The Japanese Iced Coffee Method

Although I’m usually a fan of the Mizudashi iced coffee brewing method, this one results in super delicious iced coffee too. And you don’t need to use as much coffee!

Just need to wait for warmer weather now.

Analog Camera Coming To iPhone

Yes, the market for camera and photo filter apps for the iPhone is massive and over saturated. Every second app seems to be a photo editing app these days. And yet, I am excited about this new one coming at the end of the month.

Because it’s from Realmac. They make amazing software, and always have.

The thing is, Realmac have shown before that they understand the iPhone and can produce a great and unique product for a market that’s so full of apps you can’t even find what you’re looking for anymore. With Clear, their (to-do) list app.

Clear wasn’t only Realmac’s first iOS app, but also their first app that was taken “back to the Mac”.

And now they’re turning the game around, with Analog Camera.

Image Credit: Realmac Software, 2013

Analog has been a great Mac app for years now and I use it all the time. I like the great design and it’s little but efficient features. You can choose between a variety of filters and frames, and change the strength of the filter you’ve put on. That’s it. Well, besides saving and sharing the photo to some websites from within the app.

With Analog Camera, Realmac seem to be brining this great combination of design and features to the iPhone. The little teaser video shows how the app works, and it seems, like Clear, to be heavily based on swipe gestures instead of digital buttons on the screen. And I think that’s what will set the app apart from all the other photo filter apps.

There don’t seem to be as many filters as in the Mac version, but at this point you really can’t tell. There might be more? I suppose we will find out when the app comes out at the end of the month.

≫ Turn the Dial

I don’t consider myself as a freelancer. It’s more a stage, or level, between freelancing, independent writing, and being a student with another part-time job next to his writing. I think Facebook would say it’s complicated.

Yet, I love Aaron Mahnke’s work on the Frictionless blog. It’s mainly targeted towards freelancers, but the advice Aaron gives to his readers over at the blog is generally very applicabale to everyone who ever works. In, with, and on anything. It has quickliy become one of my favourite blogs.

Anyhow, Aaron posted a post yesterday titled ‘Turn the Dial’, and said something that, thinking about it since I read the post yesterday, it is the most imporant and impectful piece of advice for me I have read online.

Particulary this one line is what has started a change of attitude towards my work inside me:

The goal isn’t perfection; it’s progression.

Thanks Aaron.

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  • May 13, 2013

The Retina MacBook Air

I’ve been saving up for a new MacBook Air for a while now. I’m not quite there yet, but if everything goes to plan, will be soon. I’m really excited and looking forward to it, but at the same time unsure about when to buy.

The last Mac I bought was the late 2009 iMac, which now functions mainly as a media center in the lounge. I prefer to work on my MacBook. It’s smaller, more compact, and I feel more connected to my work. Writing on a laptop has, for me, always been more fun than on a desktop. And the laptop I’m using is a late 2007 white MacBook. That machine is now over five years old.

So you’ll probably understand that I can’t wait to get new one. And the 11” Air looks and feels just like the perfect machiene for me.

The thing is, it’s been last updated in June last year, 335 days ago. According to the MacRumors buyer’s guid, nobody should buy an Air now, as it’s due an update soon. The average days between updates, says MacRumors, is 322 days.

Looks like WWDC will be when Apple presents those new MacBook Airs. With Retina displays? I don’t think so.

And neither does Stephen. Just as I, Stephen thinks that the Apple just can’t combine the thinness and pricepoint of the Air with the components required to run a Retina display.

Over in his blog, Stephen points out a few things that make perfect sense why Apple won’t introduce a Retina MacBook Air, or MacBook Air with Retina display, just yet. It’s not only the price which Apple has to keep low with the Airs, to be able to offer a consumer level “entry” MacBook, but also the massive battery that’s required to power a Retina display (Stephen’s got some great photos for comparison in his post). I couldn’t agree more.

The MacBook Air is, and always has been, about portablity, mobility, lightness, and thinness, whilst still offering long lasting battery power. So if Apple wanted to equip the Air with a Retina display at this point, it would have to make it either thicker and heavier to be able to put a bigger battery in, or put a similar size battery in and reduce battery life instead. And I can’t see Apple doing either.

What Stephen suggest Apple might do, although not at this year’s WWDC, is split the MacBook Air category like they did with the MacBook Pro:

One solution to this would be for Apple to do with the Airs what it did with the Pros: offer a MacBook Air with Retina display and a MacBook Air. Doing so might even allow Apple to kill off the standard MacBook Pro, as it could still offer three groups of pricing.

So here I am, thinkging about getting a MacBook Air soon, barely being able to wait, and practicing my paitence.[1] If Apple announces a new MacBook Air at WWDC in roughly a month time, I’ll be happy and buy one either way, no matter with or without a Retina display. I don’t think I actually need one. It would be nice, definitely, and something that’d I enjoy. But I don’t think I would want to give up the Air’s characterisic features for it, if that was the price for it. Neither does Apple, I think. And that’s why I will go for the non-Retina version if they do what Stephen suggests and split the MacBook Air category into with and without Retina display models.

  1. It’s also not like I just could buy one now.  ↩

≫ The Future of iOS Design?

With WWDC only a few weeks away, the rumours, speculations, and discussions about an impending redesign of iOS with version seven are louder than ever. And everyone is screaming “Flat, flat, flat!”

John Gruber and Marco Arment talked about it in the latest episode of The Talk Show and made some interesting points. They think that Apple won’t go completely flat, like the Windows 8 UI, and won’t loose the emotional side of the user interface. Apple has always appealed to the emotional side of technology through their products and product design, and it is very unlikely that this will change with iOS 7.

Tim Green has taken a look at the latest design trends of popular iOS apps and analysed their style. While they are flat, they’re not completely flat. And that is, what Tim also concluded for the new iOS design itself: flatter, not flat.

He makes the argument that the recent design changes of Facebook’s and Google’s iOS app designs are not mere coincidence of applying to this trend, but instead pushed by Apple itself.

Google and Facebook have led the charge recently for throwing design resources at their iOS apps and redesigning them in a beautiful, subtle and elegant manner. The idea that either of those wouldn’t have inside information about the direction of iOS 7’s UI and styling is beyond belief and we can only assume that the similar route they have taken (which doesn’t follow Google’s completely-flat Android style – that apps like any.do have done on iOS) suggests to me a direction we might expect Apple to be pushing people.

Whilst I’m not sure I want to believe Apple is telling either Google or Facebook such detailed information about its upcoming iOS, it makes sense in that way that those apps wouldn’t look completely out of place in a new version of the OS.

Tim brings up a lot more evidence for his idea of Apple’s new design, or what he believes it to be like. By analysing the latest trends he also comes up with a new icon for the OS Messages app that applies to these new design ideas. It’s an interesting read and definitely something to think about.

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  • May 10, 2013

The Loop Magazine

If you are a fellow Apple fanboy or fangirl you will definitely have heard of The Loop, and probably read it every day. Jim Dalrymple and Peter Cohen have been writing The Loop for 20 years now, and manage to publish great articles, links, and tidbits about Apple and other interesting and somewhat technology related topics on a daily basis.

Jim’s great experience and hard work, his relationships in the industry, and his analytical skills have earned him a very good reputation amonst bloggers and gained him the well deserved respect. This has over the years lead to the whole bloggosphere — what a word — to shut up in awe and amazement as soon as Jim drops his famous “Yep”.

Today, Jim released the first issue of his new The Loop Magazine. The magazine is an iOS Newsstand app that’s published twice a month and costs $2/month. Bringin all the features of Apple’s Newsstand, the magazine will update and download new content automatically in the background. Rather than publishing articles from The Loop in a magzine format, or publishing his own articles in the magazine instead of on The Loop, Jim has decided to create a platform and magazine for his favourite wirters’ work.

Similar to Marco Arment’s The Magazine, The Loop Magazine will feature a variety of articles and stories on different topics. Unlike The Magazine, though, the focus seems to be lying more on what Jim and The Loop stand for, and what his readers love him for: excellent technology related writing.

It is quite obvious, once you launch the app (or open the magazine, whichever phrase you prefer here), that its design and idea was heavily influenced by Marco’s magazine. That is not a negative though. The Magazine has become one of the best designed and exectued magazines of the 21st century, if you ask me. And not just me. In his essay Subcompact Publishing, Craig Mod describes how The Magazine’s style is the style we need for a newer, more modern, and more adapted publishing model for this new era in publishing. The Magazine does everything right. And Craig isn’t the only smart person who has realised that, which is why Jim did things the way he did, and openly acknowledges that he was inspired by Marco’s work. Why wouldn’t you?

With the help of TypeEngine, a new startup that makes it easy to create and publish great looking and well working Newsstand magazines without being a developer, Jim then sat down and created The Loop Magazine. And I am glad he did.

I’ve been a fan of TypeEngine when I first heard of them on App.net a few months back and immediately loved the idea behind the project. Also, mainly insipired by The Magazine, the guys behind it wanted to create a product that helps launching the publishing industry, or rather the non-existent industry of private publishers, into this day and age, and show the traditional guys how it’s done on an iPad (and should be on any other tablet device). I’m not going to go into the whole “they’re all just ripping off Marco’s idea and product”-discussion, because I think that it’s unnessecarily silly and immature.

Getting The Loop Magazine as another publications that follows this concept and executes it this well is a massive help towards making other writers and publications realise that Apple’s Newsstand app and model does have potential, and that readers are willing to pay for content that is presented in a clean and usable design rather than fancy annimations and deisgn elements that might have worked in print, but never will in digital publishing. Really, you should go and read Craig’s essay about this. There is no way I can explain this better than he does, so I won’t waste your time and even attempt it. Go read it.

I’m excited about The Loop Magazine and all the great content it is going to feature in the future. And as Marco said in the embedded Tweet above, if The Magazine has started a revolution in publishing (which it definitely has), then having two great publications like that at the front of this fight, things can only get amazing. The easy publication process and model of Newsstand combined with liberating services like TypeEngine, and two excellent publications like The Magazine and The Loop Magazine are the ink our printers need to print the magazines and publications of the future.

Go and get the first issue of The Loop Magazine. It comes with a 7 day free trial, but seriously, at $1 per issue, just subscribe. It’s not like you don’t know you’ll get amazing content that’s worth at least ten times as much money.

Ghost – The Future Of Online Publishing

When John O’Nolan first published his concept of Ghost last year, I first didn’t realise it wasn’t a real product yet, and then got unjustifiably upset when I found out that it wasn’t only just an idea but also that there weren’t any plans to make it into a product.

After a ton of responses from people who all felt like I did, John decided to build Ghost as the blogging platform just for blogging he had imagined in his original concept. I was thrilled.

Then, yesterday morning, John published the Kickstarter for Ghost and asked for £25,000 support to build the platform. As of writing these lines, John and his team have raised £51,444. Successfully funded. And I am super excited.

But why? This blog runs fine as is on WordPress, and I don’t think if Ghost hadn’t come along I would’ve looked for any other service any time soon. But Ghost is different. John’s idea makes it different.

On the official Ghost website John presents the project with three words: free, open, and simple. As “just a blogging platform”, Ghost wants to go back to the core of blogging, put the most important thing about it front and centre: writing and publishing great articles.

With a great looking environment that’s super easy to understand and therefore use. It offers a simple yet powerful editor that understands Markdown and gives you a live preview of what you’re writing. A gorgeous and customisable dashboard displays all of your blog’s most important statistics, and the ability to develop and install your own themes and plug-ins make it sound a lot like Squarespace at first. Ghost’s idea of becoming not only a self-hosted system, but also a fully hosted and paid for blogging platform for your blog draw these parallels even thicker.

But Ghost is, or will be, open source and make the source code freely available to everyone. It wants to become the next step in online publishing and help run blogs more efficiently again, taking away all of that CMS stuff most bloggers don’t need and want to bother about. And by making the project open and customisable allows for everybody to improve upon the original product. To support this idea even more, Ghost will become and NGO and put all the money it earns back into the development of the product itself, setting the focus on the development and eliminating the worry about monetization right from the onset.

So, I backed it and will move this blog from WordPress to Ghost once it’s available because it’s like Squarespace but open source? Not really. Well, kind of. But no.

I will move this blog onto Ghost because I believe it to be the next step, or level of online publishing. Building a tool this powerful and making it available for free and enabling people to freely enhance it, alongside offering a fully hosted option to easily get people started has insanely high potential. Imagine Twitter had started out like this. A project that’s available for free and let’s you highly customise and/or improve it towards your needs, but also offers some extra features and support in exchange for a bit of money. Focusing on the people and the product instead of making money, and investing the money made right back into the product. Imagine where Twitter would be now. What it would be.[1]

John has recognised this potential of his idea and is now building a product around it, with exactly that idea at its core. As he wrote in the first update on Kickstarter today:

There is the potential for this to turn into a very real, very tangible open source publishing movement that doesn’t just affect small blogs. A movement of people who care about writing, publishing, journalism, and sustainable software.

Besides a blogging platform, and just that, John has also proposed an open source magazine made of Ghost blogs. He describes it:

We’re saying Ghost is going to be great for blogging? Let’s create one of the world’s best blogs. Think Medium – but completely decentralised. The code for the actual site will also be made public, allowing everyone to see, use, replicate, improve, and hack what we use to power it.

I am crazily excited about Ghost and can’t wait to get my hands on it in August. I want to play with it, see it first hand, experience it, and step into what I believe to be the next stage of online publishing. Easy, simple, open, powerful publishing for everyone. To get a better overview, some images, and John’s words directly from him, head to the Kickstarter or official website and check out the video. And then: back it! Although the goal has been reached already, Ghost needs all the support it can get to evolve into what it aims to become. Even if you give just a few Pounds or Dollars (or whatever you have) will help the team out and support this great project. And with the new stretch goal set today, John promises that every backer, no matter how much they gave, will get a fully hosted Ghost blog for free for a year.

Please back this one guys. For writing. For publishing. For us, as bloggers.

  1. Yes, App.net is getting there, but to me is something different again. And that’s another story.  ↩

The Alpha Dominche Steampunk

You all know I love coffee. I don’t just enjoy it for the energy serving caffein, but mostly for the taste of it. A lot of people say that tea is more versatile and has more flavours to offer than coffee. I don’t think that’s true at all. The tastes, with all its nuances and notes, different coffees from different parts of the world have to offer are close to endless. Combined with different roasting styles and degrees, and the vast variety of brewing methods available to the coffee geek make a number of flavours possible that can easily compete or beat tea.

Dan Seifert, for The Verge, wrote a piece about the Alpha Dominche Steampunk that underlines my opinion of coffee. Well, he obviously didn’t set out to achieve that with his post (as he surely doesn’t even know who I am), but rather explores this new coffee making wonder machine.

Intendet to complement the classic espresso machine in coffee shops around the world, the Steampunk offers a variety of brewing methods to the barista behind it.

Despite its simplicity of operation, the Steampunk can be configured to brew coffee in any style from French Press to pour over to siphon, with very granular controls over water temperature and pressure.

Dan explains how the machine works, who came up with it, and gives an idea about how this could change coffee bars around the world. He also outlines the development process behind it and shares his experience with it.

It’s only available to a few coffee shops in the US at the moment and costs $15,000. I want it.

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