No date

Is it just me or do you get frustrated when online posts (such as this one) don’t provide a publishing date? It’s really annoying. Come on folks, take a tip from the press: Always provide a publishing date and author (unless your entire blog is just you, then an author’s probably not necessary).

Sublime

An absolutely sublime post from the Tao of Mac on everything from crazy iPad hype to an in-depth stream of consciousness on the escalating war against Flash and what HTML5 means. Beautiful site redesign too, although I suspect Rui actually did it quite a while ago and I’m just getting around to noticing now.

Just my own two cents regarding the Ars Technica article appealing to our commercial senses: While Ars may feel the pinch as more people start to block ads, the fact of the matter is — it’s a sign of tolerance levels in the audience. As more ads are blocked, the industry starts to realize that people don’t like current advertising practices. Find a new way to do it, or suffer the consequences.

The new freemium

TUAW published a great article on GDC 2010: Ngmoco’s Neil Young on how freemium will change the App Store world. If you’re interested in the evolution of Apple’s “App Store” and, in a wider sense, the marketing that’s driving one of it’s largest publishers check out the article. It’s an interesting accounting of how mobile applications are evolving into free downloads with premium paid features.

iPhone guidance

If you don’t want to shell out the $10 per month fee for the AT&T iPhone Navigator application, I can’t blame you. That’s a lot to pay for directions, especially when you can pick up a Garmin for under $100. There is an alternative, though: A new version of CoPilot Live enhances and fixes a lot of issues in the previous versions. According to the company, the app now includes improved guidance at complex intersections, Facebook status updates, free local search, and the latest maps of North America. More than 15,000 miles of roads have been added, 73 completely updated counties and hundreds of map improvements submitted by the CoPilot Live User Community.

According to TUAW you can buy the CoPilot application for a $2.99 per month subscription, or opt for a $19.99 per year payment. That’s a heck of a lot more attractive than AT&T’s plan (which would run about $120 per year). You can give the application a try for free, too, as it comes with a 30 day trial period when you first download it. TUAW does point out, thought, that after using CoPilot for a couple of years, you could have bought the higher rated TomTom or Navigon apps, both of which seem to have more features and fewer problems than CoPilot. Check out some of the reviews on the Apple store before buying: CoPilot has it’s pros and cons.

Yes, that is ironic

“We used to hustle on over the border for health care… And I think, isn’t that kind of ironic now?” — Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska, admitting that her family used to go to Canada for medical treatment when she was a child; Canada has a single payer system, which Palin opposes. (Time, March 22, 2010).

New Hyrax site up and running

I finally managed to get the Hyrax International LLC web site up and running — it’s really amazing what you can do with WordPress and a few plugins. Not at all like “back in the day” when we hand-coded this stuff in Perl and HTML1.0.

I still need to look into the “right” e-commerce solution, but so far it appears Instinct’s WP e-Commerce plugin is the winner. It’s a solid, mature platform and with a few of the add-ons you can build some really fantastic one-click or one-drag shopping experiences. IconDock has one of the best examples — not that I’m leaning toward that experience for Hyrax, but it is pretty slick.

Shopify is probably the runner up. It’s feature rich and has the added marketability of Pixar and C-net endorsement. It’s also got a rich feature set, but doesn’t have the robustness and sheer number of options and add-ons that Instinct’s product has. Both are widely used though, so it’s really a matter of doing the technical due diligence to figure out which one is the best fit.

Future shock

Ok, I’ll admit it — I think the iPad is going to be a huge success. Not because it has some whiz-bang feature or gizmo that makes it better than any of the competitors. No, I think it will succeed because it’s completely different. Apple is trying to solve a problem that’s been plaguing “the people we have claimed to serve for 30 years whilst screwing them over in innumerable ways.” Despite all the whinging by the numerous critics, Speirs has hit it on the head. They aren’t griping over the iPad itself, their griping over the end of a tyranny.

Brit’s have their priorities sorted

“Drinking problem solved,” reads the headline in The Philadelphia Inquirer. “Soon Britons will be able to get smashed at the pub while their pint glasses won’t.” Apparently, in the face of a horrendous number (87,000) of alcohol related injuries, many of which stem from shattered pint beer glasses, the government has found a solution.

No officials were talking about reforming British drinking habits of course. I like that. The Brits have got their priorities sorted — and, let’s face it, they’ve got a healthy dose of realism going here. Rather than stem the tide of drunken behavior, the government has invested in developing shatterproof beer glasses. Officials swear the country will save billions in health care costs by eradicating the “pint glass as a lethal weapon” issue.

“Glassing causes horrific injuries and has a lasting and devastating impact on victims and their families,” said Alan Johnson, Home Secretary, as he introduced two new shatterproof pint glasses. Alcohol Concern, a charity that strives to reduce alcohol abuse in Britain, praised the new designs.

Do it!

Fill out the survey! It’s only 6 questions long! It’s worth it and you could win an iPod Shuffle! And seriously, it will be very valuable.

Virtual file management with dropbox

Wouldn’t it be nice if your files magically followed you from one computer to another? Even to your phone? Across different operating systems, like from a Mac to your PC?

If this sounds like something you want to try, give dropbox a go. Dropbox creates a virtual folder on each of your computers — anything you drop into the folder shows up everywhere. It’s instantly backed up to the dropbox computing cloud, and you can even get to your files through a web browser.

One of the best features, I think: You can instantly share any folder inside your dropbox with friends or colleagues, even if they have a different operating system. The shared folders just appear inside your dropbox, letting you work together seamlessly.

Give it a try for free. You get 2GB of storage with your starter account, and can upgrade to 50GB for about $10 a month. And if you’re a Time Machine user — yes, your dropbox folder is seamlessly backed up to Time Machine.

Evernote

Have you discovered Evernote yet? I’ve become very impressed with this simple catch-all for ideas, notes, events, even your favorite wine. Essentially, it can capture just about any content, including web pages, PDF files, documents, text clippings, photos, and email messages. The real power of Evernote is, at least for me, twofold:

1. It’s cross platform, working seamlessly on my iPhone. Any information I capture appears both on my laptop and my iPhone and is fully searchable in either place.
2. Evernote’s search and retrieval capabilities are phenomenal. In part, this is because it uploads everything to a central server where character recognition is run on everything non-text, turning images, scans, faxes and PDF files into fully, content-searchable documents.

As my library of Evernote content has grown it has become more and more indispensable. This took a while. At first I had my typical quandary when facing a new tool. “Where do I put this? How will I find it again?” Eventually I discovered the answer to both questions is actually quite simple: Put everything in Evernote, and don’t worry about finding it again — it’s just going to work. And it does.

This doesn’t mean it’s entirely effortless, but it’s close. I still love Apple Mail and it’s powerful search capabilities, and I still have gigabytes of documents tucked away in my file system. I don’t dump all of my mail into Evernote. Evernote gets most of my documents, faxes, PDFs, images I snap on my iPhone. But it also gets email that I think falls into the “ooh, I’m going to want to reference that again later” category, and it works nicely — especially when there’s a document or image attachment.

Give it a try, but do be religious about it for a while. Until you have enough information in Evernote, you’ll feel like you’re doing double-duty. Eventually, a transition happens and you find it has become central to your workflow. Now, I use it every day — categorizing materials I want to research, as an “idea board” for rough drafts and notes that I’m working on, and as a way to tuck away anything I’ll want to find again.

Live longer (and make better presentations)

Want to live to a happy old age? And pick up a few tips on how to make better presentations while you’re doing it? This is a great post from Presentation Zen that gives us a few tips on both (and thanks to the embedded TEDx videocast). Take a look, it’s worth the 20 minutes or so.