Verbs

Ben Brooks:

"Whenever I set up an iPad or iPhone for a new user, they figure out where email, phone, contacts, calendars and so forth are, but the web? That one confuses most people, because “Safari” isn’t something they are used to calling the Internet.

I very much like the idea of giving users a better understanding of what things do by using verbs instead of brand names — I think it is a natural extension of this post-pc hoopla people are caught up in."

This is an interesting idea, although I don't think I'd like it very much myself.

Let's say every smartphone brand began using 'Connect' in place of their previous browser names. We'd have to refer to these things as Apple Connect rather than Safari, Microsoft Connect rather than Internet Explorer, Google Connect rather than Chrome, etc. It would be the only way of telling them apart in discussion, and they actually are quite different products so there would be no avoiding it. Sounds like more of a pain than it's worth.

I wouldn't want to take away names of mail clients either, since some of them are so ingrained in tech culture, Outlook and Gmail in particular. 'Apple Mail' is admittedly kind of generic, but people have seemingly accepted it so I'm ambivalent there.

Perhaps a better way to help new users find the 'Internet' app would be changing the icon rather than the name. If I didn't already know what these logos represented, I don't think I would be able to immediately tell that they were for accessing websites. At least the icons of mail clients usually contain some sort of envelope metaphor, regardless of their name.

'Rethinking the Lock Screen: A Counterpoint'

Both Jim Dalrymple and John Gruber have linked to this piece in the last week. Most of its points are perfectly salient, but I strongly disagree with this section:

"Additionally, the grabber itself is flawed. It contradicts the swipe left-to-right motion that is is embedded into every iPhone users muscle memory. By the time I remember I can swipe up from the right to access the camera I've already unlocked the device the normal way.

A better solution might be to add an option to have a permanent camera "notification" that looks and acts like a standard lock screen notification. Swipe left-to-right on the camera icon to go directly to the app. It could be located on the top half of the screen below the date/time bar and would be far enough away from the regular unlock control on the bottom so as to prevent it from being accidentally triggered.

This would be more consistent with how people dismiss the lock screen and have the added benefit of being less visually disruptive to the lock screen's aesthetic balance."

There's nothing wrong with the camera's current 'swipe up' mechanic.

• It's unobtrusive.
• It's very easily accessible since you don't have to stretch your thumb to reach it, which I would think fits with the idea of quickly accessing the camera, yes?
• The user could be holding their iPhone in either landscape orientation and still easily flick the camera grabber with their thumb.
• It makes swiping to unlock the phone that much easier since it requires less 'travel' than it did before the camera button was around.

I'm having a hard time believing that anyone finds it to be a confusing feature. In fact, turning it into a constant notification would seem more confusing to me. To a user accustomed to seeing notifications on the lock screen, this would probably look like Camera.app is literally always trying to tell them something when it's not.

While I think that there are useful things that could be done with the iPhone's lock screen, this isn't one of them.

Speaking of Supporting Independents...

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.

Ignoring Big Media in Favor of the Little Guy

As time goes by, I find myself depending less and less on big-name sites to stay on top of matters in the world of tech. At one point or another I've subscribed to them all: Ars Technica, Engadget, Gizmodo, The Verge, Macworld, AllThingsD, The Next Web, TechCrunch, Wired...I'm sure I'm forgetting a few.

The problem with these sites is that they're too broad in scope. They attempt to cover every possible thing, they compete to post scoops first — sometimes to their own detriment — the sheer number of articles in their RSS feeds can accumulate at a seemingly exponential rate, and most of these articles are low-content or cover events I simply do not care about.

["Oh, some Android OEM has decided to shit out yet another phone, just like they have several other times in the last week? How novel and interesting!" - something I have never uttered]

I don't want to keep up with this deluge of information. I want stories. Tech writers are encouraged to slap together several "articles" a day on every possible bit of news that hits their inbox. I just can't stretch my interest amongst that much content.

Because of this, I've unsubscribed from all the big-name publications and started exclusively reading what I call 'personality' blogs. I'm talking about places like Daring Fireball, ShawnBlanc.net, Curious Rat, The Brooks Review, 512 Pixels, and a bunch of others. Without editors and advertisers standing over their shoulders, these blogs have the luxury of publishing at a much slower rate, which typically leads to more thoughtful pieces. A stark (and rather refreshing) contrast to the postpostpostpostpost mentality of the big players.

I'm not saying the larger media outlets don't write great pieces every now and then, but I've found it to be a pretty rare occurrence. Also, these 'diamonds in the rough' will usually be shared around by others anyway, so that I don't have to dig through the garbage myself.

All of this applies to magazines, as well. I can't remember the last time I renewed a paper magazine subscription. Not only is it a gigantic waste of paper, but I feel like I'm getting better mileage out of publications like The Magazine and the Read & Trust Magazine.

Going a step further than simply unsubscribing from the big sites, I've also become a paid member of some smaller sites because I believe it's important to support independent writing. That's where the truly interesting stuff is published, and I want to make sure more of it gets put out into the world. If I ever turn this site into a full-time job, I would hope that people find it in the hearts to support what I do. Why shouldn't I do the same for the sites I love?

Slim Wallet by Supr

Back in August, I backed the Slim wallet on Kickstarter. The Slim is a tiny wallet made out of an elastic material, and is only designed to hold a few of your most commonly used cards, rather than any cash or other items people tend to keep in their wallets.

The project was a resounding success, managing to get over $200K from backers when their goal was only $10K.

Since then, they've been releasing updates about the R&D/manufacturing process, with a few delays along the way, and about a month ago they began actually shipping the wallets out from their factory in Chicago. I just received mine last night, and wanted to share my thoughts from the first 24 hours.

I love how minimal the packaging is.

Coming from a large wallet I bought from Wal-Mart years ago, I'm now having to narrow down to my most essential cards. I've managed to distill my main collection down to five items: two debit cards, my driver's license, a loyalty card that I use a lot, and my GoGo Stand (which comes in handy more than you'd think).

Rarely-used items being left behind — stuff I can grab from home as needed — include my voter ID, some medical/dental insurance stuff, several business cards I've collected, and a ton of other loyalty cards that will now live in my wife's purse, since we're usually eating at those restaurants together anyway. I was able to comfortably cut out a surprising number of things.

View from above.

The Kickstarter promo video claims that the Slim is capable of holding up to ten cards, and that's true, but that's a very snug fit and I quickly found that anything more than five items made it difficult to retrieve any specific cards when I needed to, instead forcing me to pull everything out at once. Not ideal.

The Slim definitely lives up to its name. I can't get over how thin and light it feels in my pocket. I'm still getting used to checking the inside of my pocket to make sure it's there, rather than patting the outside of my jeans as I used to.

A few small points:

• I like that the Slim's minimalist design has forced me to rethink what's truly important to have on me at all times.
• The elastic feels like it will hold up well, but only time will tell for sure.
• I don't often carry cash, but if you're the type who does, this might not be the wallet for you.

If you're interested in one for yourself, you'll have to wait a while as they complete their first batch from the Kickstarter campaign, but you can sign up to be notified when that happens. I definitely recommend it.

"The Verb is Writing"

I've been going through some of the Daring Fireball archives this morning, something I do now and again with my favorite sites. I reached the post where Gruber discusses the SXSW talk he and Merlin Mann gave in March 2009.

I'm pretty familiar with this talk, because I enjoy listening to it every once in a while. I rarely go back and listen to old podcast episodes but this talk provides so much meaningful advice that I can't help but return to it again and again whenever I need some inspiration. I have a 'Listen Later' folder in Instapaper and this talk never gets deleted, unlike everything else I've ever saved in there. It's that good.

I had forgotten about Gruber's article regarding the talk though, and as I was reading through it again, this quote smacked me in the face (emphasis mine):

"There is an easy formula for doing it wrong: publish attention-getting bullshit and pull stunts to generate mindless traffic. The entire quote-unquote “pro blogging” industry — which exists as the sort of pimply teenage brother to the shirt-and-tie SEO industry — is predicated on the notion that blogging is a meaningful verb. It is not. The verb is writing. The format and medium are new, but the craft is ancient."

I don't think I could ever put it any better that.

The Periodical Co

Earlier, Ben Brooks brought this project to my attention, and I'm already deeply interested.

Essentially it will be a CMS platform that allows non-coders to publish The Magazine-esque content to iOS Newsstand and the web, simply for a tiny cut of the subscription fees. The developers have been partially inspired by Craig Mod's Subcompact Publishing piece that I mentioned (and loved) the other day.

It would seem that Marco's early success with The Magazine has prompted somewhat of a 'gold rush' in self-publishing. There's been a lot of discussion on this topic going around lately, and I think we're going to be seeing a lot of micropublications coming out of the woodwork in the next year or two, especially as more of these publishing tools are released.

People are beginning to see how viable it is for a small-time operation (e.g. one or two people, rather than entire media corporations) to regularly publish fantastic content for just a few bucks a month and still make a tidy profit. Of course, writers have been doing this kind of thing on their blogs for years, but we are a mobile-centric readership these days, and the introduction of iOS Newsstand has seeingly reinvigorated the industry.

It may be that some readers — not myself, mind you — will more easily stomach the idea of an official 'magazine' subscription rather than some blogger's weekly newsletter, even if the content and pricing are similar. Either way, it's an exciting time for publishing and I can't wait to see what's around the corner. I only hope that publishers avoid the temptation to copy The Magazine's overall style and functionality, as may happen if they follow Craig Mod's subcompact manifesto to the letter:

• Small issue sizes (3-7 articles / issue)
• Small file sizes
• Digital-aware subscription prices
• Fluid publishing schedule
• Scroll (don’t paginate)
• Clear navigation
• HTML(ish) based
• Touching the open web

According to Hamish McKenzie over at PandoDaily, Periodical Co's product isn't quite ready for release yet but should be in public alpha by next week. I signed up to be notified, and I recommend everyone else do the same. I have a feeling this is going to be huge.

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.

'The Daily shutting down'

Marco Arment:

"The Magazine costs less than The Daily and has far fewer subscribers (so far), but that’s fine: I can’t even imagine how I’d spend $3 million per year on it. But I’m also not trying to make an all-purpose news and editorial publication for everyone, every day."

I never read The Daily, but with Rupert Murdoch behind the curtain and that much money being thrown at it, I guess I'm not surprised that it went under so quickly.

Still, you have to admit it was a ballsy idea when it started. I think they should be commended for their effort and for attempting to venture into a new frontier, not kicked while they're down the way a lot of people have been doing today.

The power of hindsight is a crazy thing.

Ah, That's Better

My email has gotten a bit out of control lately. I'm not talking about emails from real people, I rather enjoy those most of the time. I'm talking about all the detritus that websites send me.

Every morning, I awake to see several new emails on my phone. Some are from newsletters I stopped finding interesting a long time ago, some are 'new follower' updates from Twitter, some are marketing notifications from e-commerce sites, some are from the newborn photography studio I just happened to give my email address to when my son was born. The list goes on.

I can't think of a single email in recent memory that was worth reading as soon as I woke up. All I see is a list of items to "mark as read" rather than anything that makes me happy or gives me value. It's a time-suck.

Throughout the day I get even more of this crap, it's getting old, and I'm putting a stop to it. This morning, I've unsubscribed from at least 34 services and deleted almost 6,000 emails that had come from those places. I've turned off nearly all email notifications from services I still use (such as Twitter), and set up filtering rules for any services I don't remember the passwords to and thus can't change my subscription preferences.

From this point on, any email generated by websites ought to be informative or delightful. Anything not meeting that criteria is getting junked immediately.

It's no 'Inbox Zero' but perhaps I could call it 'Inbox Zen'.

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.

Introverted

J.D. Bentley on being an introvert:

"What separates extroverts from introverts isn’t shyness or unsociableness. It’s small talk.

We don’t do small talk.

Ask me about writing or technology, mandolin or entrepreneurship and I will talk your ear off. Ask me about the weather and you’ll be disappointed."

This is how I sometimes feel about conversations in my personal- and worklife, because I am an introvert by nature.

To me it often feels like people try to fill dead air with words, any words, to alleviate the awkardness of silence they feel. Or perhaps they do it to feel some sort of companionship, however weak, with the other person.

I understand it, but I am not wired that way.

If I don't feel like I have anything interesting to say, then I prefer not to speak at all. To do otherwise encourages discussion that is empty, hollow, devoid of meaning. Sometimes radio silence is okay.

Review: Fantastical for iPhone

I've used several different calendar apps on my iPhone (Agenda Calendar and Calvetica spring to mind) but haven't really found one I enjoy using.

Until today, that is.

Fantastical is an immensely popular menubar app for Mac that allows you to type out event titles using natural language. You can type "Lunch with Mom on Sunday" and it will brilliantly parse this information to create an event at noon on the nearest upcoming Sunday. Today, developer Flexibits is bringing this same functionality to the iPhone.

Simply Designed

Fantastical's lovely icon was designed by one of my favorite artists, David Lanham, and it has made the transition over to iPhone very nicely, although I could do without the staples at the top.

The staples also appear in the app itself:

These are the first of several mild skeuomorphisms seen throughout the app (another of which is the fake texture of the red bar). I mildly dislike the staples, not because of some irrational hatred of skeuomorphic design, but because I find them a little distracting. My eyes keep being drawn to them for some reason.

If you've been a user of Fantastical for Mac, you'll notice that the iPhone version isn't just the same interface being ported over. This app introduces a new feature called the DayTicker, which is the horizontally scrolling list of dates at the top. This can be swapped out for a month view at any time.

Tap any visible date and the DayTicker will scroll there. No matter where you end up scrolling, you can simply tap the red menu bar above to return back to today's date. When appropriate, each date is filled with colored "blobs" that indicate events occurring that day.

The blobs actually correlate with the length and calendar-type of each event, making it easy to quickly scroll through the DayTicker and still have a concept of what's happening on a given day. This way, you don't need to see any event titles to know that Wednesday is pretty much booked, or that a bunch of bills are due Monday (if you have a 'Bills' calendar like I do, anyway). Very simple yet effective design.

Another nice touch is the "ripped paper" graphic that denotes any gaps between days on the DayTicker.

So Animated

Animations within the app are very well done.

As you scroll back and forth in the DayTicker, the list of events below scrolls with you. Scroll the event list instead, and the DayTicker follows. It's all very fluid and synchronous.

When creating events, as with the Mac app, you simply type an event the way you would say it out loud. As you type, your words will "float" down into the event preview pane and change things on-the-fly (no pun intended) as Fantastical parses the information.

I'm writing this review on a Thursday, so notice that when I typed "tomorrow night" it automatically moved the event to Friday at 8pm. How awesome is that?

You don't even have to type if you don't want. Bring up Siri from the keyboard, say something like you would to a person, and Fantastical will still parse it just like it would the text version. I'm finding myself dictating more events than typing just because it feels more natural.

[Side note: The 'Show Details' button you see on the New Event screen simply brings up advanced options like you'd see in the default iOS calendar app, so there's no real need to discuss it at length here. Just know that it's available when needed.]

When you've finished creating the event by tapping the 'Add' button, the page folds up and flies into the background, merging with the DayTicker on the appropriate date. Another skeuomorphic design, but I can't see why this would bother anyone.

So What's the Catch?

Actually, there are very few negatives I've come across so far. The biggest one involves the DayTicker/Calendar transition.

Pull down on the DayTicker, and a month view will slide down over it like a window shade. To switch back to the DayTicker, my natural impulse is to swipe back up on the month view to send it flying back up where it came from, but instead you must swipe down again and the month view slides down and flies behind the DayTicker, which has suddenly appeared back at the top.

It's hard to describe this animation, but trust me, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about when you use the app. Something about it just feels...wrong, although it's nothing I can't get used to.

Another weird thing: I changed the colors of all my calendars to what I wanted them to be, but the DayTicker and event list wouldn't reflect these changes until I force-quit the app and restarted it.

Finally, if you tap the 'Help' menu under 'Settings', the two available options ('Tips and Tricks', 'Frequently Asked Questions') take you to webpages that haven't been completed yet. Would be nice if they had taken care of that stuff before releasing the app. Not that these sections are particularly needed, since the app is so simple to use.

The only feature request I have would be a way to change the calendar type while creating the event, but without having to go into the 'Show Details' menu. Perhaps a hashtag system (ex: #personal #work #bills)? If this type of feature already exists, I haven't found it.

[Update: I've been informed that you can add '/calendar name' (ex: /personal) to the event and it will change accordingly.]

Wrap Up

Fantastical is a lovely, easy-to-use calendar app, and it has quickly become my new favorite. Since it's on sale for a limited time introductory price of $1.99, I recommend picking it up right now. I think you'll love it.

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.

'Subcompact Publishing'

Marco Arment linked to this fantastic piece regarding The Magazine and the state of mobile publishing. Lots of great quotes to choose from, but this stands out:

"The fact that Marco — a programmer — launched one of the most ‘digitally indigenous’ contemporary tablet publications is indicative of two things:

1. Programmers are today’s magicians. In many industries this is obvious, but it’s now becoming more obvious in publishing. Marco was able to make The Magazine happen quickly because he saw that Newsstand was underutilized and understood its capabilities. He knew this because he’s a programmer. Newsstand wasn’t announced at a publishing conference. It was announced at the WWDC.
2. The publishing ecosystem is now primed for complete disruption."

Go read the whole thing, it's several magnitudes better than my own little piece on publishing.

Evernote Tip: Display All Untagged Notes

If you're like me and save a lot of stuff to Evernote, you may forget to tag notes from time to time. You may also have rules set up in Gmail to auto-forward emails with specific keywords to your Evernote email address (something I do for any emails containing the word "receipt"). In the latter case, as far as I know, Evernote will not automatically add tags or place them in the appropriate notebook for you.

Every once in a great while, I like to go back through all of these untagged notes and tag them. I'm just OCD that way. If you'd like to do the same, instead of scrolling through your list looking for anything with blank space under the 'Tags' heading, type this into the search bar:

-tag:*

The asterisk (*) acts as a wildcard, and forces Evernote to display every single note that hasn't been tagged yet. You could also use an actual tag in place of the asterisk if you want, like so:

-tag:writing

-tag:"gift ideas"

I don't really do this myself, because it's only useful in instances where you're looking for every note outside of the search term, and I can't think of a time I've ever needed to do that. Anyway, in case you were wondering, I used quotes in the second example because that tag is comprised of two words, and without the quotes to specify the exact tag, Evernote won't know what you're talking about.

While we're talking about search, you can also type something without the minus symbol (-) to find all things contained within that tag, i.e.:

tag:restaurants

If you have a ton of tags like I do, this will save you the trouble of scrolling through your entire tags list and clicking the correct one.

Evernote's search tool is pretty powerful, and an essential tool for power users and I'll probably write more about its functions in the future.

Mirrorless on the Mind

Thanks to Shawn Blanc's post on mirrorless Micro Four Thirds (M4/3) cameras, I've been considering picking one up myself.

Like Shawn, my iPhone has become my default camera, mostly because I always have it with me and it performs pretty well in my experience. Still, I would like to take my photography up a notch.

As I mentioned in that Monochrome iPhoneography post linked above, I actually own a DSLR camera: the Canon EOS 20d. Even with my basic kit lens, I can achieve better results than on my iPhone, but the problem is that shooting with this camera is very un-fun. It's bulky, heavy, there are way more settings than I ever need, and the rear LCD monitor is laughably small. Images that looked perfectly clear on that tiny screen inevitably turned out to be blurry when I got them onto my computer.

It hasn't been an entirely negative experience, though. This camera is really what introduced me to hobbyist photography in the first place, and because it was already considered an old model by the time I purchased it used from a guy on Craigslist (which is the only reason I could afford it at all), I had to learn things in a slightly more difficult way than people using modern equipment did, and I think that was beneficial.

I've just gotten tired of lugging the thing around and dealing with all the little things. I'm pretty sure I spent more time fiddling with settings than I did taking photos. Every time I needed to charge the battery, it involved removing the battery pack entirely and hooking it into this enire other apparatus that I needed to have with me at all times; you couldn't simply connect a power cable. If I happened to be carrying my DSLR bag around somewhere (which was a pain by itself) and wanted to get a shot of something interesting happening, I would sometimes miss the shot because it took too long to get the camera out of the bag and primed for shooting.

Because of all this, the DSLR bag has been collecting dust in my living room closet for a couple months now. Nearly all of the most recent photos on my 500px page have instead been taken on my iPhone 4S. And why not? It's so much easier to take out my iPhone from my pocket, swipe up on the lockscreen, and start taking photos within seconds.

Lately, I've been seeing examples of photos taken with mirrorless M4/3 cameras, and I'm jealous of the quality they're achieving with such small devices. These things are like mini-DSLRs, in that you can buy different lenses and swap them out at will, despite the camera bodies being about the size of point-and-shoot devices. This type of camera looks right up my alley, and the fact that they're way more affordable than most DSLRs makes them even more enticing.

I'm still on the fence on which mirrorless M4/3 camera I want. From Shawn's research, the two cameras that look best suited to my needs would be the Sony Alpha NEX-6 or the Olympus PEN E-PL5. Based on price alone, the Olympus camera is the better deal (right now it's on sale for $600, $200 off the usual price) over the Sony's $999 price point, but the Sony takes better photos from what I've seen so far.

I'll continue to do some more research on my own and we'll see what happens.

'Two Legacies to Strive For'

Rian van der Merwe has been thinking a lot about family lately:

"But for me it is also a move to a better understanding of what it means to be a family, to be bound together through thick and thin, to care more for these people than I ever thought would be possible. And with that comes the realisation that I don’t want to be that guy. That Dad at the park who’s always on his iPhone. The one who’s never home in time for bath time. So I obsess over these things — it pretty much takes an act of God for me not to be home to give my 3-year old a bath. And when I fail, I fall hard, and sometimes stumble rather slowly back on my feet."

Couldn't agree more. It's the kind of thing I was getting at near the end of my post about hardcore gaming.

'The (Un)Obviousness of iCloud'

Chris Bowler:

“For the past couple of years, I’ve slowly added various settings to my iPhone and iPad; settings like backing up to iCloud and the syncing of purchases. I never paid a lot of attention to these changes — they simply made sense. When I walked back in my head, I realized that my last two computer upgrades did not involve syncing my iPhone and iPad.

iCloud had made that step unnecessary.”

Like him, I've been surprised by how much use I've gotten out of iCloud. I'm not about to switch to it wholesale from Dropbox or anything, but the little things like bookmarks, reminders, contacts, and notes being synced between devices make a big difference.

It's also nice to have the peace of mind that if I ever have to restore my iPhone, all of my apps, documents and even keyboard shortcuts can easily be synced right back to the device, all over the air. Or if my phone gets stolen, I can possibly remotely pinpoint its location with the Find My iPhone service. So cool.