App Design Vault has gathered tips from a few recent articles and books on pitching your app to blogs (including my own and Pitch Perfect by my friends Steve Sande and Erica Sadun). I maintain that getting blog coverage is the #1 path to app success, so I consider this a great resource.
marketing, quicklink
I had the pleasure of hosting Merlin Mann for a second time this week. The topic was “failing gracefully,” and the conversation was surprisingly on-point. Suprising for me, not for Merlin. He’s a pro.
podcast, systematic
Thanks to a big hand from Joe Workman, the Markdown Service Tools are at 2.0. There aren’t a lot of new tricks in there, but everything should be codesigned to avoid Gatekeeper issues and there are many improvements to functionality:
markdown, markdownservices, multimarkdown, service
I’m not a chef. I’m barely a cook. I do have my moments, though, and today’s lunch was one of them. Even my wife agrees. I thought I’d take a minute and record the recipe for posterity and my own reference, but you can try it if you’re looking for something to do. This is distributed under the WTF license, of course, so do whatever you like with it.
cooking, potatoes, recipe
When I posted the nvTagNavigator application, I had mentioned that you could automate it to run at regular intervals. I didn’t think about the fact that it pops up two dialogs every time it runs, making that impossible. The new download includes a script that can be automated.
nvalt, tagging
Treehouse is a better way to learn technology. library of step-by-step video courses and training exercises will give you a wide range of competitive, in-demand technology skills that will help you land your next dream job or build your startup idea. No experience? No problem!
Systematic #32 just went live. I was joined by Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater software for a conversation about MarsEdit, productivity and some great picks of the week.
podcast, systematic
At this point, I think just about everyone knows I have a thing for iOS text editors. My proclivity for plain text and my love of my iDevices means that I track innovation in this arena pretty closely. A new app in this category has recently caught my attention: Write, a Dropbox-based text editor for iPhone.
appreview, iphone, texteditor
Here are a couple of nifty (I think) bash functions which probably won’t work for anyone else. The first one checks GMail1 and reports unread messages on the command line, the second one keeps a vigilant watch for new messages and streams the sender and subject lines using rsstail.
terminal
If you’ve used nvALT for a while, you know that tagging in it is, well, broken. There’s no unified place to see all your tags, and tags can’t be searched exclusively. The nice thing that Zachary built into it is OpenMeta tagging, so if you store your notes as plain text files, you can search tags with Spotlight and any OpenMeta app. This, combined with the url handler, leads to some interesting possibilities.
nvalt, tagging
Track all of your billable hours in the new year with Harvest before more time flies. Work on client projects from anywhere by starting a timer effortlessly via web browser, mobile device, and now from your favorite project management tool. Tracked hours appear in visual time reports designed to help finish projects on time and within budget. When all is said and done, send professional invoices to happy clients and get paid. Don’t delay any longer. Sign up for a free trial and start…
After some annoyances with the latest version of Safari, I switched over to Google Chrome full time. I had every intention of switching back when the kinks were ironed out of Safari, but the extensions available for Chrome have kept me hesitant to leave it behind.
chrome, github
Jason Rehmus, freelance editor and writer, joined me this week to talk about — among other things — his own story of changing his own life on his own terms. It’s a great example of the “Midwest work ethic.” I know, people everywhere work hard, but us upper-Midwest folk take pride in the reputation. I can’t explain it.
podcast, systematic
To make up for my nerdery yesterday, I present the dumbest service ever made. By me, anyway, I’d hate to strip that title unknowingly from someone else without a fair fight.
service, text
