I got writeroom for mac during macheist 3 for free. Recently I became interested in writing again and decided to give it a try. I was impressed with how much I like the no distractions approach to writing. Sure it is inconvenient if you need to do stuff like checking references and getting some “inspiration” from someone else’s work. But for writing down stuff that is 90% opinion like my blog it’s just perfect. Another cool feature is the “typewriter effect” of keeping the area I’m currently typing in the middle of the screen.
I’m finding it surprisingly therapeutic to just write stuff down… it’s sort of the GTD way: get stuff out of your head and into a “System”. This “system” consists of a directory of text files synchronized with SimpleTex.ws.
In fact when I start to work seriously on my thesis I plan to take a no distraction’s approach by turning off IM, email and facebook notifications and closing firefox instead of just moving to another space.
I’ve written most of this post on my iphone which i’m finding much more appealing for text input than before. In part that’s because I decided to shell out the 4 eur that writeroom for the iphone costs (yeah didnt even wait for a promotion… It was a leap of faith! Much better than evernote and still capable of online sync. I’m not dropping evernote for actual notes completely, just for blog posts and other large blocks of text that aren’t strictly speaking “notes”.
I had previously began using AwesomeNote for quick notes such as song names and contact info (names, emails, skype/IM contact) before either adding them to the app (facebook, skype,…) or addressbook at a more convenient time. I do not need these notes to be synched.
I’m also more interested in reading. I was using read it later but the iphone app has some inconveniences – it failed to keep track of position and scrolling was often an issue. Both of which were solved by switching to the paid instapaper app: it keeps track of my position in the text between sessions and tilt scrolling works awesomely. And since I switched to Instapaper I actually stopped using firefox tabs to keep track of what I had to read – even things that I can’t/don’t want to read on the iPhone (stuff containing videos, lots of images, …) and stuff that I want to blog. There was never that big of a reason to to that before and I hadn’t forced myself into that system with read it later.
So far it’s working. I’m reading all those articles that would normally linger in my firefox session until I finally gave up on ever reading them or accidentally closed them or whatever.
PS: The iPhone is the best invention since electricity
Posted: February 4th, 2010 | Author:lrei | Filed under:Misc | Tags:apple, iphone | Comments Off
So what are the reasons for my iPhond to be jailbroken?
The number one reason was that I wanted it unlocked. I’m temporarilly living in Rome and simply wanted to use my iPhone. When I go back to portugal, this reason will no longer exist.
Still I do like my iPhone unlocked so I can use it when I visit other countries.
Which apps/hacks do I use that are only available fof jailbroken iphones?
SBSettings should be an iphone feature provided by apple. Sadly, it isn’t. It provides fast access to enableing and disabling 3G, wi-fi and bluetooth as well as brightness control.
Five-Column SpringBoard,five rows and five dock items and winterboard for things such as removing app names (yeah icons alo e works better with the overcroweded hacked launcher).
So… Will I continue to jailbreak my iphone after it’s not vital?Depends on how much trouble it is but I hope so.
Written in Writeroom for iPhone, posted via Wordpress iPhone app at Ciampino Airport (Rome), Italy
Fraser Speirs – Blog – Future Shock: “The Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update or reinstalling the OS.
The Real Work is teaching the child, healing the patient, selling the house, logging the road defects, fixing the car at the roadside, capturing the table’s order, designing the house and organising the party.”
(…)
If the iPad and its successor devices free these people to focus on what they do best, it will dramatically change people’s perceptions of computing from something to fear to something to engage enthusiastically with. I find it hard to believe that the loss of background processing isn’t a price worth paying to have a computer that isn’t frightening anymore.
In the meantime, Adobe and Microsoft will continue to stamp their feet and whine.
Hmmm… while I agree that computers are too complicated and often hinder “real work” I don’t really what loss of background processing or lack of flash support has to do with it. And there is no good reason not to safeguard the ability to tinker.
Nevertheless, Speirs is correct: the iPhone and the iPad are devices that have the potential to allow people to focus on doing the “real work” instead of “managing” their computers. Just think of how many blog posts there are dedicated to making your computer work (e.g. how to defragment your drive, repair filesystem, remove virus, …). There is also a lot of complexity at the application-level: even keynote is not easy to use! Not enough anyway. I’ll have to try the iPad version for myself before I can comment on it.
(PS: I don’t use Pages & Numbers. I usually have no need for spreadsheets and Pages is just really bad)
Tinkerer’s Sunset [dive into mark]: “When DVD Jon was arrested after breaking the CSS encryption algorithm, he was charged with ‘unauthorized computer trespassing.’ That led his lawyers to ask the obvious question, ‘On whose computer did he trespass?’ The prosecutor’s answer: ‘his own.’
If that doesn’t make your heart skip a beat, you can stop reading now.”
Amazon, Macmillan: an outsider’s guide to the fight – Charlie’s Diary: “Final note: to customers, Amazon would like to be a monopoly (i.e. the only store in town). To suppliers, Amazon would like to be a monopsony (i.e. the only customer in town). Their goal is to profit via arbitrage, and if they can achieve those twin goals they will own everyubody’s nuts — the authors, the customers, everyone.”
The post goes into detail on how the current model works how amazon and the publishers are trying to evolve it in different, mutually-exclusive ways.
After years of being screwed by the content industry at large (Music and Movie) I was generally inclined to be against the publishing industry in what I though was mostly their attempt to exact higher prices from consumers. And of course, DRM; it might not be important to the publishers but it is very important to consumers. Eventually, if one side offers DRM-free media and the other DRM-encumbered media, the winner is clear. Consumers are not as stupid as they appear to board level executives who I’m guessing are the type of people who think themselves much more intelligent than the rest.
Overall, the reverse auction model tends to be a very good one for the consumers – at least those of non-technical books whose prices seem to never go down *coff* – though this probably is just the way it has to work with a much more limited but “premium” market.
Most of the books I tend to read have been around for a few years – many of them already in the public domain, so I guess picking up a book at $6 is better than amazon’s fixed $10. But paying $15 is not. I wonder which books will cost more…
I just hope that this battle results in DRM free books like it did for music. DRM is always too expensive.
Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.
We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.
Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!
Thank you for being a customer.
Seems surprisingly reasonable. It is clearly a victory for Macmillan. The prices are probably, as Amazon says, unreasonably high but you can chose not to buy them until they drop the prices…
I just hope that this is only the first battle in a long line that will result in DRM free e-books down the line.
Even in spite of the problems I’ve mentioned before. Ideally I will wait for at least the inclusion of the camera which will be there in the next version and a 128GB drive so I can actually carry around my photos as well as have enough space for movies. I still don’t understand the choice of a 4:3 1024×768 display instead of a 16:9 720p display but I don’t know if that will get “fixed” anytime soon (as opposed to 3yrs+ from now or never).
Great hands-on via slashgear – just look at them play with the giraffe:
Ironically, you will need flash to see it…
Going from irony to hypocrisy, it’s funny that the same blogs that applauded Google for listening to its users and providing an alternative to flash in youtube now post about how it’s a tragedy the iPad doesn’t support the plugin they professed to hate just days earlier.
And let’s not forget that this was the most requested feature for youtube. People’s hate for flash was greater than their love for Freedom of Speech (or copyright infringement) with better handling of DMCA takedowns coming in at second place on the request list.
But when Apple takes steps to rid the net of the garbage that is flash, however self-serving you might think it, it is suddenly tragic.
Than there’s the fuss surrounding “multitasking”. So ummm you want to split the screen in two and read on safari while you write to Pages… so you now have pages, safari and a huge virtual keyboard on scream… doesn’t seem very appealing but it’s a valid request. Allow me not to care though. It’s just too much of a minor issue for there to be such a big fuss. I think it’s mostly FUD being spread around by parrots and people suffering from reverse-fanboyism which is a lot more disfunctional than fanboyism.
Update: Apple customers don’t want flash on the iPad - Flash will become one the textbook example of why alienating a relatively small (in this case, mac & linux) customer base can be fatal.
Adobe are you surprised that he people you mistreated for years now want flash gone?
I wonder if internal pressure played a part in the speed with which google introduced HTML5-video into youtube. After all many of their engineers are mac users and open source types who probably use/used linux.
2010 will be an interesting year for tablet/slates/ebook readers. I can’t wait to see if Apple drops the iPad like it did Apple TV, if it makes one hell of an iPad 2 or just incrementally updates it. But one thing is for sure: it’s going to face a lot more competition than the iPhone.
The evolution of HP’s slate – users wanted a rich media experience not just ebooks.
This is my obligatory iPad post. All throughout the many years since we began hearing Apple Tablet rumors every time an Apple announcement/conference was imminent I’ve have constantly been against it. I don’t like tablets and I thought (and still think) that the introduction of one by Apple would stop them from making other, better products to prevent cannibalization of their tablet.
Obviously, Apple can’t make a netbook. It would be just as unreasonable to expect Ferrari to introduce an actual Ferrari-branded car below the $2000 price line. But Apple could’ve made an ultra portable – think 10-11″ Macbook Air. Now I doubt that will happen.
There is certainly a product gap between the phone and the laptop but neither the netbook or this ipad are going to fully fill it in my opinion.
From an OS perspective, the iPhone OS was the natural choice and the only one that made any sense. The lack of Multitasking in non-native apps is not the biggest limitation of the OS currently. In fact, that’s mostly a non-issue. It’s also temporary. The original iPhones, before the 3GS, simply didn’t have the power to handle multitasking properly so Apple disabled it. They will no doubt enable it in a year or so. For now it’s not a priority (since it is a MINOR issue) and they probably don’t want to anger everyone that doesn’t own a 3GS yet. I would like to see Multitasking in an instant messaging app. The hack that apps like IM+ use (having the connection to IM networks established in their servers) is nice but it’s slightly inconvenient since it takes some time to “restore” the connection to the iphone.
I’d also rather see them overhaul the terrible notification system which is far inferior to Android’s notification system.
The biggest problem however comes from the fact that it so heavily sandboxed/compartmentalized. As a use case example, you can’t easily expect to browse the piratebay in safari download a .torrent, add it to the bittorrent client, pass the resulting downloaded file to the zip extractor app and proceed to add the resulting music folder to the ipod app music library.
And You can’t easily add a video to the iPad (or the iPhone) without having to go through iTunes. Or dealing with format conversion in (too) many cases.
As for Flash support, I finally understand how Zararthustra felt when he came down from the mountain and realized that people didn’t know god was dead. Flash is dead.
The three most positive surprises were the ePub format support, the ability to run the iPhone apps you already purchased for your iPhone and the 500USD price point. I have no interest in 3G since I already have it on my iPhone and I’m not going to pay for two data plans.
Unfortunately there were also three rather negative surprises: the non-widescreen non-720p display and the lack of a front camera (or any camera for that matter) and the low storage of the entry model (16GB, seriously?).
In conclusion, inadequate video support, lack of a front camera, the inability for apps to truly cooperate in a PC/Mac fashion, a bad notification system, a poor display and low storage in the entry model – all problems present in the iPhone but somehow made much more significant in a tablet make the iPad rather unappealing. The potential is there but will Apple be able to exploit it or will the iPad be another Apple TV? Only time will tell but I think at least some of these problems will remain for the foreseeable future.
If I ever buy a netbook it needs to have a proper OS. Windows is even more of a joke on a netbook than it is on a normal laptop and since I don’t foresee apple coming up with a netbook in the near future, linux is all that’s left. And no, that crap Asus ships and calls linux is not an option. Windows wannabe Xandros with a lame interface – no thank you. Ubuntu is currently the (only) way to go. And I mean normal Ubuntu not Ubuntu with weird interface (DJ Silly Remix). Sure you can install something like Ubuntu EEE if you have an eee pc or similar but that still might not get all your hardware runing properly plus why did you have to do it yourself? That should’ve been done by the manufacturer imo.
I also find some of the hadware on the current generation of netbooks lacking. There’s nothing that can be done about the SSDs at the moment. They are all slow, low-capacity energy-vampires. One could go with the traditional mechanic drives but that’s soooo last century. The memory is a different story. 512MB is definitively not enough. 1GB is usable but 2GB would be nice. But the biggest let down in my opinion is the battery life. Assuming you don’t stick with windows or the windows wannabe that comes pre-installed, you won’t get past 5h of battery life. And knowing the reviewers and my own careless use of computer resources, that probably translates into 3h in my hands
Granted some may say I’ve missed the point of netbooks. That all netbooks are for is browsing the web, reading email and instant messaging. Nope. That’s just all you can do with the current hardware. Ok the truth is you can do a lot more but you’ll soon run into limitations. Say I want to fire up eclipse and work on my JADE powered project for the Distributed Intelligent Agents course. It’s painfull enough on my macbook I can’t imagine it being bearable on the current crop (read crap) of netbooks.
But that’s not what netbooks are for right? And if it’s just browsing and reading email, an iPhone will do. But work still needs to get done and while my macbook is great for that, I’d still like a more portable option. One I wouldn’t be too afraid to drop/lose. A more task-oriented option (e.g. work on proj A for 2h at a random place with wireless) without the hundreds of applications I keep conveniently open on my macbook would also be nice.
Obviously there are already many options in the market and more to come. But I’m not paying more than 350 eur for one. That’s the price of an eee pc 901. So all I have to do now is wait for another 12 months for it (or rather its sucessor(s)) to reach the kind of hw specs I want and for them to either drop the pseudo-linux or for ubuntu’s netbook support to improve a bit.
