25 May 2011
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NASATelevision:
A camera mounted on each of space shuttle Endeavour’s solid rocket boosters capture the launch of the orbiter on STS-134 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on May 16, and documents the SRBs’ separation and subsequent landing in the Atlantic Ocean.
25 May 2011
On Sunday David Allen posted an update on Twitter mentioning that his “favorite GTD app”, eProductivity, had just launched a free version. In case you’re not familiar with it, eProductivity is a Getting Things Done application built around Lotus Notes. For many people Lotus Notes is a thing of the past, something they struggled with in the ’90s and were happy to be rid of. In terms of something to build a modern GTD app around, it might as well be Eudora.
So, I took the opportunity to tease David a bit, and posted a reply to his tweet, saying, “The fact that @OmniFocus isn’t @gtdguy’s favorite GTD app makes me wonder if he really gets GTD… 
”.
I didn’t really expect any sort of response from David. I mean, how often when you reach out to one of your heroes do they actually take the time to reply, particularly when you’re being a bit of a jerk and teasing them?
But I did get a response, and it was a surprising one: “@jasonclarke @OmniFocus …or if they do.”
David Allen, the inventor of the Getting Things Done method, is implying that the OmniFocus Mac and iOS application suite (widely considered to be the gold standard of task management tools that support GTD), and by extension the Omni Group, don’t “get” GTD.
Shocking, right?
To be fair, David responded later that he “Didn’t mean to bag on OmniFocus…just to push back on people who think there’s nothing better.”
Unfortunately, David still loses some credibility in my eyes if he felt the need to handle his puzzling disdain for OmniFocus this way. Sure, I can see why OmniFocus isn’t for everyone (obviously it won’t appeal to non-Mac users), but to put it down as not getting GTD, and to simultaneously support an irrelevant productivity platform like Lotus Notes?
Like it or not, the GTD method not only benefits from solid and relevant technology solutions, these days it requires them. David likes to talk about how pen and paper are perfectly adequate GTD tools. If you can use pen and paper to run your GTD system, you don’t need a GTD system. And no matter how good eProductivity is on a computer, it can’t possibly compete with OmniFocus’s ubiquity across computer, phone, and tablet devices, not to mention its innovative user interfaces.
Getting Things Done is a fantastic workflow, and it has bettered my life immensely. And while David is the undisputed GTD guru, I wouldn’t recommend getting your advice from him about what technology solution to adopt when following the GTD method.
Execution is everything, and The Omni Group continues to show us all how it’s done across their entire product line. OmniFocus makes a ton of money, and its large user base loves it.
It also doesn’t hurt that it’s not built on a platform like Lotus Notes.
By the way, if you’re looking for some fantastic (in my opinion, guru-level) training on using OmniFocus as part of your GTD task management workflow, check out David Sparks‘ OmniFocus Ninja Tricks screencast series:
24 May 2011
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Ryan Chreighton:
I really hope you enjoy Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure. In all of this, our goal as parents is to give our kids the kind of childhood we would KILL to have had. I can’t imagine how different my life would have been if I had made a real working video game with my father at age 5. In fact, I can’t imagine how different my life would have been if he hadn’t left when I was eight months old.
But no matter. Some day, the ponycorns will get him.
Click on the title image at the top of the post if you’d like to play Cassie’s game.
09 May 2011
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I managed to accidentally set the furthest-read location of one of my Kindle books to half-way through the book when in reality I hadn’t even started reading it. To be honest, I think it happened as a result of a bug in the Kindle for Mac app, but that’s not the point of this post.
I found some instructions online explaining how to reset the furthest-read location:
- Visit “Your Account” page on amazon.com.
- Go to “Manage Your Kindle” under “Digital Content” section.
- Scroll down to “Manage synchronization between devices. Learn more.” and select “Learn more.”
- Select “Turn Synchronization off.”
- Make sure all your device locations are at or before the location you want to set in the book.
- On a device which has the book in the right location, delete the book (you should write down the current location, just in case).
- On the same device, go to the archive and re-add the book.
- Open the book up (it should be in the same location as before).
- Then turn synchronization back on.
- Hit the manual sync on the device.
Unfortunately, like some of the commenters, I couldn’t get it to work. I think I figured out the secret sauce, though. Starting at step 6, I think it’s important to perform these steps using the device that set the furthest-read location last. In other words, before you try these steps, when you go to synchronize your location a popup will come up asking you if you want to sync to the furthest location. That popup will give the device name of the device that set the furthest location. It’s that device that you need to use when performing these steps.
In my case, attempting to reset it from my iPad failed every time, but once I wised up and tried it from the Kindle for Mac app, it worked straight away.
05 May 2011
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Eddie Smith on how it’s now harder to justify not owning an smartphone than it is to justify owning one:
Add to this the value your app phone will bring when
- Freeing up time on vacations that you’d otherwise spend fumbling with a map, or worse, lost
- Price comparing products in stores by simply scanning bar codes
- Having more options for staying in touch with family
- Running your business more efficiently by triaging email on your phone before sitting down at a full keyboard to do better things . . . to name only a few.
They’re not just toys anymore, and honestly, it’s getting harder to cost-justify not owning one anymore.
21 Apr 2011
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Matt Hickey:
The Michigan State Police have started using handheld machines called “extraction devices” to download personal information from motorists they pull over, even if they’re not suspected of any crime.
How is this even remotely considered legal?
20 Apr 2011
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16 Apr 2011
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Eric D. Snider:
Now, that statement might be a little confusing. It might sound like they’re saying that the Huffington Post, which has built its brand by getting people to write for free, would never try to get people to write for free. But that’s not what the statement is saying. All those people who write for free at the Huffington Post? Those are not professional writers. Those are people who just want a platform for their voices. The Huffington Post Media Group would never try to get actual professional writers to write for free. Heaven forfend! Why, they wouldn’t be professional writers anymore then, would they? Not if they weren’t getting paid! They’d be … I don’t know … unpaid bloggers. And the Huffington Post Media Group does NOT want professional writers to become unpaid bloggers, no matter what that e-mail said. Well, I mean, unless they want to, of course. If they’re cool with not getting paid, hey, why not?
By far the best post documenting the tragic bumbling that is now Arianna-O-L. What a joke that company has become.
15 Apr 2011
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It took me a long time to realize how much of a Dave Grohl / Foo Fighters fan I am. The track A Matter of Time from this album is a masterpiece, as are These Days and Walk. This video is of the band playing through the album straight through, all 49 minutes of it, in their rehearsal space.
This is TIGHT. These guys are pros.
13 Apr 2011
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Brad Linder:
While I’m not particularly interested in taking a salaried position at this point in my career, I wish AOL would have hired full time bloggers for Download Squad and many of its other properties years ago. It’s always felt strange to expect bloggers to pour their heart and soul into their work for $10 or $15 per post. Writing for Download Squad was one of the most difficult blogging gigs around, because it required not just coming up with an on-the-spot opinion about some article you read, but downloading and installing software, testing it out to see if it lives up to its promise, and writing a mini-review in roughly 150 to 500 words (with occasional room for longer feature reports). But Download Squad bloggers worked remarkably hard at their jobs despite the relatively poor pay right up until they received a letter yesterday letting them know that their services were no longer required.
Brad’s take on the situation is spot-on.
I’ve been meaning to write a goodbye to Download Squad since I parted ways with the site early this year (2011). It took me a long time to decide to leave; the writing had been on the wall for a while and I was having a very hard time getting excited or even interested enough to write for AOL, but I still felt (and feel) a strong attachment to the various evolving teams I worked with there over the past six years. It’s really disappointing to see such a talented team summarily discarded.
I certainly wasn’t one of the most prolific writers at Download Squad or the other Weblogs Inc. sites I wrote for, but I did manage to pump out over a thousand posts for Download Squad, and a few hundred more combined for TUAW, TUMW (apparently no longer available), and DIY Life over the years. It’s … something.
A particular point of sadness in all of this is knowing that AOL/HuffPo is dismantling something that my late friend Marc Orchant had a hand in building. Marc brought me on at Weblogs Inc. and mentored me as a blogger early on. Though I never met him in person, I learned a lot from him, and miss him.
To all the writers I worked with at Download Squad over the years, I hope the future holds better and brighter things for you all. You deserve it.