Kyle Fox had the same feelings I did when previewing fonts on Typekit:
I got tired of using Web Inspector to modify Typekit’s settings. I got tired of inserting dummy text, too. This bookmarklet solves both problems.
His bookmarklet adds a beautiful, simple, and useful toolbar to Typekit’s type tester field.
Shadoe Huard of Smarterbits:
Consider the probability that the majority of PCs shipped and sold by the time Windows 8 comes out, and for some time thereafter, will still come with built-in DVD drives. Drives which will be utterly useless.
Microsoft knows that disc drives are on the way out. Not supporting them seems so boneheaded that I wonder if they want to remove disc drives but their partners building the hardware won’t take the hint and follow suit.
I hope this is Microsoft’s hint because if it isn’t, it’s sheer stupidity. If this is a hint to hardware manufacturers, it would be better delivered in a board meeting rather than in the unit sales at Best Buy.
Letting my imagination run further, what if those board meetings have happened?
Birdhouse is a little notepad for Twitter, I keep drafts of funny toots in it. When it launched, it looked like a great idea but I told myself it was just for those clever people on Twitter. Now that I’ve bought it, I guess I can’t say that.
It had been a while since Birdhouse was updated and this showed when running it on iOS 5. The update, released yesterday, squashed many compatibility issues and bugs.
Birdhouse is a niche app. If you’ve never heard of it, Adam Lisagor made a great video explaining Birdhouse and its unique features.
I’m following up on my previous post about how Duck Duck Go utterly failed at indexing my site. This morning searching the site via Duck Duck Go returned a proper sampling of results.
It seems the results have returned to normal. However, switching back to Google, even for a day, made me aware of some differences in the two services:
Now that Duck Duck Go is displaying recent posts I noticed something weird with the favicons displayed beside them. The search results show the old favicon (from the Squarespace days) along side the new posts and the new favicon along side the old broken links. It’s a small but confusing mixup.
As much as I distrust Google’s general motives they provide excellent, well ranked, and easily readable results.
Dynamically generating content for an internal site search would defeat the purpose of this site being only static HTML pages. Instead, I outsourced this job to Duck Duck Go when I changed the backend from Octopress to Secondcrack. Octopress uses Google who is notorious for silently violating a user’s privacy and Duck Duck Go looked to be doing things more in favor of users privacy. I knew Duck Duck Go’s speed and ranking would be lacking next to Google’s offering but I wanted the underdog to succeed.
Turns out, Duck Duck Go’s results have become either inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date. Currently, a search for anything not included within the first 10 articles of the front page returns “Not found”. I switched back to Google right after discovering this.
Testing the search results further, I searched for my review of Reckless Racing 2 using the words Reckless and Racing. The results still returned null. Out of frustration I tried just Racing instead. Duck Duck Go returned two outdated links. The first was an article about Real Racing 2 HD that I wrote when I was using Squarespace in March 2011. The second was the sixth index page of my Squarespace site where the Real Racing 2 HD article appeared at some point in late 2011.
Both of these links have been broken and returning a 404 since I killed the Squarespace site in December 2011. That’s 6 months ago.
I do not know why the search results depreciated so much. I tested Duck Duck Go before implementing it and the results were thorough, albeit ranked strangely. Google already crawls my articles and ranks them much better than Duck Duck Go. It’s not something I’m loosing sleep over but I was trying to keep Google from being a part of my site.
Update: Search results have unexpectedly gotten better. I’m still sticking with Google though, here is the follow up.
Figure is so much fun but after I create a mix I realize it’s like driving a car without seats. It’s held back by an obvious omission. Propellerhead, the developers, haven’t said if a save, share, or export function is coming so for now, Cody Tucker’s solution will have to suffice.
I’m still having fun using Figure even without sharing or exporting tracks. Maybe it’s not a big deal but I think Figure would benefit greatly from being a shared experience.
I enjoy a cup of Aeropress coffee. I think Adam Lisagor enjoys it a bit more.
Federico Viticci of Mac Stories:
Among the Drive features touted by Google, the company announced the service will support OCR (optical character recognition) for scanned documents, image recognition for uploaded pictures (for instance, you’ll be able to search for “Eiffel Tower” and have Drive find a picture of it in your files), and search.
It appears that Google copied Dropbox and added creepy indexing features. That seems really sleazy.
Also from Google’s Terms of Service (with added emphasis):
When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.
Please, read the entirety of the Terms of Service. I know they were in effect before Google Drive was announced but Google’s insistence on possessing the entirety of users data is slimy.
There is a scene at the beginning of Casino Royale where the criminal Steven Obanno needs access to his money whenever and wherever. He hires the services of Le Chiffre, a banker to the world’s terrorist organizations, to provide this anywhere access. Le Chiffre later uses this money for his own purpose of leveraging the stock market. This describes my feelings towards any data in Google Drive: manipulated.
This is the best wallet I’ve owned.
You could stop reading there, that is how much I recommend it. However, like any quality movie it has a target audience. Let me explain.
The Slimmy Wallet
It’s designed for me, a person who has a few cards and some cash. If you’re looking for a “pocketable purse” as I like to call it, this is not for you. It’s meant to be functional yet inconspicuous in your pocket.
The Slimmy wallet is, like the name implies, quite thin. It is comprised to two fabric-lined compartments surrounding a leather lined compartment. It turns out that I have been using the wallet differently than the website instructs.
I feel that the outside two pockets are more suited for cards and ID because the fabric used in the lining grips but doesn’t scratch. It’s never an effort to get them out and at the same time it’s clear they’re not falling out on their own. The middle pocket’s leather lining holds cash in a similar manner, what I put in there is not falling out. The website shows the outer two compartments holding cash and receipts and the inner one holding cards.
I keep my bank card in the outside pocket, cash in the middle, and ID and other cards in the other outside pocket. I rarely put receipts in my wallet for more than a day. If I do they share the bank card pocket. As a precaution I don’t take my credit cards outside the house.
The wallet, despite its size, doesn’t feel cheap. The build is sturdy and after months I have only noticed the pockets corners flare slightly at the unattached corner. This is actually convenient. If you carry the same configuration of cards for a while the leather moulds to them making the wallet even slimmer.
It’s would be disingenuous to compare the Slimmy and my old wallet because I used it to carry coins too, so to make a better comparison I ripped the pocket out1. Now, they are both without coin pockets and when empty, the Slimmy is less than half the width of my old wallet. When their both carrying the same cards, the Slimmy is less than a third the width. Sometimes I forget it’s in my pocket because it’s so thin. Even when full and in my back pocket I can comfortably sit on it.
I’ve always had a wallet with a coin pouch. These are hard to come by and designed for kids under the age of 12.
Now that I’ve grown up coins go in a free pocket. This way I’m motivated not to have bundles of metal jangling around and when I’m home I offload the change helping me pay the washing machine. Having less coin on my commute also stops me wasting money on snacks.
I’ve said it already, it’s my favourite wallet.
It’s available on Amazon and Koyono’s website. I first heard about the Slimmy through Shawn Blanc’s website, Tools and Toys so if you’re going to by it through Amazon, follow Shawn’s link so he’ll get a kickback. There are also models in different colours available on Koyono.com.
It was going to fall out anyways. ↩
I really enjoy using Paper and this collection of amazing artwork makes it evident that a lot of others do too.
