Give it up to Eurogamer’s Digital Foundary for being an unimpeachable source for hard-core tech/processing/graphics news within the gaming community. This scoop on the Xbox One – it’s past performance and how it’s likely to evolve with the SDK changes – is a great read.
Engineer Kelly Ellis reveals the real fallacy in relying on the “pipeline” argument (that there’s just not enough qualified women available) when it comes to the gender problems the larger tech industry has. As Ellis argues, there’s a larger problem of women leaving the industry early. They can often face a hostile, male-centric culture or dated stereotypes that programming inherently (and falsely) doesn’t match their gender’s “natural qualities.”
My iPhone app usage aligns with the 80-20 rule. Most apps I try are completely disposable; within a few days I delete them or relegate them to a folder off the home screen, for use only on rare occasions. Yet I use a handful of apps every day. They stand the test of time for months, if not years, of usage. As we wrap up 2014, I wanted to highlight my “must-haves”. Many are well known within tech circles, but there’s a few lesser known apps that are also worth your time.
Alien Blue. My Reddit usage pales in comparison to other social media and news sources. I never comment, happy to scan a handful of design and gaming subreddits for links and general information. Thankfully, Alien Blue handles the browsing component well. It deserves special praise for its handling of image galleries and videos, both of which pop up frequently on Reddit threads.
News Funnel. Another plug for my self-built news site that lists top stories from Designer News and Hacker News. It sizes down effectively for the iPhone (and other mobile devices) so I can scan both sites easily.
Nuzzel. The app aggregates and lists the most linked to articles in your Twitter feed, ordered by popularity. There’s no faster way to see what’s trending among my Twitter friends. And via the “news from friends of friends” option, I usually discover some tech, film or gaming related articles I would have otherwise missed. I’ve tried many tools that build content off of my Twitter feed; none of have stuck the way Nuzzel has.
NYT Now. I was I was skeptical of the streamlined, simplified interface of NYT Now when it debuted earlier this year. Yet after a week of usage it secured a permanent slot on my phone’s home screen. At its core, NYT Now lists the full NYT app’s top stories, but adds larger imagery and helpful bullet point summaries for articles I don’t have time to read. It’s that smart use of bullet points that make all the difference on the go.
Reeder. I like having full control over my news aggregation, so for me there’s no substitute for RSS in the form of a Feedbin account. On the go, Reeder is my Feedbin reader of choice. There are other quality apps with Feedbin integration, but I find Reeder syncs faster than the competition. Also, the screen density of list items – dense but not too dense – matches my workflow. It’s about speed and sharing to other services like Pocket and Twitter, not lingering to read full stories.
Tweetbot. I check up on Twitter frequently, which makes a strong Twitter client essential. And while there’s been strong improvements on the official Twitter app lately, it still can’t match the speed and customization Tweetbot offers. Its timeline sync between devices is an especially nice touch.
Hours. I like to keep track of how much I’m working on both my day job and side tasks. I first tried popular web based time tracking software like Harvest and Toggl. But both felt optimized around more complex, team based workflows, when I prefer a simpler system. Enter Hours. The app centers on an intuitive interface for me to start, stop, and switch timers easily. It could use a Dropbox or iCloud based backup, not to mention a more customizable export system. But those are small quibbles on an otherwise strong 1.0 product.
Mailbox. I generally shy away from email apps that try to add their own productivity features on top of my inbox. But Mailbox adds its extras elegantly; with swipe gestures to archive or delete messages, I’m able to move through my inbox much faster than previous mail clients (there’s no coincidence Apple added similar swipe functionality to Mail with iOS8.) Overall, Mailbox adds just enough functionality to add value, but not too much to distract from my inbox content.
Pocket. My one stop source for catching up on content I’ve saved elsewhere on the web and aforementioned news apps like Tweetbot and Reeder. Parsing has gotten better over the years and the clean, stripped down reader view is easier on the eyes than many original web sources.
Wunderlist. I dig Omnifocus as a task manager for complex work tasks, but it’s overkill for simple to-do lists I write for chores, tasks at home, and other miscellaneous work. I’ve previously bounced around and tried Clear and Todoist, but both ultimately lacked staying power. Clear has a cool minimalist interface driven by gestures, but it was too simplistic for my needs and I’d run into occasional iCloud sync delays between devices. Todoist provides a lot more power, but the additional filters and searches overlapped too much with Omnifocus. Wunderlist finds a middle ground between Clear and Todoist; its sync is rock solid and the shared lists are useful and easy to set up with family members.
Next. Like with aforementioned time tracking, my budgeting needs are simple, centered on daily spending for expenses like restaurants, drinks, apps, and electronics. Because I’m entering in new entries manually each day, a smart entry UI is critical, and Next nails this perfectly. I tap a large category button, enter the amount and I’m done.
Overcast. For years I used Instacast to listen to podcasts. But eventually the complexity of extra features I never used (e.g. sleep timers, individual podcast settings), combined with several periods of slow syncing let me to try other clients. Marco Arment’s new Overcast matches my podcast flow perfectly; its interface is stripped down and straightforward, syncing is extremely reliable, and I use both of the exclusive “smart speed” and “voice boost” features heavily. There’s also a few small design touches I appreciate, like the audio equalizer animation during playback and the use of Concourse for typography.
Rise. I first scoffed at the idea of a dedicated alarm clock given the utility of Apple’s Clock app. But Rise is beautiful and has custom alarms that can progressively rise in volume, which I find is a more relaxing, peaceful way to be woken up. Most importantly, its gesture interface makes setup very easy, an important consideration given how often I change my wakeup time slightly from day to day.
RunKeeper. I run several times a week, and while I like select features on Strava and other fitness apps, I’ve always come back to RunKeeper for GPS-based run logging. The app has a straightforward interface that’s easy to both interact with and read as you run. I also appreciate the high degree of customization for automated voice notifications on your distance, time and speed.
Weather Line. I feel like I’ve tried at least twenty weather apps over the years, but since I started using Weather Line a year ago, I’ve been hooked. Like a few other weather apps, it has Dark Sky integration, which I find essential (so much so I own the original Dark Sky app for extra detail during rainy weather.) But Weather Line has a unique line graph interface that’s easily scannable to see how the rest of the day or week will pan out. I haven’t found another app that’s quite as intuitive, especially for a quick glance.
It’s that time of year again; several critically acclaimed apps get a discount for the holidays. Many rarely get a discount, so it’s worth jumping on these sales before they end on December 26th.
It’s a extremely strong set of applications, but I’d personally recommend Tweetbot, Drafts 4, Scanner Pro, MindNode, Next, and Clear.
Yosemite’s most striking change to Mac OS X are its visuals, a nod to bring the OS more in line with iOS. That’s distilled in its new set of default system app icons. As John Siracusa writes in his Yosemite review:
Apple is trying to discipline the world of OS X icons. While one icon shape has been deemed insufficient, Apple believes three shapes should just about do it: circle, rectangle, and tilted rectangle…Visual simplification is the order of the day, and details that don’t read well at small icon sizes have been excised.
Unfortunately several apps I use heavily haven’t updated their icon and clash with Yosemite’s new look. In a sea of flat minimalism, bold colors, and thinner typography, a few icons that don’t follow trends can really stand out. So I hunted on Dribbble to find suitable replacements. Below I’ve provided a few direct links if you’re interested in grabbing them for yourself.
If you haven’t replaced an app icon yet, it’s an easy process in Yosemite:
In terms of my replacements:
iTerm isn’t far off the mark but I wanted a more minimal, flatter look that better paired with Apple’s Terminal icon. Jason Long’s take is a better match.
Mailbox overall looks great, but the “in construction” thin lines (albeit with good purpose to signify beta status) all over the Mailbox icon were distracting. Chris Jennings made a very clean replacement that goes well with Mailbox’s minimalist aesthetic.
nvALT has a clever icon with a small stack of sheets alongside a rocket ship taking off. But it’s busy in the context of Yosemite. So I went ahead and created my own amateur work in Sketch combined with Icon Slate for output. Download it here.
Spotify’s default icon already works with color and a circular shape. Yet I wanted something with a more subtle gradient, punchier color and more clearly defined edge to the icon. Sebastian de With’s Muir set was my first choice, but after using it for a few days the white coloring for the icon’s sonic waves felt off from Spotify’s black aesthetic. So I switched to Jean-François Goncalves’s work. It’s very similar, but with black instead of white accents.
The great Iconfactory put together Sublime Text’s “big button” style original icon, yet it never resonated with me; it was just a bit too “cute” for my tastes. I’ve used other replacements while on Mac OS 10.9, but for Yosemite I’ve settled on a simple tilted rectangle icon from Rafael Conde. I love the subtle cross hatching on the icon’s background.
Tapbots have always had a playful and original bent to their wonderful Tweetbot app; that gives some creative license away from Yosemite’s usual icon layout. But Ilja Miskov put together an option that plays better; it mirrors Tweetbot’s simpler iOS icon cropped to circular form for Yosemite.
David Greenwald, writing fro The Oregonian:
Here is the gigantic, crucial difference between piracy and streaming. In piracy, we don’t have listening numbers: we don’t know if an album downloaded for free was listened to 100 times or 0. A download might represent a lost sale or it might represent a listener adding to an endless collection or sampling one album among dozens, as if hearing the song on the radio. We really have no idea. But with streaming, we absolutely know. The statistics are right there. And artists should be paid accordingly: maybe not $10 a fan, but definitely more than a few pennies.
There’s a cold ratio at play here: the less popular a band is, the more money they need to generate per fan to reach a break-even point. However, the more popular a band is, the more ways they have of generating money per fan — and often they can generate more money per fan anyway, with deluxe packages at shows and branding opportunities, especially if you consider corporations to be people, as the Supreme Court does. It is a fundamentally unfair marketplace that privileges the already successful, which is rarely the path to innovation — or interesting art.
Journalistic site Krautreporter, writing a post on Medium:
Three years after the death of its charismatic founder, Apple is doing all it can to maintain this reality distortion field, mainly by exercising total control about anything that is reported about the company or its products. In contrast to Apple’s design philosophy this strategy does not manifest itself through clarity and elegance, but through a subtle and sometimes questionable toying with our, the reporting journalists’ vanities and dependencies. If you write positively you’ll be wined and dined, if you criticize, no matter how fairly, you’ll be penalized. Admittedly this is common practice with large corporations, but hardly any one of them will go as far as Apple does. And there is no other corporation that the media have allowed to get away with this kind of manipulation for such a long period of time.
As much as we all admire Apple in many ways, it’s interesting to get a much harsher perspective on its treatment of the media. I question if it’s quite as black and white as Krautreporter portrays here, but there’s been many times where I’ve questioned the relationship between the tech press and Apple.
I love practical side projects that I’ll actively use, so I created a web site that shows trending stories from two resources I check daily: Designer News (DN) and Hacker News (HN).
Many designers and developers I know consider both news sources essential reading. They’re the source of engaging Pocket reads, solid tech ideas, and inspiration that helps my career. Yet I’m not fully satisfied by the layout of the original web sites, or with other extensions or apps that aggregate content from either source. So I created my own.
News Funnel has a rudimentary web scraper back end that feeds the 50 top ranked posts in from both Designer and Hacker News. It’s responsive and equally readable on phone, tablet, or desktop. But the site is less about development techniques and more about design exploration around how I use DN and HN. I don’t linger in either news source; it’s more jumping off point into an article or two to read or save for later via Pocket. I want content that I can browse as efficiently as possible.
An efficient design starts with typography. News Funnel is it its core a list of articles, so nailing the right font is a critical step. After researching many options in Typekit I settled on Dalton Maag’s Aktiv Grotesk as the app’s font. While I considered other, more distinctive or whimsical choices with higher contrast, Aktiv Grotesk is a grotesque that’s suited to the straightforward nature of the app. Yet it’s not the expected (and I’d argue, overused) Helvetica either. It’s cleaner, fresher, and more neutral, an effective cross between Helvetica and Univers. That neutrality is a good match for the diverse set of stories that trend on DN and HN. I also bumped up article title size and contrast more than other DN or HN aggregators; I prefer more discernible text over raw information density.
Because of how fast I move through both DN and HN, I wanted hit targets for my mouse clicks or finger taps that were large and obvious. That goal made for a logical match with the popular ‘card’ paradigm design. There’s one card or box per article, and a click or tap almost anywhere in the card opens it. For non-touch users, the border changes on mouseover to reinforce the action state. There’s also a large chat bubble icon with generous padding on each article’s right side to access the comments section.
I often visit both DN and HN for various reasons and in a range of contexts, which made adding customization a natural choice. It’s all accessible in a single side menu. By default, wide displays show DN and HN side by side, while narrow displays allow you to toggle between either source. There’s also a special combined mode which pulls articles from both sources into a single column, alternating articles in ranked order. Especially on narrow width displays (e.g. smartphones) that makes it easy to scan through both sources with minimum effort and context switching between apps or web pages. Just scroll down and keep your eye trained on a single column.
I find ranking and title to be an occasionally insufficient indicator of what I should be noticing from either news source. So to keep relevant articles front and center, I added a simple highlights toggle in the side menu. You can choose to highlight stories that have a large number of comments, high point score, or those that reached the top 50 list quickly. There’s no substitution for opening an article, but flipping on highlights and running a quick scan through the app can draw attention to good content I would have missed otherwise.
The context of where you access News Funnel matters as well. Much of that is taken care of with responsive web design so the list is readable on any device. But location and time of day is another key factor. I’m often scanning both news sources in low light scenarios, usually late at night on my Macbook or iPhone. To make it easier on the eyes, or for those that prefer a different look, I added a toggle to flip between light and dark color schemes.
While I’m no aesthetic designer, I added a few visual touches to keep things simple and avoid distraction from the actual content. To start, animations are consistent. They run on the same easing scale and, for the exception of the side menu, are exclusively fade ins and outs. The reading color palette is monochrome. To add emphasis to clickable areas, hover states add punchier blue tones on DN content, orange on HN content (albeit toned down from the stronger “official” orange on the actual HN web site) and purple for combined content.
Overall, I designed News Funnel to be a concise way to check up on cool stories going on in the design, development, and the web. Feel free to check it out.
Another OS release, another great review by John Siracusa. Some might find John’s depth maddening (the review’s word count is probably larger than most other OS reviews online combined), but I think that’s exactly why it’s so essential. Treat it like a small novella: have a drink, sit on the couch and parse through the whole thing for a few hours on a low key night. If you love tech, it’s great entertainment.
Engineer Pete Warden:
We’re still behaving like the rebel alliance, but now we’re the Empire. We got where we are by ignoring outsiders and believing in ourselves even when nobody else would. The decades have proved that our way was largely right and the critics were wrong, so our habit of not listening has become deeply entrenched. It even became a bit of a bonding ritual to attack critics of the culture because they usually didn’t understand what we were doing beyond a surface level.
