Category Archives: Internet

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Kudos to the team at Lift for launching their iOS app today:

Lift is a simple way to achieve any goal, track your progress, and get the support of your friends.

Rachel and I used to have a website many years ago where we tracked our goals and would encourage each other (“Nice work on yoga, you get an exercise check today”) and Lift is now the well-designed, simple app that I’ve been looking for as a replacement. Here’s my concise review:

This app has become a part of my daily routine. It’s helped me become more regular at the stuff I know I should do but “forget to” (looking at you, flossing…). It’s also a fun way to track habits and activities and then visualize it (I thought I ran more than I did). I’d recommend this app to anyone.

Download Lift in the app store.

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I’m very proud of the team at Crowd Favorite and the great work they did alongside the Simpson College PR team. Everything from the design, to the way the content is managed is exactly the kind of elegant work we’re excited to work on every day. Check out the new site at Simpson.edu.

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The Internet Defense League “is a loose coalition that shares a commitment to defending the Internet.” I decided to participate in broadcasting alerts on my site when the internet is “at risk” not because I think many visitors to a personal blog will be persuaded to act but because it seems like the right thing to do (beyond taking action when needed).

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By Rebecca Greenfield at The Atlantic Wire:

Preteens posing with helicopters they did nothing to earn and posting the pictures online for others to ogle provides an easy in for commentary on the state of the American dream. (Dead.)

We stumbled upon this yesterday and had a good laugh, but after reading this I realize it’s indicative of something interesting going on and I’m a bit more self aware of how I present myself.

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I was browsing the Mac App Store and spotted a new “Editors Choice” app from Mint.com: Mint QuickView. It’s a system tray application icon that pops down a ‘quick view’ (modeled similar to Fantastical or even Spotlight) of your finances. Spending, recent transactions, net worth, etc.

Rachel and I have over two and a half years of our joint finances at Mint.com and it’s the best online budgeting, tracking, and personal finance planning tool. It has my unqualified endorsement and the new app is a great addition to the website and mobile apps.

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Here’s a fascinating play-by-play from SCOTUSblog of what happened in the media and at the White House (all within 15 minutes) after the Supreme Court’s decision being announced last week:

The announcement of the Supreme Court’s decision largely upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on Thursday, June 28 precipitated a genuine media drama.  Millions tuned in to get the result in real time, and were rewarded with the spectacle of two major news networks reporting the story incorrectly. Indeed, the President himself was in limbo while his staff raced to find out whether the Court had struck down his signature policy initiative.

I dropped Safari Reading List and moved back to Instapaper

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If you’ve ever looked at Safari’s new “Reading List” feature and wondered “is it good enough to replace Instapaper?” or a similar read-it-later service don’t worry, I’ve tested it out for you. Four months ago I moved all my articles into Safari (my primary web browser) and stopped using the Instapaper applications to read on my iPad and iPhone. Spoiler alert: I almost complete stopped saving articles to be read and I stopped reading saved articles.

Here are the big reasons I stopped using the Safari “Reading List”:

1. No home screen presence

Without a nagging reminder to keep reading when I pick up my phone during idle time, I default to spending my time in “less useful” ways such as checking Twitter, checking email, or playing a game. Without a dedicated application icon, for me it was hard to remember there is a list of good articles waiting for me buried in Safari (two or three taps away).

2. No API integration into apps (yet)

I find most of my long-form articles via Twitter and Reeder (RSS feeds). Both these applications have a dedicated button for sending a URL directly to Instapaper. There is no (currently) way to do this for the “Reading List” without taking two steps: open the link in Safari (which switches the currently open app) and then use the built-in Safari action to save to the Reading List (similar to ‘bookmarking’). This is slow and clumsy and led me to almost completely stop bookmarking articles to read later. Sometimes I would read it then and there just so I wouldn’t have to switch apps. Sometimes I would just skim the article and move on.

(I can only presume future iOS versions will make this a simple action available to iOS apps.)

3. No offline abilities

Instapaper does a great job turning an article into a simple, text-only version that will show up downloaded to my devices in the background. With Safari’s Reading List I need to be online to access the URL (tough luck if the URL goes offline temporarily or permanently) and then I need to use the ‘Reader’ tab to see the text-only version. Again, this seems like extra steps and clumsy. It’s close, though.

(I am aware that iOS 6 will add “Offline Reading” support, that’s why this is number three.)

Reading List has near parity to other read-it-later providers like Instapaper but it’s still a bit too fiddly to be useful. My guess is offline support will be good and a dedicated iOS “Save to Reading List” action is around the corner. I’ll try things out again and see if Instapaper drops off my home screen then. But, the point remains: without the nagging application on my home screen: I forget to read what I told myself I should.

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This post by Matt Mullenweg is pretty insightful:

WordPress has fantastic content that people on Tumblr love, and Tumblr has a rich and diverse content and curation community that can drive new visitors to WordPress — it’s like peanut butter and chocolate.

And I’ve felt exactly the same way, actually. Near the end of the ski season I noticed Jason Kottke had essentially duplicated his entire web experience on Tumblr just to allow users to properly repost, follow, and share his content.

I thought this was genius and started researching ways I could do this myself for Colorado Snow, which is self-hosted on WordPress. So, while you wait anxiously for Jetpack to add Tumblr support simply add the Tumblrize plugin and get started.

  • Question #1: Does this shut down the Tumblr versus WordPress.com “monthly traffic” and “active blog” statistics and comparisons? Probably.
  • Question #2: Will Tumblr get anxious about this and the potential for duplicate content, abuse, etc.? Probably not, eyeballs are eyeballs.

PS: Here’s my Colorado Snow blog on Tumblr, it only took about 5 minutes to set up and configure.