Marco.org - The Mac App Store isn't for today's Mac developers -
I’m still not sure where I stand on the Mac App Store, but Marco puts forward some interesting comments that I’d not really thought about.
One thing that I’ve come away thinking after reading it. Will there be an Instapaper app when it launches?
“The ever-so-thinly veiled message? Don’t worry so much. Just blog it. If you are among the lucky few who achieves perfection effortlessly, then by all means carry forth. The rest of us are lucky if we coerce a unit of coherent thinking out our brains and onto the web. Perfectionism? Your editor will help you achieve it after you’re famous.” — Daniel Jalkut
I’ve had MobileMe (MM) for nearly 9 months now, for the most part it’s worked perfectly in the background syncing my contacts, calendars and bookmarks across my iOS devices and my Macs. No complaints from me on that front.
Now I’m no stranger to using online services to store files. In the past I’ve tried Box.net, used Google Docs and am a big advocate for Dropbox, so when I was assessing my useage of MM I began to question why I don’t use the up to 20GB of storage I have with iDisk (something I’m not alone in judging by the response I got on Twitter).
Wanting to explore iDisk fully I checked the MobileMe section of Apple’s website, specifically the section on setting up MM, which, it turns out guides you through the set up of your email, contacts, calendars and bookmarks. It details logging into MM and setting up the sync of the aforementioned items with only a token gesture to iDisk at the bottom the page. The features section is a similar story. I’m told how I can, using the iOS app, access my iDisk on my iPhone and on the web, but not how to set it up.
So I opened up System Preferences and explored the MM section. I checked the normal Sync section, a familiar tale, turn it on and select what I want to sync.
I checked the iDisk section and was greeted by this:
Ok so I can click the big Start button and it will turn on iDisk sync automatically. But no explanation of what it actually does, what gets synced or what doesn’t. That’s a big difference to the screen I was greeted with under the Sync section, which is pretty self explanatory.
So what do Apple need to do to help make it easier for me to use all that online storage?
Well, simply put, there are two1 reasons I’d like to use the space on my iDisk. I’d like to store my documents there so I can get at them easily from anywhere, as well as for another backup, and I’d like to be able to share files for download.
When I set up syncing of my contacts, calendars etc, it’s a case of telling MobileMe to sync automatically and ticking the boxes of the items I want syncing. It’s all built in and nothing really to think about. This should be the same process with iDisk. Under the iDisk tab I should be given the opportunity to turn on syncing automatically and tick the main folders I’d like to sync. In my case Documents and Public, then, whenever a file is placed in these main folders they should be uploaded in the background just as a new bookmark in Safari is.
It’s a crude mockup but it illustrates my point. It’s understandable, it show’s me how much space I’m using and I’ve got control over my Public folder. It’s simple to understand, it would get me using it and I’m sure it would get others using it.
1 Well maybe three if you count the fact I’m paying for it as a reason.
I had to link to this simply because I can identify with it.
(Sorry I can’t remember the via, the post was in a window of tabs opened over the last week or so. I’ll update when I find it.)
Saw this on Flickr this afternoon and felt compelled to share it. One thing I don’t post often enough is imagery, so when I see something as awe-inspiring as this I’ve decided I should share it.
A lot of the blogs I read don’t offer comments and generally I don’t miss it. The few that do allow comments, I read the post and try to read the comments if I’m interested in the topic. Thanks to the way I try to control the blogs I read, the comments that I do read usually leave me feeling like it was worth while and added value to the initial post. On the larger blogs, which have really become more than blogs in the traditional sense of the word, the comments usually descend into anarchy and trolling. I never read the comments on these blogs, and in all honesty mostly just skim over the post unless it really grabs me in the first paragraph or two.
You can easily draw the conclusion from this that there is more than one form of comment to a blog post. There is the considered comment that adds to the conversation and there is the noisy comment which adds to the general din. In my experience, and disappointingly so, the noisy comment that adds to the general din is the most common. People don’t have the time to offer up something more considered, and those that would make the comments worth reading are so busy that they don’t comment at all. It’s understandably easy, rightly or wrongly, to draw the conclusion that commenting is on it’s way out. Which is why when I read this paragraph in the newly launched Cognition, aka The Happy Cog Blog, I was intrigued.
Speaking of experiments, there’s our comments section. Everybody knows inline blog comments are going the way of the BBS and Gopher sites of yore. We’re not ready to say “comments are dead” (we’ll leave that for Wired Magazine’s next cover story) but we have noticed the smell, and we’re doing something about it.
It seems that they, along with a lot of you, have noticed what I have spoken about above. I read on with interest to see what new system they had thought of was, in the hope that it could potentially bring a shift from noisy comments to conversational comments.
Kids today are more likely to respond to a blog post on Twitter than in the article’s comments section; so we’ve collocated our comments on Twitter. Share a tweet-length response here, and, with your permission, it will go there.
Upon reading their solution I was disappointed. It turns out their solution is the ability to comment via Twitter. From the post there is a tweet box, you give permission and your tweet goes out to the world. At the same time it’s added to the post, in the same manner as a conventional comment using a conventional form.
Straight away I wondered what’s the difference between a noisy comment and using the method Happy Cog have gone with to comment? The comment still has to be made from their page for it to appear in the right place. The display of comments is still the same, ie. a big long list that takes lots of scrolling to read. The only difference really is a low barrier to entry–because I’m already logged into Twitter–, a limit of 120 characters1 and a tweet that appears as a comment to the post as well as appearing out of context in my Twitter stream. Whilst the traditional comment form is open to abuse, and any mildly popular post can play host to trolls and the like, it did at least give potential for intelligent debate.
I can understand the appeal behind trying to develop new ways of commenting, but I question the use of Twitter as a solution. The number of tweets I see in relation to a post are limited, most tweets of this kind offer a link to a post as a quick way of sharing, maybe with a sentence to sum up or offer a quick off the cuff remark. Is this really the type of conversation that should be encouraged? Shouldn’t we instead be looking for a more robust method of commenting? If a post is worth commenting on, surely it deserves more than 120 characters that can easily be lost in a sea of other 120 character remarks? The traditional sense of commenting at least allows those who have put thought and consideration to stand out from the crowd in the fact that their often long comment will stick out above the short one liners that generally occur.
Of course there will always be the oldest form of commenting on the web in the form of a post on your own blog.
If you are moved to respond with more than 140 characters, post the response on your website, and it will show up here.
That’s the solution we should be encouraging more of.
LM Wind Power | Identity Designed -
Excellent piece of identity design by Danish studio Make. The word mark by itself is excellent, the implementation simply reinforces it.
“This grace is unrelenting. This grace has no intention of giving up. This grace will not be satisfied with the status quo. This grace does not get discouraged. It will never compromise. It will never become bitter or cynical. This is loving, patient, perseverant, powerful grace.” — Paul Tripp
“Its time to stop feeling sorry for ourselves because we think no one is listening and start doing what we love: creating things that change peoples lives, even in the tiniest little ways.” — Joshua Brewer
“If feeling you’re going to succeed makes you work harder, that probably improves your chances of succeeding, but if feeling you’re going to fail makes you stop working, that practically guarantees you’ll fail.” — Paul Graham