Steven Pressfield's Trying Something New

Steven Pressfield, best known for writing The Legend of Bagger Vance and a few excellent books on doing professional knowledge work, is easily one of the best resources of creative inspiration around in my book (see what I did there?). Can't say enough great things about the guy.

Which is why I'm excited about his upcoming newsletter experiment.

“What makes something ready for the Big Leagues? How long do we have to languish in the minors before we break through? What does it take to get over the hump?

I suspect that no few of the readers of this blog find themselves in that exact same spot.

What’s missing?

What’s the final piece to the puzzle?”

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? If you click through to the newsletter signup page, he goes into more detail on what this project is about (emphasis mine):

“I have a new, long form project that’s about the writing of a first novel; what takes a project from being unpublishable to being publishable. It’s too long to be on the blog, so I’m going to give it with a bunch of other goodies.”

Such advice from Steven is sure to be invaluable, so it was an instant sign-up for me. How about you?

Speaking of Tools & Toys...

Be sure to revisit Shawn's guide to backyard cooking to prepare for the upcoming holiday weekend. Loads of great tips and recommended gear throughout.

The Great Discontent Interviews Frank Chimero

Frank Chimero is a designer and the author of The Shape of Design, an excellent book I talked about on Tools & Toys recently.

Frank always has fantastic things to say about design and freelancing:

“It’s more important to do good and interesting things than it is to make money. If you do good and interesting things, then you have to trust that the money will follow.”

He also delved a little into the age-old "fake it until you make it" method:

“I learned to make websites because I agreed to do something that I didn’t know how to do and then I had to figure out how to do it. That seems to be a pattern that comes up all over the place because nobody knows how to do what was invented last week. You have to say you know how, then figure it out under the gun.”

and

“As soon as you start writing like you know what you’re talking about, then you have to back it up. But, I’ve always been very clear that I am making it up as I go along. I’m learning on the job.”

There are a hundred other things I'd love to quote, but instead I'll just tell you to go read the whole thing. Great interview.

The New Instapaper is Live

The beta is over, and the new design has been rolled out to instapaper.com proper. I still love the way this looks, and according to their blog post about the new design, reading progress now syncs on the web. This has been one of my longest-running wishes for Instapaper's web client (the iOS versions have had this capability for a long time).

'The Time You Have (In Jellybeans)'

A video by Ze Frank, using jelly beans to depict how little time we truly have in life for our creative pursuits. Neat concept, although I disagree with the way he divides the 'Work' and 'Creative' portions up from one another.

For creative people at least, I think the goal is to have those two aspects of life coalesce into something harmonious, not treat them as separate, untouching buckets of time.

Editorial for iPad is Out

I've been anxiously awaiting the release of Editorial after Federico Viticci mentioned it a while back, and now it's finally here. Speaking of Viticci, you should go read his epic review of the thing.

If you'd like a more summarized description of Editorial, go check out my post about the app on Tools & Toys.

Scott Belsky on Taking Action

Scott Belsky, Adobe’s Vice President of Products/Community and Head of Behance, was interviewed by The Great Discontent. He spoke a lot about creativity and doing great work.

There are two particular quotes that stood out to me. Here's the first:

“One piece of advice is that the opportunity cost of waiting to do what you want to do just goes up. The excuses you tell yourself to wait to try what you have in your mind are wrong. In truth, you will have more responsibility tomorrow than you have today — it’s a fact. You can always find a reason why you should wait, and some are very valid, like having to pay back student loans, but recognize the fact that the opportunity cost goes up, not down. Whenever people talk to me about their ideas, I get frustrated because I want them to do something about it. Take action on things that are in your mind’s eye.”

And later on:

“There are probably more half-written novels in the world than completed ones. The solutions to all of our gravest problems in society are in the minds of creative people out there: the creative chemist who works in a lab somewhere but can’t stay organized, or doesn’t have the impetus to act, may have the cure for cancer. Obviously, all of the greatest artists who we know are the ones who have produced stuff, but that doesn’t mean they’re the ones with the greatest insights.”

The biggest takeaway I got from this interview is the sheer importance of getting started with something. You might be holding onto the greatest idea ever, but it's worthless to the world if you don't do anything with it.

Instapaper Web Beta

From the Instapaper blog:

“When the [Betaworks] team sat down with Instapaper’s creator, Marco Arment, back in April to get a download of his ideas and to-dos for improving Instapaper, the first thing on his list was to update the Instapaper website. Well we’ve done it, and it’s now ready for you to check out and test.”

I've only been using the beta for a few minutes, but I already dig the new visual style and layout. It's very exciting to see that Instapaper's still being actively developed and improved after Marco sold it a while back.

If you'd like to check out the beta, just head over to beta.instapaper.com and log in with your Instapaper credentials.

FeedPress Introduces Dropbox Integration

FeedPress, my RSS feed provider of choice, has announced an awesome new thing: your feed subscriber/reader stats can now be exported to a plain text file in Dropbox on an automatic, daily basis.

The text file even breaks down the RSS readers and services people are using to read your content. Pretty cool.

'Delight is in the Details'

Shawn Blanc has released his long-awaited eBook + interview series, Delight is in the Details.

“In the book, I talk about why the long-term success of our products (and our reputations) depends heavily on us taking the time to think through and sweat the details. This book encourages you to strive for excellence and resist the tendency to settle on “good enough” work that leads to forgettable products.

Additionally, I share several examples of products and services I consider delightful, and I talk at length with makers who've shown an astounding ability to sweat the details, gleaning from their experience and success.”

Shawn has put a ton of work into this project, and it shows. I highly recommend picking up a copy, especially if you're a designer or writer (or anyone else who does creative work, really).

The full bundle that includes the audio book and interviews is only $29, while the eBook by itself is $20. I'd recommend getting the full package at least to get access to the interviews.

Getting It Right

Jaren Sinclair, developer of Riposte:

“I have my dad to thank for my capacity for this kind of work, such as it is. If I had had a different upbringing, I would likely have a bad habit of settling for my first attempts. My dad taught me the importance of getting it right.”

We could all stand to do more things right rather than just okay, myself included.

Farmer's Market, Episode 7

Rick Stawarz of Macinstructor invited me to be a guest on his podcast, "Farmer's Market". We discussed my iOS workflow, my day job as a tech support guy, our former days as Apple employees, and the interview series I've been doing around here.

This was a lot of fun and I appreciate Rick having me on. Go listen!

'A Stroll Into Space'

Luca Parmitano, the first Italian astronaut to take part in a spacewalk:

“After shaving more carefully than usual (I don’t want to have any cuts on my head or face), I have a particularly big breakfast – there’ll be no lunch today. Then I turn to Chris [Cassidy], and he must have been able to read the question on my face, because he answers even before I have time to speak: "Yes, let's do this". In other words, it’s time.”

I loved this whole story.

Drafts Has a New Icon

Greg Pierce, developer of the much-beloved Drafts:

“I was approached by a large multi-national corporation regarding concerns about the old Drafts “D” icon’s similarities to one of their trade marks. This was likely a somewhat tenuous claim, but I was not interested in pursuing a battle on the matter – and I must say the corporation in question conducted itself in a professional and reasonable matter, which made it much easier to capitulate. At any rate, in the end, I think I like this new icon better.”

The new icon is rather lovely, and I really can't blame Greg for trying to avoid such a legal battle. Still, it's a shame that indie creators have to face such challenges. I highly doubt an iOS app catered to nerds was really going to affect a mult-national corporation's bottom line or confuse their customers in any way.

'Some Great iOS Apps, Currently Free'

Over at Tools & Toys, Shawn Blanc and I put together a list of some awesome iOS apps and games that have gone free this week to celebrate the App Store's 5th anniversary.

Seriously, this list is full of great stuff, so go check it out.

'Fanatics'

An oldie but goodie from Shawn Blanc (emphasis mine):

“Anyone can get fans by simply showing up day after day and being genuine. But to get fanatics you have to do something long enough to create nostalgia. Or you have to do something crazy or wonderful enough to give your current fans something to get fanatical about.”

'19 Cute Kittens Fall Off A Cliff'

Over the weekend, Jordan Cooper invited me to be a guest on his Blenderhead podcast.

We discussed RSS readers, consumerism, the tech blogosphere's focus on CEOs, Instagram's popularity, my iPhone's home screen layout, the origin of the name 'Unretrofied' for this site, and I even got to gripe about my day job a little.

This was a lot of fun to record, so go check it out. And just so you know, the episode contains NSFW language so consider this your warning.

'Making the NetNewsWire 4 App Icon'

John Marstall, designer for Black Pixel, details the steps that went into the design of NetNewsWire 4's new app icon, the beta of which I linked to on Tools & Toys the other day:

“With the release of NetNewsWire 4 Public Beta, we wanted to overhaul and modernize NetNewsWire’s app icon as much as the rest of the app. We didn’t throw out everything — the color scheme and satellite metaphor stayed — but the design is completely new.”

I love how much thought and care went into the design (and it certainly doesn't hurt that they're sticking with the astronomy theme).

'Inside Digg's Race to Build the New Google Reader'

Mat Honan went behind the scenes at Digg to get the story on their new RSS reader, which is said to be releasing next week:

“McLaughlin is talking about the future of Digg Reader, the project he and his small team of fifteen have been working on for the past month. Right now it’s just a mess of code, Keynote sides, and shit on a whiteboard. They need to turn it into a real product, one to take the place of Google Reader, which shuts down on July 1. They have less than 60 days. Simultaneously, the same team of five engineers is working to integrate another product–Instapaper–that they’ve just purchased. None of this is top secret, the opposite in fact. Digg publicly promised the world to have a replacement ready in time. They had to move fast. And when you move fast, things get fucked up.”

A few months ago, I never would have imagined that any product with 'Digg' in the title could possibly be interesting, but now I'm actually looking forward to checking Digg Reader out. It certainly sounds like they've put an impressive amount of effort into the project.

Feedly Cloud

From the Feedly blog:

“Feedly cloud is now live, providing a fast and scalable infrastructure to seamlessly replace Google Reader. Feedly cloud also comes with a completely stand-alone Web version of feedly, that works with all major browsers. Finally, we are please to announce the first nine applications built on feedly cloud, that allow you to expand your feedly experience.”

With only 10 days left until Google Reader bites the dust, this is great news indeed. Feedly has been one of my top choices for Reader alternatives (especially since Reeder supports it), and I'm glad that they're working to make the transition as painless as possible.

Relatedly, IFTTT just announced a Feedly channel.