Use Dropbox to sync MarsEdit across multiple machines

As great as MarsEdit is (and it is great), it doesn’t yet let me sync drafts across multiple machines. With respect to WordPress (and some other CMSs), MarsEdit does allow you to save your posts as drafts on your web server; however, I have a general aversion to this because it requires that I remember to update the timestamp of the post (to the current date/time) when I actually publish it, and also causes the post IDs to stray from date-order (I know, I’m anal).

A couple of months ago a friend mentioned Dropbox (currently in private beta) in passing, and immediately I wondered if I could use such a service to do what I needed with respect to MarsEdit (and OmniFocus; see below). Turns out I could.

MarsEdit

To get Dropbox to play nice with MarsEdit you have to use symbolic links (because, as far as I know, MarsEdit doesn’t let you specify where you want to store your drafts and other data), and Dropbox will sync only what you drop into the Dropbox folder. The trick to using symbolic links in this scenario is two-fold: 1) you must make sure your usernames on each machine are the same; and 2) you must time correctly the creation of the symlinks on each machine.

Usernames

Regarding the first point, it must be understood that when you use the “ln” command to create a link, it resolves the tilde so that the path to the linked-to file contains your username (i.e., ~/Dropbox → /path/to/username/Dropbox). In light of this, the usernames on every “syncing” machine must match up, else the last machine to talk to the Dropbox folder will overwrite the symlink to point to the username on its machine; this obviously will break the symlink on the other machine because it will then point to a path that does not exist on that machine.

Dueling symlinks

Even if each instance of MarsEdit is being run under the same username, you still may run into some problems (but these can be remedied; keep reading). When I first set out to get sync working, I saw some funky behavior. For example, I’d create the symlink on machine one, run a couple of tests on machine one to make sure it was working, and then run some tests on machine two (which immediately showed the symlink in its Dropbox folder, as it should).

At some point during this process, the symlink on machine one would break, and the LocalDrafts folder (the MarsEdit folder I was trying to sync) would be copied into the Dropbox folder and the symlink removed entirely. You can appreciate the problem: both machines were now synced, but MarsEdit could no longer see the synced folder because it existed outside of the hard-coded directory used by the application.

To get around this, I thought to create the symlinks on both machines semi-simultaneously, in the hope that some contention rule would let them stand on their own (i.e., machine one wouldn’t ‘cause’ the symlink to be created on machine two, and therefore wouldn’t set into motion the problem just described).

Well, my hunch was correct — creating the symlinks at the same time does the trick. Over the last couple of months I’ve had zero problems with the setup; the symlinks on both machines have persisted without issue.

Finally, the actual solution

Remember that Dropbox syncs only what’s in its folder, and so the symbolic link must be placed there. To do this, simply navigate, on every machine you want synced, to ~/Dropbox/, and execute the following command (simultaneously on all machines):

ln -s ~/Library/Application Support/MarsEdit/LocalDrafts marsdrafts

That’s it. Realize that “marsdrafts” is the new directory entry that will be created; you can name this whatever you want. Keep in mind that if you have MarsEdit open on two machines simultaneously, and make changes to a draft on machine one, those changes may not show up on machine two until you restart MarsEdit on machine two (which will cause the application to re-read the LocalDrafts folder).

OmniFocus

OmniFocus lets you specify where you want to store your database file, and so it’s trivial to get it working with Dropbox (i.e., simply tell OmniFocus to store the database file in the Dropbox folder).

However, there is one caveat. You’re going to want to quit OmniFocus on machine one before firing it up on machine two, else you’ll likely run into the file being locked by one instance of the application, which can result in some weird (and maybe fatal?) contention issues.

I note that this method, and the issues that come with it, have been obviated by the sync-capable OmniFocus v1.1 (currently in pre-release). While on the topic, and despite my grumblings about the price, OmniFocus for the iPhone is very nice.

Other applications

These methods obviously may work with any other application you’d like to sync across multiple machines. However, you should remain cognizant that certain applications may have read/write mechanisms that preclude these particular approaches; as ever, backup your data before experimenting.

Wall·E

It’s no secret that I have a somewhat anti-utopian (as opposed to dystopian) view of the future (and present!) of mankind (“Oh, hello there AI. Please don’t kill me!”), and on the whole, generally prefer my movies sad, and my music sadder. To that end, the first half of Wall·E really delivered.

How could you not be moved by the drab, post-human, almost post-robot Earth? Talk about being simultaneously harrowing and beautiful: the melancholic color palette, the dutiful robot carrying on with its “directives” even though there is no one left on Earth to appease, the non-dialogue, the re-packaging of consumer detritus — man’s legacy — into skyscrapers, the “non-junk” saved and savored by Wall·E, and his painful-to-watch attempt at piecing together the human condition and connecting with the past that built him.

You kind of forget that Wall·E is a robot, much less a cartoon robot. Brilliant.

Ah, a perfect beginning to what could have a been a near-perfect movie, but which eventually transmogrified into something else entirely, something packaged and predictable, something happy.

I get it — everything has to work out in the end. For the kids. But, it all felt a bit manufactured and forced to me, and ultimately the ending completely belied the beginning. Or, by the grace of some cosmic, ironic redemption, the whole thing came full circle. Who knows.

Pixar’s ability to consistently deliver movies — over and over and over again — that appeal to every age, is something that puts it in an untouchable class of its own; at the same time though, that versatility continually demands it sacrifice honesty for marketability, and (especially in Wall·E) vision for profit.

There is no doubt that the pre-watch hype surrounding this movie (“OMG! Greatest movie ever!!!”) had a role in it not living up to my admittedly impossible expectations, but such influences notwithstanding, I still came away from it slightly underwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the majority of it, but something definitely was missing.

It’s a smart, emotional movie, and I will no doubt watch it again many times over; I just wish the second half was a bit more like the first, the messages not so strained, and the ending slightly less optimistic.

If I’m being completely honest, I found the similarities to Johnny 5 a teensy bit grating. After all, I’m a robot-loving child of the ’80s (and, if memory serves, had the movie on both VHS and Beta) — how am I supposed to feel?  ;)

MS Exchange email drafts on the iPhone

The iPhone’s built-in support for MS Exchange is great, and has worked for me without issue since setting it up yesterday. That said, there is one niggling nut I’d like to crack, if possible.

Let me start by saying that I’m pretty sure the problem isn’t on Apple’s end; I think it’s just how Exchange handles the situation, though I have no real experience with Exchange and can’t say for sure (please correct me if you know).

The issue is that when I save drafts of emails on a computer other than the iPhone, those drafts, while “available” on the iPhone, act like emails I’ve received (though they are devoid of sender information); given that copy/paste is still a pipe dream on the iPhone, the drafts are effectively useless (i.e., I can’t send them!).

There is a similar issue going the other way as well; that is, when I create a new email on the iPhone, and save it as a draft, that draft never appears on any of my other Exchange-aware machines. On the iPhone, a new “drafts” folder appears in the folder list (for those counting, there are now two folders named “drafts”), but I don’t think that folder talks to Exchange (i.e., it’s the local-only drafts mechanism built into the iPhone Mail app).

So, the question is this: how can I get the iPhone Mail app to treat Exchange-created drafts as drafts?

Weave v0.2 and tab synchronization

A couple of weeks ago I published a piece regarding the death of Google Browser Sync, and its heir presumptive, Weave, which at the time, did not yet support the feature I care most about, namely session restoration across multiple machines. Not long after pushing that piece into the ether, a few people emailed me to let me know that a tab-syncing version of Weave would be released on June 20th; though the release date slipped a bit, v0.2 was made available a few days ago, tab synchronization intact. Well, kind of.

Since the release, I’ve been testing the tab-syncing functionality, and unfortunately, I have to say it hasn’t worked too well. There have been times when it has presented to me tabs from machine one that weren’t currently open on machine two, but this behavior — the intended behavior — is sporadic at best.

The following is my attempt to sum up what I’ve experienced over the last couple of days (please forgive me the bullets), after which I’ll describe what I think is wrong with the implementation (even assuming it worked perfectly).

• When I quit Firefox, the browser window(s) falls away and a small “Syncing with Weave…” window appears. This never finishes; in fact, I’m not sure it transfers anything to, or receives anything from the server. I inevitably have to kill the Firefox process.
• It seems that every other time I’m made to kill the Firefox process, Weave, upon a relaunch of the browser, has forgotten who the hell I am and I’m required to run through the entire “initial synchronization” process again.
• After the first click, clicking on the indicator that tells me there are “unsynced” tabs generally shows me nothing but a completely blank window.
• Of all the tabs I’ve had open, Weave seems to get confused by Gmail and Google Reader; it never thinks they’re synced up, and consequently never stops presenting them to me as “new” (on both machines). I’m assuming this has something to do with their shifting titles/URIs.
• Syncing sometimes takes forever and frequently stalls. Perhaps this can be attributed to the WebDAV server that we are all currently required to use (eventually, we’ll be able to sync to a WebDAV server of our choice).
• There seems to be some delay between when a new tab is opened and when it is actually synced. For example, if I open a new tab on machine one, manually sync machine one, and then manually sync machine two, machine two will not immediately show me the new tab. It may see it eventually, but it is by no means instantaneous.

I haven’t yet had occasion to pore over Weave’s activity log (I will this weekend), but I suspect it might shed some light on at least some of the issues I’ve encountered.

Implementation (and how it should be changed)

It’s called tab synchronization, which, in my mind, means it should be as automated as possible. As it stands, users have to consciously look for, of all things, a yellow triangle with an exclamation point in the middle. Yeah, a hazard symbol. Huh?

Assuming you notice this little “warning” in your status bar, you then have to click on it, which will [hopefully] present to you the tabs on your other machine(s) which aren’t currently open on the machine from which you’re clicking. Finally, you have to read through a list of page titles and check a box next to those pages you want to open. What is worse, there is no way to select all of them at once, and presumably that’s exactly what you want to do (I mean, you’re syncing, right?).

In my opinion, tab synchronization should work like so:

1. Use the browser on machine one.
2. Use the browser on machine two.

That’s it. I should never have to think about synchronization. When I open/close a tab on machine one, machine two should open/close that tab in the next sync cycle. I don’t need to interact with those processes other than to set them in motion by using the browser.

To the Weave team

Thank you. Please don’t confuse my comments with inappreciation or some sense of entitlement. Quite the opposite — I know how hard this stuff is, and recognize the nascency of the project. At the end of the day, I just want to see this thing reach its potential, which, I realize, goes far, far beyond tab synchronization.

Google Browser Sync → Weave?

Update: It looks like a tab-syncing version of Weave will be released on June 20th!

A few days ago it was “announced” that Google was discontinuing support for Google Browser Sync, which is, without a doubt, the most useful Firefox extension I use. In a response to a user’s inquiry regarding GBS support in Firefox 3, Google said the following:

It was a tough call, but we decided to phase out support for Browser Sync. Since the team has moved on to other projects that are keeping them busy, we don’t have time to update the extension to work with Firefox 3 or to continue to maintain it.

Grr. I understand that they have much bigger fish to fry, and that GBS makes absolutely no money for them (as far as I can tell), but so many of us have to come to rely on it, and in a very big way. I’m not saying they should maintain it forever, or even that it should remain free, but it would be nice if it could be kept alive just a little longer; maybe at least until someone else offered something similar?

Well, it looks like the void may be filled sooner than we thought. Keep reading.

I hate inefficient, repetitive manual labor

I’ll be honest, I don’t care about 80% of what GBS does, and in fact, most of what it does can be done by other extensions or combinations of extensions. I mainly care about session restoration across multiple machines, something that no other extension, browser, or service currently supports.

I realize that my use case may be a little different than most — I generally cycle between two machines each day and my browser rarely has less than 50 open tabs — but I must admit that I was still very surprised to see so few mentions of the session-restoration aspect of GBS on sites discussing the death of the extension.

In any event, before GBS, I was made to do the following every singe day, twice:

• Copy the URI of every open tab on the “first” machine (or every open tab up to a point where I knew the tabs on both machines were already “synced”).
• Paste these URIs into an email sent to myself.
• Open the email on the “second” machine and open each URI in a new tab.
• (If multiple windows were opened, each with multiple tabs that I wanted to keep in their respective windows, then the scope of this nonsensical manual labor increased commensurately).

It’s 2008. That’s crazy. The Copy All URLs extension made the task bearable, but it was still something that made me angry every time I had to do it. And I had to do it twice a day.

GBS changed all that and allowed me to completely ignore what tabs/windows were open/closed on which machine — if I wanted to make sure that all the open tabs from machine one were available to me on machine two, I simply had to restart the browser on machine two. Period. End of story.

Sure, there were times when it broke, and badly, but it was nothing a little history-surfing and determination couldn’t fix. For the most part, GBS worked brilliantly and saved me a lot of time, effort, and worry.

Enter Weave (hopefully)

Sadly, and I think surprisingly, there are currently no other options for multi-machine session restoration. Though relatively new, not even Weave, Mozilla’s homegrown web services integrator, supports such a feature, though it seems it will be a part of the next release. From a recent post at the Weave discussion board:

Tab sync is not in the latest release, but it should be in the next one. The way it works is that it periodically saves a list of your open tabs to the Weave server, and it periodically checks the server to see if any tabs have been added by your other computers.

So when you open a tab on a computer with Weave, then go to another computer that also has Weave, Weave will notify you that tabs from the first computer are available and let you pick which ones you want to open.

Nice! If that second part is true, then Weave may actually turn out to be better than GBS, because you won’t have to restart the browser to sync tabs/windows.

Given the current, overlapping features between GBS and Weave,¹ and the cozy Google-Mozilla relationship, one can’t help but think that GBS is being phased out in light of Weave.

I wonder if the tab-syncing version will be released together with Firefox 3 on Tuesday. Hrm.

Twitter Tools, modified to ignore @tweets

For the past month or so I’ve been using Alex King’s fantastic Twitter Tools WordPress plugin to display on this site the latest tweet from my Twitter stream (see sidebar). However, I have one semi-trivial issue with his very robust plugin, namely that it doesn’t allow you to keep @tweets — tweets directed to a particular user — from being displayed. I changed that.

To ensure that my changes wouldn’t break any of the “main” features of the plugin, the only function I modified in twitter-tools.php was aktt_latest_tweet() (i.e., the function that displays the latest tweet). If you use any of the other features and want this @tweet-exclusion to be plugin-wide, it shouldn’t be too hard to incorporate my changes into the other functions you’re using.

The modifications

I increased the query limit from 1 to 5, so that the last five tweets are retrieved instead of just the latest. These five tweets are then cycled through until a non-@tweet is found, at which point the loop breaks and the non-@tweet is output to your site. If your last five tweets are @tweets, then the function will simply output “No tweets available at the moment,” which is what it would otherwise display if there was some error in initially retrieving the tweets. If you’re constantly @replying to other users, you may want to bump the query limit to some larger number.

I should note that this is a modified version of Twitter Tools v1.1b1 (the latest version of the plugin is v1.2b1). If you’re currently using v1.2b1, but invoking only the aktt_latest_tweet() function, then you can safely overwrite your twitter-tools.php file with this modified version. If you’ve made any modifications to either v1.1b1 or v1.2b1, or if you use any of the other available plugin features, then you’ll want to overwrite only the aktt_latest_tweet() function.

Download the modified twitter-tools.php file (remember to change the extension from .phps to .php after downloading).

Future plans

I think at some point I may completely gut the Twitter Tools plugin, and release a much simpler version that does nothing more than display the latest tweet, minus @tweets.

Amazon Kindle

Yes, I realize that this piece is a bit “late,” but I wasn’t able to get my hands on a Kindle until just a couple of months ago.¹

The five-second, 192-char review (inspired by Twitter)

I love the Kindle, and totally see myself using and enjoying it (and its progeny) for many years to come. I’m reading more because of it, and seriously doubt I’ll ever read a paper book again.

Why I bought one

My explanation (justification?) is likely going to sound either abstruse or semi-reasonable, depending on both how well you know me and where on the luddite↔technophile continuum you fall, but hear me out.

I’ve always been a rather voracious reader (I’m that guy who has to read the side of the cereal box, etc.), but since becoming so completely caught-up in this web thing many, many years ago, almost all of my reading has moved to the computer. So, while I no doubt read much more than the average person each day, the bulk source of the words has shifted from books to Internet-based “news,” and all that that has come to mean.

At the end of the day, I really wanted to get back to reading books.

You could obviously argue that I could read books without the Kindle, and you’d be right. Partially. Sure, I can go out and pick up a book (and I’ve certainly done that over the last decade, though probably only a handful of times a year), but these books are missing what I’ve come to really appreciate and enjoy about reading online — the ability to [re]search and easily switch between sources. The Kindle fills these gaps.

For example, you can immediately lookup the definition of a word by using the device’s built-in dictionary (simply move the cursor to the line where the word is and choose “lookup in dictionary” from the menu). Relatedly, and given that the Kindle comes with a lifetime EV-DO Internet connection, you can use Wikipedia to easily lookup anything on which you’d like more information. It all works quite brilliantly and is obviously something that simply can’t be done with a paper book.

As another example, consider the auto-bookmarking feature, which automatically remembers where you left off in each of your books (and yes, you can manually place as many bookmarks as you’d like). Such a nicety also finds a parallel in the computer world: my browser automatically remembers not only tabs and other session information, but also the position at which I stopped reading the pages within the tabs.

Another feature I really like is the ability to see, at a glance, how far along you are in a book simply by looking at the dotted line at the bottom of the screen (the dots are “bolded” as you go), which can be considered equivalent to the scrollbar on a web page. Moreover, when viewing your list of books, these dotted lines are made relative to all the books on your Kindle; it’s kind of neat to see not only how far along you are in each of your books, but also how long each book is relative to the others on the device.

One of the best features of the Kindle is its storage capacity. Out of the box it can hold roughly 200 books, and that space can be expanded many times over using its available SD memory slot. It’s so nice to have multiple books at your fingertips (as you have multiple tabs at your fingertips inside a browser); you can flip back and forth between completely different subject matter, all from a single, light device that automatically remembers where you left off the last time.

Finally, the Kindle lets you highlight certain passages and take notes along the way; and like a web page (or the Internet generally), these highlights, annotations, and even the books themselves are searchable.

All of this may seem perfectly obvious, not perfectly analogous to the web world, and completely inconsequential to you, but for me, in the aggregate, it’s exactly what I currently want in a book.

The end result of all of these things is that I find myself not only wanting to read more, but actually reading more. A lot more.

Design

Let’s be honest, the Kindle looks like a crossword-puzzle device a grandfather might receive from his grandson at Christmas (and so it is with some trepidation that I use it in public), but the fact is, the design is actually very thought out, and well at that.

At first blush, the design seems irretrievably flawed. Indeed, when I first saw the pictures I couldn’t believe Amazon went with what looked to be the worst type of design: ugly + impractical. In fact, I didn’t feel too much better upon taking the device out of its packaging, but after some serious use I’ve come to really appreciate the way it works. Sure, even after nearly two months of use, I still find myself hitting the next/previous page buttons when I don’t mean to, but I’m willing to look past that given that they work so well when you actually do want to move between pages, and which ease-of-use isn’t predicated on the device’s position.

I usually find myself holding the Kindle with one hand (i.e., near the bottom of the device with my thumb on top and fingers below), and switching back and forth between my right and left hands. The back cover is a rubber-like pad that actually feels pretty good and definitely makes the Kindle a bit easier to grasp.

As previously mentioned, it’s hard to use the Kindle for anything other than reading without accidentally hitting the large next/previous buttons that make up most of its sides. That said, the layout of the buttons really does work well when you’re reading; because they take up most of the sides, they are generally very accessible no matter how you hold the device, or even if you lay it down on a table, bed, lap, etc.

Many have criticized not only the large buttons, but also the combination of the “select wheel” and “scrollbar,” used to highlight menu options and other controls. I quite like the select wheel and think it’s a great compromise given the limitations inherent in e-ink. The wheel has a nice rubbery feel to it, and gives tactile feedback when you press down on it (not unlike the scrollwheel on a mouse). The one thing I’m not a huge fan of is the “cursor,” which runs along a track parallel to the screen, and which corresponds to what on the screen you wish to select. It’s a bit shiny (think reflective), and for reasons I can’t quite figure out. I should note that the cursor also acts as a progress indicator in some instances, but I’ve yet to find that functionality useful.

One of the nicest things about the Kindle, and something that is inherent in such a device, is that, unlike a regular book, its orientation and weight aren’t constantly shifting. With a paper book, you are made to move [it] around as you shift from the left to the right page, flip pages, etc. With the Kindle however, all of that shifting disappears and you can hold your chosen position indefinitely.

Such a “feature” generally allows you to expend less energy when reading. For example, I like reading in bed while lying on my side. With a paper book you have to constantly hold the book to keep it open and to move it slightly depending on whether you’re reading the right or left page; with the Kindle, you can just let it rest on the bed and then tap the next-page button as needed. I realize that this may sound like a trivial thing to devote a paragraph to, but it really is amazing how such a device can change the way you read, or make the way you’re used to reading that much better.

The e-ink display

If you haven’t seen e-ink before, you owe it to yourself to check it out. It really does read like paper. Of course, this technology has been available to the public for quite some time (most notably via Sony’s e-book Reader), but never has it been presented in such a perfect package (the Kindle’s looks notwithstanding). Not only does the screen read like paper, but the viewing angle also mimics paper (i.e., it’s limited more by your eyes than the technology), and it’s very non-reflective, which means you can read it just the same in the bright sun as you can next to a lamp in a dark room (I’ve yet to find lighting conditions under which I couldn’t read it, save no light at all). It’s great.

Another nice side-effect of the e-ink technology is how little power it draws. Indeed, because there is no backlight, the only time the Kindle really touches the battery is when the screen is refreshed (e.g., when you go to the next page). Subsequently, the device can go for a very long time without a recharge, which, as you might guess, is incredibly freeing.

The Kindle offers six different font sizes, which is useful in ways you might not imagine. For example, lately I’ve been taking the Kindle to the gym if I know I’m going to be riding the bike, and if my arm gets tired from holding the device in a particular position for a prolonged period of time, I can simply increase the font size and set it on the control panel of the bike. Similarly, when reading at night, if my eyes start to feel really tired, I might turn the font size up a few notches to reduce the strain.

The refresh rate of the screen seems to bother some people, but my guess is that these complainers have either never used an e-ink device (and are commenting just to comment) or have only used one for a very short period of time. I’ll readily admit that the first few times it was a little weird to have to “wait” for the screen to refresh, but given that it takes less than a second — roughly the same amount of time it takes to flip a page in a book — it’s a total non-issue.

The included case is crap

The Kindle comes with a usable, but cheap case that uses one of those annoying elastic bands to hold it together (think Moleskine). Moreover, the device is secured to the bookcover-type case by just two flimsy braces located near the middle of the case. It’s crappy.

Within two minutes of using the supplied case I started looking online for third-party options, but there were very few available. In fact, I could find only one company making Kindle cases, and I picked up their Slip Case. It’s nice. It’s certainly not going to win any design awards, but it gets the job done. It’s very thin (fits well in the small pocket of my computer bag), is hard on one side (to protect the screen), and holds snugly the device. I definitely recommend it.

Buying books is addictive

I was amazed at how many books I bought within the first two weeks of owning the Kindle.² It’s so incredibly easy to buy books, either directly from the device itself, or through Amazon.com; either way, it’s essentially a one-click process, and the book arrives on the Kindle within a minute of the purchase.

Using a similar process, you’re allowed to download, for free, the first chapter of any book available in the Kindle store. A great move, which costs all involved parties essentially nothing, and in the best case may lead to a purchase.

Did I mention that there are currently ~120,000 books available, and most for $9.99 or less? I don’t think you’ll ever want for content.

The send-to feature

The ability to send to the Kindle, by email, long-form articles and other content (for 10 cents an email)³ is invaluable. If I come across a long article that I think I’ll probably never actually finish reading on the computer, I simply email it to my Kindle address and seconds later it’s on the device. OK, so the formatting is hit-or-miss, but what do you expect? Amazon obviously can’t be expected to be able to parse perfectly everything you throw at it, and I’m sure this is something they’re constantly improving.

Things I haven’t tried yet

I’m so preoccupied with reading that I haven’t spent any time at all connecting it to my computer (I’ve done everything over-the-air), adding music (much less listening to music through either the built-in speaker or headphone jack), adding memory by way of an SD card, or downloading and listening to audiobooks. I have spent a little time playing around with the “experimental” web browser, and while it’s usable, I don’t see myself ever actually using it, save for Wikipedia lookups (web pages just aren’t meant to be consumed on a device like this, with non-scrolling e-ink).

What I’d like to see in future versions

I’d like them to offer different colors, or at least one other color (i.e., anything other than bright white).

It would be really nice to have my highlights (i.e., book passages that I’ve “circled”) available to me through my Amazon account. Amazon currently keeps track of the books you’ve bought (and will allow you to re-download them at any time if, for example, you’ve removed them from your Kindle to make room for other content), but doesn’t offer a way for me to use the highlights I’ve made, without plugging the device into my computer (though I think they’re saved together with the book, and come along with it should you re-download it).

I use the keyboard so infrequently that it might be nice to have it slide in/out or otherwise hide itself, so as to bring down the overall length of the device. Then again, I’m not quite sure how I would hold it if that extra space wasn’t there.

The behavior of footnotes can be inconsistent, even within a single book. I think this needs to be a bit more standardized across all books. When it works, it works great, but when it doesn’t, you can be made to figure out where you left off (which may be next to impossible in some cases).

Should you buy a Kindle?

Yes, assuming you like to read books (or simply want to read more of them), I can’t recommend this device highly enough. Amazon has made the entire process — from searching for and buying books, to reading and annotating them — effortless and fun. They really do have something special in the Kindle.

Belkin CushTop

Earlier this month I wrote about my quest for a new laptop stand, and commented on the stand I had recently purchased, the Allsop Cool Channel Platform. I also referenced the iLap, which I had been using for years, despite some fairly serious flaws.

While the Allsop was OK, I very quickly resigned myself to continuing the hunt for a better solution. Just a few days after publishing that piece, I came across the Belkin CushTop, and while I had seen it many times before, it always struck me as a bit too bulky and cumbersome, but this time I decided to give it a shot, and I’m really glad I did.

There’s no getting around the fact that it’s a little large, but I’m here to tell you that it works very well besides. In fact, I liked it so much, that after just one night’s use I picked up another so that I could have one at my girlfriend’s place when I was over there.

I was worried that the fabric covering the CushTop would not be sticky enough to keep the MacBook Air from sliding around on its four rubber feet, but the Air actually sticks to it really well, which allows you to work in a lot of different positions; in other words, you don’t have to sit perfectly still with the stand flat against your thighs, but rather have some real freedom to move around a bit.

Part of its large volume has to be attributed to its slightly unusual height, but that it’s so tall is actually good for a couple of reasons. The first is that the heat from the bottom of the laptop is that much further away from your body; this, coupled with the inch-plus hole in the middle of the CushTop, means that you feel no heat from the notebook. Very nice.

The other advantage of the increased height is that the screen is moved closer to your plane of sight (i.e., you don’t have to bend your neck as much), and with protracted use this can make a huge difference. As a corollary, the keyboard is also raised a significant amount (when compared to other stands, which usually raise the back of the laptop much more than the front); while some people might not like the extra height, I actually prefer it — I can generally type faster and for longer periods of time when the keyboard is raised a few inches above my lap.

After using the CushTop for a few days, I’m no longer actively searching for a new laptop stand (that’s right, all of you can breathe a heavy sigh of relief, and sleep well knowing the hunt is over — my gift to you).

Help, I need a new laptop stand

For the past four years I’ve been using an iLap to keep my laptop away from, you know, my lap, but a few weeks ago I decided to pick up an Allsop Cool Channel Platform. I had been looking for a new stand for a while, and just happened to notice the Allsop model while waiting in line to return the BlueAnt Z9.

While there was nothing particularly wrong with the iLap, I was getting a bit bored with it (yeah, I know, I know, it’s a laptop stand), and I’ve found the front pad, which connects to the stand by velcro, pretty annoying all along (something I kind of touched on in my original iLap piece). The whole setup never felt very solid, yet for whatever reason I stuck with it for years.

As far as the Allsop platform goes, it’s generally alright, but definitely suffers from some problems, especially if you are using a MacBook Air.

My favorite feature of the stand, and indeed the main reason I bought it, is the “lip” in the front, intended to keep your notebook from slipping off the platform.¹ This feature allows you much more freedom to place the laptop in various positions on your lap, stomach, etc., and knowing that it can’t slip off the front is pretty liberating. The problem though is that the platform just isn’t rigid enough; it bends very easily. In fact, with just the lightweight Air resting on it, and it on a slightly less than perfectly flat surface (e.g., your lap a lot of the time), it will bend. This desire to bend, coupled with the Air’s super-low profile, means that the front of the Air often finds itself on top of the lip, instead of behind it, which obviously completely defeats its purpose.

I’ve also had a problem with heat dissipation, even though Allsop says the platform “uses a non-slip woven surface with engineered channels for passive air circulation to help keep your notebook computer cool.” With the Air, the heat vents are located on the bottom of the notebook, near the back where it starts to curve. Because the platform is slightly cushioned, and because the Air’s feet are very short, the entire bottom of the Air tends to touch the surface of the platform, which inhibits the heat’s dispersion. My Air tends to run 10-15 degrees hotter when on the platform (as opposed to a table). So, while it does keep the heat away from your lap, it actually causes the Air to become hotter than it otherwise would.

Long story short, I need a new laptop stand. Any recommendations?

Jawbone > BlueAnt Z9

Last week I purchased a BlueAnt Z9 Bluetooth headset, all the while knowing that I would likely return it. And that’s just what I did.

I’ll keep this ‘review’ really short, as it’s the same story you’ve heard me tell a million times before, namely that — and this is a real shocker — the <insert headset name> simply does not eliminate background noise as well as the Jawbone. The Z9 just continues the streak. It sounded OK (both on my end and the receiver’s), fit my ear fairly well, and offered decent noise isolation, but really, we’ve been spoiled by the Jawbone.

I’m not sure why I even hold out hope anymore; you’ll remember that I was similarly dissatisfied with the nXZEN nX6000 and the Motorola MOTOPURE H12, among many others. Speaking of the H12, allow me to quote from that piece:

I’ll be honest, I’m kind of tired of buying these things and always being disappointed (what is this, like my 20th Bluetooth headset?). Here’s to hoping Aliph can use its recent $5 million cash infusion to remedy all of the original Jawbone’s shortcomings; if they make it smaller, louder, and impervious to wind, it’s going to be untouchable.

As it just so happens, the next-gen Jawbone made its way to the FCC a few days ago, and so it may be soon that we’ll be able to see how far they’ve come in the last year and a half; my uninformed guess is that the issues I have with the current version (see above) have been resolved (OK, maybe not the impervious-to-wind thing, but I bet they’ve addressed the problem to some extent).

That said, I’m hoping the design of this second version isn’t an indication of its technical capabilities; if it is, they may be in trouble. I’m not sure what the diamond pattern on the model supplied to the FCC is all about, but I’ll assume, for at least my own public-use reasons, that flat, smooth versions will be offered (right?!?). Maybe they’re just bad pictures. Let’s hope.

Hugh MacLeod on Twitter

This cartoon sums up well the impact Twitter is having on a lot of people. Hugh says he found Twitter to be “too easy,” and I can’t disagree. Though I don’t want to admit it, the service has likely influenced, at least indirectly, the rate at which I post things here. But, unlike Hugh, who quit Twitter, I’m in for the long haul, both here and there.

Of course the upside to all of this is that the barrier to entry for [micro-]blogging is now negligible at worst, and inviting at best.

The MacBook Air is morphing into my primary machine

In anticipation of the Air’s arrival, I said the following:

For me, the Air will be a secondary machine — a complement to a blazing-fast Mac Pro — and that, I think, is how it’s being positioned (if not explicitly); indeed, the dearth of ports almost demands the conclusion.

That equation has changed a bit for me since taking delivery of the Air a month and a half ago. I now think that, given enough time, the Air will become my primary, and indeed only computer.

This revelation is informed mostly by how little I’ve used the Mac Pro since the Air came into my life; and when I say “little,” I mean only a handful of times, and even then only for Lightroom and Photoshop. While I don’t think I would like using the current Air for the sometimes complex and processor-intensive stuff I do with those applications (and I’ll admit I haven’t tried), something tells me that two or three revisions from now, the Air will be wholly sufficient for all of my needs (and surely it’s presently adequate for most everyone else).

Relatedly, and unsurprisingly to me, I’ve yet to use any of the available peripheral ports, much less need any of the ports it doesn’t have.

In other news, I picked up a Time Capsule earlier today, and will likely say something about it here within the next few days (if I don’t relegate all of those thoughts to Twitter).

Razer mice, a survey

When it comes to most things electronic, I’m kind of odd in that I have no qualms about buying everything available in a particular product line — until I find the right/best thing — and mice are no exception to this insanity.

With respect to pointing devices, I’ve been using Razer mice since the dawn of time; indeed, since the days of the original Boomslang (which they recently re-released). As far as I know, they produce (and have been producing for years) the best, most advanced mice in the world.

Over the course of the last month, this little “problem” of mine has been in full swing — I bought the Razer Lachesis (their flagship model), DeathAdder, Copperhead, and finally the Diamondback 3G (I was using the original Diamondback before this buying spree began). That’s every mouse Razer currently sells, save the Krait.

Before getting into the very cursory summaries of my experiences with these mice, I have to point out that my opinion of the Lachesis and DeathAdder was colored strongly by Mac OS X’s broken mouse acceleration,¹ which has been a known issue for quite some time; fortunately, it doesn’t seem to affect all mice. Essentially, the acceleration curve is not so much a curve as it is a steep incline that abruptly plateaus.

Even with the tracking speed turned all the way up, the Lachesis and DeathAdder were barely able to traverse my 23” monitor without me having to lift my hand. It’s kind of hard to explain, but basically the mice acted differently depending on how fast I was moving them, and in a weird way it kind of felt like I was exerting force or effort to make them behave how I wanted. It was work.

For example, if I was moving slowly over the tabs in my browser, the pointer would move slowly, but if I moved from those tabs to the bottom corner of my screen, I was likely to hit the “plateau” velocity, after which the pointer would take off. I was constantly fighting the mice, trying to get them to move the way I knew they should. It was an incessant, overriding annoyance.

And now, without further ado, a few completely irrelevant thoughts about each mouse.

Lachesis

The Lachesis did not fit my hand at all. In fact, my hand actually started cramping and throbbing within 10 minutes of using it. I tried to convince myself that I was holding the mouse wrong, but when you start making excuses for something that should be second nature when using a computer, you realize that the problem probably isn’t with you. Moreover, the scroll wheel was recessed so far back (toward your palm), that it required a very uncomfortable motion to use it.

DeathAdder

I generally don’t like mice that aren’t symmetrical and that are designed to support your entire palm, but I figured I’d give the DeathAdder a shot given how long it’s been since I’d used such a mouse. Well, I was immediately reminded why I stopped using them — they’re draining and require a lot of entire-hand movement to control (unlike a “fingertip” mouse, which allows you to cover a greater area without having to lift your wrist). Another big problem for me was the scroll wheel; it was nearly impossible to scroll up without engaging the wheel’s built-in button.

Copperhead

A great mouse, and very similar to the Diamondback [3G], save one annoying design issue involving the side grips. On the Copperhead, the side grips came to a very distinct point throughout their length, and as such, didn’t allow me to get a firm grip on the mouse; I couldn’t figure out if my thumb was supposed to go on top of the rubber, beneath it, or straight to the side.

Diamondback [3G]

As far as I can tell, this mouse is perfect for me and suffers from none of the drawbacks listed above. Oddly, it’s (I think) the cheapest mouse in Razer’s lineup (though the low-end Salmosa may take that prize when it’s released later this year).

Finally, for those wondering, I use the Razer eXactMat mousing surface (surprise!). Yeah, it’s large, but I like it besides.

Publishing makes you think differently

It’s an odd phenomenon, but one I’d bet is shared by others like me, that no matter how many times I read a post before publishing it, I always notice something that should be changed after it’s actually been published. Stranger still is that these must-edits present themselves immediately after the post goes live and are always painfully obvious, even though, before publishing, I may have read over the completed piece 10 times (and this after it’s already gone through myriad iterations).

Curiously, the changes usually have nothing to do with grammar, but rather phrasing, tone, transitions, etc. Frequently, post-posting edits involve the title; I’ll decide on something and like it beforehand, but after seeing it at the top of my index page I’m often compelled to change it, despite the fact that I mimic the look and feel of my index page when previewing in MarsEdit.

The point I’m trying to make is that it seems my brain can’t pick up on these certain things unless I know others are reading the piece. It’s almost as if the knowledge that the world has access to it unlocks some other thought process that empowers me to improve(?) it. Weird, I know.

Working Class Heroes MacBook Air ENVELOPE

Anyone that knows me probably knows that it was love at first sight with the MacBook Air ENVELOPE from Working Class Heroes (did I really just say that?). In fact, when I e-mailed the link to my girlfriend, she laughed because it was “so [me].” Indeed, the sleeve’s design is a perfect conspiration of my stylistic predilections; it’s minimal, svelte, somber, understated, etc. The dark grey wool felt and leather “badge” give it a militaristic quality that I really like.

Though it doesn’t quite feel as substantial as it looks, I think that’s the point — restrained pragmatism. The construction of the sleeve is rather simple — it is, after all, mainly just two pieces of felt sewn together — but, and as expected for $120 (including shipping), it is hand-crafted with a transparent eye toward detail. There’s something very bespoke about it, which I eat up.

The one thing I was particularly worried about from the images, and probably the reason I didn’t order it right away, was scratching the Air on the metal buttons. I think I convinced myself that this maybe wouldn’t be an issue as long as that portion was flexible enough to bend away from the center when loading/unloading the Air, or at least heavy enough to stay splayed at my insistence.

It turns out that it’s neither of those things, yet the buttons don’t touch the computer. It’s kind of hard to explain how this works, and even harder to determine whether it was done on purpose (surely some of the credit must go to the Air’s thinness), but once you begin sliding the Air in/out, the whole thing kind of puffs out (the shape at the opening looking like a compressed circle), and the button pieces move away from the center. Long story short (after I made you read the long story), the buttons are a non-issue.

Finally, for those of you who are thinking about getting one of these, keep in mind that the top portion (i.e., where the buttons are) is about an inch long, which means that the effective width of the laptop is ~14 inches; as such, your sheathed Air may not fit into bags that are specially designed for 13-inch notebooks.

Shhh! Don’t tell them they’re twittering!

I use Facebook (yeah, I finally bit the bullet a few months ago) for one thing and one thing only: to check my friends’ status updates (using the corresponding RSS feed and Yahoo! Pipes¹; you didn’t think I actually logged in did you?). What’s funny is that some friends currently using Facebook pooh-poohed my earlier insistence that they use Twitter, and now here they are dropping “tweets” left and right on Facebook.

Duty calls

I’ve been following the insanely great xkcd webcomic for as long as I can remember, and this, Wednesday’s effort, is a perfect example of its usual poignance. My girlfriend’s reaction to it: “It’s totally you.”

Twitbin + NoScript

I recently commented on the MacBook Air’s battery life, and mentioned in a footnote that the NoScript Firefox extension breaks Twitbin; I attempted a few workarounds (including whitelisting “localhost” and “file://”), but couldn’t circumvent the blockage.

Shortly after posting the article, Brian Breslin, a Twitbin developer, contacted me and offered to help solve the problem. I quickly told him what I had tried, and soon after he gave me a very simple solution: whitelist http://twitbin.com/beta/.

Works like a charm.

MacBook Air battery life

Given all the hoopla surrounding the MacBook Air’s battery life, I thought I’d throw my two anecdotal cents into the ether.

Jacqui Cheng’s review was published the day before my Air was to arrive, and I was understandably unnerved by her description of the Air’s battery life:

I’ll cut to the chase here: the MacBook Air’s battery life sucks. A lot. I found it to be a pretty big disappointment, holding it to my admittedly-high standards. I ran down the battery from full charge four times and came out with an average of two hours and 33 minutes.

She was, on average, getting half of the five hours claimed by Apple.

I took delivery of the Air on Monday and have run the battery down many times since, but never in under four hours.

So why is my battery lasting ~40% longer than Jacqui’s? Well, one thing that the reviews seem to routinely gloss over is that the MacBook Air will likely be your second or even third machine (as I previously pointed out), and as such, you’ll likely use it for mostly ‘lightweight’ tasks. AnandTech gets this right:

By now you’ve heard that under “normal” usage, the Air can only manage about 2.5 hours of battery life. That’s true and at the same time it isn’t. I touch on part of this in the review, but the MacBook Air isn’t designed to be your work notebook - no ultra portable is. It’s a notebook for a writer, for someone taking notes in class; it’s a second notebook, or a third system. As such, the typical usage model can be very different than your standard notebook.

It will come as no surprise then that Anand’s results were very much in line with my own: “…4 hours and 16 minutes doing what I consider to be the intended usage model of the Air is respectable. It’s not great, but it’s not terrible either.” Indeed. Now, am I saying that Jacqui’s results are flawed? Of course not — those are the numbers she got doing what she typically does on that machine. I’m simply pointing out that the battery life is more than decent for my use case.

With regard to the specifics of my setup and usage over the last few days, I have the 1.8GHz/HDD model, kept the screen brightness at less than 50%, disabled Bluetooth, disabled Dashboard, disabled Spotlight, and always had myriad applications running. I didn’t do anything too processor-intensive with it (and never expected to; see the footnote in my initial Air article) and was really obsessive about killing errant processes that were stealing too much CPU time.

Predictably, the application used most was an optimized-for-Intel build of Firefox, which, as ever, never had less than 50 open tabs. I should note that JavaScript was disabled by default¹ (I obviously allow it on some sites, e.g., Gmail, Google Reader, etc.), and that Flash was blocked, unless needed.

Other programs that were always open and which saw extensive use, included MarsEdit, Path Finder, Microsoft Word (for work), TextMate, iTerm, iStat menus, Quicksilver, TextExpander, and OmniFocus.

More thoughts on the MacBook Air

Earlier today, in the “bit” regarding the MacBook Air announcement, I discussed briefly my immediate purchase of it, and I wanted to expound on that a bit more.

For me, the Air will be a secondary machine — a complement to a blazing-fast Mac Pro — and that, I think, is how it’s being positioned (if not explicitly); indeed, the dearth of ports almost demands the conclusion. I think I, like most people that have been waiting around for this thing (or some approximation of it) for as long as we can remember, would have preferred something smaller (please, everyone, stop conflating “smaller” with “thinner”), but this will do until that something comes along, if ever.

When it comes to notebooks, the one thing on which I refuse to budge is the keyboard (oh, right, it also has to run Mac OS X) — I want a full-size keyboard, and nothing less. The Air gives me that, albeit flanked by more metal than I wanted or anticipated.

Personally, I probably would have been completely satisfied with an all-specs-updated version of the 12” PowerBook (i.e., I’m totally willing to sacrifice screen real-estate for decreased width and depth), and if they came out with that a month from now I would probably dump the Air in a second. That said, in my case, the whole width debate is probably a pragmatic wash given the way I plan to use the Air.¹

Finally, and in light of my consumer electronics track record, I’m taking a lot of flak for not getting the SSD, but like I said before, I just can’t justify the additional $1000 for a subsidiary machine; were it my main machine, and I didn’t need more than 64GB, I would probably pony up for the next-gen storage. I’m curious to know why they aren’t offering a 32GB SSD; I really think that would have hit the sweet spot for a lot of people, including myself.

Notwithstanding everything I’ve just said, I’ve a good feeling that come two weeks from now, when this marvel of engineering is sitting in my lap and I’m typing away on it, I’m going to forget all about the fact that it’s a bit larger than the dream machine I’ve had in my head for the last couple of years, and will simply enjoy using it.

Skate (or how I relapsed and reverted to age 13)

Skate is, without a doubt, one of the most amazing games I’ve ever played, and certainly the greatest skateboarding game of all time. In fact, playing it while back home a couple of weeks ago compelled me to finally pull the trigger on an Xbox 360 Elite.¹

As I’ve discussed briefly here before, I haven’t really owned a console since ~1998,² mostly because of my addictive personality, perfectionism, general competitiveness, and preternatural gaming skills which demand that I be great at the games I play.  ;)

Allow me to elaborate. Though I don’t talk about them much here, video games used to be a pretty big part of my life (like every kid growing up in the 80s/90s I suppose), and it’s always been too easy for me to get wrapped up in being the very best at any game that catches my interest (umm, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, 19XX, any and every racing game, Killer Instinct, anyone?). Fully cognizant of this predisposition, over the last many years I have usually resisted altogether the temptation and desire to play video games, lest other attention-demanding interests suffer.

To put it quite simply, gamer regret kind of consumed me at some point a few years ago, and if I wasn’t learning or producing something, I felt I was wasting time.

Alright, enough with the defense of my video game dry spell, let’s get back to Skate. This game just works, mostly because it totally rethinks the control scheme (i.e., most everything is accomplished through the “flicking” of one joystick, combined with the movement of the other), and in a way that is as analogous to real skateboarding as anything I’ve ever seen, which is all the more impressive in light of the fact that the controller has nothing to do with your legs and/or feet.

There is definitely a steep learning curve, but once you’re on the other side of it, the possibilities are endless, and the technical control you have over the skater is mind-blowing. It’s nothing short of brilliant. When you bust, you’re OK with it, because you know that you, not the game, screwed up. It’s hard to put that sentiment into words, but trust that it’s a neat feeling.

As I said to a friend not long after getting the hang of the game, I may actually use it to create movies of tricks I could do as a teenager³ (you know, to show to whomever I can convince to feign interest in them). Speaking of movies, the replay/movie-making system is fantastic, and the control you have over the replay video really lets you dissect the physics of the game, which are about as spot-on as you could want (though, admittedly, the falls could be much more realistic, but I guess that’s kind of a moot point).

If you’ve ever had any real-life interest in skateboarding and have a predilection for video games, you almost have to buy Skate.

Oh, before I forget, I have to mention that the best part about me picking up an Xbox is that the girlfriend is really excited about yet another demand on my time! Poor thing, she really has no idea the volume of this can of worms.

Gmail for BlackBerry now “talks” to the OS

I’m not quite sure when it happened,¹ but the Gmail BlackBerry client now interfaces directly with the device. In other words, the BlackBerry knows when I receive an e-mail through the Gmail client. In fact, after you install the client, you’re given Gmail-centric options in the profile settings (e.g., you can define a particular tone for messages received through the client, etc.).

The client works so well that it hasn’t even crossed my mind to setup the BlackBerry e-mail client to receive my Gmail e-mail (I go back-and-forth on the need/desire to have my non-work e-mail pushed). If you’d like, it will even add a “Sent from Gmail for mobile” signature to the bottom of e-mails sent through the client (unfortunately, however, the language currently can’t be changed).

Other things worth mentioning are its overall speed, the lightning-fast auto-completion of contacts in the to/cc/bcc fields (it works just like regular Gmail!), the pre-fetching of e-mails in anticipation of your opening them, and its general robustness.

If I have to complain about something, it would be the seemingly will-nilly background polling for new e-mail. There are no options to specify with regard to how often the client will check for new e-mail, and I can’t figure out its apparently random schedule. There’s a manual solution to this (i.e., just click “refresh”), but I’d prefer a frequency I can modify. Also, support for contact groups would be nice.

I think it’s safe to say that Rui is onto something:

As far as I can tell, despite [Google] regularly churning out standard MIDP versions of their apps for other phones, there are actually more Google applications for the Blackberry than for any other mobile device. And I don’t mean icons with shortcuts to the browser, I mean actual running code.

Which is, in my mind, doubly interesting when you consider that Android is, for all practical intents and purposes, a Java platform (you code in Java, even if the end result doesn’t run in a “normal” Java VM).

So yeah, they might just be using the Blackberry (definitely the best Java-based platform out there right now) as a prototype/playground of sorts. (emphasis mine).