I have an intense amount of love for Alfonso Cuarón’s film, “Children of Men”.  The single-shot opening scene alone is so intense, so fully realized, so seemingly real, that it’s hard not to get emotionally involved with the rest of the story. And trust me, you will.  It’s a powerhouse of a film.

Since “Children of Men” (a 2006 film), I’ve been waiting patiently for his next feature film, “Gravity”, and yesterday the first teaser trailer for it dropped. It sure looks like more of the same from him.  Near-futuristic, emotional “what  if?”  themes, over-layed on top of beautifully shot visuals.  I got chills from it. And those last couple of seconds… (gulp!)

Here’s the trailer. And yeah, it’s now officially on my short list…

www.youtube.com/watch

A great idea...

When Apple announced Passbook with iOS6 I, like quite a few iOS enthusiasts, was very intrigued.

The idea of going to a concert and, when I got to the venue, having my tickets show up on my lock screen a swipe away from being scannable at the door, was not only an incredible concept, but it was also an amazing convenience!

Then when I saw the companies involved, companies like Ticketmaster and Eventbrite, Fandango, major Airlines, Target and even REI… I suddenly had this wonderful feeling that all of that fishing around in my wallet that I do at the register or at a venue entrance, would finally be done with! It was a nice thought!

So what happened?

Well, I don't go to too many Ticketmaster-based shows (and my experience so far, a lot of Ticketmaster venues don't even support scanning tickets on phone screens anyways). I like seeing movies in independently owned theaters. I rarely shop at Target. REI's implementation is pretty weak (it only displays my member card number), and my main Airline (for better or worse, US Airways), has somewhat of a "if you blink, you'll miss it" integration of Passbook. So when I do occasionally fly, I completely overlook it.

With the exception of one concert that had tickets setup through Eventbrite (which worked quite well by the way), I had yet to have that quintessential Passbook experience: where several tasks in one outing were completely handled without me having to unlock my phone or print something out on paper.

Not until this last weekend that is. :)

The Situation…

I was getting away for the weekend, for a self-imposed writing retreat in Charlotte. I booked a flat in the downtown area through AirBnB (I'm a HUGE fan of the service) and found the fares for a round trip ticket from Durham on Amtrak to be surprisingly cheap. I knew AirBnB had Passbook integration but I was honestly surprised when I found that Amtrak did too!

Two train tickets, one accommodation reservation and just like that: I finally had my test case!

The game was afoot! :)

I added both train tickets and my AirBnB reservation to Passbook a week prior and went on with life until the weekend came for me to leave.

My expectations were fairly basic. I wanted to arrive at the train station in Durham (and Charlotte on the way home), get a notification, swipe the notification on my lock screen, have the conductor scan the displayed ticket, and board the train. Upon arrival to where I was staying, I wanted another notification to pop up when I got close to the address and have all of my reservation info readily accessible, with clickable phone numbers and addresses (postal and electronic).

In fairness, I already knew that the info I needed for where I was staying would be displayed on the AirBnB Passbook card. But what I didn’t know, was if it would show up on the lock screen automatically when I got close to the address.

That all said, how did it work?

Amazingly well! The day of my Amtrak departure, as the time got close, a notification came up telling me the time that my train was supposed to leave. Not only that, it also told me that the train station I was leaving from was nearby (info I already knew, but still)!

When the train got to the station and the conductor started asking for tickets, I swiped the notification on my lock screen and there was my ticket, with my name, order number, departure/arrival time and a scannable bar code that worked perfectly with their scanners. I showed the conductor my phone, he scanned my lock screen and I hopped aboard. It was that easy! No questions were asked and many other passengers had the exact same experience.

Next up? My arrival at my accommodations for the weekend.

The place I was staying at was within walking distance from the train station in Charlotte, so I hoofed it. As I got within a half a mile from the address (give or take), I took my iPhone out and, lo and behold, there was the AirBnB reservation notification on my lock screen! When I got to the location, I swiped right on the notification and it instantly gave me my reservation info, including phone numbers to reach the owner and instructions on how to check in and check out. After I settled in, I texted the owner as a courtesy to let him know that I arrived (and on the day I left), but other than that, I never spoke to, or saw him.

Honestly, it couldn’t have worked better! The train ride back to Durham worked just as well as the train ride to Charlotte: without a single hitch.

Such Potential…

The idea behind Passbook is an experience that is totally in Apple's wheelhouse. They have always thrived on making those mundane, "everyday life" experiences that we simply put up with, easier and better.

With a such a great Passbook experience under my belt, I was instantly left wondering why it had taken me this long to experience it (hard to believe it’s been 8 months since iOS 6 was released into the wild). Though I am sure there are totally rational reasons why so little companies have added Passbook integration to their respective apps, I do think it’s a shame and a total missed opportunity. Because these two companies did, I have even more love for AirBnB’s service and I absolutely look forward to riding Amtrak again. For the first time ever, I went on a trip away from home and didn’t have print a single sheet of paper before I left. I mean, how cool is that?

Until more adoption takes place, I guess we’ll just have to take these great and ultra-convenient moments when we can get them.

If anything, I just wanted to share my experience with you all, so that you know these kinds of textbook “Apple moments” do exist. That they don’t just look cool in the commercials.

What do you think? Have any of you had good experiences with Passbook? Let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear about them!

Scapple is a mind-mapping desktop client created by the geniuses at Literature and Latte, the same folks who are the masterminds behind my go-to, long form word processing program, Scrivener.

I had every intention of writing what will probably be a ridiculously long review of Scrivener (I’ve literally written tens of thousands of words in it after all) before I even mentioned Scapple. But then Literature and Latte went ahead and announced today on their Twitter feed that they were taking Scapple out of beta next week.

So, naturally, I thought I would help spread the good word.

What it does:

At its core, Scapple exceeds most at being very easy to use. You double-click anywhere in the window to create text objects (blocks or “bubbles” of text, images, etc…), and then you drag these text objects on top of each other to link them together with a dotted (or solid, or arrowed) line.

Seriously, that’s it.

Of course if you dig a little, you’ll find that there is way more that you can do with this powerhouse of an app! But I love, love, LOVE the fact that you can launch it and, without a tutorial, be making very quick and versatile mind-maps of anything in under 5 minutes!

I’ve used Scapple for mapping out chapters in novels I’ve written, making diagrams of floor plans, any kind of hierarchy I can think of and, with its ability to export to PDF, I’ve even used it professionally in my day-to-day!

Just Get it...

Like Scrivener, its strength lies in its core simplicity. If you need it for anything beyond that, the tools are there, patiently waiting. For that aspect alone, I give it my highest recommendation.

Next week the finished version will be available for purchase (L and L says it will be under $15) on the Mac, so go out and support it folks. You won’t be let down. I promise!

Here’s the link to the beta download if you want to give it a try before the official 1.0 release!

UPDATE - Download links:

• The official 1.0 release can now be found on their site right here! 
• If the Mac App Store is more your speed, you can find the link to that version here. (though you'll most certainly get updates to the app much quicker if you purchase the version directly from Literature and Latte's site.)

And, as an added bonus, they also released a video tutorial on the basics (and some more advanced stuff) of what Scapple can do. So if you need further incentive, check out the embed below: [www.youtube.com/watch](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvP6c7AFx_c)

Last August, my wife and I decided to downsize our home situation moving from a 1500 square foot home, into a 500 square foot studio apartment.

That’s right… we moved into a home that was a third the size of what we were used to.

The reasoning behind this decision is worthy of another post entirely, but one of the results of this move was the act of us digitizing our entertainment, as well attaining a paperless lifestyle.

It certainly wasn’t easy and like all expected challenges in my/our life, I had to have a plan of attack from the outset. First and foremost we needed get rid of a lot of stuff! Physical CD’s, DVD’s and books take up a lot of space in your home (whether you notice it or not) and our new tiny apartment simply wasn’t going to have the room to house everything we collected over the years. So it didn’t take long before I decided that anything that could be transferred to a hard drive or cloud-based storage, would be.

Sounds simple enough right? It is actually. But, another problem reared its ugly head. After ripping and selling all of our music and DVD’s over the years, I knew immediately that this process would take time, and lots of it.

The good news though? It’s totally worth it. The even better news? There are a lot of ingenious services out there that will help make the process much, much easier. So I thought I’d share my findings with you all.

Entertainment…

With the advent of cloud-based services like iTunes Match and the low price points of external storage nowadays, it’s simple (and relatively cheap) to come up with digital backups of your entire entertainment library. I ended up subscribing to iTunes Match, transferring my entire music library there and buying a USB hard-drive cradle like this one for everything that Match wouldn’t cater to. By the way, if you have a lot of old hard drives laying around, this cradle is awesome, as it caters to both desktop and laptop drives.

On the software end, to rip our CD’s I’d used iTunes over the years and for the DVD’s, I used RipIt. Both apps are incredibly easy to use and I never ran into copywrite issues ripping the DVD’s either. Please note that the time this takes has EVERYTHING to do with the speed of your CD/DVD drive. I think collectively, I was at it for about a week, just evenings though. It’s boring “work” and you should find something to do between rips. As I mentioned, we were moving so I had plenty to do.

Once everything was ripped, I sold all of the physical copies on Craig’s List or gave them to friends and family. And no, that wasn’t easy.

The Dead Tree Stuff…

So, that obstacle behind me, I moved on to everything else. It didn’t take long at all to realize that digitizing your music and movie collection is dead simple compared to digitizing all of the paper that’s been in your life.

Next I dealt with the books.  The books weren’t that big of a deal. We basically kept our treasured copies (the ones you read more than once, or the ones that changed your life) and got rid of, or sold, the ones that were literally collecting dust. Then, after you have done that bit of curation, you look at the remaining stuff and see if it’s worth buying their e-book counterparts. It’s surprising how this simple process whittles down the bulk of your book collection. I am not going to lie, if you love books, this process is really hard to go through. Prepare yourself and steel your resolve. You can do it!

In the end, we sold the bulk of our book collection to used book stores around the area, but another great find was donating the rest to charity programs that routed your books to other countries or even prisons. If you have books after this process (I had an old HTML 3 book the no one wanted, can’t blame them either), at the very worst you should be able to recycle whatever is left.

Once the books were gone, we felt like we were really making progress! The house we were selling suddenly seemed downright cavernous! We were well on our way! But then we started opening our closets and saw all the white file boxes with Sharpie-scrawled years on them.

The Rest…

What was in these boxes were all of the documents we’d collected over the years. It was either important stuff (like tax info) or things that we thought we might need in a pinch (like service manuals for your vacuum). There was a lot of crap too that we simply didn’t need at all: it would all have to get recycled.

When it was all there, sitting out in front of us, it was intimidating thinking about everything we were going to have to do to make this work. But you start simple and go from there. We started the process by going through everything quickly, separating everything into two basic piles: the stuff we planned on keeping and the stuff we were going to shred and recycle. After that was done, it seemed a little more manageable which was great psychological booster. I went ahead shredded everything we were going to recycle and brought it in bags to the local recycling center. We actually used some of it for packing material too!

At this point in the process, we had gotten rid of about 60% of it all. It was time to digitize the rest!

How We Did It

First things first: move to paperless billing. Log into the respective site of any of your monthly bills, or give them a call and make that switch. Almost every service offers it now.  Just bite the bullet and make the change, I think you’ll find the adjustment period very short. :)

You also need to realize that you are not the first person who has done this. Today, there are TONS of resources out there. But if I had offer one to you? I’d recommend this: “Paperless Field Guide” by David Sparks.

This book is invaluable in breaking down the process of creating a paperless, workflow-based system in your life that is not only space-saving (physically and digitally), but is also immensely useful and reliable going forward. Sparks offers great hardware and software suggestions and his writing and overall approach to the subject matter is very accessible and not overwhelming in the slightest. He also offers excellent examples and though I found Sparks’ personal workflow system a bit overkill for me (he’s a lawyer, so it kind of needs to be), I ended up with my own, much simpler workflow; borrowing a lot of best practices from the book and adapting it to my life.

That’s what is so great about this book! It isn’t a blue print for what you need to do, it’s merely a guide.

Here is my paperless workflow, in a very barebones format:

1. Find, or receive, a piece of information that’s worth keeping forever.
2. Scan this document somehow (more on this below) into a PDF document, preferably with OCR (again, more on that below).
3. Move this document into a predefined folder structure that’s easy to navigate through, with a predefined title structure. I went with “year_date_description” (i.e. “2013_0410_utility_bill”).
4. Verify everything saved properly and get on with your life.

Sounds simple right? Well, it is, but not until you get a hold of the right tools.

What We Ended Up Using…

A Document Scanner of Some Kind: This is pretty crucial and, luckily, there are a TON of options out there. We bought an HP Scanner/Printer combo a long time ago for $50, so we used that. It doesn’t have to scan spectacularly, but it definitely should scan documents so that they are highly legible. The faster it scans, the more time you will save.

PDFScanner: This software works incredibly well with any scanner you plug into your Mac and, compared to it’s competition, it is very low-priced at just shy of $15. Just turn your scanner on, launch “PDFScanner”, click the “Scan” button”. That’s it! It will take your paper document and create a PDF out of it in no time.

Other things this software can do that are pretty invaluable are OCR - Optical Character Recognition as well as preset naming conventions (if you want the date it was scanned, inserted in front of the title every time you scan a document for instance). Both of these features are key, if you are trying to organize your documents so that they are easily searchable. “PDFScanner” can also mimic duplex printing as well, which is nice when you have a multi-page document that you want to transfer into one multi-page PDF document.

I was initially skeptical at the price, and while it’s more expensive counterparts can in fact do more, this software catered to my needs/paperless workflow nicely! I used it to scan literally everything we had left on file (read: 100’s of documents).

Dropbox: There are a ton of online cloud storage solutions out there. I use Dropbox because it’s flexible and I am already familiar with how it works. If you go with another one, make sure the service you choose supports folder structures. Most of them do nowadays, but I thought I’d throw that out there. PDF’s don’t take up much space, so I have been working with a free Dropbox account at the moment. I haven’t even come close to my 5gig limit, you/I can always pay for more storage if you run out.

JotNotPro: Mentioned in the “Paperless: Field Guide”, this is my mobile “Plan B”, for when I am not going to be near my home scanner anytime soon, or if I am just being plain old lazy. It’s an iOS app that you use to snap a picture of your document and then it automatically turns the pic into a pdf for you to send where ever you’d like. You can also link this app to automatically upload to a location on Dropbox as well, which made it no-brainer for me.

There’s a free version of this app that might suit you just fine, but I ponied up a couple of bucks for the Pro version. It provides extra functionality and it’s just a great app, so I wanted to support the developers.

Evernote: I’ve mentioned Evernote several times on this site. No bones, I love it. But as far as my paperless workflow is concerned, I use this only to file non-paper based things, like prescription and insurance cards, my license, my passport… you know, the important stuff that you need to literally have at your fingertips, tagged and in full color.

A lot of people use Evernote as their complete paperless eco-system/workflow. I didn’t only because I use Evernote for a lot of other digital-memory-based systems in my life and didn’t want my important/crucial documents getting buried in all of that. If this fits the bill for you though, go for it. You can’t beat free and their mobile apps are second to none.

Worth the Time and the Effort.

Whether your life necessitates it or not, digitizing your entertainment and important life documents, as time-consuming as it was initially, was an incredibly smart move for us. I no longer have to drag boxes out and leaf through a ton of folders to find my insurance info, past salary amounts or my tax info from five years ago. Now that it’s organized and searchable, I can find pretty much anything in a matter of minutes (at home, or on my phone even). That’s pretty incredible when you think about it!

Developing a good workflow makes this task WAY less arduous and having the right tools (hardware and software) can automate scanning and filing into a process that takes less than ten minutes out of your day.

The minute you need it and you see, firsthand, how much your hard work paid off?  I tell you, it really is a thing of beauty. And seeing all of that extra closet space you just regained?

Well, that’s pretty awesome too! :)

As many of you might’ve heard in the last few weeks: Google’s “Google Reader” service is going bye-bye. .

But that doesn’t mean that RSS is going with it.

While I am not terribly surprised in this day and age by how many people have no idea what RSS actually is, I am very surprised by the amount of folks who think that RSS, as a technology, is synonymous with Google’s Reader service.

This notion couldn’t be further from the truth!

As it turns out, our valued RSS feeds are very much alive and well.  It’s just the medium that we all (myself included) chose to read all of these feeds in, that is going away.

So now all we have to do is choose an alternative.

Since I am in the same dilemma that many of you are in, I thought it’d be a good service to show the services I’ve been thinking of transitioning to. Here they are in no particular order of importance:

• Feedly.com - These guys' membership EXPLODED after Google's announcement. Their service will take care of your mobile RSS fix, with apps on the all major mobile platforms. Desktop and laptops will have to live with the web client but from what I've seen, that experience is clean and pleasant to look at.
• Newsblur is a bit more hardcore for RSS wranglers, but the added functionality comes at a price ($2 a month for anyone with more than 64 feeds) and, worse, they are no longer accepting free accounts for folks with less (a restriction that is, for now anyways, temporary). If you are willing to pony up the cash though, they offer a lot of great functionality that many other web-based services don't, like nested folder structures for folks who like to organize their feeds, feed refreshes every minute, built in keyboard shortcuts and native mobile apps for both iOS and Android. Not bad!
• UPDATE 06/20/2013: Black Pixel just launched the public beta of NNW 4.0. To check it out, click here to download.  -  For a Mac user, NetNewsWire is a great alternative. Die hard fans got a good shot of adrenaline after Google's news dropped. The company that bought NNW, Black Pixel went somewhat dormant after their purchase years ago, but now with a major competitor out of the way they are gearing back up to fill that gap.  Having used NetNewsWire on my Mac and iOS (iPhone and iPad) platforms in the past, I am very comfortable in saying that, as an application, it's a solid product! But it's missing a very crucial bit of functionality still: feed sync between desktop and mobile platforms. This was the main reason I ditched their product years ago and it's still the reason why I hesitate to go back. Still, they are making a renewed commitment to bringing reliable sync to their platform, so it may be worth jumping back in. If feed sync isn't important to you at all, I can heartily recommend this service without hesitation.
• Also in the Apple-only arena is Reeder which, up until now, has been pretty much solely catering to the Google Reader platform. The developer of the app Silvio Rizzi, has now come forward and made commitments to a multitude of feed alternatives to quell his rabid fanbase (both of which my partner in crime and I are a part of). I have the utmost trust in Rizzi's skills. Hands down, if you are an iOS/OSX fan, the attention to detail that he puts into is native apps is far and away the best RSS experience I've experienced to date.  If he delivers on his promises (and I have no reason to believe he won't) we Mac users will be well cared for.
• Another paid web-based client that is getting some attention is feedbin. Like Newsblur, Feedbin also charges $2 a month, but it's layout is super clean, it's got tagging for organization, lots of import options and claims of being super speedy in its feed delivery! I haven't used it personally, but a lot of developers I admire are getting behind them.
• The last option I will offer is from the folks at FeedAFever. Fever got a good amount of attention for its novel approach at serving up your RSS info.  Some of the attention was good, and some of it was a bit mixed. Still, I wanted to offer it up as an alternative because it's always worth checking out the folks who are trying to do something different with a service you and I use every single day.
• UPDATE 03/28/13 - A great recommendation from wordshepherd.com - The Old Reader: http://www.theoldreader.com -  "It looks and acts very much like Google Reader pre-Google+, before they nuked their sharing tools. So you can follow your friends’ shared items, and comment on them, all in a self-contained, curated ecosystem." - haven't checked this one out yet, but I certainly appreciate the social aspects involved in this implementation. Sometimes things don't need fixin'! Thanks David!
• UPDATE 06/26/13 - Digg Reader also launched their own RSS Reader today! It's super stripped down, but with Digg integration baked in. So if you are into Digg and want that service wedded to your RSS addiction than click here. There's also an iOS app, with Android love  "coming in the next few weeks".

So, those are just a smattering of the "Google Reader replacements" I've encountered that are getting good or, at worst, interestingly mixed press. The web-based options will always be your best ally because they are OS-agnostic. If you can find one that also offers a quality native mobile OS experience, than that will always be the icing on the cake.

If you have any alternatives that I missed, please add them in the comments below! I’ll update the post immediately with your recommendation and a link back to your site! ;)

In the meantime, good luck with whatever alternative you go with! I will certainly offer an update with whatever I end up choosing.

Honestly, the key thing to remember is that you don’t have to say goodbye to those web sites out there that have given you content in the past that you enjoy on a sporadic non-Twitter-like level.  They still exist and, in most cases, are better than ever! :)

RSS on the web hasn’t changed at all.  Far from it.  If anything, it’s just being given that all-too-rare opportunity to evolve!

"Your Car and Smartphone, Connected

Just plug the Automatic Link into your car's data port. Your car and smart phone will automatically connect whenever you drive, wirelessly."

This one has been making the rounds today and for good reason: there are so many awesome ideas at play here! Basically, "Automatic" is a hardware and iOS/Android software solution that connects to your smart phone to your car in a really ingenious way. Once connected, it gives you quite a bit of functionality! The complete list can be found here (just scroll down).

The top ones for me though are easily:

• The way it connects to your car. It "...plugs into the same port your mechanic uses when you take your car in for service." and it's use of the low-energy Bluetooth 4.0 connection to conserve your phone's battery life is really well thought out.
• The geolocation of your car is always recorded in real-time. So no need to take a picture of the spot you parked in. The location can also be shared.
• Accident/crash support. Contacting 911 with your location all the while texting loved ones once help has responded and is on the way, is pretty great.
• Real-time reporting on engine lights (listing their cause) AND the ability to reset them. To me, this alone is totally worth the price of the service/hardware! $69.95 (!?!)

Check out the video below! It covers everything above and more.

As you can probably tell, I am smitten with this. Just a very, very interesting idea for a service. And it’s the implementation of it, that makes it so intriguing to me.

I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure there isn’t anything like it out there!

Company: “Automatic” All video and pictures were taken from Automatic’s own press material.

youtu.be/_AyXNeRbp…

I really love to photograph the world around me. It’s yet another way to tell the stories that I constantly see floating around in my day-to-day. They are also incredible reminders of times past, for better or worse.

I honestly can’t remember a time when I didn’t have a camera at my disposal. When everything went digital, my instances of taking snapshots went up significantly. But when my phone became my go-to camera? That’s when the game changed completely. The ability to take great quality shots from something I carry with me pretty much all the time, was what changed me from a part-time “planned moment” photographer, to a full-time one.

Am I a professional by any means? Hell no. I am more of a hobbyist really. But I do love it and with each composition, I notice my eye getting better and my shots more interesting.

For the last couple of years, I have been using whatever version of the iPhone I owned at that time. I love the shots it takes and with the plethora of image manipulation apps at my disposal in the App Store it gives me a lot of opportunities whenever I find inspiration.

But there comes a time when you can feel you are reaching the limitations of the hardware at your disposal. Not that you want to abandon it completely, but that you simply wish you could somehow  “do more” with it.

Therein Lies The Rub:

When you reach the point I mentioned above, you have a few options. You can always upgrade to more powerful kit. Maybe a more powerful point-and-shoot? Maybe a gorgeous DSLR? But that's yet another thing you have to carry around with you and it can also get expensive; not all of us have hundreds of dollars of disposable income.

You could also just learn to live with what you already have. But where is the fun in that? ;)

Wouldn’t it be great if there was something in between? Something that didn’t let you sacrifice your current situation (that camera that’s always in your pocket), but also gave you new avenues allowing you to expand upon what already works?

Enter, ōlloclip "3-In-One iPhone Photo Lens"…

ōlloclip is a 3 lens kit that slides firmly over the back camera lens of your iPhone (there are two different kits, to accommodate that iPhone 5 and 4 form factors). You can get a description of it from their product page, but basically it is a tiny solution (seriously, it easily fits in your jeans pocket) that can deliver some really nice results that you could never achieve with your iPhone camera alone. Once attached it gives you the following:

• A macro lens (with a 10X multiplier that allows you to focus an iPhone within 12-15mm)
• A wide-angle lens (that doubles the field of view of the iPhone)
• A fisheye lens (captures approximately a 180 Degree field-of-view)

That's some pretty cool extra functionality and while I've only been using it on my iPhone 5 for a few months now, I am already loving the results that this tiny lens kit provides.

I particularly love the macro capability and am astounded that my phone can produce such shots. My second favorite is the fisheye, which has afforded me some neat artistic license, and while I haven’t used the wide-angle much, it’s definitely been handy when I’ve wanted to capture the horizon (while not doing a panorama).

What’s also fun is using these lenses while shooting video! You can create some pretty funky stuff if you feel so inclined!

The Build Quality.

The first thing you notice when you unpack the ōlloclip is that, despite it’s weight, it feels rugged.

The clip part of the lens kit that is attached to the iPhone itself is a kind of soft plastic that, at first, had me worried about scratches on the front and back body of the phone. But, after using it for a bit, it is clear that it’s the soft build of the plastic that insures a tight fit on the phone, all the while protecting it.

The glass itself is housed in a rugged anodized aircraft grade aluminum that feels rigid, yet incredibly light weight.

The glass (arguably the most important part) is “precision ground glass multi-element optics” and while I am far from being a lens expert, I have been very pleased with the quality they produce. They each come with their own lens caps and the lenses themselves are also really easy to clean.

The kit itself comes pre-assembled with a tiny pouch that doubles as a handy lens cloth. I keep the whole kit in my breast pocket of my jacket or in my front pants pocket if it’s warmer. It’s so light that I hardly can tell its even there. Oh and if you are a traveler and are into light-weight minimalist systems, this will definitely help in that regard. I can’t wait to take this on my next trip anywhere.

Any Drawbacks?

As tiny as the kit is, it is oddly shaped. So my only wish really, is that I could take the entire assembly apart and somehow still protect the lenses from damage. In its current state I don't really see a way to do that. But, as I stated above, you don't really feel it in your pocket unless you bump into a wall or something and it jabs you.

Also, because of its size, I do worry about breaking it. I can’t help it. It’s not that it feels fragile or anything, it’s just that I personally can be really clumsy and, depending on the day, absent-minded. So it wouldn’t surprise me at all if I dropped it or sat on it some day. But again, as I stated above, the build quality is such that I have yet to feel that this little power-house would go down without a serious fight.

The results.

I can could sing the praises of the ōlloclip all day but really what matters is the quality of the pictures you take, so here are some examples:

[gallery ids=“1583,1584,1585,1586,1587,1588,1589,1590,1591”]

 

A lot of these have been run through filters (you can tell which ones I am sure), but while I am no pro, I still am stunned that these were shot with an iPhone. At $69.99 I can heartily recommend it for folks looking to take their iPhone photography to that proverbial next level. It’s super easy to use and once you get the hang of it, I think you’ll be just as amazed as I’ve been!

Please Note: The pics in this review of the ōlloclip itself, are all linked from their site. I did not take those (though I wish I did).

Thanks for the recommendation! Now where can I get it!?

1. At ōlloclip's site.
2. The Apple Store
3. Best Buy
4. Sprint Retail Stores

I’ve been curious about App.net since it’s inception. When it was announced it made quite the splash!

Ok So What Is It?

For those who don’t know, App.net is an alternative to Twitter (a service that’s made some questionable changes of late), that’s subscription-based, ad-free and, up until now, somewhat of a “gated” community.

The subscription format, while keeping them afloat, also crippled the much-needed adoption that the service needed to continue (speculation of course, but at the end of the day you need people to, you know, actually use your service).  Well, that all changed today when they added the long-awaited “free tier” to their account offerings.

But I Like Twitter. Are there many differences between the two services?

Thankfully, to the average Twitter user, no.  After all, to compete with Twitter you wouldn’t want to reinvent the wheel and luckily they don’t. So don’t worry, the usual ingredients are here: posts (like tweets, only with a 256 character limit), replies, favoriting, reposts (identical to retweets), the developers/API’s aren’t beholden to anyone and there are no limits to development on their platform.  Also, and this pretty important: they will never sell your personal data, content, feed, interests, clicks, or anything else to advertisers.

They also have a veritable army of apps for phones, tablets and pretty much every desktop OS out there.

Ok, so if I get an account, what do I get?

The free account gets you the following:

• Free tier accounts can follow a maximum of 40 users
• Free tier accounts have 500 MB of available file storage
• Free tier accounts can upload a file with a maximum size of 10 MB

Yes, it's limited, but for a lot of people (myself included) this all they will ever want out of the service at first. Let me kick the tires a little, give it a test drive and if the service is worth the time and I need the premium options being sold, of course I'll subscribe. But I am glad I don't have to, just to simply get through the door.

So I know they took a good bit to get this point, but as far as I can tell, the wait was worth it.  I’ll give a follow-up to this post after I’ve used the service for a few weeks, but I can already tell you this now, if they can get the buy in?  Just from the very brief usage, I can tell that Twitter will have a viable competitor on its hands.  

And really, at the end of the day? If all else fails, having a good competitor might make Twitter that much better. Everyone wins when these news service rise and compete.

All right I am IN! Where do I get a free account?!

As of today you can only get a free account via and invite from an existing subscribed user. I personally got mine by logging into Twitter (oh the irony) and searching for “app.net”.  That brought up a TON of people offering invites!  

So go get ‘em folks! Check out the service and find out what all the hubbub is about!

"This mosaic contains all the pictures of all the cars who drove me from Oslo to Beirut 112 cars, trucks and scooters in total. It’s been an incredibly exciting and rewarding adventure. Thank you so much everyone who picked me up, hosted me, guided me and gave me a wonderful life lesson."

~Photographic diary of Sébastian Dahl.  (@sebastiaen) 24-year-old photographer who recently hitchhiked 10,000km to get from Oslo (Norway) to Beirut (Lebanon).

I stumbled on this last week and felt compelled to share/spread the word. These pics (as well as many others) are all linked to photographer Sébastian Dahl's site (linked above if you missed it).  Definitely have a look if you want to get bitten by the travel bug again (or for the very first time).  Really, really, beautiful pics, stories and observations await you there.

UPDATE 01/22/2015: Hey guys, over the last year or so I’ve had comments (below) on this post where people have had issues with rotating their videos and saving them afterwards. There are many video formats out there that can easily play on a Mac, but may not play nicely with QuickTime. In my case, my video file was already QuickTime compatible (.mp4), so opening, modifying, and saving the file was easily achieved. If you are using any other format, QuickTime will try to either convert before it opens it, or simply not open it at all. If it converts, there is always a chance of file corruption (though I’ve personally never run into that).

Lastly, this isn’t a QuickTime support site. I will vouch for the steps below, as they work perfectly for me even today. But if they don’t work for you, there isn’t a whole lot I can do to make that situation better for you. You’d be better off hitting up Apple’s support forums.

Now, on to the original post!

---

Hey guys just wanted to post this quick tutorial because, quite frankly, after years of using Mac’s OSX, I still find simple, yet powerful ways to handle those odd technological problems I sometimes run into.

The Problem:

I was at a really wonderful Mardi Gras Celebration in downtown Durham this week and while I was there, I shot some video of the celebration. Well, there was so much going there that I absent-mindedly botched the orientation of the video, shooting initially in portrait and then 2 seconds later, rotating my iPhone into landscape mode.

The iPhone (or iOS I suppose) is somewhat dumb in this regard in that it holds onto the initial orientation of the what you were shooting and does not shift to accommodate a change like going from portrait to landscape on the fly.

So 98% of my video ended up looking like this:

In the past when I ran into this dilemma, I often stopped recording, quickly deleted the bad video, used the preferred orientation and then started recording again, not missing a beat.

But not this time.

And while I figured there must be some way to rotate the video after the fact (like countless image editors allow you to do), I was a little surprised to find there weren’t many obvious and easy ways out there. Eventually I found the answer in Apple’s own QuickTime app. Like a lot of helpful things when you are looking for them, the option was hiding in plain site.

Here are the steps:

Step One:

First open your video file in QuickTime. You can either fire up QuickTime first, go to “File” and then down to “Open File”. Or you could right-click the file itself, choose “Open With” and then choose QuickTime.

Step Two:

Once the video is open click “Edit” and you’ll then find the rotate and flip options straight below

Step Three:

Once you’ve locked the orientation you want, you then have to export your video with the new changes you’ve added. You’ll find the “Export” option under the “File” menu in QuickTime.

Choose the file settings you want to export as and click “Ok”, to kick off the export.

When the export operation is complete, you’ll find your new file where ever you chose to save it with the correct orientation!

This whole fix took me less than 5 minutes to complete, but depending on the length of the video, it could take much longer (or shorter, again, it varies).

Hopefully this helps someone out there who got into a similar jam. Or, at the very least, it’ll add another hit for Google to serve up. I was kinda giddy when I found it myself!

"Soon enough, the words began to crawl out, slowly, timidly. I felt how bad and clunky it all sounded, not to mention the atrocious grammar. All my writing habits were slowly annihilated. But I stopped caring at maybe the 550 word mark. I kicked my inner perfectionist out the door in a grand spectacle, maintaining that they were no longer welcome in the chaotic frenzy that had since taken over my body." ~ Sheree Joseph

"that time I wrote 25,000 words in 19 hours" by @tinyfleu https://t.co/leNOQ62f

I’ve been reading a tech site called The Verge for about a year now (or since they launched at any rate) and one of my favorite features that they do is their “What’s in your bag…" series.

In these articles they take someone from their staff, or even guests, and ask them to write about the bag they carry everyday and what’s inside it typically. Not only do I find this topic oddly fascinating, but it’s also a great way to see what other folks in your field are using in their day to day to make whatever systems they have in their lives run smoothly. The writer in me also loves how it is a bit a character study as well.

Anyways, I’ve been meaning to do that here in this space for a while and finally found the time to take pictures this week. So, much thanks and credit goes to The Verge for the idea and I hope you enjoy!

So here is my bag and all of it's contents:

A quick rundown is in order I think! Here’s the list of what you are looking at (starting top left and moving left to right):

A pair of over the ear Sennheiser HD280 pro’s

• A 13in Retina MacBook Pro
• REI Quantum Messenger Pack
• Kobalt Brand Computer Screwdriver set
• Leatherman Skeletool Multitool
• Pair of Apple Ear Buds
• Two thumbnail drives (One Ultra 2gig and another Sandisk 32gig)
• USB adaptor for the 32 pin connector on my iOS devices
• Thunderbolt/Mini DisplayPort to VGA monitor adaptor
• 3ft 1/8" Stereo to Dual Phono (RCA) Plug Y-cable
• Square Credit Card Reader
• Two small Moleskin Journals
• My Mighty Wallet
• My keys

Sure, there are other things that will sneak into my bag from time to time, but this is what I typically have in it everyday!

Now if you are already bored out of your skull, you might as well head back to your Twitter or Facebook feeds. But if you have that same curiosity that I have, stick around! Because I’d love to tell you about these things individually and show you why I carry around this stuff everyday.

Still here? Awesome. Let’s dive in shall we?

Sennheiser HD280 pro's headphones

I work in front of a computer for at least eight hours a day. During that time it’s mostly project-based work, so I find that listening to music is a wonderful escape from everything around me. Originally I used a crappy pair of cheap ear buds, then I tried the on-the-ear kind and in both cases after three straight hours of use, my ears were killing me. So it was around a year ago that I went on the hunt for a good (read: not super spendy), quality pair of over the ear headphones. I needed 4 things out of them:

• Little to no noise bleed. I hate disrupting my neighbors.
• Comfort. Good padding for prolonged use.
• Above average sound quality. I am not an audiophile per say, but music is extremely important to me.
• A long cord. I don't want to take them off or have them yanked off my head when I reach for something behind me.

I already had a few folks that I trusted for reviews, chief amongst them Marco Arment, and when I found his comprehensive reviews of headphones last year like this one on his site, he frequently referred back to this pair of Sennheiser's as his main pair for listening to anything hours on end.

I bought them from Amazon and have yet to think of buying another pair. They are very comfortable, have a long spiral, springy cord, emit very low noise bleed and the sound quality is exceptional.

A great buy!

13in Retina MacBook Pro

As I’ve mentioned many, many times on this site; I am a Mac user. It’s nothing personal. I use PC’s and Macs all day at work and OSX is just fits my life and my daily workflows best. Both platforms have merit.

That all said, I spent around 8 months trying to live without a laptop, utilizing just my iPad and a bluetooth keyboard, and the gaps where a laptop could’ve really sped things up for me became too hard to traverse.

So I had to go back. I’ve been using the 13in MacBook Pro with Retina Display for everything about two months now and I can honestly say, without a single shred of doubt, that this is the finest computer I’ve ever owned.

And for those who are wondering if the screen is worth the extra cash: yes, it really is.

The bag itself

The bag I settled on is the REI Quantum Messenger Pack from REI. It's nothing incredibly fancy but it's got a padded sleeve for my computer, lots pockets for pens, notepads and all of my accessories, nice touches like a felt-lined pocket for your smart phone, mesh pockets for easy line of sight for anything you don't want to dig around for, thickly padded shoulder straps… seriously, its a really great bag! What sold me on it though was the bag-length zipper on the side that unzips directly into the laptop sleeve so that it's easy to take it out and put it back in while traveling.

It’s not all that expensive either if you can find it (it looks like it’s no longer on REI’s site).

Kobalt Brand Computer Screwdriver set

I am, at times, a woefully impatient person. Especially when it comes gadgets and upgrades. If you have ever needed a computer screwdriver set in a pinch and didn’t have one on hand, you’ll know what I am talking about. If you have never needed a set, you probably view it as extra bulk.

I have needed them, several times in fact and after the last time, I stopped off at Lowes on the way home and snagged this set. I paid very little for it and I will definitely need a new set soon, as the heads are chipping and stripping from use over the years. My next set will be better quality for sure.

The whole set, when zipped closed, is quite light and takes up very little room. I just tuck them in, down at the bottom of my bag.

To this day, I am still shocked at how much I reach for these little guys.

Leatherman Skeletool Multitool

Like the screwdriver set above, I am shocked at how many times I need a good pair of needle nose pliers, or a good knife, or philips head, or a wire cutter, or a bottle opener, or a… well, you get the point.

I use the Skeletool both for hiking/camping, as well as my day-to-day. It’s light for what it is, but also incredibly well built.

Again, when I’ve needed it, I’ve been so psyched that I had it in my bag. It’s incredibly adept at solving problems.

A Pair of Apple Ear Buds

These poor bastards have been through the wringer and are also hands down my least favorite Apple product. But, that all said, I keep them in my bag for when they are spatially more appropriate or when I am only sitting down for a few hours of work. The cord is too short, the sound is ok and, as you can tell from the glue on the ear pieces, they are falling apart. I basically keep them in my bag because they get the job done, but also I wouldn’t be bummed if I left them somewhere.

Two thumbnail drives

I move files around from computer to another a lot. I also like sharing. So in the case where items are too big to attach to an email or you aren’t networked directly to your needed destination: thumbnails drives are still pretty damn convenient.

Mine were cheap and the only reason why I keep to 2gig one around is because it still works like a champ. Mostly I always go for my 32gig one.

USB adaptor for the 32 pin connector on my iOS devices and a Thunderbolt/Mini DisplayPort to VGA monitor adaptor

Incredibly handy when you need to offload pictures from a USB device to your iOS device. Also an amazing adapter to add to your travel kit.

The Thunderbolt to VGA adaptor is solely for work purposes. Because you’d be shocked at how many office projectors/monitors still use the old-school VGA connections.

3ft 1/8" Stereo to Dual Phono (RCA) Plug Y-cable

If you ever are traveling and have wanted to plug your MP3 player into a stereo wherever you hang your hat for the evening, this cheap little cableis a must! Just plug it into the head phone jack of your player and connect the red to red and the white to white on the back of any stereo you encounter.

After a long day on the road, I am always relieved when I get to listen to my tunes through speakers. It’s not possible without this little travel companion. You can find them in almost any store in town, including most grocery stores (I bought this one at a local RadioShack on our last vacation).

Square Credit Card Reader

I could seriously write an entire separate post on this tiny wonderful gadget (and I most likely will) , but this post alone is getting pretty epic so I will keep it short.

Square is basically an online service that allows you take credit card payments with your phone or tablet device. Just plug this card reader into the headphone jack of your phone, download Square’s app and you are ready to take payments from anyone. If you do freelance work or even run a full-fledged business, this little piece of plastic is a godsend.

Read more about Square here. You get the card reader free when you set up an account.

Two Small Moleskin Journals

Though I do almost all of my journaling digitally now, I still run into the occasional instance where it’s just quicker to snag some pen and paper and scribble ideas and thoughts down.  These journals from Moleskin are cheap, take up very little space and the paper inside writes quite smoothly with any pen that’s nearby.  They come in lined and blank versions. I almost always use blank books because my note taking is a little unstructured.

My Wallet and Keys…

Yeah… so, this is my wallet and these are my keys….

I don’t like a lot of things in my pockets so I keep them in the zippered back pocket of my bag.

A lot of people ask about my wallet, I got it from “Mighty Wallet by Dynomighty Designs”. If you are looking for a thin (and I mean literally paper thin) wallet that can hold a lot and can take a beating (they are all made of Tyvek) that is super affordable. Give these guys a try! I got mine for the design and have kept it because it hasn’t given up on me or my lifestyle. Not yet anyways.

Wow… You Made It This Far! I'm Impressed!

If you made it this far, I am guessing you found some use or odd entertainment in it all, just like I often do. I know it's weird but I just love reading how other people do the exact same things I do, but differently!

So what do you use in your day to day? Do you have some better suggestions for me?If so, leave them in the comments below! I’d love hear about them!

As always, thanks for coming by!

Ok, so, I haven’t done a “Soapbox” post in a bit, but recently, I felt compelled to do so.

The topic:

I have absolutely no data to back this up, just sheer observation, but the state of independent theaters is pretty damn sad. More and more of them are closing because they simply don't make the money that the huge twenty screen, IMAX enabled mega-cinemas make. Sure, these "Davids" may make enough to keep the lights on for a few years, but that lately doesn't seem to be enough to stop the "Goliaths" (read: land owners) from bulldozing them to build another Harris Teeter.

Because clearly, we obviously need more Harris-frigging-Teeters down here (/sarcasm).

Okay, so where am I going with this?

Earlier this week I went to a double feature of The Evil Dead 1 and 2 at the The Carolina Theater here in downtown Durham. I am not going to lie, when the lights came up, I walked out with the biggest dopey grin on my face! I was completely bathing in nostalgia!

Memories of VHS tapes, dark living rooms, my friends and I eating popcorn slowly, waiting to be scared out of our minds…. Those were some of my favorite times growing up and to have the opportunity to watch 35mm copies of those movies again in a theater, just as they were shown when I was way too young to see them originally, meant a lot to me. As if the opportunity to see them was a gift. And, to me anyways, it truly was.

I know, I know I can hear you all right now…

“Awwww, Tad likes spending time watching movies on shitty screens with crap sound systems in ancient musty buildings that smell like my old aunt Mildred’s house. That’s SO cute! But what’s the point?"

The point is this. I am 99.9% sure the double feature that I saw the other night would never be shown at one of the mega-cinemaplexes you see stamped out across America today. The Evil Dead movies are too old, the acting is too cheesy and they aren’t “classic” in the sense that “Citizen Kane” is considered a classic. But here’s the thing, they were shown here that night and that’s entirely because the Carolina Theater is independently owned. It isn’t run by a corporation and it isn’t beholden to anyone except its members (and public ticket sales of course).

Put simply, outside of porn, they can show whatever they want really. And in the case of the Carolina, they often do.

It’s hard to remember for a lot of folks but, this is the way movie theaters used to be and nothing makes me more depressed than knowing that a lot of today’s youth probably won’t ever get a chance to set foot in one. And even if they did, I doubt at this point they’d appreciate it. Their parent’s home theaters are too impressive as is and when they aren’t there, all of their friends are getting dropped off with thirty bucks to spend at places with stadium seating, bigger, higher resolution screens and sounds systems that make your skull vibrate.

So again, why should they? Or more over, why should you?

The point...

Well, for me it goes well beyond the nostalgia I waxed about above. For me, it's about not losing the threads of where things came from.

So much of pop culture today is completely ripped off by media from the past (and yes, I say this knowing full well that my father would say the same). That doesn’t make today’s stuff irrelevant, but it does put it into context and context is something that is often overlooked nowadays.

In the case of film, I love knowing the history, I love learning about its DNA: the directors, the cinematographers, the cameras used, the actors, the soundtrack composers, the time periods and the methods that were used to make the film…

…there’s a purity in it all. There’s value in the ritual.

It’s the same reason why so many of us still seek out vinyl, actually pay to have our laser disc players serviced, or, more recently, get excited when a vintage functional 8bit NES is up on eBay so that we can still blow into the damn cartridges.

It’s those things that attach us back to everything, and everyone else that came before us. So much of everything that everyone loves today is linked to something that someone was equally passionate about from the past. It’s the essence of human connection. So yeah, in my humble opinion, it’s really, really important. If you ignore the past, you might as well ignore the present.

Supporting these theaters may seem trivial. And while this all may not seem important right now, trust me, it will become important when it’s gone.

I’m not asking for the world really, I am just asking that when that next movie you want to see pops up on your radar, try seeing if it’s showing at an independent theater near you. Give it a shot! These old relics might surprise you! (And no, none of the places I’ve been to smell like aunt Mildred’s and their equipment is often WAY up to date)

In short:

We need to stop, breath, and take time to remember how we all got to this point. Because let's be honest, wasn't the ride kind of incredible?

Linkage to other indie theaters in the NC, Triangle Area:

• In Durham, The Carolina Theater
• In Chapel Hill, The Varsity
• In Raleigh, The Rialto

Feel free to hit me up with other indie theaters in the comments below!

A quick tale on the recent and drastic changes to this site.

It was the early evening of New Years Eve and I wanted to throw up a quick post saying “Happy New Year” to everyone. I went to my site and tried to login and immediately saw that the service my site runs through, Scriptogr.am, was down or, to be more accurate, was simply unavailable. I then hit Twitter to see if they’d posted something and lo and behold, they did. twitter.com/scriptogr… So I waited a bit (a few hours) and then saw this come up. twitter.com/scriptogr… twitter.com/RonnyLam/… Attached to this last tweet was a domain name registrar notice saying that Instagr.am literally hadn’t paid the bill yet for their domain name. Now, to be fair to these guys, the story has to be more complicated than that, but at face value? They definitely had a bit of PR nightmare on their hands.

So with their apparently self-inflicted DNS issues causing my site to be down (as well as others on the planet) for, at the time, several hours, I knew that my grand “Wouldn’t be awesome if I could somehow use Dropbox to host my web site?” experiment was done. It was a free service that, for most part, worked quite well (forgiving the occasional laggy load times), but with the direction my life was going, I knew it was time for something more reliable and stable. So I did a quick search on top hosting providers for 2012 and was thrilled to find one that I happen to walk by everyday, heading into work: “A Small Orange”.

I took an hour, perused their services and found them to be really affordable for my needs (Plus their ideals were really in line with mine. Not a prerequisite, but always nice to see!) so I signed up.

Long story short, I had a self-hosted WordPress blog up and running in less than an hour! I even had the barebones of my content restored as well. This all couldn’t have occurred if it wasn’t for A Small Orange’s service, which was really exceptional, with live chat support available and prompt on the night of New Years Eve!

So if you are looking for a hosting provider, definitely check them out! It’s early in the game, but I can already tell they are a cut above the many companies out there vying for your business. It is important to note that my circumstance went as well as it did because I know what I am doing as far as setting up a web site is concerned. But I am confident that the same opportunity would be afforded to a novice as well.

And no, I don’t work for these guys! I just like letting folks know when I encounter good service is all.

So, that’s it! Welcome to thaddeushunt.com, version 2.5! It was an unfortunate glitch in the Matrix for sure but, in hindsight, it was a move I needed to make. In the end, Scriptogram’s service was down for 3 whole days I think, which had to have sucked for them. The idea behind their service is amazing, it’s just the implementation of it still needs some work. I’ll be interested to see where Scriptogram goes in the future!

It also appears that I’ve taken the right amount of time away from WordPress, as they’ve added a bunch of improvements and customization options that I really love. It still seems like over kill for my needs, but I guess at this juncture too many options are better than being stuck with none. I really like the site’s new theme too (it’s a slightly tweaked version of WP’s most recent default theme), very responsive for all of you gadgets' screens. So have a look around and leave a comment if you want (yep they are back)! I’d love any feedback you wanted to share.

Oh yeah! HAPPY NEW YEAR! :)

So, half of the holiday season has come and gone (I hope it all went well for everyone!) and, with the constant barrage of digital ways to stay in touch with everyone, it reminded me of an iOS feature that’s become my favorite in iOS6.

It’s called “Do Not Disturb” and it is wonderful. :)

Full disclosure: I absolutely adore the people in my life. I really do.

But, there are some times when we all need a break from those little popups that beep and blip, begging for our attention.

And sometimes it’s not even people! I also have a few weather apps that send along severe weather notifications that, while interesting, aren’t exactly worth being woken up at 3AM for.

So with all of these helpful notifications, how do we block them out when we don’t want them interupting our lives? Well, luckily with the advent of iOS6, we have the ability baked right into our devices.

Cool! So where do I find it?

Head into “Settings” and, fourth from the top, you will see “Do Not Disturb”. To turn it on, just toggle the switch from “Off” to “On”. A little crescent moon icon will show up to the left of the clock up at the top of your iOS device screen, signifying that it’s activated!

So, how does this work exactly?

When "Do Not Disturb" is switched on, absolutly no notifications will come through. This includes emails, texts, Twitter updates, Game Center updates, anything in notification center, even phone calls.

This sounds great and all, but what if someone needs to get in touch in an emergency and I forgot to turn it off?

Really great question! If you go into “Settings” and then “Notifications”, you’ll find another “Do Not Disturb” section (which is really un-Apple-like, but I digress). In here, dwells the secret sauce that makes “Do Not Disturb” (I am just going to refer to it as “DND” for the rest of this post) so great. In this settings menu, you can schedule when you want DND automatically turned on and off! For me, this is great because I hate getting disturbed by my phone while I sleep, so I set it for 10PM and 5AM every day. Once scheduled, the DND mode is enabled everyday during that span of time until you opt to turn it off.

The emergency phone call dilemma is handled with the “Allow Calls From” option. I personally set it for “Favorites” so the folks I have listed as favorites in my “Phone” app come straight through whenever they call. You can also set this to “Everyone”, “No One” (if you really mean business), or you can even set it for a specific group you have setup in your Contacts app. Again, this only pertains to phone calls, all other notifcations from apps still will not come in when DND is scheduled/enabled.

The last setting is for “Repeated Calls”. When this is turned on, a person will have the ability get through your DND setup if they call twice in the span of 3 minutes. Personally, I LOVE this setting, as I often tell people if there is ever a true emergency, please call us twice repeatedly if we don’t answer the first time. It’s a small thing, but the fact that Apple threw this option in, is just genius in my humble opinion! This way, if for whatever reason, someone important to you is calling from a phone that isn’t theirs, they’ll get through.

Oh yeah! One thing to remember…

When scheduled/enabled, DND mode blocks ALL ALERTS, including third party alarm clock apps! So if you are using one (unsurprisingly, Apple's "Clock" app doesn't get blocked) make sure you schedule DND mode to turn off before your alarm goes off. Otherwise you may be late for work and we can't have that can we? ;)

So that's it! Go enjoy some quiet time!

We all love being connected (maybe we love it too much), but sometimes the act of unplugging can be a nuisance. With the new DND option, it's a lot easier. So, turn on DND and take that mid-day nap you've been promising yourself! You totally deserve it!

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UPDATED: Jan 1, 2013 - Ever have one of those days when you think you are being watched?  Just two days after this post Apple released this advertisement into the world:

youtu.be/eLJN_d2sV…

They also, unfortunately, had reports of this (which I actually fell victim to) so watch out for it.  I fixed mine by turning DND on an off.

I am a HUGE fan of Shane Curruth’s “PRIMER” and his next, “Upstream Color”, looks to be just as intriguing. Two teaser trailers were released in the last two weeks and both strike completely different tones. I have know idea what the film is about. All I know is that its imagery is stuck in my head and, for me anyways, that’s a good thing.

“Upstream Color” Teaser 1

www.youtube.com/watch

“Upstream Color” Teaser 2

www.youtube.com/watch

And, for old time’s sake, the Trailer for “PRIMER”:

www.vimeo.com/53890508

 On it's site, mouapp.com, the text editor "Mou" is aptly described as "The missing Markdown editor for web developers". And, for me anyways, it truly is. I've been using it for several weeks now and I wanted to share my thoughts on how I found it and how it has found it's way into my writing/blogging system.

If you write in Markdown, you'll know that there is no shortage of apps out there that cater to it. But many of them merely export to html or maybe, if you're lucky, give you a popup preview pane to view what you've created before you do.

With that in mind, I went on the hunt for a Markdown editor that worked differently. First and foremost, I wanted something that could accurately display my Markdown inline. A lot of Markdown editors to date give this kind of visual feedback on screen, but most of the time it's just an indicator showing you that you've successfully applied the proper syntax. It doesn't show you what it will look like when it's translated into html. So, as I mulled through a pile of research on the editors I Googled, I was surprised that I couldn't find an editor out there that gave me this type of feedback. I couldn't, that is, until one night the good folks at Scriptogram tweeted to the world an app that was in beta called "Mou". Not only did they specify that it was built for web developers using Markdown, but that it also offered many options that some of the editors did not.

Naturally, I was psyched at the possibility of finally finding the editor I'd been searching for! Of course, I still had to use it. :)

Well, I did and I am happy to report it is now definitely my go-to Markdown editor on the Mac (it's Mac only by the way. It also only runs on 10.7 or higher.)! There are a lot of reasons why I chose it and, honestly, the bulk of these features can be found in other editors. But the most important ones are all here (including a few that I didn't even know that I needed) in one tidy package.

Here's a rundown of the key features that tipped the scale for me:

Split Screen Edit Window for Realtime Markdown to HTML Conversion

I actually wish I could film this, because it's hands down my favorite feature. When open Mou, you'll notice immediately that the edit window is split down the middle to show your Markdown code on one side and it's translation to HTML on the other. But what's really awesome is, as you type your Markdown on the left side, it is updated with the html conversion on the right,in realtime! There is a second of lag as the program does it's thing, but I tell ya, this instant feed back is fast, beautifully implemented and unbelievably handy when you want to know how your code is going to look when you post it up for the world to see.

This all said, Mou's default setup only shows your code in the raw html format, the CSS of the site you are posting to could, and will, change what you see on the right (sometimes significantly). The good news? You can import your site's CSS into Mou if you want to have an even better representation of what your end product will look like.

Post Function

A very close second in my running for "favorite feature", is Mou's "Post" function. This site you are reading runs onScriptogram's framework, and Mou's ability to post to a site running on Scriptogram is some wizbang hoodoo that I am glad just works. Once you put your Scriptogram site's unique ID into Mou's preferences, it becomes an option under the File>Post menu.

I gotta tell ya, not having to log into the back end of my site to post something is just damn convenient. It's easy to use and it works every time.

Oh and if you're a Tumblr user, it can post to that too!

Auto Complete

Like any code-based language, Markdown has a syntax logic that, while super simple, readable and easy to use, still needs to be upheld in order to work. Mou does a great job at making sure that your code (spelling and grammar too) is correct through it's auto-complete functionality. When you type a "("it automatically places a ")" in front of your cursor. This is a wonderful time-saver! In fact, it actually makes me want to use Mou as an everyday text editor for anything (which of course you could) and I sometimes do.

I could go on about the other ways that Mao's autocomplete works, but if you use Markdown in your day-to-day, you'll have to trust me when I say it makes writing in Markdown even more simple to use.

Themes

Themes are in just about every text editor out there now. That all said, Mou's are great and it's nice to have it added in with everything else in such a robust program. Customizing any text editor to your liking is is key and with Mou it's easy to do.

There are other cool features too!

• It's super fast! It feels like a light weight editor when you use it and it's burned through anything I have thrown at it quickly.
• A word/character/byte counter
• A really simple export to HTML or PDF option (that can even include your css too!)
• View Controls with Enhanced CJK Support for folks around the world writing in character-based languages the run vertically.
• Supports OSX's full screen mode and autosave function (a life saver if you need something from a previous version)
• A powerful set of keyboard actions that allow you to write your Markdown even faster.
• Incremental Search for looking for things easier and granularly within your document.

Seems Awesome Right? So Where Do You Get It?

Mou currently is in Beta, but every build that's dropped has been rock solid in my usage. The good news is that this awesome editor is free right now because of it's beta state! Eventually it will be for sale (price TBD) when it reaches version 1.0 release. But if you donate to the development (highly recommended), you'll get a free upgrade when that version is ready!

Links:

• Mou App: http://mouapp.com - download link is that bottom of the page. If you can, feel free to donate!
• Develper: Chen Luo
• Twitter for the app: @mou
• Twitter for the Developer: @chenluois

PLEASE NOTE: All images in this post are from Mou's site.

Hey all, just quick tip before the holidays! The other day I found myself looking once again for a tip to remedy this situation:

The issue, in a nutshell, is that whenever you install a new app update from the Mac App Store, it inserts a copy of the icon in the "Open With" menu when you right click anything. It kind of drives me crazy!

At any rate, I think I've looked for a fix at least four times now so, in an effort to prevent that from happening to you (and myself) again, I wanted to post it up here so I could find it easily.

Now this tip pertains 10.8 (Mountain Lion), but I'm assuming it'd work in previous versions as well. So, to clean this mess up, open up a terminal window (found in Finder > Applications > Utilities > Terminal.app), paste the following command line entry and hit enter (make sure you get all of it):

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

It may take a few seconds to execute but when the command line prompt comes back up, close Terminal and check your "Open With" menu again. It should now be cleaned up, with only single entries listed. On one occasion, this "fix" didn't take effect until I restarted my mac, but all of the other times I tried it, it was instantaneous.

Is it "bad" to have multiple listings? Absolutely not. It's just a slightly OCD need to keep things tidy that I have. I have to imagine it drives other people nuts as well. ;)

That's it! I'd like to wish everyone in the states a happy Thanksgiving! If you're traveling, be safe and if you are staying home, make sure the turkey fryer is no where near anything combustible.

Have an awesome holiday everyone!

I'm constantly amazed by how much my brain is bombarded by information (let alone raw stimuli) every second of everyday. If I'm honest, most of it is completely useless fluff; entertainment at best, advertisement at worst. But a good amount of it is still worth looking at and remembering. In it's current state, my life doesn't always allow the time to look at everything when it presents itself. I mean, how could it? Because of this fact, I've come up with a few app systems that allow me to curate most, if not all of it. I figured I can't be the only one with this kind of life, so I thought I'd do a post about the different apps I use to remember things and how I specifically use them. Most of the apps I am about to talk about are free and are available on many different platforms. So this isn't yet another Mac-based software post. I know I tend to focus on those.

Also, please note that these aren't reviews of these apps. Some of them I use to their fullest extent, but most them, I use for that one function that they do extremely well. The good news is that most of these apps have been around for a good amount of time and have been reviewed extensively. So feel free to Google them afterwards if you want to know more about them. As always, I'll also have links at the bottom of this post to their downloads and dev sites.

Ok. So, here we go. Without a doubt the following instances come up several times a day for me:

1. I come across an article, review, link to an event, video, etc. that I either want read later or share with another person. There's one caveat though: I have no intention of keeping it. I'll read/view it later and then I'll delete it.
2. I come across web content that is more of a resource. Something that I will need and continue to reference in the near and very distant future. It's that tidbit or object that you know you'd absolutely regret losing or forgetting.
3. Lists. We all have them! Grocery lists, to-do lists, gift lists, travel prep check lists… they're those lists of important things that you check off immediately after you do them. When the list is done? You happily delete it feeling that warm sense of accomplishment.
4. Tiny notes. Particularly ones that you need to share across devices. Like a Post-it note but more permanent. I won't need it all of the time, but if I am flaking out and just can't remember, it's in it's separate app waiting.
5. Password and Account info. Between my wife and I alone we have, sickeningly, close to a hundred different logins to a host of websites that vary from yoga studios, to credit card accounts. We could use the same user ID and password for all of them, but shouldn't and we don't (nor should you). For this, I need an app that wrangles all of these accounts and passwords, so that they are easily found and encrypted to the hilt.

Those are the scenarios! Now I'll go through each app that I use to combat them.

Situation One: Disposable, yet still worthy of consumption...

For these situations I rely on "Instapaper". Marco Arment's Instapaper is worthy of an entire post alone on this site, but when it comes to shelving a movie review that I really want to read but don't have the time to? Instapaper is perfect and is my go-to app. Through it's applets and API I can send anything on just about any app on any platform (computer, phone, tablet) to my Instapaper account to read later in it's now extremely popular stripped down format. No distractions, stripped of ads, viewable offline, lots of choices to suit my reading aesthetic, all wrapped up in a solid, dependable platform.

I use Instapaper to save so much of what I find in my daily travels on the internet crazy that the service is free. And when I'm done with the content, I delete it! I don't have to, there are plenty of options to archive things in Instapaper, but it's not how I happen to use it. Browser-based, it's available anywhere there's an internet connection. There are also native apps on iOS and Android platforms as well, and though I don't own an Android device, the iOS apps work flawlessly.

Situation Two: Non-disposable Resources. In other words, that stuff you want to keep.

In these cases, I rely almost exclusively on "Evernote". Evernote is one of those software solutions that is completely adaptable. There are just so many ways to use it! Their approach is simple: offer any and every way that you could think of to upload anything digital, permanently to the cloud. Oh, and make it super easy too!

Me? 95% of the time that I use it, I utilize their very handy web-clipper browser add-on to send snapshots of web sites onto Evernote's cloud storage. I do tend to tag my additions and add them to folders, but that isn't really necessary. Once clipped into Evernote, your entry is saved, completely searchable and, at the very least, auto-organized by date. Just a couple weeks ago I saved a dozen different web sites on shower heads. Tagged "shower", it was simple to bring up everything I'd found weeks later when I was ready to pull the trigger and buy one. Easy!

But you can also use it in other handy ways. A perfect use case of this is when I used it the other day when we bought and enjoyed a bottle of wine while out for dinner. After we drank the wine I took a picture of the label on the bottle, tagged the variety ("red" "malbec") and, because I took it with my phone, Evernote used the GPS coordinates to log where the photo was taken, so we could remember where we drank it. Months later, we wanted to have the same wine out for some friends who were coming over for dinner. When I was at the wine shop, I opened up Evernote on my iPhone and knew precisely what I was looking for. It also helps A TON when someone asks to help you.

This exact same approach is also incredibly handy when you park you car in an airport parking lot before leaving on three week trip to India. Take pic of the lot and space number. Save it. Get on with life and focus on other things. Simple.

In the end, Evernote's service is definitely one of those "what you make of it" situations. But don't let that deter or overwhelm you. Trust me, I don't even use it tonearly the degree that others do. My workflow is simple by design and, because of that, it's been pretty damn invaluable over the years.

Situation Three: Lists

There are three types of lists that I typically keep.

• Lists before an event, like a vacation, making sure we have everything we need.
• Grocery Store lists.
• Any trip to a hardware store inevitably should have a list.

In this case, simple is always better for me. I don't want any crazy or feature-rich todo app. I just want something with text, check boxes and something that syncs across devices. The syncing option is only optimal to me for when my wife and I head out to the dreaded grocery store. With a list that syncs between our phones, we can divide and conquer. She knows I grabbed the eggs because she sees that I checked it off when I went down the milk aisle. If this situation sounds bad ass, that's because it is. ;)

My apps of choice are "Grocery IQ" for grocery stores and Apple's own "Reminders" app on the Mac and on iOS for everything else. Both sync across multiple devices. Grocery IQ gets a leg up over Apple's own "Reminders" app because it offers up coupons as well as the ability organize your list by aisle if you already have your favorite grocery store layout memorized. It's super simple to use and always handy when someone is home and remembers something while you are on the way to the store.

The "Reminders" app is baked into iOS (so it's free), syncs with iCloud and is backed by Apple, so you can't go wrong with it. It's quite simplistic (just multiple lists of check boxes and text) but it does what it does very well.

Situation Four: Tiny Notes

What's a "tiny note"? Tiny notes are those incomplete sentences of info that you need handy at any given moment in time. An example of this is an address to a party or a security code into someone's place that you occasionally visit. It's not worth permanently archiving, but it's also not really disposable either.

A perfect use case for this is my sister recently moved into a new flat that has a security code at the front door. She told it to me and I instantly jotted it down on my phone. I don't want to memorize it right away and I certainly don't want to keep badgering her for it whenever I visit. For all of these scraps of important andconvenient info, I use the "Notes" app in iOS. It's super basic, baked into iOS (again, it's hard to beat free) and because I don't use it for anything else, it's not terribly crowded with other bits of info. As of today, I still only have one note in the app with a small list of things that I need occasionally and because it's synced through iCloud, I don't need to read it out loud or send it in an email or text to my wife. I simply tell her it's in "Notes" and she knows exactly what I am talking about.

Situation Five: Accounts and Passwords

If there is only one thing you take away from this post, I hope it's this: take the protection of your ID and password info seriously.

There are a lot of password generators out there and just as many apps that work well at encrypting and storing your personal info remotely and securely. I personally love, and use Agile Bits app "1Password". They work on the simple premise that the safest password you could ever have, is one that you do not know. Basically it works like this. You have one password to memorize, and that is the password to the 1password app itself (see what they did there?). Inside this app is a highly encrypted database of all of your user ID's and passwords (which can be created in-app with their password generator), support for full credit card info, personal documents, personal info, you name it. It'll accept just about anything you want protected, yet accessible.

For all it is under the hood, it's quite incredible how easy it is to incorporate it into your life! One way it really saves time, is in it's ability to auto populate web fields with the click of a button when using their feature-rich (yet easy to use) browser plugin. Go to a site, click the 1Password button in your browser's toolbar, type in the one password for the app, click the link that corresponds to the site, and you are on. It takes it from there, auto-populating the fields and even logging you in with an incredibly hard-to-crack password that you have no chance in hell of remembering. In addition to logins, the auto-population is borderline magic when you face situations where you have to fill out forms for anything online. Not having type in your mailing address or credit card info instantly becomes addictive.

It's not all roses, there's a good bit of manual setup involved, but once you get your info into 1Password, you are set and life becomes way more convenient (not to mention way more safe).

1Password also isn't free, but in my opinion it's worth every penny you spend and then some. I think you'll find that you'll use it mostly on your home PC, but it's also available on iOS and Android devices as well.

Forget about forgetting…

So that's it! With the above apps, I've streamlined a ton of useless crap out of my day to day. I no longer sweat nearly as much about remembering non-critical moments or things. In all cases I have access to everything on every device I own with a screen and an internet connection. Errands are cut short, time is gained, your important info is protected…. Even if you were to try just one of these above situations out, I promise you, you'll see the benefits.

Give it a shot! Let me know what you think on Twitter.

App Links:

• Instapaper - iOS | Android | Web
• Grocery IQ - iOS | Android | Web
• 1password - Mac | Windows | iOS | Android
• Evernote - Mac | Windows | iOS | Android | Blackberry | Windows Phone

The fine Developers of these apps:

• Marco Arment - Instapaper
• Evernote.com - Evernote
• coupons.com - Grocery IQ
• Agile Bits - 1password
• Apple - Notes and Reminders iOS Apps

  All pictures in this post are linked to either the app store or the developer’s own sites/presskits with the exception of the 1Password app logo which I’d be happy to swap out if they have an official presskit that I link to. Thanks! :)

As I'm sure many of you noticed today, Apple released the much anticipated and, as it turns out, thoroughly leaked, iPad Mini. And there was much rejoicing right? Right?!

Well, for me, the answer is "yes and no".

Now it was only just announced, so obviously I haven't touched or used the device, but the first question I had when the initial rumors started dropping (months ago) waswhat would I have to give up to fit this into my current tech eco-system? If I did get it, what would I change? I'd definitely relinquish my old iPad to Gazelle, as there truly would be no need for two tablets. I figured it would be at least as powerful as my iPhone5 or the 3rd gen iPad and it'd also presumably be thinner and lighter, also two huge bonuses!

In fact, about the only thing that would stop me from buying one honestly was the screen. And by this don't mean the issue of compromised screen real estate, which has never been an issue for me (I've actually written happily on my iPhone on numerous occasions). But the resolution? Screen resolution would definitely be a deal-breaker for me. Put simply, Apple's "Retina" display technology that was released with the iPhone4 has completely and utterly spoiled me. So much so, that it's a genuine distraction to use other devices of lesser quality.

So naturally, when the rumor mill started churning out tidbits of how the new iPad Mini was was going to have the same screen as the trusty old iPad2, I had my concerns. This rumor of course turned out to be true, as well as the hardware being less robust than the third gen iPad 3. Take away the finish and the new iPad Mini is basically a smaller iPad 2.

Which, to this unabashed Apple enthusiast, was a completely missed opportunity.

While it's always amazing to me how Apple continues shrink it devices into smaller and thinner form factors making them more and more beautiful, aesthetics can only go so far. Eventually people notice when they can spend a little more to get a little more.

So when they dropped the price during the presentation (50 bucks less than the iPad 2), the deal was sealed for me. I'd crossed that line between "interested" to, "I just don't want it". Which is a shame really, because I could definitely see the use of a smaller, lighter, retina display equipped, same-internals-as-the-iPhone5, based iPad in my life. For travel it'd be a dream. The screen would still be an excellent size for everything I do on my iPad now and I absolutely wouldn't have seen it as compromise on any level.

But I'm clearly not the demographic they are trying to sell this to and that is absolutely, positively fair. I'll continue to wait it out until they have what I'm hoping for. I'm sure it's in the works. I can be patient. In fact, I predict that at this time next year? The iPad2 will be gone, the iPad mini will take it's place and it will stand proud next to the full-sized iPad, retina display and all! You heard it here first people (trust me, I am not the first to make that prediction)! :)

In closing, I guess what I find the most interesting about today's announcement is that, for me anyways, Apple actually shot for the lowest common denominator, which isn't typical for them. No one can drum up prelim excitement like Apple can and this incoming announcement had the community at a fever pitch. Which leaves me wondering how everyone will feel after the dust settles and the "new product announcement" high wears off.

My guess is that, while they'll think it's a beautiful product (and it is), they'll be waiting to pull the trigger just like me.

Now that new iMac and retina 13in Macbook Pro? Those are pretty damn enticing…

Pics linked from apple.com