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simpledesks:

We got tired of the communal table (mostly because some of us want standing desks). So now, I have room for a proper monitor and coffee maker.

Submitted by Dave Fayram.

This desk deserves to be posted on Minimal

Jumpcut: Minimalist Clipboard Buffering for OS X:

Jumpcut is an application that provides “clipboard buffering” — that is, access to text that you’ve cut or copied, even if you’ve subsequently cut or copied something else. The goal of Jumpcut’s interface is to provide quick, natural, intuitive access to your clipboard’s history.

I’m not sure why I had never heard of this one before. Perhaps it is that rock that I find so comfortable this time of year. In any case, just like it says on the tin, Jumpcut is a clipboard history application that is designed to be simple and only handles text. I’ve found it very handy the past few days of usage.

(via One Thing Well as part of a post about a graphical clipboard manager)

Just wanted to drop some info for all of you who ordered a Minimal Mac T-Shirt.

I have been told by the printer that the shirts should be in my hands no later than this Friday (12.10.2010). My plan is to start packing them this weekend in the hopes of getting them all out no later than next week. Now, that said, please be patient as I am still recovering from some major neck surgery which prevents me from being able to do some crucial things like driving so I’m relying on the help of friends and family to get these packed and out to you.

There is the status as it is right now. I will let you know should anything change.

iPad Means Business, the new book by tech pundit, my dear friend, and all around great guy Julio Ojeda-Zapata, is now available. If you have any interest at all about how real people are using the iPad to get real work done, I think you should order a copy. Also, I wrote one of the forewords for the book.

That said, the foreword that is in the book has been edited quite a bit from the original. See, a writers job is to craft compelling prose. An book editor’s job is to take that prose and turn it into something that might sell the book. One of the many reasons why we writers have always been at war with editorial (Screw book sales! This is art!!!).

Therefore, as special treat for my readers, and because I control both the horizontal and the vertical here, this is the original foreword as I wrote it. I hope it motivates you to purchase the book:

Welcome to The Future

It is the future. It is a revolution. The overthrow of an industry. The takeover of a market. When everything we thought about technology changed. The point where the computer truly became personal. Also, it is just the beginning.

If I had to describe to a random stranger who had never seen the iPad, and was asked what it was, my answer might include some of the previous exclamations. This is a device that is the realization of many Hollywood visions of what a computer might be in some far off time – from Star Trek to Minority Report. It feels far ahead of everything else available today. Something in the back of the mind suggests that you have something you should not yet have, yet do.

Take it out in a public place and you are likely to get even the shyest person in the crowd approaching you and asking for a demonstration. They can not contain themselves from asking for a look at this thing they may have seen in commercials or in a display at the mall, yet still could not believe actually existed. Like a jet pack, or a flying car, or any of the other things we all were promised we would have in the 21st century, but the true pace of progress proved otherwise. Yet this – a computer nearly the width of a pencil, with a display the dimensions of a page of paper, that you manipulate with the touch of your fingers – this future is real.

Give it to a child and within minutes, with little to no instruction, they get it. It may be future to us who have been given a certain unescapable paradigm about what a computer is and how we interact with it. To a child, this is very much of their time. Raised with a much shorter period of interaction with a keyboard and mouse and in an age when they can play console games by waving a wand at a screen. To them, this is second nature. It is in these times that you realize the iPad is very much a device of the now. It is the way it always should have been and henceforth will be. The children of today will likely grow up with only the faintest of memories of what a keyboard and mouse was. The idea of any barrier to direct physical interaction with a computer will seem as distant as one that takes up an entire room is to us.

This is also a computer that is easy for older people to use. No complicated file systems to navigate. No lofty concepts to grasp. Just clear, easy to launch applications. Those who may have found computers too complicated, mice and keyboards too confusing, can find their solace with the iPad. A new world of where a simple touch will allow them access to the internet, email, photos, books, and friends.

But don’t let the ease of use for the young and old alike distract you. This is also the ideal tool for todays modern mobile worker. Far more portable than a laptop. Less intrusive in a meeting. Able to wield email and presentations with equal speed and aplomb. Alone it is an adept productivity tool. When paired with a wireless Bluetooth keyboard, it can hold it’s own against any mobile device. Together, the speed and length with which one can produce results in a word processor or email program is limited only by ones ability. In fact, this entire chapter was written this way.

The word that Apple has used repeatedly to describe the iPad is “magical”. While this may seem simply just a marketing buzzword, there is a certain truth to it. When you use the device, you become so immersed in the interaction, that the device itself seems to “disappear” until whatever application you are using is all you are left holding in your hands. Studies have shown that we form an emotional bond with the things we hold or touch. The fundamentals of how you get things done can really change when you can hold your email in your hands? Or your music? Or the internet itself. How you feel and experience these things changes as well.

The reason the hardware disappears is because the software feels natural. When browsing digital photos for instance, they react in a way that is as natural as interacting with the traditional printed kind. When reading a book, the pages turn with the same speed as they would when leafing through a physical one. In every case where there is a real world metaphor, something familiar outside of a computer, it behaves as one would expect. No delay, no separation. It is this attention to detail that the magicians used for the wondrous alchemy that happens when using the iPad.

One more thing about the iPad is that there is no right way to hold it. Stand up with it, sit down, lie back in bed. Pick up the iPad and the screen will rotate to fit your view. Hand it to someone else and it will flip again to theirs. This makes it amazingly easy to share it with others. Hand it across the table at a meeting. This is a social machine. Pass it to your friend to share a funny video. Have a child sit in your lap while your read them a book from it. Unlike other computers that are often barriers to interaction, the iPad is purposefully made for it.

We will look back on this time as a moment when everything we had come to know about computers changed. It is not hyperbole to say that this is a historic shift for technology. And it is just the start. The iPad is still young by any standard. And if this is just the start, it begs the question of what is yet to come. Something even more magical, more revolutionary, and more unbelievable yet real. Welcome to The Future.

This book, written by crack technology writer and pundit Julio Ojeda-Zapata, is here to guide you through this new age. He will show real world examples of professionals, creatives, and others just like you getting real work done using the iPad and having a lot of fun doing so. I know I am.

Enjoy.

Barnett Newman, an American-based painter who lived from 1905 – 1970, is linked predominately to the New York Abstract Expressionist school. Even more than Mark Rothko somber coloristic paintings, Newman’s work is perhaps the most minimal of the Abstract Expressionists, as he was strongly involved in color field or monochromatic painting.

His paintings are trademarked by what Newman called “zips”. These are painted lines on canvasses of block colors that define the spacial structure of his painting. One of his best known works is Vir Heroicus Sublimis (“The Sublime is Now”) from 1950-1. When it was first exhibited, Newman wrote:

There is a tendency to look at large pictures from a distance. The large pictures in this exhibition are intended to be seen from a short distance.

These “zips” were also actualised in 3-dimensional forms, such as The Wild (1950).

See some of his work at the Museum of Modern Art for their Abstract Expressionist New York exhibition that runs until April 25, 2011.

Minimal Mac: An Open Letter to Tumblr:

Patrick summarized in a very polite way what tumblr should know:

Dear Tumblr,

I really love you as a blogging platform. I don’t really think I could have started Minimal Mac as quickly as I did, nor keep up with posting regular content as easily, on any other platform. In fact, I still feel this is the case. I really do feel that if I switched to Wordpress or any other solution it would not be as easy or as pleasurable an experience to use when it is available to me.

That said, the past few months there has been excessive downtime on your service. Not just weekly but several times a day. I’m not sure of the reasons why, as you have not provided an explanation that I am aware of. That said, those times, although frequent, are usually brief enough that they have been outweighed in my mind by my enjoyment of the platform.

This current outage, it’s sheer length of downtime, and your lack of clarity about expectations for its resolution, are disheartening at best and irresponsible at most. It really saddens me because, as you may be able to tell from above, I’m a big fan and don’t want to switch.

If the problem is that you have grown too fast and lack the infrastructure to be able to handle the load, say that and then let us know your plan to correct this. If you are unable to correct it due to lack of cash flow, please start charging money for the service because that would kill both problems with one stroke (i.e. cause a mass exodus and give you revenue from those, like me, who would stay and gladly pay). No matter the problems, please simply explain what they are and how you plan to fix them. Such transparency would go a long way with me.

The bottom line of all of this is that both my content and my readers deserve better then what you are allowing me to deliver right now. What good is my writing and curating if it can’t be read or seen? What good is the trust I have spent time forming with my audience if they can’t trust that this site will be there for them to enjoy at a time that suits them?

So please, just be straight with us. It’s the least you can do.

Tree Chunk is a toothpick dispenser made of solid maple, designed by USA based industrial designer David Tsai. I like the basic shape and the playful methods of dispensing a toothpick.

Each dispenser has a unique grain and is numbered and signed. It holds 80 round toothpicks and dispenses one at a time in a variety of ways, such as with ‘the bump’, ‘the smoker’, ‘push-shake’ and ‘clap’.

Tree Chunk is available at Etsy.