Minimal Mac

52 Tiger » Mail rules

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 22:09:33 -0500

I get several hundred email messages per day across several accounts, gigs and points of reference.

I don’t use a single rule. I have one inbox. I treat them all the same way.

Required reading.

"So, the big realization with 2.0 is that I tried to do too much. Which is, you know, like being in a..."

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:04:43 -0500

““So, the big realization with 2.0 is that I tried to do too much. Which is, you know, like being in a job interview and saying your biggest fault is you work too hard. But it turned out to be a big disservice to my customers,””

- Wil Shipley: “we tried to do too much” for Delicious Library 2

I saw this very same thing ultimately put a software developer I used to work for out of business. To balance features, compatibility, boundary cases, and need is a hard line to walk but it is one that a developer must to survive.

(via Subtraction)

My Priority Inbox in Apple Mail.app | The Brooks Review

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:48:10 -0500

My Priority Inbox in Apple Mail.app | The Brooks Review:

First this is not nearly as impressive as what Google has built, but when you have several email addresses and a filing system you like, using Gmail is just not that practical (at least not for me).

That’s kind of where I am at after the initial excitement over the potential of the idea. He also covers some of the rules he uses to achieve similar results. I love this one:

Basically it is looking for my work email address to show up in the CC field, and then checking to see if my name appears in the message body. If my name is not in the message body and I have been CCd on the email, the email is then marked read and archived.

Brilliant.

(via Shawn Blanc)

Small is Big

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:01:00 -0500

Now I have had some time to digest all of the announcements at Apple’s Music/Media Event held yesterday. I took the time to watch the keynote and have read several news and pundit posts about it. One thing that stood out to me is how much “small” was promoted as a feature. Seriously, if one were to build a drinking game around that word and all of it’s synonyms, one would have been under the table passed out half way through the event. Every single product that was rolled out got a reduction in dimensions and that fact was highlighted heavily. Let’s go down the list:

iPod shuffle — Smaller and thinner than not only the last generation but also the generation before that it most closely resembles.

IPod nano — Cut virtually in half and put on a diet. Now small enough to wear as a large watch.

iPod touch — Even more thin than the past generation which already seemed impossibly so.

Apple TV — Small enough to fit in a jeans pocket. I would be watching my house guests quite a bit more closely if I owned one of these.

There are many reasons why small matters. The one that immediately pops to mind is that, with the exception of the Apple TV, these are portable devices and a reduction in size makes them even more so. That said, here is the other thing that comes to my mind, the technology disappears. You forget it is there. Suddenly, there is no player, your music exists in your ears and you no longer feel it clipped to your shirt or in your pocket. Suddenly, there is no set top box, the movies just appear on your screen. Makes me wonder how long it will be before they really are gone and all that is left is the experience.

The new Apple TV. Your TV, simplified. (Don’t worry, I...

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:15:33 -0500

The new Apple TV. Your TV, simplified.

(Don’t worry, I have something to say about everything released today but real life has me waiting to sit down and write it.)

What? That? Up there? The picture? Well, I’ll tell you...

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:38:00 -0500

What? That? Up there? The picture? Well, I’ll tell you about that in a second. First, a story…

Before my wife, Princess Bethany, and I got married, we took a course on money management for couples. The course was led by Ruth Hayden, author of the very excellent book For Richer, Not Poorer: The Money Book for Couples. You should buy it. Seriously. You see, money differences and problems are one of the leading causes of breakups and divorce. Anyway, one of the strategies she advocates is to figure out how much money you need every month for your day to day stuff beyond bills, divide it by 31 to find your daily budget, and then get that amount in cash (yes, the dead tree, smokable kind). Spending cash makes you very conscious of exactly how much you have to spend. The rule is that when it’s gone, it’s gone, and you have to do without.

It’s a killer idea and one I don’t do often enough. Largely because getting and dealing with cash these debit card days is kind of a pain. Online purchases in iTunes, Amazon orders, software purchases - there are plenty of things you can’t easily pay for in cash. Which brings me to the screenshot above. It’s an iPhone app called Left to Spend (iTunes link). Here is how the developer describes it:

To use ‘Left to spend’, all you need to do is set up a daily allowance that you KNOW won’t break your budget. Every day this amount will be added to your total allowance. Whenever you spend money you simply open ‘Left to spend’ and enter the amount, which is then subtracted from your total allowance. If your total allowance is running low, you need to slow down your spending and wait for your allowances to accumulate. As long as you never get below 0, you’ll never have to worry about money again.

Yep, a solution to the problem. Cash, or no cash, track spending just the way it was recommended in my story above. It’s an elegant little app that does one thing well (Paging Mr. Mottram!). Not only that but it is an excellent first project for a struggling student abroad so help him out with a few cents from your daily budget.

(Submitted to Minimal Mac by the developer, Lauge Jepsen. Full disclosure; He did give me a freebie code to check it out. Doing so did not guarantee a review – positive or otherwise.)

Gmail Priority Inbox Puts Important Messages First | Smarterware

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:41:52 -0500

Gmail Priority Inbox Puts Important Messages First | Smarterware:

The only worry I have about Priority Inbox is the additional complexity it adds to Gmail. As I said this past week on TWiG, Gmail is just getting stuffed with new and more advanced features: phone calling, Buzz, Tasks, and now this, not to mention the (awesome, but huge) buffet of optional features in Labs.

So, the web is all, um, atwitter about GMail’s new Priority Inbox feature. It basically takes a backwards approach to their already excellent spam filtering by using the technology to help filter up the messages that are most important to you.

There is lots of coverage on this already today but I am linking to Gina’s piece because a) it is a nice, concise overview but also b) she brings up the important observation quoted above.

GMail has such an overwhelming myriad of settings, features and options now it is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate. Priority Inbox is a compelling feature but I sure would have an even easier time dealing with my mail if there were not chat lists and buzzing and themes and all sorts of other stuff I had to turn off just to, you know, check my email.

There is also the increasing privacy concerns. By using this new feature, you basically are telling Google what and who matters to you. They will use that info to both provide a better experience and push more relevant ads to you. Sure, they are already doing this to some extent with the ads that are already there. That said, this will surely help them make that data even more precise. Do you trust them? Is this a fair trade off?

To paraphrase a dead old white guy, perhaps those who give up privacy for the sake of inbox sanity deserve neither.

All You Need is Simplenote – Shawn Blanc

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:10:00 -0500

All You Need is Simplenote – Shawn Blanc:

To say the app has barely changed since 2008 is, of course, not to say that Simplenote is the same as it was two years ago. It has been refined, polished, and updated with taste.

Not to get all Simplenote crazy but I would be remiss if I did not link to Mr. Blanc here. He took my call to have people share what is in their Simplenote to a whole new level. Bravo!

"Nature is more complex than anything humans could imagine, but nature is precisely as complex as it..."

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:03:10 -0500

“Nature is more complex than anything humans could imagine, but nature is precisely as complex as it needs to be and not one bit more, which makes it simple.”

- Jonathan Harris – Simplicity

At Home in The Cube: Guest Post from Julio Ojeda-Zapata

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 09:31:00 -0500

The following is a guest post from my friend Julio Ojeda-Zapata. He is a technology writer for The Saint Paul Pioneer Press (my hometown paper), geek, and all around great guy. You may also know him from his appearances on This Week in Tech.

I think there are many out there who struggle to find the same control over their workplace computing environment as they do their home. For most, there is less choice at work over the tools you are given to use. As someone who works for themselves, I wanted to have someone speak to this quandary and tell their story. Thankfully, Julio was happy to step up to the podium.

My cubicle at work made me uneasy for years, and I couldn’t put my finger on why. This year, it dawned on me what had bothered me for so long — It was my computer stand.

You probably know the kind. It’s an adjustable metal apparatus with dual surfaces, one for a PC and monitor, the other for the keyboard and mouse. The surfaces slide backwards and forwards with a yank or a shove, as well as upwards and downwards via a rubber-sheathed metal crank.

My workplace has dozens of the stands, positioned alongside cubicle desks. My co-workers toil on the stands without complaint. In a bit of an epiphany, though, my long-suppressed hatred for these Rube Goldberg contraptions bubbled to the surface — and I knew I had to be rid of mine.

To grasp why this stand bothered me so much, you need to know how I work in my home office.

I have the simplest of desks, consisting of a sturdy rubberwood table my wife and I picked up at Pier One Imports for a pittance when we were newlyweds. It was our cozy dining-room table for a long time, until we bought something larger and more appropriate for entertaining our friends.

Then it became my workstation. It was too tall for typing, but my wife — who, unlike yours truly, can be trusted with power tools — fixed this by taking inches off the legs and reattaching them.

Thus transformed, the table became a single, broad work surface for a succession of all-in-one Macs, with plenty of room to spare for peripherals and the printouts I fan out when I am writing.

The table is typing and mousing heaven, with an obscenely ample area for my optical rodent to roam unimpeded, and curved edges that cause no irritation to my underarms and wrists during my marathon work sessions.

Commercial computer tables don’t measure up. These range from cheapo OfficeMax versions with ridiculous slide-out keyboard trays, to hyper-expensive variations from the likes of Anthro and Biomorph. Sure, the latter are elegant and ergonomic — even electrically powered, in some higher-end cases, for raising and lowering with push-button ease — but I’m not about to spend hundreds or thousands for such Lexus-like furniture.

My rubberwood desk adheres to the Minimal Mac ideal: It does its duty with absolute simplicity, maximum efficiency, minimal cost, extreme elegance and complete comfort.

My PC stand at work offends me in many so ways. The faux-wood typing surface is barely wide enough for the keyboard, with little extra room for a mouse. Its legs are enamel-painted metallic tubes ending in ugly, jagged-edged openings; the rubber covers intended to camouflage this are always missing. So is that absurd hand crank, forcing me to go in a frantic hunt for a substitute.

A couple of months ago, I reached my breaking point and had the stand banished. I needed no replacement brought in, as it turned out. I already had one: my cubicle’s desk.

This surface was too tall for comfortable computing, but I knew it could be lowered to precisely the right height. I’m sure millions of cubicles around the world have the same flexibility.

With my stand gone and my desk adjusted, I sighed in relief as I rolled my computer chair up to the ultrawide typing station and got busy (on a Mac, of course). This felt just like my rubberwood table back home. All the mechanical complexity was gone; a single, exquisitely positioned work surface remained. I like my job, and this allowed me to like doing it.

My new computer setup, though, made me something of an office oddball. Visitors to my cubicle would become flustered as they sensed something amiss — it took them a second or two to see that the PC stand was gone. No one at my office, to my knowledge, has ever done such a thing.

But I’ll never go back. This is what freedom feels like.

Canned – iPhone App Designed by Sky Balloon

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:48:00 -0500

Canned – iPhone App Designed by Sky Balloon:

Send a canned message in under 2 seconds!* It’s as easy as launch, select, send!

We have all been in the situation. Perhaps while driving (which I in no way advocate), or in a meeting, you need to send a quick text message to someone. Usually, it’s the same person or group of people – your spouse, your daycare, your team. Usually, it’s the same message – “Stuck in traffic, running late.”, “Stopping at the store, what do we need?”. You get the picture.

Canned solves just this. Set up pre-addressed and composed SMS messages to save, select and send. Either to one person or a group. It does one thing and it does it well. Also, it’s only 99 cents. This is a home screen app for sure.

What's in your Simplenote?

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:15:00 -0500

Some of the old timers may remember one of Apple’s most famous ad campaigns – “What’s on your Powerbook?”. In it, celebrities and some regular folk were pictured with their Powerbooks and revealed in text were some of the things they used it for. Even back then, I was highly fascinated by the tools people use and how they use them and this fed that crave quite nicely.

With the new release of Simplenote, I thought it might be fun to list just a few of the notes I have in mine with the hopes that others will share theirs as well. If you do decide to post yours up somewhere, @reply me your name and a link to your list on Twitter and I will update this post with it as my time allows. Sound fun? Great, here we go…

What’s in my Simplenote?

Bits of words and wisdom – Where I keep nice phrases and well written sentences I run across on the Internet.
Yay me! – Where I keep a little list of meaningful accomplishments. I look at this whenever I’m feeling down about myself. It also came in handy for performance reviews back when I had a “real” job.
Home Stats – Any measurements I take around the house I keep in here so that, for instance, I always know how big the dining room is or the cubby holes in my office desk hutch. Things like that.
My wife’s standard order at Chipotle – So I don’t have to call first if I’m picking some up for dinner or lunch.
My personal manifesto – Things I believe in.

OK, your turn. What’s in your Simplenote?

Jack Mottram (who, as usual, displays mad ninja skills)

simpledesks: @home Submitted by Taras Kalapun. The...

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:59:19 -0500

simpledesks:

@home

Submitted by Taras Kalapun.

The funny thing is, as beautifully composed as this shot is, I’m most interested in the chair. Looks like a beautiful chair.

Episode 20- The Air Has Overheated - The Bro Show - The Bro Show

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:00:00 -0500

Episode 20- The Air Has Overheated - The Bro Show - The Bro Show:

Instead of getting into the nitty gritty of of my recent return appearance on The Bro Show podcast, I’m going to attempt to explain why I love this podcast so much.

These are two young guys who are truly passionate about the things they discuss and that really comes through in the show. I mean, seriously, go listen to last weeks episode and tell me you know any two guys more passionate about the Scott Pilgrim series and film, or BBCs Sherlock Holmes series, or, well, anything they discuss. The only thing they are more passionate about is having a great podcast that earns any recognition they may get.

Not to mention, they are the epitome of the archetype British gentlemen. They are unflinchingly gracious, professional, a bit cheeky, and very smart.

So, go take a listen and subscribe while you are there. While this week you get to listen to me blather on at tedium, the coming weeks you get to hear two fine young gents who believe in things, and such qualities are increasingly rare these days.

Function Vs. Form : fiftyfootshadows.net

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 23:31:00 -0500

Function Vs. Form : fiftyfootshadows.net:

Wow. Great read. John Carey hits it beyond the bleachers with this piece. Many, many things that resonate here with me, I’m not sure I know where to start. I’m just going to pick out a favorite bit or two:

I find that I sit somewhere between the ultra minimal lifestyle that many tout on their blogs and social networks and those attached to older, kitschy nostalgia. I like having old books on my bookshelf and small trinkets from my travels scattered around my living space. I like both the minimal forms of modern trends in product design and the warm feeling an old wooden bookshelf can bring.

Yep, same here. While people who don’t know me would peg me, based especially on what they see here, as a modernist/minimalist, they may be surprised to find me spending hours each day at my treasured old-fashioned cherry wood desk. I love it. I’m a writer and when I first saw it I thought to myself that it looked like the desk of a writer. Lots of cubby holes for pen and paper stuff. To me, it feels like a place where serious work gets done. Then there is this:

So when it comes to buying into new products I feel its good to look at things in a really obvious way, why do I think I need this and what do I need it for, which leads me to also picture what I DON’T need within the product as well. All too often a product will stretch itself way to thin by trying to accomplish too much. When you boil down a need to its essence you will more often than not discover you can usually do more, and be happier with less. When you simplify your desires it leaves room for you to actually enjoy the results of your labors.

So very, very true. Also, don’t be fooled. He does dig deep and peel back some layers on overdoing it with the minimalism for its own sake. That said:

Happiness is easier to find when you don’t fill your life with all that clutter and that is the reason I have been thinking about all of this lately. It feels all too daunting to live a life so crammed full with information and constantly changing standards to keep track of. I search for ways to find a balancing point, a calm among the madness of life spinning around me.

Me too, Brother John. Me too.

Also, make sure to check out his desktop pictures while you are there. I’ve featured them here before and they are killer.

(via shortsweettothepoint, which is proof that I do, in fact, look at the submissions.)

onethingwell: Evom, a simple drag ‘n’ drop video converter and...

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:00:44 -0500

onethingwell:

Evom, a simple drag ‘n’ drop video converter and downloader for the Mac.

(via saramdle)

Works as advertised. Very niffy little app.

Simplenote Gets Updated, Stays Simple

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:26:00 -0500

I have been a dedicated user of Simplenote for quite some time. Almost everything you see here on the site is either synced to it via Notational Velocity or written directly in the iPad or iPhone app.

The new version was just released and it is nothing short of amazing. They have chosen just the right features to add, and the right polish on the UI, while still maintaining what brought its users here in the first place — Simplicity.

Some of the new features that matter to me are the ability to “pin” notes you select to the top of the list, word and character count, full screen mode on the iPad version in landscape orientation, and versioning.

Seriously nice work. If you have not tried it yet, well, I’m rather surprised you have bothered reading this far.

I forked the excellent (open source!) Notational Velocity app,...

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 10:19:00 -0500

I forked the excellent (open source!) Notational Velocity app, and hacked in a third pane that shows you the note you’re viewing as rendered by Markdown.

I just did a search while working on something else and was aghast at discovering I had not linked to this before. It really is a simple as the blockquote above. For those of us who write (or increasingly, live) in Markdown, being able to see your markup rendered in real time is a godsend. Seriously, go and get it. If you need to focus and not see two versions of what you are writing, simply slide the Markdown pane out of the way. It’s what I use and it’s really, really great.

Great quote from Frank which mirrors one I have posted...

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:41:00 -0500

Great quote from Frank which mirrors one I have posted before.

Also, if you are not reading Frank Chimero, I’m likely to trust everything you say just a little bit less.

Via: The Endangered Species

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 18:58:00 -0500

I want to talk about something very important. Something that, I feel, has gone increasingly unnoticed – in fact abandoned in many cases – on the internet today. It’s increasing disappearance is akin to that of an endangered species. It’s so small that, when its population dwindles, people stop noticing. Pretty soon, we will look up one day and it will simply be gone. If we do not take action now, only those of us who remember the early days of the Internet will remember it. Then it will be too late. For this reason, I plan to take drastic action now. What is this rare yet important part of the online ecosystem?

Via

The “via”, as we online writer types call it, is what you see at the bottom of a post giving attribution to the source where you found the link. For instance, take a look at the recent via I gave for this link to Scott Adams’ The Less Feature:

(via Chris Nuccitelli)

Not only did I acknowledge who pointed me to the article. If you click the name, I link directly to the exact place and words he used to point me to it. Obviously, I can’t do that in every case. But where I can, I will.

Here is another example from one of my other websites, The Random Post:

(Though I saw this in my own feed, I’m giving the via to Randy Murray, who linked it on Twitter and reminded me I had something to say)

I made it very clear the events that happened that led me to not only the link, but also the fact that I initially saw it and passed it over but then, thanks to a trusted source linking to it, gave it secondary consideration.

Then, there are cases like this:

(via Ben Kogan who, despite my offer, said it was not necessary to link. He was just excited to share it.)

Ben sent me the tip off for the link via email. Therefore, I could not have linked to the exact source. Even though I asked if he wanted me link to his personal site or some other place when I gave him the via, he told me he did not. Guess what? I still need to make it clear why I am not linking to the source.

Attribution and acknowledgement of sourcing are not only the right thing to do, the honorable thing to do, they are the very strands in the thing we call the web. They are what connect it all together. They help to explain how I got here from there and why. They also help you navigate back down that thread and, hopefully, onto other places filled with wonder, curiosity and delight.

Many on the web have become far too relaxed at doing the simplest of vias:

(via Minimal Mac)

I wont call out any specific examples. It really does not matter. What does matter is that I not treat my vias with the same lack of care. Therefore, I feel I must overcompensate for my own transgressions in this area. To make it up not only for the ones I have failed to do, but to make it up for the rest of those who do not. Especially those who fail to link this site in that chain of knowledge, thus potentially robbing their readership of examining the threads herein. Therefore, you will be seeing a lot more hyper-explanatory vias from me. I will not be perfect at them. I will forget and fail. In fact, the iPhone photo from my friend Jorge that I linked earlier failed to receive a proper via. It will go like this:

(via Ian Hines. Despite Jorge being my friend, and I a reader of his photoblog, I failed to see this photo before)

See, one less missing via. Baby steps.