Minimal Mac

I’d like to extend a great deal of thanks to my friends at Mac Mini Vault for sponsoring this week’s feed. If you need fast and affordable co-location services, this is a great option.

They have a special promotion going in celebration of these latest upgrades and expansions. For the next couple of weeks, the Enterprise colocation plan will be discounted 90% down to $5.00 per month for 6 months when using the promo code MMV-5for6. Just go to the sign-up page, and the promotional code field will be available once the Enterprise colocation service has been added to the shopping cart. It’s super easy (and, boy, what a deal!)

Studio Neat has been in business for two years. We have launched two successful Kickstarter projects, in turn paving the way for a new era of independent hardware manufacturing, and recently entered the software world with our first iPhone app. We have learned a lot in a short period of time, and wanted to share this information with the world. So we wrote a book.

This is required reading for anyone even thinking about raising capital through crowd-sourced funding. It’s a short read but every bit of it is fantastic and essential. 

So, how has technology impacted my life in a true and meaningful way? In every way that could have meaning. I don’t really think my life would be the life I have without it.

This interview with me literally took months. I took my time thinking deeply about each question and answer. Because of this, and Matt’s extreme patience with me, I think it is the best I’ve ever done.

If success is a catalyst for failure because it leads to the “undisciplined pursuit of more,” then one simple antidote is the disciplined pursuit of less. Not just haphazardly saying no, but purposefully, deliberately, and strategically eliminating the nonessentials.

Mac Mini Vault is a unique service specializing in secure co-location of Mac mini servers.

The Mac mini makes the perfect server. It’s small, affordable, fast, and when running Mac OS X Server, has all of the features you need to offer enterprise-class services in a machine a fraction of the size and price.

That said, there are many reasons you may not want to host a server on your own. Security, power, and bandwidth are all very real concerns. Especially if you are doing hosting of web services, email or valuable personal data. For such things you want to ensure uptime and not everyone (i.e. only the privileged few) has a data center at their disposal.

Mac Mini Vault is a colocation provider specifically designed to host the Mac Mini. Colocation (or “colo” for short) means that you place the Mac Mini that you own in their secure data center. They supply the power, bandwidth, and physical security allowing your Mac Mini to be ‘hosted’ on the internet. You can access it’s desktop or its command line. You can use it for file storage, web & database hosting, an e-mail server, or some of the built in OS X Server tools such as calendar, address book, wiki servers, etc. Because the hardware is compatible with Windows and Linux as well, you can configure it anyway you’d like before sending your Mini to them.

Their latest cabinet has been wired up and is online. This brings the capacity to host Mac minis to over 400 units. This allows them to offer premium features included the base service. Free hands-on support, remote reboot, bandwidth graphs, and discounts from software partners are included with the Core colocation plan which starts at $29.99 per month.

They have a special promotion going in celebration of these latest upgrades and expansions. For the next couple of weeks, the Enterprise colocation plan will be discounted 90% down to $5.00 per month for 6 months when using the promo code MMV-5for6. Just go to the sign-up page, and the promotional code field will be available once the Enterprise colocation service has been added to the shopping cart.

It could not be easier or a better time to consider this as an option. Check out Mac Mini Vault today.

A big thanks to Tweet Keeper for sponsoring the feed this week. Tweet Keeper is a fast and easy way to search, archive and export (to plain text even!) any public Twitter feed. 

If you care at all about backing up your digital possessions from Twitter, get this today.

DEVELOP NOW! FOR THE FUTURE!

iPad First, as the name implies, is my personal initiative to highlight those applications and projects that are being built or re-imagined for Apple’s iPad first. In part, it is my hope that it will encourage others — developers, makers, dreamers, and doers — to do the same. 

This is an experimental side project on my part. Going to see how it goes for a little while and I will keep at it as long as my interest sustains.

Draft is the quick way to capture text on iOS. It provides a wide variety of actions to let you output text to Email, Twitter, Facebook, Dropbox, Evernote and many other apps.

Drafts is the Swiss army knife for text on your iPhone and, now, iPad as well. Besides the above it also has pretty good Markdown support as well. 

Most of the feature requests for Pop for iOS that I get results in my telling them to buy Drafts. It’s good enough to lose a few bucks to.

Tweet Keeper is an amazingly easy way to save, search, and export tweets from a Twitter account. Not only is it a great way to backup your own tweets — but you can search and save any public tweets, since it works with any Twitter account.

As some may have heard, I’m currently on an extended Twitter sabbatical for many reasons. As a writer, I believe all that I write — even the seemingly inconsequential — has value. I did not want all of this writing that I have done for the past few years on Twitter to remain only there. Therefore, I was looking for a way, even before my departure, to easily backup as much of my own tweets as I could — plain text preferred if possible. Tweet Keeper came at just the right time for me. It was lightning quick at finding my last 3200 tweets (a limit imposed by the Twitter API… Don’t get me started.) and allowed me to create a permanent and portable backup.

Then, in email discussions with the developer, Ganter Ludwig, I found that he too had a similar philosophy and designed the app to serve it:

I’m a strong believer in backing up valuable digital “possessions.” I know tweets are often considered to be disposable, but my tweets are indeed valuable to me . With all the recent concerns about Twitter changing, the need to backup tweets became even more apparent. That’s why I wanted an easy way to store my tweets outside of Twitter so I always had them, and can control how they are presented in the future. There are other ways to back up tweets, but they all had limitations or were annoying difficult to setup and access.

Twitter, as we have known it until now, is changing. This is a great app that could not have come at a better time. If you care at all about digital archiving and data lock-in, or if you simply want a fast way to search through past tweets, this is the app you need.

It’s only $1.99 on the app store which is more than fair if you ask me. Having ownership of my words is worth far more.

“Disconnecting” and “disconnected” are two very different things, as I’m discovering.

Who the hell is this Patrick guy and why would I want to write emails in the order he suggests? That’s just crazy talk! Probably not even his real name.

;-)

I need to take some time out to thank the Splinter Software and the great new calendar app, Today, for sponsoring this week. 

Today was inspired, in part, by ideas written about right here. It’s designed to give you the detail about upcoming appointments you need, when you need it, about the things you need it most for. It’s clean and friendly and well worth your buck. Get it now on the app store.

jasonvanluejournal:

Something else that really fascinated me is that even though the majority of the population has never touched a computer, most of the country is mobile. And though it’s slightly better in cities, the connection country-wide is 2G in the best of times. But everyone has a cell phone, most of which connect to the internet. Tim said a lot of businesses even have websites.

I am also aware of other tales like this. And that, for many in “developing” countries in Africa a smartphone is often used as the only computer and often is shared amongst many family members.  Second or third hand, they often can be had far more cheaply than a full size computer or laptop.

Interesting perspective as we all wax on endlessly about the size, weight, and cost of products that are only rumored to, maybe, possibly, someday, perhaps, exist.

(via Chris Bowler)

I wanted to highlight today’s episode of my podcast, Enough, as I think it is topical to the ongoing discussion here. That being, the idea of the “No-grade” — The choice not to upgrade to the latest, greatest, shiny-new-thing when there is no compelling reason to do so. 

Some personal examples of this for me are not upgrading to Mountain Lion on my MacBook Air and still using my original, first generation, iPad. Unless something drastically changes in the near future, I have no plans to upgrade either anytime soon. 

Now, I’m not saying there might not be reasons for others to upgrade. I’m just saying that we should be mindful and purpose driven when doing so.

This is a short episode but I’m pretty proud of the ideas expressed and the discussion that ensued. Take a listen and, if you like what you hear and have yet do do so, please subscribe. 

Being the one in control of what moves me, what I feel obligated by, and what attachments I have to fleeting experiences is not an authority that I’m willing to concede to the arbitrary whims of an app on my mobile phone.

Rather than say: “I am too busy, I don’t have any time for X.” I realize I can be honest and say I am not interested enough in X to do it.

Saying no is saying yes to other things.