Posts in Linked

Slugline→

New screenwriting app for OS X by Stu Maschwitz. I like how Jonathan Poritsky briefly describes it:

Slugline allows you to write in Fountain while making your script look like a formatted screenplay. It’s like Final Draft without all the headaches. It’s magic. And since your documents are always in plain text, you can take them with you anywhere.

Fountain is, of course, the plain text syntax for writing screenplays inspired by John Gruber’s Markdown. I don’t write screenplays, but I’m aware of the alternatives that already exist on the market (namely, Final Draft). Slugline, from what I see, looks like a mix of FoldingText and traditional screenwriting software: it’s got automatic formatting of plain text for screenplay documents, deep OS X integrations, and a rich preview that, however, is still based on a plain text file. I also like the Outline view, which more Mac text editors should support. Plus, even John August seems to like this app.

Slugline is available for $39.99 on the Mac App Store. You can watch the promo video below.

Permalink

Sublpress - Sublime Text WordPress Plugin→

Interesting work by Nicolas Dienstbier:

Sublpress is a Sublime Text WordPress Plugin that allows you to remotely manage many WordPress 3.5 installations from within Sublime Text. The mostly quick panel based system allows for managing settings, posts(and custom post types), pages and taxonomy terms of a WordPress blog.

I use Sublime Text 2 as a Markdown text editor every day, and I’m intrigued by this plugin. Once I’m done with a post in Sublime, I fire up Marked, hit CMD+Shift+C to copy the HTML code, and go to WordPress to post it. With Sublpress, I could do the posting directly from Sublime, so I’ll make sure to check it out.

Sublpress works with both Sublime Text 2 and 3. You can find it on GitHub (via Brett on Pinboard).

Permalink

Facebook SDK 3.5 for iOS→

Some nice updates for developers who integrate Facebook functionality in their iOS apps. A new native Share Dialog, with support for photos like the iOS 6 Share Sheet, will be available in beta today:

The native Share Dialog is simple to integrate and significantly improves people’s sharing experiences from your native mobile app. It has built-in support for publishing Open Graph actions. In addition, people now have the option to share activity from apps through this dialog without needing to login to Facebook first. This makes it faster and easier for people to share.

The data and publishing permission dialogs look good as well. Facebook says they’re 20% faster, too.

Permalink

Cloak VPN Service Adds $1.99 Mini Plan: 5 GB per Month Across All of Your Devices→

Cloak is an easy-to-use VPN service that safeguards the flow of information to and from your computer on public networks (like a Wi-Fi hotspot at Starbucks). Cloak’s plans have always been inexpensive at less than $15 a month for their top tier 60 GB plan, but their new $1.99 Mini Plan for 5 GB is absolutely killer. It’s incredibly affordable, offering just the right amount of data you’d likely use on the road.

Permalink

Yahoo Releases New Weather and Mail Apps→

Casey Newton:

Yahoo Weather represents one such attempt to delight users into giving the rest of the company’s products a try. Meteorology has been a strength for Yahoo, which has provided data for the default weather app for iPhone since it came out in 2007. But Apple’s weather app has evolved very little over the years, and Yahoo decided to build a new app that emphasizes photos over text. Open Yahoo Weather in big cities around the world and you’ll see sharp, high-resolution images that have been gathered from Yahoo-owned Flickr. The app displays different photos based on location, weather conditions, and time of day.

Nice updates by Yahoo, which seems to be iterating faster than ever with Marissa Mayer at the helm. The new Weather app uses a photo background fetched from Flickr, with clean font and icon overlays for weather information. For my location, the app can only fetch one photo; interestingly, weather data for forecasts is provided by Wunderground.

There are several nice touches in the app. Information is laid out vertically, and as you swipe the background is slightly blurred to put the focus on weather data. There’s no pagination, and the only screen that snaps into view is the first one; at the very bottom, the Wind & Pressure and Sun & Moon sections are both animated (and the current time of the day is reflected in Sun & Moon). Something I don’t like is the advertisement for other Yahoo apps in the left sidebar, though I understand why the company wants people to know Yahoo does still make stuff for the App Store.

I won’t switch from Today Weather, but Yahoo Weather is a good 1.0 release. I like it more than Apple’s own Weather app (which is powered by Yahoo).

Permalink

Twitter Announces #music App→

From the Twitter blog:

Today, we’re releasing Twitter #music, a new service that will change the way people find music, based on Twitter. It uses Twitter activity, including Tweets and engagement, to detect and surface the most popular tracks and emerging artists. It also brings artists’ music-related Twitter activity front and center: go to their profiles to see which music artists they follow and listen to songs by those artists. And, of course, you can tweet songs right from the app.

The new app isn’t available on the App Store yet (tip: to check, refresh Twitter’s page in iTunes using CMD+R). Twitter #music will launch with direct support for iTunes previews, plus Rdio and Spotify streaming for users who have accounts on those service. I’m interested to see how Twitter will handle the login process for Rdio and Spotify, but based on what I’m reading, it sounds like a good idea. Maybe Twitter does have the network infrastructure and willingness to do social music right.

I’ll leave more thoughts for a review. In the meantime, check out Twitter’s official #music landing page, and Joanna Stern’s preview of the app at ABC News.

Permalink

Evernote Wants To Build Hardware→

Jay Alabaster for PCWorld:

The CEO of archiving service Evernote said his company will soon release branded hardware with partners, as it moves toward creating its own devices.

“We won’t actually do the manufacturing, but we’ll do the co-design together,” said Phil Libin, who spoke to IDG News Service on the sidelines of the New Economy Summit, a technology conference held Tuesday in Tokyo.

After 6 apps, 2 web tools (Clearly and Web Clipper), a Business service, and expansion on 3 major platforms (OS X, Windows, Android) it makes sense for Evernote to consider more collaborations on the hardware side. Some facts worth keeping in mind: Evernote has its own developer platform and ecosystem for both apps and compatible hardware; the company signed a partnership with Moleskine to enable automatic tagging of notebook pages using stickers; they have a Chinese version of the service; and, they’re not new to other kinds of collaborations such as carrier deals and smart fridges. Evernote wants to grow.

Tighter integration with hardware would, in theory, allow Evernote to create apps that have a more direct connection with the OS. I don’t think it’d be absurd to guess Evernote is considering a Home-like approach: Evernote’s tools span note-taking, document management, photos, location, contact management, and even digital handwriting. Why wouldn’t Evernote want deeper access to mobile OSes for phones and tablets?

Again, from PCWorld:

Libin emphasized that the company aims to make devices that are “new and magical,” rather than entering an existing product category.

We’ll see in a few years.

Permalink

Recovering From A Hard Drive Failure→

Riccardo Mori:

Remember: hard drives die unexpectedly in most cases. (Solid State drives too, in case you’re wondering). It will happen when least you expect it. It will happen at an inconvenient time. You will be bothered. If you don’t have a backup of your stuff, you will also be panicking. Be prepared.

Wise words. Thomas Brand also had a good piece about Time Machine:

When I was a Mac Genius in 2004, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard had yet to be released, people were not backing up. When a Mac came to the Bar that wasn’t booting, that was making strange clicking sounds, I got scared. The diagnosis was simple, the hard drive hard failed. The repair was straightforward, the hard drive had to be replaced. But someone would have to tell the customer that if there wasn’t a backup, they had lost everything. That someone was me.

I use SuperDuper, and run a backup on a weekly basis. SuperDuper helped me recover from hard drive crashes in the past, and it couldn’t be easier to use (because you don’t really use it, after all).

However, I’m not as anxious about backups as I used to be. With the move from local storage to cloud services, I feel comfortable knowing that my documents always exist somewhere. I see this every time I set up a fresh install of OS X: my documents, passwords, and photos are in Dropbox and Evernote, my music is on Rdio, my purchased apps are on the Mac App Store, and if they’re not, I have a license saved in my Gmail account. My movies and TV shows are on Plex and iTunes in the Cloud.

I’m not saying backups aren’t important. But I’m lucky enough to not having to work with large files that require local storage, and I know that restoring my Mac from scratch isn’t as painful as it would have been three years ago.

Permalink