Jason Clarke

If you’re looking for a Google Reader client for iPhone or iPad instead of using Google’s web interface, the consensus seems to be that Reeder is the best choice. While it’s a very good choice, I don’t necessarily agree that it’s the best choice.

Personally, I think Byline is a better reader for a few crucial reasons that I’ll lay out below.

iPhone version

In a word: speed.

Both Reeder and Byline cache images when synchronizing to speed up their display, but Byline is significantly faster at displaying cached content than Reeder is. Beyond that, Byline also caches web content when it detects that the full article is not available, or if you explicitly set it to cache web content from a particular feed. While I like and miss Reeder’s Readability function, I find the offline caching of full web pages more useful to me — not just for use offline, but for making navigation faster.

iPad

Everything above about speed on the iPhone version holds true on the iPad. I don’t understand why Reeder is so slow at rendering images that are already in its cache; sometimes it’s so slow it makes me wonder whether the cache is actually working properly.

But more importantly, on the iPad my biggest complaint is text contrast. While I love the control Reeder gives me over font size and I prefer the line spacing it uses to Byline’s, the text in Byline is black on a white background, instead of dark grey on a light grey but textured background. My eyes get tired out very quickly using Reeder, even at larger font sizes. And the dots in the texture of the background are simply distracting.

Gestures

Another speed-related advantage Byline has over Reeder is the gesture it uses to move between articles. In Reeder, you have to either use the admittedly well-placed up and down buttons on the left side, or you have to pull down at the end of an article to display the next one. Swiping left and right are dedicated to other, less important tasks. In Byline, you move between articles by swiping left and right. It’s a smaller, easier gesture to complete than pulling down at the bottom of an article, and it doesn’t require that you actually be at the bottom of the article to do it, making quickly scanning a breeze.

If getting through your feeds quickly and efficiently is important to you, Byline is a clear winner over Reeder.

Please note: I've moved my active blogging over to a new site, called Jason Clarke - Infinite Bass Line. I will leave this site up indefinitely, but if you're interested in my latest posts please consider visiting the new site.

Andrew Janjigian:

The next few times I had leftover pizza with which to experiment, I played around with the method to make sure I understood the technique. I knew that the moisture- and heat-trapping cover was essential, but wasn’t sure about the heating method itself. I tried placing the slices onto a preheated griddle, but that only served to over-crisp and dry out the slices, leaving them stiff as planks. As did starting out with a cold griddle set to a higher temperature. In the end, I determined that the three essential elements of the method were starting from cold, covering the griddle, and heating the slices at a temperature below the boiling point of water (212°F).

Please note: I've moved my active blogging over to a new site, called Jason Clarke - Infinite Bass Line. I will leave this site up indefinitely, but if you're interested in my latest posts please consider visiting the new site.

There’s a new startup called Sendoid that has just announced its beta release. Sendoid (previously called iSendr) is a cross-platform application using Adobe Air (unfortunately) that lets you share files of unlimited size, generating a private URL that you can then give to the other party to download from.

If the other person is also a Sendoid user, they can use the Sendoid application to download your file. If not, they can simply paste the URL into their browser, and download it from there.

I’m testing it right now and though the speeds aren’t amazing, it’s perfectly serviceable. Sendoid’s revenue plan isn’t immediately obvious, but I’m hopeful that they find one since a solid cross-platform peer-to-peer file sharing tool is something I’ve been desperately needing for a long time, and I’m glad it’s finally here.

Please note: I've moved my active blogging over to a new site, called Jason Clarke - Infinite Bass Line. I will leave this site up indefinitely, but if you're interested in my latest posts please consider visiting the new site.

Sara Yin:

Although NASA has a zero-tolerance policy for drugs, this is the second time in just over a year since cocaine was discovered at the facility. In January 2010 a small amount was found in the hangar that housed space shuttle Discovery, which, incidentally landed back on Earth last Wednesday. It will spend the rest of its days in a museum.

They’re putting a small amount of cocaine in a museum?

Please note: I've moved my active blogging over to a new site, called Jason Clarke - Infinite Bass Line. I will leave this site up indefinitely, but if you're interested in my latest posts please consider visiting the new site.

Paul Carr on being quoted about a company months ago, only to have the quote published after that company becomes his new employer:

As it happens I stand by everything I said about Forbes. Unfortunately, it seems I didn’t stop at Forbes…

Yikes! Evil squared. So, who is evil squared, exactly? Carr takes aim: “Newser.com has always been shit, and I’m disappointed in Michael Wolff for creating it. I used to like him. He used to care about content. Huffington was great, but now they’re chasing traffic and SEO and filling up their pages with slideshows and sex tapes and horseshit.”

Yikes indeed. Of course, in the time between my email interview with Steven and the book coming out, TechCrunch and the Huffington Post have now became part of the same “happy” “family”.

Tough spot to be in. I’m finding it hard to believe Paul’s “future self” really feels good about HuffPo. If he does, it’s a convenient self-delusion.

Please note: I've moved my active blogging over to a new site, called Jason Clarke - Infinite Bass Line. I will leave this site up indefinitely, but if you're interested in my latest posts please consider visiting the new site.

I’m a nut about text editing apps on my iPad, and right now I’ve settled on Elements (iTunes link) as my preferred app. I like it because it’s a universal app that works on both iPad and iPhone, it seamlessly synchronizes text files using DropBox, and it has a Markdown preview function so I can see what my final product is going to look like.

As much as I like Elements, and the many other Markdown-capable text editing apps available for the iPad, I’m frustrated that none of them support syntax highlighting. For non-programmers, syntax highlighting is a way to make a text editor make the syntax of a given style of code or markup more readable.

For example, I’m writing this in TextMate, which has a very good MultiMarkdown plugin. It allows me to set a colour scheme so that, for example, linked text shows up green, while the URL shows up orange. Bold and italic text is also given colour, as well as actually being shown with the formatting itself. Headings, if I had them in this document, would be distinguished by a background colour change for the entire row. Syntax highlighting just makes reading what you’re writing a little bit easier, and makes looking at previews less frequent.

The first iPad text editor that automatically synchronizes with DropBox and supports Markdown including syntax highlighting is guaranteed a spot in my iPad’s dock, and I bet there are a lot of other Markdown nerds out there that would flip over it as well.

Please note: I've moved my active blogging over to a new site, called Jason Clarke - Infinite Bass Line. I will leave this site up indefinitely, but if you're interested in my latest posts please consider visiting the new site.

An instant classic Download Squad post from Lee Mathews:

Now, I’m not questioning how these applications perform, their price tag, or anything of any real, practical concern. Some of these might be quality downloads. That said, let’s have some fun. Here are 10 application names that warrant reconsideration.

Please note: I've moved my active blogging over to a new site, called Jason Clarke - Infinite Bass Line. I will leave this site up indefinitely, but if you're interested in my latest posts please consider visiting the new site.

David Sparks:

Katie and I are joined by Mac mad scientist, Brett Terpstra, and cover finding files on your Mac along with some advice about tagging and file naming conventions.

I haven’t even listened to the episode yet, but I can tell you that this is going to be worthwhile. David calls Brett a “Mac mad scientist”. I might choose the term “Mac evil genius”, as long as you understand that by evil I mean “will make using your Mac better”.

I’m an unabashed Brett Terpstra fan.

Please note: I've moved my active blogging over to a new site, called Jason Clarke - Infinite Bass Line. I will leave this site up indefinitely, but if you're interested in my latest posts please consider visiting the new site.

Jesus Diaz:

Your new iPad—and old too, with iOS 4.3—has a new hidden feature that Apple doesn’t want you to know about: Extra multi-touch gestures that completely changes the iPad experience—for the best.

For example: With a simple hand swipe, to the left or right, you will be able to navigate through running applications. Once you try it, you won’t be able to go back.

Sadly, Apple doesn’t want you to use these features yet. They could have included the switch in the general preferences for everyone, but right now this is only available for developers, so they can give feedback.

This “hack” will cost you $5 and about 10GB of hard drive space on your Mac for Xcode, but for the usability improvement it’s very much worth it. It astounds me that Apple didn’t leave these features turned on for everyone in iOS 4.3—the only argument I can see is that they’re not very discoverable, but that could be said about any gesture-based input.

Please note: I've moved my active blogging over to a new site, called Jason Clarke - Infinite Bass Line. I will leave this site up indefinitely, but if you're interested in my latest posts please consider visiting the new site.

About this talk:

Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises, and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script — give students video lectures to watch at home, and do “homework” in the classroom with the teacher available to help.

Khan’s re-imagined classroom clearly wasn’t an obvious idea, but it seems like it should have been.

Please note: I've moved my active blogging over to a new site, called Jason Clarke - Infinite Bass Line. I will leave this site up indefinitely, but if you're interested in my latest posts please consider visiting the new site.