J.D. Bentley has unveiled his reader-supported site, The Handshake. I gladly signed up and look forward to the exclusive essays that will be published there.
Lasting Value
As some of my recent posts may tell you, I've become engrossed with writing lately. Guys like Shawn Blanc, J.D. Bentley, and Patrick Rhone have inspired me to pursue a greater mastery of the craft, and over the years their essays have struck chords within me that have caused me to rethink my perception of the world.
For two years I've been writing articles about happenings in the tech world, but as I look through my archives — which I've been trying to organize — I realize that many of them have become meaningless to me after the fact. Too often I've latched onto a popular story and written something about it despite any real interest on my part, or simply posted something low-content that could have been linked on Twitter instead.
I want this site to be better. I want to be better. I'm a little embarrassed by the mountain of drivel I've allowed to accumulate around here. The goal is to be a capital "W" Writer, not just some guy who managed to assemble a vapid link list.
This doesn't mean that I want to stop writing about technology altogether. Far from it. I'm simply burnt out trying to keep up with the daily firehose of tech news, and from now on will only contribute to discussions I truly care about, at my own pace. The focus of this site will be narrowed, rather than being thinly spread over several dozen subjects.
Forcing myself to stick with a smaller range of topics should allow me to write more thoughtful material. This could result in a slower posting schedule, but that's better than shovelblogging in my opinion.
Also, I will be removing those posts from the archive that I feel have lost any meaning, or perhaps had none to begin with. I want readers to return to my archives years from now and still find something worthwhile, no matter what post they click.
I want lasting value, not fleeting pageviews.
Thankful
Thanksgiving is over a week gone, but I wanted to give a sincere thanks to all of my readers and visitors—yes that means you—for making this past November the biggest month Unretrofied has ever had, in terms of traffic.
I would be writing for this site even if nobody were reading, but I won't deny that it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy that people are finding something worthwhile here to keep returning for.
I wish I could reach through the Internet and hug every last one of you, but the technology isn't ubiquitous enough yet and I don't want to creep your significant others out, so suffice it to say that I am incredibly grateful for your continued readership. You guys are great. Thank you.
Thoughts on Writing
I've been doing a lot of thinking about this blog lately. You know, the typical existential stuff: where I want the site to go, who I want my audience to be, what kind of impression I will make, what I want to say.
With that said, I hope you'll excuse me if I ramble for a bit.
A little history
I started this site in October 2010, mainly as an outlet for my geeky interests. You could say I'm pretty late to this game. I've really only been following events in the tech industry for about 5 years now, and apparently I had the gall to start a tech blog in a world where people like John Gruber and Jim Dalrymple have been writing since I was a kid.
It's been a slow-moving process, let's be honest. For the first seven months after starting the site, I only managed to post six times, skipping two months straight in the process. They weren't even very good posts, which is why they've been removed from the archives.
I actually used to be a little embarrassed about my slow posting rate, because to any outside observer, it probably looked like I had zero dedication to this project, and that simply isn't true. I just had no clue what I was doing.
I've since come to realize that it's perfectly fine not to publish anything if I don't have something worthwhile to say right then. This is my site, after all, and I believe that there is real power in hitting the Publish button. I still get nervous doing it.
The truth is, I never used be someone who would write for the sake of writing. I grew up actually despising any homework where an essay was required. I struggle with writer's block quite often and I have a long, long way to go before I master the art of crafting beautiful sentences.
Sharing my thoughts with the written word has never come to me naturally in the past, but in these last couple years I've fallen in love with the process. Never before have I been so fueled by a desire to improve myself in a particular field. Writing has become a form of catharsis for me.
So what's next?
This blog has a long way to go before it will ever be on the same level as the ones that inspired it. But I'm willing to give it my best shot.
I want to do work that is substantial. I want people to read this site and have the same feeling I get when I read one of Shawn Blanc's best pieces. I want them to be inspired. I want them to take something positive away from here, or be given new perspective on a topic. And I hope it's not too big-headed of me to desire these things.
I will continue to improve, little by little, post by post. I will work on writing more thoughtful material, rather than brief bits of commentary on someone else's work. It's difficult for me to judge how I'm doing in this regard, since comments are disabled and I'm essentially speaking into an echo chamber where I'm the only occupant.
Get in touch
I have no intention of ever enabling comments, but I would still love to get some feedback on what I do here. Consider this an open invitation. I'd like you, the reader, to take this opportunity to tell me what you think about anything I've written, or even just say hi.
I truly appreciate the readers who have given this site a chance, and I will strive to continue improving my voice. I feel like great things are coming.
Thanks, everyone.
'Blogging Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry'
Harry Marks gathered together some of the "update" statements made by several tech blogs yesterday, after they were fooled into publishing information on a false press release:
"Notice anything about those update statements? Actually, let me rephrase that - notice anything missing from those update statements? Maybe, I don't know, an apology? A promise to verify a story before reporting on every press release that crosses their desks? I'd even settle for a declarative, "We were wrong," in big letters at the top of each post."
The race to say "FIRST!" is an ugly one.
The Unretrofied To-Do List
As the title implies, here's a list of things I would like to accomplish for the site. Probably won't be that interesting to anyone but myself, but I've heard that the best motivator for getting things done is making them public so that I feel more accountable.
Anyway, here goes:
- Have a logo designed.
- Design a nice t-shirt or two, with the logo on at least one of them.
- Write more long-form pieces instead of link-blogging so much.
- Focus more on writing product reviews than before (this will require actually purchasing stuff I want to use, but I don't make a ton of money and I tend to like nice things so this could be tough without support from readers).
- Get better at writing in Markdown.
- Write about my Evernote setup.
- Finish that review comparison of Instacast/Downcast/Pocket Casts/etc.
- Come up with some sort of paid membership that provides readers with additional content/features of some sort. This will be inexpensive, likely $2-3/month.
- Set up RSS sponsorships. Will only approve services I personally love to use.
- Interview some of the web personalities that I look up to, mainly writers but also some designers and podcast hosts.
- Start a podcast of my own.
I expect the list to keep growing, but this seems like a good start. If you guys have any feedback or ideas, I would love to hear it.
Another New Era in Publishing
The history of the publishing industry is a fascinating subject. With the invention of the printing press in 1440 and its subsequent adoption throughout Europe, ideas could spread faster and farther than they ever could before. Nearly two centuries later, somebody took this idea and applied it to the current events of the times, inventing what would later become known as a "newspaper."
For most of the 20th century, people were still relying on newspapers, books, and magazines for information. In the late 1990s though, something called the "internet" (you might've heard of it) came along and gave people another tool to spread their ideas: the blog. Blogs have become a wonderful resource for all sorts of information. They can be about current events, the happenings in someone's personal life, reviews of products, helpful information on any number of subjects known to man, archives of history, and much more. These are incredibly powerful tools.
We've even found that a miniature form of blogging (i.e. Twitter) can still be enormously useful, especially because even someone in a 3rd-world country whose only access to technology is a dumbphone from the 90s can still use it. Never in history has it been easier to make your voice heard across the globe.
And now, we've entered another phase of idea-sharing that involves both content curation and self-publishing. As for curation, I'm not talking about people who call themselves curators just because they run linkblogs. I'm talking about a few specific projects that have been unveiled in the last several months (like Evening Edition, The Brief, NextDraft, and Circa) who are making a point of taking long-form news articles and/or other topics, and condensing them into more digestible form for readers who want to keep updated on current events but may not have the time to read long articles from multiple resources constantly.
With self-publishing, we have projects like The Magazine and the Read & Trust Magazine, which are monthly publications that require a small fee from the reader. Rather than curating content from elsewhere, they contain collections of articles submitted every month by a group of paid writers.
Sounds like any other magazine subscription, right? But there's a BIG difference: these projects are organized and published by individuals (in this case, Marco Arment and Aaron Mahnke, respectively) rather than entire media companies or news outlets. The internet, and tools such as Newsstand, have given people the opportunity to become their own publishers and make decent money without having to work under someone else's editorial vision, all from the comfort of their home.
I'm excited about what people are accomplishing on their own in the world of publishing, and hope to see more efforts like these in the future.
A New Look
I'll try to keep this brief. If you make a habit of visiting Unretrofied rather than reading it via RSS, then you will notice that I've been making quite a few design changes in the last couple days.
It's not as big of a change as the last redesign obviously, but I think it's much nicer. I'm happier with the typography (now with serifs!), pages should render more nicely on e-ink displays like the Kindle, and I've started categorizing posts like I should have been doing this whole time, which means things will be easier to find from the archive.
I will also finally start using links in post titles if I'm directing the reader to another person's site. In those cases, if you would like to link to one of those posts here instead of linking the external site, you can use the timestamp link provided at the bottom of each post. I've already gone through some of the more recent posts around here and changed them to the new format.
'Comments Suck'
Cap Watkins discusses why he thinks Branch is a better tool for discussion than blog comments.
“Internet comments have long been a source of pain for popular web sites. On one hand, the ability to participate with a story gives readers a closer connection with the site and probably drives a bit of returning traffic. On the other hand, comment sections are wretched hives of scum and villainy. ”
I've disabled comments on Unretrofied since the very beginning exactly for this reason. If someone feels the need to comment on something I've said here, they can feel free to let me know via a blog post of their own, or they can contact me through Twitter and email, but I'm not letting this place become cluttered with stupid arguments and vile opinions. Even if that means shutting out the nice, thoughtful people too.
I'm not about to start adding Branch links on all of my posts as an alternative to having comments, as Watkins suggests in his post, but I think it's an intriguing proposition.
Welcome to the New Unretrofied
I have a habit of tweaking this website a lot. I just can't seem to settle on a given "look". Why on Earth did I pick that typeface? Why are those colors not matching? Is my site actually easy to read? These are the questions I'm asking myself all the time.
Today, I did more than just tweak. I've moved Unretrofied from Squarespace v5 to Squarespace v6. Doesn't really sound like a big deal now that I'm typing those words, but I assure you, the stuff happening behind the scenes is very different. This is a totally new platform. Versions 5 and 6 are entirely incompatible, so it's not as easy as clicking an 'upgrade' button. This site has been completely rebuilt from the ground up. My hope is that I can make the site a bit more minimalist but still a bit unique.
Here's what the site looked like before:
Obviously, the new site has done away with the two-column layout in favor of a nice, wide single-column format. I feel that this change alone makes my posts more pleasant to read. I've also opted for more line spacing and larger typography. The end result is that the site's text actually has a chance to breathe a bit. I was inspired to do this by Benjamin Brooks' current blog design, which is even more minimalist than mine.
Another obvious change is the lack of red post titles. I originally made it that way so that if someone were scrolling through the page, they could quickly and easily pick out each entry. The problem with that is that it leads to the site feeling more busy than it needs to be. I've found that I don't really need a bunch of glaring text to achieve this effect. Instead, I've simplified the color scheme, added more space between each post, and increased the size of the post titles themselves. Looks much nicer and still allows the reader to easily discern each post while scrolling.
Also new is the navigation menu bar at the top of the site. This replaces the 2nd column that existed in the previous design, and it's still easily accessible at all times (it stays on-screen while the site simply scrolls "behind" it). This is also where the site kept a little of that red color, in that whatever page you're currently viewing is shown in red on the menu bar. All links on the site also show in red on hover. I guess I just couldn't bring myself to part with it entirely.
Images within posts are now larger than before, something I've wanted to try for a long time but couldn't because of the constraints of the old design. I love looking at big, beautiful photos on the web. In fact, this change in design may be the encouragement I need to get out my old DSLR so I can capture great images to use on the site.
One thing I'm excited about is that v6 allows for mobile-formatted pages, and now I've got a very nice-looking mobile website. I haven't been able to test it from any other phones but my own, but on my iPhone 4S, everything looks very nice (Update: After writing this post, I had a chance to test the site from a few Android devices. Looks great there, too).
On this mobile site, the top navigation bar is hidden under a 'Menu' button. Tapping that button gives you a nice little "sliding down" animation, revealing a drawer containing the hidden navigation links. Tap 'Menu' again, and the drawer slides back closed. Pretty neat.
With this change, and with the two-year anniversary of Unretrofied coming up in October (wow, I can't believe it's been that long already), it seems like as good a time as any to start writing some more long-form opinion pieces and product reviews, much like the ones you'd find on Minimally Minimal. Up until now, most of my posts have been links to content elsewhere on the web, but that's not very fulfilling creatively. I would rather blog less often but produce higher-quality content than be a lazy 'curator'-type. Quality always beats quantity when it comes to blogging, and it's about time I started showing it.
Whatever happens next, I hope you guys enjoy the improved design and I encourage any constructive feedback you'd like to give. Hit me up on Twitter and let me know what you think!
Note: Due to the site change, it was necessary to change the URL to my RSS feed and subscribers will need to update their readers accordingly. Apologies for the inconvenience.
IFTTT is Fantastic, and You Should Use It
I'm pretty late to this party, but I am falling in love with task-automation service ifttt (if this then that). Basically this service allows you to create "recipes" of behavior using "channels", which is just a codeword for the list of different services involved, such as Facebook, Evernote, Instagram, Dropbox, Twitter, Youtube, SMS, email, and a LOT more.
The idea is that you can have ifttt check one of these channels for a certain type of activity, and then trigger a second channel in a specific way. For example, I have a recipe that checks for any new photos I post on Instagram, and then saves those photos to a folder of my choosing in my Dropbox account. Another recipe watches my Unretrofied RSS feed and auto-tweets any new entry it sees.
These are two simple uses for the service, and aren't even considered a drop in the bucket of what ifttt is capable of. There are currently 47 channels available, and most (if not all) of them have multiple trigger types, AND there are more being added all the time, so the number of possible combinations is staggering. Luckily, you can already see some of the interesting things people have come up with on their public recipes page.
I recommend at least checking it out and seeing if you can get something useful out of it. There's a little something for everyone.
Hello World!
I'm not much of a programmer, but I couldn't help using that title. Anyway, hi reader! I've been inspired to write a blog about technology and other stuff, so I hope you enjoy. I've decided to disable comments right off the bat, so if you need to reach me, I've set up a Gmail account specifically for this site: unretrofiedblog@gmail.com
Let's see where this thing goes.