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Simple Domain Name Registrar - iWantMyName [Sponsor]:

I want to take a moment to thank this weeks RSS Feed sponsor, iWantMyName. Want simple and easy lookup, registration, and administration for over 90 international domain name extensions? Check them out. Trust me, I know this stuff. My banker can vouch for that.

Is Mobile Affecting When We Read? « Read It Later Blog:

When a reader is given a choice about how to consume their content, a major shift in behavior occurs. They no longer consume the majority of their content during the day, on their computer.Instead they shift that content to prime time and onto a device better suited for consumption.

Initially, it appears that the devices users prefer for reading are mobile devices, most notably the iPad. It’s the iPad leading the jailbreak from consuming content in our desk chairs.

Very interesting and data driven read. The difference between the iPad graph and the rest is startling.

Speaking of software, Twitterrific 4 is now out. It boasts some handy features and is a serious and more traditional Mac OS-like competitor to Twitter for Mac (formerly Tweetie). It’s free to use with ad support. Just under ten bills to turn them off.

Sparrow is a new mail application for Mac that takes a newish UI approach to email by being inspired by another (Tweetie/Twitter for Mac). It has support for GMail only right now but they promise full IMAP support soon. That said, the GMail support seems very robust. Not sure even with the IMAP support I could justify using this over Mail.app but it may fit the bill for you. Especially if you are looking for a Mac native GMail client.

I love the two-tone, type-only design of the Stop The Water While Using Me! packaging almost as much as I love the concept.

The designers, German agency KOREFE (Kolle Rebbe Form und Entwicklung), were given one dream of an assignment:

Develop a brand for a high-quality range of cosmetics that meet the increasing requirements of an ecologically aware society and set new standards in environmental protection. The innovation: the message is the brand.

Do you think they did a good job? I do.

Infinite Loop: On Android, Apple and User Experience:

A fantastic post by Justin Lowery. It’ll be here for 24 hs, then it’s gone. Read it and agree with me on something I’ve been saying for a couple of years now.

The main point regarding Google & Android is one that’s been made ad-nauseum on the web: they simply do not care about users or user experience at all. They consist of a group of very nerdy, engineering-driven programmers who simply cannot relate with normal people. Their products reflect that in their complexity, ugliness, inconsistent design, and very rough, stuttery interfaces. Sure, you can hyper-configurate your Droid to do X when at GPS coordinates Y & Z during hours A & B, but how’s the everyday experience? Awful. Miserable. Pathetic.



A quick look at most of the Android theming forums will show you exactly why Apple locks things down the way they do. To quote someone from a long time ago — “No one every lost money underestimating the intelligence or taste of the American people.”



Nearly all the Android modifications and themes make the phone less stable, more buggy, and in most cases, a downright hideous sight to behold. The same could be said of Jailbroken iPhones. The people really haven’t got a clue what they’re doing. Why should Apple (or Google for that matter) give license to a bunch of clueless 12 year old amateurs, while removing it from a carefully constructed team of world-class designers and developers? It makes no sense.



In all fairness and reality, every Android handset maker out there blocks rooting and modding to the best of their ability, and in most cases does a better job than Apple at discouraging and/or preventing it.



Android is not any more “open” than iOS is. For example, look at the hardware chip in the Droid X that checks the ROM for modifications before boot-up, or the fact that all their Android devices have “mandatory OTA updates” that are forced down their users throats, which destroy all rooting or modding work done once they install themselves in the background, without the user’s permission! Apple would never conceive of such a thing as a “mandatory update.” It took weeks for the modding community to bypass that. Apple has no such precautions in place, and it typically takes less than 24 hours to root the latest iOS releases.



I suppose you could say that it’s a taste thing. However, I do believe (and could list countless articles from all over the web that vouch for this) that if you set Android and iOS in front of a board of industry experts in the fields of UI/UX and iA, and asked them to give an honest analysis of the two systems, that iOS would come out firmly on top. Google simply does not care about their users. They’re in exactly the same position Microsoft has been in for years with desktop Windows. You aren’t their customer. Verizon and Motorola are. You’re merely an inconvenient side-effect to them. In Apple’s view, you as the customer, and your experience while using their products are everything. That’s something that emanates from everything they do.



The rat-infested flea market that the Android Marketplace has become is a subject for another post, one which I hope to write soon.

Enough Episode 6 — Traveling Light:

This episode of the podcast is all about something I have long practiced – traveling light. In it, I cover everything from some of the products I use to how I manage to make my goal of being able to leave on a moments notice, to any climate, for an indeterminate period of time (and how that was recently put to test).

Be sure to check out the show notes for links to some of the products I use. Also there is a link to a video I made some time ago about packing for a three day business trip in a daypack.