Justin Blanton:
Finally, and to be clear, I’m happy NNW is “back” (the more people using RSS the better as far as I’m concerned), but I think a lot of the excitement around the launch is rooted in nostalgia more than anything.
Same. I’m glad NetNewsWire has been relaunched, but it has a way to go before I would consider it a top contender in the feed reading space.
Justin Blanton:
I’ve long wanted to get to this point, and being (mostly) here now feels pretty damn good.
Much of what makes this possible is that I can delegate in one way or another most of what I think of, and can get away with being extremely terse in my emails. At this stage of my career my day-to-day job requires minimal work-product; if I was coding all day, designing websites, or researching, I probably wouldn’t be able to leverage my pocket computer the way I do, but I wouldn’t want to either.
There are a lot of people who just don’t need traditional computers anymore. Delegating tasks, checking on projects, discussing ideas — communicating — is the kind of work that smartphones excel at. There’s no reason to add the unnecessary cruft that comes along with desktop operating systems when you have everything you need on your pocket computer.
(Via Eric Schwarz.)
Justin Blanton:
For better or worse, queues are how I’ve come to view nearly every aspect of my life, and I know I’m not alone. Apart from some work-related responsibilities, nearly every other dimension of my life flows into “one” sinuous, malleable, and ever-growing list of things to digest and process. This includes queues for Netflix, DVR, RSS, Twitter, Facebook, Pocket, Kindle books, personal/work email, skeletons of blog posts, etc. etc. etc. It quite literally never ends.
Everything in my life has an inbox. And if something doesn’t, I do everything I can to route it in such a way that it ends up in my RSS reader, Twitter timeline, or email inbox. This is just about the only way I can ensure that everything I need to do gets done.
Justin Blanton, writing on Medium:
I’ve always had this uneasy, incomplete feeling if I knew — even if it was just a hunch — that there was something better out there for task x, my build, my aesthetics, my circumstances, etc.
It’s not about brands for me, and really never has been — it’s about the intersection of my hyper-particular stylistic preferences, quality, and means.
The only measurable amount of brand loyalty I have is with the companies that have consistently proven themselves to me. But I’m also the first one to switch to another brand if a competing company provides a superior preduction.
If you’ve been following the site’s Twitter account for a while you may have noticed that I share my iPhone’s home screen on the fifteenth of every month. You may have also noticed that it very rarely changes and never more than an app or two at a time. Like Justin, my days of constantly switching between different applications that perform the same task are behind me.
Justin Blanton:
In the olden days (you know, ~2008) it frequently was the case that if you didn’t read something as it was sitting there in front of you, you never would, and you likely forfeited many things you wanted to read because you just didn’t have a source-agnostic, friction-free way to store them for later. Yes, you could have just opened your 117th tab, or added it to your highly-structured bookmarks collection, but we all know that’s no way to live.
Instapaper is one of those amazing little services that I take for granted. I use it almost everyday and have stored thousands of web articles on it over the years. Honestly, I don’t know how I ever got by without it.
A neat little app recommended by Justin Blanton on Twitter that helps you keep track of your cellular data usage. It features an Apple Watch companion app with complication, today view widget, and clever usage forecasting. It’s by far the best looking app I’ve seen for this utility.
I’m one of the followers that often replies to Justin’s iPhone screenshots asking why he has so many notification badges turned on. If I were him, I’d include a link to this piece alongside every screenshot I share.
