Frank Chimero's incredible book on design is one of the most thought provoking books I've ever read. I preordered the eBook copy after its Kickstarter campaign was over, and only wish now that I had purchased the hardback edition. Here's what I wrote about it over a year ago: if anything, that doesn't do the book justice. The Shape of Design is an eloquent treatise about what design really means, and how well designed things influence our life. It's a must-read, even if you don't consider yourself a designer.
I was reminded of how much I love the book today while reading over Shawn Blanc's new book Delight is in the Details, where he draws inspiration from Chimero's text. So, I hopped over to The Shape of Design's site again, just to take another look at it, and was surprised to see it now contains the full text of the book in an online eBook. The site's been beautifully designed to make it the perfect way to read the eBook online — much like Matthew Butterick's Practical Typography site — and if anything, you'll likely enjoy reading it more online than in a PDF.
It's incredibly generous of Frank Chimero to make his work available free online, and I can only hope that this will mean more people will read it and take its advice to heart.
Go read it at ShapeofDesignBook.com; you won't regret the time you take to read through it. It's easily worth an afternoon or three of reading and contemplation.
“You’re driving yourself crazy (and going in circles) over how things should be, but if you settle down and look at how things really are, you might figure out how to change a few of them.”
The word processor is far from dead, but Microsoft had better start fighting if it wants to keep Word at the top of the market. Because this year, word processors are the big thing in web apps. Word — and even Google Docs — haven't really made the mobile transition, and neither of them are really designed for writing for the web. That's left a huge gap to be filled.
Today saw the release of Quip, the newest online writing app that's an attempt to reinvent the word processor for 2013. But it's far from alone. Here's the newest online contenders from the web app throne, linked to my AppStorm articles about each of them:
iWork for iCloud — Apple's new beta web app versions of their iCloud suite make up the prettiest — and most feature-filled — set of office apps on the web. They're nearly perfect copies of their iPad counterparts, and work amazingly great on the web. Just … no collaboration features, at all, right now.
Draft — My favorite web app of the year, enough that I've written about it multiple times already, Draft is a Markdown writing app for the web with an editing service, tools to publish to WordPress or save to Dropbox, and more. Much more. It's great, and the one of this list you've got to try since it's so unique.
Editorially — The new collaborative writing app from Jason Santa Maria and Mandy Brown of A Book Apart fame, Editorially is a Markdown app similar to Draft, but in a more traditional interface and built around teamwork. It's slick, but in private beta.
Quip — The newest entry, from a former Google and Facebook team, Quip aims to reinvent rich text collaborative writing for the iPad age. It's great — but far closer to Word and Pages than Draft and Editorially mean to be, in a fully unique way. Another app you'll have to try.
Can I include a Mac app here, too? Ok, good. Ulysses III is the writing app that's won me over this year. It's amazing for us writers that already use Markdown day in, day out, but it's simple enough that it's the only Markdown app I've ever seen that has a chance at converting the normal Word user to Markdown. And that's really cool.
Yup. It's a fun time to be a writer that loves trying out new writing apps.
Another of my recent articles from AppStorm, this time digging into the features of SimplyMpress and LetterMpress, the two best apps to make letterpress style art on the Mac and iPad. I've been following LetterMpress since it was first on Kickstarter, and have been excited to see their team follow though on the original promise and take it further.
For a quick summary: you'll likely find SimplyMpress easier to use for making a quick letterpress-style design, but LetterMpress is more impressive and lets you feel like you're using a real printing press. But, both feel more at home on the iPad's touchscreen than they do on the Mac. Not too surprising for a ported app, but I was hoping they'd be a bit better on the Mac than they are.
Now, read the full review for the rest of the scoop.
If you're sharing small files all the time, Droplr's the sharing app you should be using. From Web.AppStorm, here's why I finally switched from CloudApp to Droplr — and why I think you'll find yourself very happy if you switch as well.
2 days over a month since Techinch Magazine hit the App Store, and 2 days under a month since Techinch Magazine Issue 1 was officially released, here we are again with Issue 3. And it's the best issue yet, if I may say so myself.
This time, instead of just articles from yours truly, we've also got an article from Nathan Snelgrove, a writer from Canada who's worked with me at AppStorm and recently penned an article that was published in The Loop's magazine (coincidentally also a TypeEngine-powered magazine). He brings us an insightful article about finding the right balance of tech for your life. Nathan's a great writer — and a great friend — and I'm very excited that he's been able to write for Techinch Magazine.
Then, you'll also notice that Techinch Magazine is a bit shiner this time, thanks to the hand-drawn graphics in two of the articles from the brilliant London-based illustrator, Jason Ramasami. He'd gotten in touch with me via App.net when I first launched Techinch Magazine, and put together some rather stunning illustrations for my articles this time. Hope you enjoy them this time, and look forward to seeing more of his work in coming issues.
Go Check it Out!
So, if you have a minute, go download it the latest issue from the App Store, or get your PDF/ePub copy from Gumroad. I sure hope you enjoy it — and to all of my subscribers, thank you so much for joining me in this venture. I really, really appreciate every one of you taking the time to read the articles — and for buying a subscription.
It's not too uncommon for me to spend a dollar or ten on an impulse app or eBook purchase. But hardware's a totally different matter. I planned my MacBook purchase months in advance, saved and thought and debated before finally buying an iPhone, and maxed out my backup drive (and then managed to erase half of the stuff on it) before I bought another 1Tb external USB3 drive. The [Nifty MiniDrive] was nearly an impulse buy, but at $30 it was cheap enough to take a chance on.
Today, another device convinced me to buy it only an hour after first hearing about it: Google's [Chromecast]. It's a $35 HDMI stick — practically the same as the USB flash drives and 3G connectors we're used to — powered by Chrome OS. Just connect it to your TV, where it'll likely be 100% hidden (assuming your TV can power it over HDMI; otherwise, you'll need a power cable. Still, not bad), and open Chrome on any of your devices or a supported app (YouTube, Netflix, Google Play on an Android device, and a handful of others coming soon). Find what you want to watch, then tap the button to "cast" it to your TV. And anything online will work, or at least it's supposed to, including any site with HTML5 or Flash video. Next thing you know, your online video will be playing on your TV via the Chromecast, in full HD.
It's obviously going to be compared most to the Apple TV, which can stream videos from a number of online services, play iTunes media, and mirror your entire Mac or iOS device's screen via AirPlay. But it's 3 times the cost of the Chromecast, and is yet another set-top box. If browser-based videos make up the majority of your viewing, then the Chromecast is perfect. And I happen to bet there will have to be ways to get it to play local media via a personal server — that's something I shall have to try out. But if you're already using Netflix+YouTube for your streaming entertainment, the Chromecast would be perfect — and it comes with 3 months of free Netflix streaming, making it effectively $24 cheaper. And somehow, it would only make sense now if Google could figure out a way to bring Google Play videos to iOS (Update: turns out they already have. Buy a movie/TV show in Google Play, and you can open it in the iOS YouTube app under the Account->Purchases tab. Thanks for confirming, @failgunner).
But hey, at $35, it's cheap enough to come up with extra use cases. Imagine this: you can carry a Chromecast in your laptop bag, and when you give a presentation just have the media team stick it in the projector, and you can give a full projected presentations via Google Docs (or, hey, iWord for iCloud, or even the Powerpoint Web App). Or, imagine if Google brings full-device mirroring to the Chromecast for Macs and PCs — that'd make it the perfect way to make any TV into a wireless display.
I'll still want to get an Apple TV sometime if only for full-screen AirPlay Mirroring — and not just the Chromecast's Chrome Tab mirroring — but I happen to think that the Chromecast will cover most of my streaming media needs. And that's really cool. I can't wait to get mine.
Hey Google, good job. You just sold this Apple fan a device.
*****
Now, if only the Ubuntu Edge was coming sooner than next year, I'd be sorely tempted to buy another non-Apple device. What is happening?!?
Matthew Butterick, a typographer and lawyer who'd previously written the book Typography for Lawyers, just released a brand new book: Practical Typography. Yet, rather than printing it and releasing it as a normal for-pay eBook, he turned it into its own eBook web app designed 100% for reading in your browser. Its content — the basics of typography explained for anyone to understand — is impressive enough, but the book's web app is equally impressive.
You'll find chapters devoted to everything from quotes and apostrophes to text formatting with OpenType features and the line spacing settings you should use. There's a Typography in Ten Minutes chapter to get you going quickly, font recommendations so your documents and sites won't look outdated, sample documents, and more. All of it, for the low price of free — but if you find it useful, you should check out the ways you can pay for the book. It's more than worth it, and it'd sure be neat to see more books released like this.
Oh, and the book recommends Pitch, my favorite monospaced font, in the font recommendation section, which is neat to see. It also lists Source Sans — the font used in Techinch and Techinch Magazine — as exceptions to the rule that with free fonts, you get what you pay for. Also nice to see. Perhaps I have somewhat decent taste in typefaces.
But why are you still here? Go check out Practical Typography, make some time to read it, and bookmark it for reference. That's exactly what I'm doing.
It's been two weeks since I officially launched Techinch Magazine, and I've finally got Issue 2 out the door. If you've already downloaded the app or subscribed via email, you should have received a notification about the new issue. If you didn't noticed the notification, though, go check it out.
Here's what you'll find this time around:
Welcome to Techinch Magazine Issue 2
You Are Not Your Tools
Making a Smart Home
Automate All Your Stuff
The Tools to Build Techinch Magazine
This time, I've included PDF and ePub download links in the iOS app version of the magazine, so you can read Techinch Magazine on any of your devices.
At just over 6,000 words, it's longer than Issue 1, and hopefully at least as enjoyable as the first issue. Hope you enjoy it, and we'll be back with Issue 3 in two more weeks — and that issue will have an article from a new guest writer as well!
"A Maximum Viable Product is a product that is as good as the market will bear." Allen Pike, Steamclock Software
What everyone should aim to build: the very best stuff they can.
If you're tired of the App Store being dominated by freemium junk games and ad-ridden knockoffs, this should be your new manifesto.
Now, if only Apple would get wholeheartedly behind helping others make work they're proud of, instead of focusing on promoting free apps and hampering building sustainable businesses on the App Store. But then, Panic and others are proof that the App Store can work for Maximum Viable Products as well, so perhaps it's just a problem of developer and consumer perspective.
Either way, here's to the next generation of Maximum Viable Products. Go build them. We can't wait to use them.
