search results. You know, a lot like Google used to be, back when it unseated AltaVista as the dominant search engine online.

Remember AltaVista?

Path’s new Terms of Service puts the lie to CEO’s apology | ExtremeTech

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:30:05 -0800
Path’s new Terms of Service puts the lie to CEO’s apology | ExtremeTech:
How a social network with trust issues like Path has could have the following clause in their terms of service is beyond me:

Any changes or modification will be effective immediately upon posting of the revisions on our site, and you waive any right you may have to receive specific notice of such changes or modifications.

My budding curiosity about Path is now completely extinguished.

Do you know who has access to your email (and what they're doing with it)?

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:25:00 -0800
Do you know who has access to your email (and what they're doing with it)?:
I read the following line in this article at Mashable, and it gave me pause:

Baydin recently extracted data from five million emails its users handled — either using the company’s “email game” or scheduled for later via Boomerang.

The article is about a study Baydin did on the effectiveness of various words in email subject lines. But to do this study, they analyzed the text in all the email they are handling through their various email services. Boomerang, referenced above, is an add-on service to Gmail that allows users to “snooze” messages out of their inbox and have them return at a later time.

While I’m sure users are explicitly giving Baydin the right to access their email to enable this service, I doubt they are expecting them to collect statistics on the content of their emails.

Just because it’s possible to do so and technically within their rights doesn’t make it the right thing to do. I think Baydin made an error in judgement here.

IBM Research study finds organizing email into folders wastes time, just search instead

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:12:00 -0800
IBM Research study finds organizing email into folders wastes time, just search instead:
In productivity circles this has become pretty much accepted wisdom, but it’s great to see a research paper back up the anecdotal evidence.

[via Ben Brooks]

The one you feed

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:30:06 -0800
The one you feed:
Tim Johnson, responding to a request on Quora for parables:

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”

He continued, “The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Encouraging Things to Say to Kids « Parenting From Scratch

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:45:06 -0800
Encouraging Things to Say to Kids « Parenting From Scratch:

Here is a list of encouraging phrases to say to kids. Some of these examples fit many kinds of scenarios, and others are responses I’ve said to my kids about something specific that happened. I try to say these kinds of things daily, and, once I understood what makes a response encouraging (as opposed to praising, belittling, fixing, etc.), it’s actually not very difficult to fit them into conversation.

Every day my kids have opportunities to feel proud and to want me to encourage them even further. But rather than say, “Good job, that makes me so happy,” I try to find a way to focus it on their efforts. In short, encouraging statements keep the task/ action/ problem/ accomplishment about the child, not about the parent.

Hard, but so worthwhile.

Motorcycle vs. Car Drift Battle 2 (by iconmotosports) Fun.

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 20:30:05 -0800

Motorcycle vs. Car Drift Battle 2 (by iconmotosports)

Fun.

Fotoshop by Adobé (by Jesse Rosten)

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:49:06 -0800

Fotoshop by Adobé (by Jesse Rosten)

Changing Vancouver is a fantastic site that takes historical...

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 15:04:17 -0800

Changing Vancouver is a fantastic site that takes historical photos and recreates them now, then shows the results side-by-side. Fascinating for anyone that has spent time in our beautiful city.

(via Photo by Glen_Trainor) Me in Minnesota two weeks ago....

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 20:33:05 -0800

(via Photo by Glen_Trainor)

Me in Minnesota two weeks ago. Wishing for some of that Minnesota snow before Christmas here in Vancouver.

Best fails of 2011 || TNL (by TwisterNederland8) Some of these...

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:59:05 -0800

Best fails of 2011 || TNL (by TwisterNederland8)

Some of these are hard to watch, but others are hysterical.

What happened to Lego?

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:05:00 -0800
What happened to Lego?:
Dan Sinker:

The reality is that the unisex, open-ended, building and imaginative creation sets that my peers normally associate with Lego are gone. Look at this ad:

That ad is remarkable for two reasons: First, it presents Legos as a playset where you can just make stuff, and it revels in it. But even more remarkable is that it features a girl holding Legos. I seriously can not remember the last time I saw a Lego marketing image of a girl holding their product.

I expected to have a HUGE Lego collection with—I mean for—my kids when I became a father. But the Lego that I knew as a kid seems nowhere to be found. The current-day sets are all about providing the imagination for you instead of enabling you to explore your own imagination.

It’s a crying shame.

The Failed Promise of ‘The Verge’ — The Brooks Review

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:52:05 -0800
The Failed Promise of ‘The Verge’ — The Brooks Review:
The truth hurts.

It’s true that The Verge seems to be lacking a voice. Those guys were never influenced by advertisers back when they were at Engadget, so I can’t imagine it happening now. It sure reads like they’re afraid to piss anyone off, though.

Ben just won me back as a reader with this piece.

The simple truth that eludes most of us, expressed in 44...

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 19:08:05 -0800

The simple truth that eludes most of us, expressed in 44 seconds.

Steve Jobs’ Vision of the World (by gocarlo)

American Drink: Back to School Special

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 20:36:00 -0800
American Drink: Back to School Special:
This one accidentally sat in my drafts for a couple of months, so it’s not quite as timely as it otherwise would have been. It’s still pretty funny though.

americandrink:

At the end of a busy school day, kids need some love from a relaxed, supportive parent. At the end of a busy work day, some of us need a little help to become that parent. Here’s what to do when the closest mixer is a juice box.

Playground Vacation

1 box tropical fruit juice
2 oz. rum
…