by Ken Clark on January 17, 2010
We need to talk about email clients. I’ve been joking for years that I’m going to write an email client and charge $500 for it — an email client that actually meets the needs of developers and professionals who rely on email, folks who type for a living. But I’m not going to, and I don’t know anybody who is. The economics of it make it kind of tough, given that Apple ships a good email client with OS X. Nevertheless, we need that email client.
via: inessential.com: Email init
Brent Simmons, creator of NetNewsWire, launched the idea yesterday that the time is ripe for an open source group to develop a new, lean Cocoa-based email application for the Mac.
The working name for the project is Letters or Letters.app.
There’s already some interesting discussion on the project mailing list, and he’s set up a Twitter account to follow the project as well.
Tagged as:
brent simmons,
email
by Ken Clark on January 13, 2010
Earlier this week I read a “real” book for the first time since I got my Kindle last year. It was interesting to see how much my brain had retrained itself to the Kindle:
- The biggest surprise? For the first few hours I found my thumb reaching for a phantom joystick that wasn’t there anytime I saw a word I wanted to define. I didn’t realize until then how much I’ve come to rely on having a dictionary at my fingertips.
- The biggest frustration? Not being able to highlight passages of interest and store them into a central repository. I know – people have underlined books for centuries, but it seemed so much more inefficient to me than having all my highlights from all my books in one place. I settled for dog-earing those pages even though I knew it was unlikely I would go back and transcribe the sections that were of interest.
- What I enjoyed the most? Being able to quickly browse forward again to see how many pages were left until a chapter wrapped up. I have always wished the Kindle would add some sort of “how much is left in this chapter / section” feature.
- The second biggest surprise? I have really gotten used to holding the smaller form factor of the Kindle. I write this next sentence knowing it sounds totally ridiculous, but it took me an hour or two to get re-acclimated to holding a two-paned book that continually pushed against my fingers to remind me that it would be much happier if I just let it return to its natural closed state.
- A final random thought? Quickly thumbing back to pages I’d previously read to find the first reference to a person, thought, or concept wasn’t materially better or worse for me than the Kindle search. I could have argued both sides of that one, but it’s really a tie.
It surprised me to see how after only about six months, the Kindle has changed my perspective on something I’ve been doing for virtually my entire life. My internal frame of reference for long-form reading is now the Kindle, not a physical book. Crazy.
Tagged as:
ebook,
kindle
by Ken Clark on January 10, 2010
by Ken Clark on January 5, 2010
Over the holiday weekend I found the time to knock out several updates to the site that have been on my someday / maybe list for a while now. The big one was moving the site to a new domain name, kenclark.me, in place of the old one, kenclarksblog.com. (I know, I am not going to win any major creative points for that one!)
Why bother, you may ask? It’s pretty simple. Kenclarksblog.com started to feel dated; as if the site was permanently stuck in 2005, and it finally got to the point where it bothered me enough to make the change.
Changing domains on a pre-existing site can be tricky, but I have to say that it really couldn’t have gone any easier due to both the Wordpress platform and great support from Bluehost, my hosting company. On the day I made the switch, I spoke with three different Bluehost support reps, all of whom answered the phone on the first ring and were outstanding. Additionally, their admin tool made setting up all of the 301 redirects quite simple.
Once I got the domain transfer worked out, I took some additional time to tack on the latest WordPress updates and add the Disqus comment engine as well, so I am feeling good that I’m entering 2010 with a minor tune-up complete and in the rear view mirror.
I believe everything is redirecting properly, but if you see anything funky going on with the site or the RSS feeds, please let me know.
P.S. Here are a couple links that I found useful in the event you are considering anything similar:
Tagged as:
blog,
wordpress
by Ken Clark on January 1, 2010
I downloaded Acorn today for a test run. I was a little lazy and launched the app from my Downloads folder and right after was pleasantly surprised to see this dialog box pop up on my screen.
It’s a small thing, but such a simple way to make the end user’s life easier. I can’t recall ever seeing this in another app. A very nice touch and a great first impression.
Tagged as:
acorn,
mac,
usability
by Ken Clark on December 31, 2009
If you’re thinking The Tablet is just a big iPhone, or just Apple’s take on the e-reader, or just a media player, or just anything, I say you’re thinking too small — the equivalent of thinking that the iPhone was going to be just a click wheel iPod that made phone calls. I think The Tablet is nothing short of Apple’s reconception of personal computing.
via Daring Fireball: The Tablet.
John Gruber, as always, totally delivers with what is easily the most thoughtful article I’ve read on the rumored Apple tablet. A really great read.
Tagged as:
apple,
tablet
