The Foxfire books have been in my life as long as I can remember. I can still remember their location in my parents’ bookcase. Just as I remember the location of Fleming’s Art & Ideas (1968, 3rd edition) art history book. Even today, all 4 of these books are next to each other the hallway bookcase. All of them describe cultures, traditions, and artifacts seemingly foreign, primitive, and obsolete.
Yet, everything within the pages of Foxfire was captured less than 50 years ago. That recency makes it as much a survival manual as a history book. As much entertainment as reference. As much novelty as reminder of how far we are from plain living.
(tl;dr – I call sputnik on Google, Apple, and Facebook)
At any given point in tech culture, there are favorites. Favorite places to work, favorite companies to talk and write about. A few years ago the favorites were; Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google. Long ago, I’m sure the favorites were – IBM, Remington, and Smith-Corona. At one point, I’m sure Western Union was a favorite. Today, the favorites seem to be Apple, Facebook, and Google. Unsinkable.
Apple is at an inflection point. They’ve never had so much love and I’ve never felt so ambivalent about them. I like their laptops, keyboards, monitors, and trackpads. Their software efforts (merging of iOS & Mac OS X, app stores, the monstrosity that is iTunes, Ping) and awkward social & internet efforts really concern me. As much as I love their hardware – I’ve lost faith in their software.
Similarly the zeitgeist is turning from Google.
It’s in the air – you can smell it. The Google Search Results page – once the example of how to make an excitingly useful product without any crap – is increasing fully of it. Confusing, cluttered, and filled with spam and tracking bugs. The recently launched Google+ is a hail-mary and that’s turning into a sock puppet. Their fixation on ‘real names’ and introducing a ‘+name’ rather than the established ‘@name’ is as trite and silly as Microsoft moving the close button across the screen in Windows. Or the British putting ‘u’s in words that shouldn’t have them.
I commend Google on the mass-shuttering projects not core to their advertising businesses – Google Labs, and so many others. I think they should continue that trend and reduce their core offerings to 4.
Their complex and conflicted relationships with both open-source software and personal privacy concerns me. Additionally, I currently see Google’s $0 offerings as a strong disincentive for continued innovation – for both Google and other market entrants. The the last time there was an exciting new email client was…um…when Facebook opened to the general public?
All the while, there’s great, foundational work being done by non-favorites.
Amazon’s uniquely positioned to drive the commercial web, providing common sense personal privacy, and fostering web-based innovation as reasonable prices – look at Amazon Web Services and the Amazon Kindle. There’s a platform and a channel – and I’m not sure which is which. Plus, every transaction has a price. How ever small. That non-zero price makes all the difference. And unlike Google & Facebook, Amazon’s not promoting their use of sexy, open source technologies as a recruitment tool. Amazon is the straight-forward, commercial web.
Mozilla is continually re-thinking the web browser. Their vision accommodates multiple devices, multiple experiences, a notion of privacy, both live connections and offline (Firefox Sync, Aurora, etc). This will be an increasingly strong use case. My work with Kernest has shown me how much our web experience is reliant on the browser vendors’ vision of the internet. Having consistencies across those experiences makes them all more usable – and Mozilla is innovating here.
To me, Samsung has the second best hardware in all of tech-land (Apple’s lawyers have argued Samsung has the best hardware). I’ve only two complaints about the Galaxy S 4G handset; measly 1-day long stand-by battery life, it’s tied to Google. Once Samsung relaunches a Teflon-ed version of the Galaxy Tab – they’ll have the high-end mobile hardware market.
If you happen to have an HP TouchPad you’ve probably noticed there aren’t a lot of compelling native apps. Additionally, HP (like Apple) does a pretty good job of shipping the device with applications that will cover 60% of everyone’s needs.
In the case of the TouchPad, it shipped with; Adobe Reader, Amazon Kindle, calculator app, calendar ap, photo & video app, music app (with native streaming), messaging app, map app, an office suite, a nice email client, and a decent web browser. To round it out, I installed the WordPress app, WebOnEx, and PreWare.
By far, the most useful app isn’t an app. It’s a feature of WebOS – ‘Just Type’ – the empty text field that’s always awaiting your next query. It’s like OS X’s Spotlight – or my preferred Quicksilver – turned into a primary focus of the OS.
Like Quicksilver on the laptop – I use it to initiate web searches or launch specific documents. For web searches – WebOS is smart enough to provide you with a list of search vendors/types (Google, Maps, Wikipedia, Amazon, sites you’ve visited). I’ve changed my default to DuckDuckGo.
Either way – all of these searches open in the same browser. A Webkit-based browser that; supports tabs, bookmarking, and can send links to email. While it doesn’t support @font-face and gets confused by some complex javascript – I can do my banking, check email, shop Amazon, and catch up on my favorite sites amazingly comfortably.
Which brings me back to HP’s App Store. No – there isn’t the selection that’s in the Apple or Android stores. And that’s a reminder that you don’t need an app – just a decent browser.
With the Focused MacBook Air project a success, I’ve turned my attention to the MacBook Pro.
With the kind of jet-engine-esque noises the MacBook Pro was making, I was convinced the hard drive was going. Turns out it was just a bad fan. Unfortunately, this meant I actually had to deal with the overfull hard drive.
I picked up a $80 Western Digital 1TB Elements USB drive from Target[1]. Cloned the MacBook Pro hard drive, then wiped it clean, and did a fresh install of OS X Lion.
When the install was complete – I followed the Focused MacBook Air checklist on the primary account.
If you’re going to Focus your MacBook * – don’t use the Migration Assistant – it’ll just pull over all your distractions. Clone your drive and get familiar with rsync.
Then, I created a second account – and named it: 'Mail, Calendar, Chat' dedicated to the communications apps that I’ve quarantined from the primary account (and the MacBook Air).
I’ve also kept the date/time indicator in the menu bar – I’ve found it handy when coordinating appointments and deadlines.
Sometimes, work on the Focused side needs to be emailed or send over a chat. To accommodate this, I’ve connected the Focused & Communications sides with a alias folder (‘Common’) on their respective Desktops [2].
Drop something in that folder on one side, and it’s available on the other.
Clean, easy, focused.
Yes – this setup means to check email, or whathaveyou, I need to sign-into a different account. That’s a pretty good deterrent to being distracted by mail or Hacker News while I’m waiting for a long process to finish.
1. I like Western Digital’s Elements series – they’re good enough to work reliably and cheap enough that you can buy a couple at a time just to make sure.
Conferences – professional, or otherwise – are funny beasts.
Taking days away from the day job
+ paying hundreds (if not thousands) in entrance fees
+ sitting in a chair
+ watching PowerPoint slides.
I’m not crazy about any of those attributes by themselves – together, they make a frightening combination.
Within the past 5 years, I’ve “organized” two conferences (and many smaller events) – PodcampMN & FontConf.
In both cases; the venue was donated, entry fee was $0, they were 1 day affairs, sessions were determined led by participants, and the larger goal was to make the event I would attend.
While I’ve actively avoided most of the new features and functionality in OS X Lion as part of my Focused MacBook Air effort I’m a huge fan of the 2-finger swipe between pages.
Right now, I see it as the only part of Apple’s Bring-iOS-to-MacOS UI effort that feels natural, comfortable, and OMG-WHY-DIDN’T-THEY-DO-THIS-SOONER!
Not having it in the Finder, Mail, and on all my other Macs feels as un-natural as not having Quicksilver installed. And I’ve only had it for 10 days.
Earlier this spring, I picked up a used electric lawn mower. After performing marvelously for most of the summer – it died.
Batteries no longer held a charge. Dead.
Not that unusual in this household.
The batteries in the 2 Dell Mini laptops in the house also, after 2 years, can’t hold a charge. Which, if memory serves, is about when the batteries in my Apple laptops also went out. Maybe sooner.
I called up the manufacturer – who said the batteries could only be purchased through them or Home Depot. Only Home Depot.
The Home Depot down the street from me had no lawnmower batteries on the shelf. Not even for this year’s mowers. Nothing. HomeDepot.com had something they said would work – but it nothing like the dead batteries.
I called up Batteries Plus – and they were more than happy to help. It was pretty remarkable to see how effortlessly they found and installed the replacement batteries.
We finished mowing the lawn. Yet today – the new batteries were dead – despite being charged over night.
I opened up the hood to find a wire dangling disconnected.
After a quick search online – I found the wiring diagram for this specific mower and it’s now charging in the garage.
So, no, I’m not worried about HP no longer making hardware devices. The TouchPad is the best tablet I’ve worked with in 10 years. And there’s a thriving internet community around it.
Plus, at least HP is saying upfront they’re divesting themselves from hardware. Unlike many other manufacturers and retailers that just act like their products don’t exist once they leave the shelves.
