I watched with interest as people I knew tried out interesting combinations of domains, found cool ones then tried to think of uses for them, etc. It was very different than the normal .com domain hunt.

I don’t know if .me will take off - it’s certainly an interesting TLD, but the .com seems stronger than ever. Even the iPhone, the very model of a modern device, only has a “.com” button¹. Is .me any better than .info (except maybe for personal domains)?

I picked up a couple of .me domains that I thought could be useful down the road if .me becomes widely adopted. I’m not sure if I’ll actually use them - I’m tending more towards “.com at all costs” these days - which is pretty sad.

Time will tell if a good .me is worth more than a mediocre .com.

1. Which is, quite frankly, shameful. [back]

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I see people complaining and whining about Twitter’s downtime and issues¹ all the time. I understand where they are coming from, but believe it or not I actually like the fact that Twitter isn’t a 100% reliable service.

I don’t want Twitter to become a responsibility; I like having a casual relationship with it. I read tweets when I want to, and ignore things I’ve missed most of the time. I’ve already got people asking me if I get their replies or direct messages on Twitter - I know it will only get worse if reliability improves.

Twitter is a fun service for me - a distraction, an amusement. It’s something I like to turn to when I have time. I don’t want it to become something I’m beholden to (like e-mail).

I know that other people have very different views on this, but I actually like the fact Twitter is a bit of an adventure .

1. I’ve had my own experience struggling to scale what some people consider a simple service, so I guess I’m also pre-disposed to be sympathetic to people trying to bring services to the web. [back]

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• LaunchBar - this is the very first thing I installed. I’m hopelessly dependent on it.
• Firefox - I’d like to give Safari another try, but I need someone to build a PwdHash extension for it before I can really use it. Besides, I still believe Gecko is the best engine to develop on.
• BBEdit - still my #1 text editor.
• TextMate - I’m now using this for CodeIgniter development.
• YouControl Desktops - If I could turn off transitions altogether in Spaces, I might not need this.
• Path Finder - a much better Finder.
• MailTemplateEditor - I use this 3-5 times a day on average.
• Twitteriffic - gotta get my fix.
• NetNewsWire - an app that deserves more run time than I’ve been giving it
• Skype - for the times when I need it
• Skitch - haven’t used it much lately but it’s great for marking up design comps
• Pukka - I blame Ethan for this one, he got me hooked on Pukka a while back. It’s a nice lean del.icio.us posting client.
• LeanCalc - I use this all the time for quick calculations
• iWork (copied over, it wasn’t too happy about that and complains every time I launch it, but still works)
• SubEthaEdit - often used to take notes as a team on conf. calls
• PwdHash - I’ve talked about this at length
• Adium - the best IM client out there
• MsgFiler - I can’t use Mail.app without it
• Adobe CS3 - runs surprisingly well
• iStat Menus - the calendar widget is awesome
• shadowClipboard - totally reliant on this as well
• Vienna - for private feeds

It’s interesting trying to wittle things down to the essentials. I keep letting little things leak in, but in general I’ve tried to keep it fairly tight.

What makes your “must-have” list?

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Overall, increased usage of the iPhone has done more to reinforce my previous opinions on it than anything else - except maybe making me more dissatisfied with the browser in the BlackBerry.

Some notes:

• The iPhone is a two-handed device, where the BlackBerry is designed to work very well as a one-handed device.
• The keyboard on the iPhone is just awful. Whenever I need to type anything (e-mail, Twitter, etc.) I use the BlackBerry.
• The browser is just phenomenal, and I’ve found myself on the mobile web more with the activated iPhone than I was with my BlackBerry.
• Even with the browser being so good, it’s not nearly as fast as using a laptop.
• Having a native Twitter app on the BlackBerry makes me realize just how much better the iPhone will be in a month.
• Real IMAP support on the iPhone is excellent, for an “e-mail” device, the BlackBerry’s non-BES IMAP e-mail support is just pathetic.
• The web iPhone apps and info pages are really quite handy.
• I badly want a podcast app for the iPhone that supports downloading podcasts over wifi. I’m sure someone is building one - let me know if you want another beta tester.
• The BlackBerry Curve is significantly lighter than the iPhone, and the rubberized side panels make it a lot easier to grip.
• The upcoming OTA syncing for the iPhone eclipses what BlackBerry users have unless they have a BES.
• Having web page bookmarks on the home page for the iPhone reminds me of the old PQAs on the Palm VII and i705 from back in the day.
• The iPod integration in the iPhone is actually better than I expected. I’m noticing that more as I use the device more.
• I appreciate my BlackBerry keyboard more now.

Having 2 phones seems a little silly at times, but the iPhone is actually an “add a phone” to my BlackBerry line, so it’s not too bad². It’s pretty obvious to me that I’m going to need to be building great tools for the iPhone in the future, so… it’s a business expense.

1. For all those who have asked, it continued to work as expected the entire year. [back]
2. I actually have the radio off most of the time to save battery [back]

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I first brought it with me on a quick trip to LA last month, then again last week when I went to Ohio to spend some time with the ShareThis team. This last trip, it really came in handy.

I arrived in Ohio late, and around 12:30am local my drive to my hotel was interrupted by an accident on the freeway. After about 45 minutes parked, we were turned around and directed back to the previous exit. Of course, I didn’t have directions to the hotel from this exit - just hit the “avoid roadblock” button and Bob’s yer uncle.

The GPS is nice around town, but It’s in my travel bag to stay.

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Advantages (over the MacBook Pro):

• Smaller and lighter, of course.
• The battery life is much better.
• It fits a lot better on the plane, especially when the person in front of you decides to recline into your space.
• It doesn’t get as hot during use.
• Smaller/lighter power cord.

Drawbacks:

• The battery takes a long time to charge. I was a little more paranoid about this than I needed to be as it turns out. With wireless off on the plane, and the screen not too bright, I was getting reports of 5+ hours available.
• The screen is smaller/shorter, which resulted in me hunching over more while using the machine. Bad for my back/shoulders.

The overall impression is that for me it’s an incremental improvement while traveling on more than a day trip. I generally pack the following gear in my backpack:

• Laptop
• Power cord
• Mini surge protector
• Targus lap desk (I have the old while model)
• Bag of goodies including my EVDO modem, wireless router, and various cables and adapters
• Noise reduction headphones in their big ‘ol case
• One or two magazines

At the end of the day, the couple pounds and space in the bag that the Air affords me over the Pro is nice, but can get a little lost in the shuffle.

On the flip side, I absolutely love the size and weight of the Air in day to day use. I’ve gone to a smaller bag and don’t carry as much around with me when I’m local, so I really notice the difference.

1. I plan to be sell the MacBook Pro soon and replacing it with a Mac Pro at the office. I don’t need two laptops. [back]

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The most bothersome by far is the way the BlackBerry handles read-receipt requests. Whenever an email is received on my BlackBerry that includes a read-receipt request, the BlackBerry replies with an e-mail saying:

Your message has been delivered to the recipient.

This is particularly frustrating because it’s not accurate. The message may have been delivered to my BlackBerry, but that doesn’t mean it’s been delivered to me - and certainly doesn’t mean that I’ve read it. This is supposed to be a read receipt, not a delivery receipt.

I believe that at times this gives people sending me e-mail an incorrect view of my response to them. Scenario:

1. Someone sends me an e-mail at ~8pm.
2. They receive a response around 8:05pm with the confirmation message above.
3. Sometime the next morning, maybe 8-10am - maybe later, I have time to read and reply to the message.

The same thing can happen during the day as well if I’m in a meeting, etc. While I may be responding within an hour or two of seeing their e-mail, the darn BlackBerry auto-response can make them think I’m responding many hours later than that.

As far as I can tell, there is no way to turn this off. I can’t find a setting for it on the BlackBerry, nor in my account on blackberry.com, and the BlackBerry tech support reps I’ve spoken to don’t know how to disable it either.

It bugs me every time too because I BCC myself on e-mails sent from my BlackBerry with a rule to auto-file them properly in my IMAP account. I’m effectively SPAMming myself with these things.

If anyone has any tips on fixing this, please share them.

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1. Best - The SSD drive makes certain things ridiculously fast. Launching applications, rebooting, waking from sleep - all of these take a fraction of the time they take on my MacBook Pro or PowerMac G5 Quad.
2. Worst - The length of time that the battery takes to charge is absurd. This is particularly painful for me since I’m treating it as my travel/portable machine. When I have a layover, I like to find an outlet and recharge. With the MacBook Air, the benefits of this seem to be slight.

I also miss the little battery indicator on the outside of the case - probably because I’m constantly wondering how close the thing is to being charged up.

I’ve also been checking out possible “everyday” bags for the Air - no need to carry my big ol’ 17″ sized Timbuk2. I ordered a small Coder which fits it nicely, but doesn’t leave much room for anything else and doesn’t have the extra cargo room I’d hoped for¹. I’m likely to return it.

I think a vertical configuration might work well for the Air. The Waterfield SleeveCase (vertical) is an interesting option, as is the Booq Boa slimcase M. Brian is checking out this one, which looks very nice but isn’t vertical.

Any other Air users out there have bag suggestions?

UPDATE: this Tom Bihn bag looks like a possibility as well.

1. The photos were not very clear on the interior of the bag. [back]

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ideal

My recent history (2004-2008):

• A few years back, I was using a 17″ PowerBook with an external monitor as my primary machine.
• Then as I transitioned to doing most of my work from my home office and the desktops were much faster at the time than the laptops, I switched to a desktop.
• Since I was no longer using the laptop as my primary machine, I changed from valuing screen real estate to valuing portability. I got a MacBook.
• Then I started working outside the house again, first at the Hive and now in our own office. I needed something that could drive a big monitor, so I swapped the portability of the MacBook for the graphics power of the MacBook Pro.

Now that I’m in the office full time, I’m considering getting a desktop machine there and going back to a laptop as just a portable/travel machine. Assuming I don’t go hog wild on specs and/or go with a used desktop box, I think I could upgrade to both (after selling my previous laptops) for just over $1k.

The MacBook Air is very tempting to me as a portable machine - something to use while traveling. While it can’t drive a big display and isn’t particularly fast (it’s not a suitable replacement for my MacBook Pro), it’s very nice at what it does. I need to go play with one some more.

I’m going to keep all of this in mind next time someone asks me “what kind of computer should I get?” - I’m now of the opinion that the correct answer can vary widely depending on how you plan to use it.

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Of course it isn’t realistic, but I wonder if people would be more likely to absorb good Twitter behavior if they had to follow people for a week before they could post.

I self-censor in Twitter at times because what I’m writing will be distributed to 1000+ people. I’m sure I still post crap from time to time, but I do make an effort.

It’s similar to the mailing list warnings I’ve seen. I remember one that would tell you something like:

Your words will be sent to n people and approximately x man hours will be spent reading them. Are you sure you want to send this?

Steve and I have similar tastes in Twitter behavior. After much chit-chat, we have come to the conclusion that Twitter could be vastly improved if they simply changed the question from:

What are you doing?

to:

Say something interesting.

Only somewhat snarkily submitted for your review.

One other thing we’ve been discussing is how we react to “friending” activities in various social networks. I’ve gone so far as to set up a filter to auto-delete e-mail from Facebook, but similar e-mails from Twitter don’t seem to bother me. The difference is that the Facebook e-mails all come with a request for me to do something (log in, hit some buttons, etc.) while Twitter’s are just notifications that I can ignore or delete at my preference.

After discussing several different social networks, I’ve got a new postulate: the more a social network asks from me, the less likely I am to embrace it.

Agree or disagree? Sound off in the comments.

1. I’ve written about tweeting properly in the past. [back]

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Ever since my hard drive snafu a while back, I’ve been a lot more cognizant about backups.

• My email is sent to both FastMail and TuffMail, just in case.
• All of my work file are in SVN, which is backed up with an hourly rsync to Strongspace (soon to be going to S3 as well).
• My production MySQL databases are dumped nightly and archived to S3.
• My home machine runs a RAID 1 array and I do SuperDuper backups to external drives.

And I’ve just set up a backup solution for my laptop that we’re standardizing on at Crowd Favorite. Basically we’re using a combination of SuperDuper and Time Machine, with a single external drive.

Using a single 500GB external drive:

1. Connect the drive, and say “Yes” to use this as a Time Machine backup.
2. Launch Disk Utility and create 2 sparse disk images using settings similar to these.

Time Machine will run for a little while, you want to let it finish before you start your SuperDuper clone. Once Time Machine has finished, you’ll want to do your first SuperDuper clone.

I use the 2 encrypted disk images to house my SuperDuper clones. The reason to have 2 is to give you just a little extra security. There are two issues that this helps with:

1. Using a disk image, especially an encrypted image, brings disk image corruption into play.
2. When you do a clone from your main drive, there is a chance that your main drive can get into a bad state, then you overwrite your backup with it.

A second image can slightly mitigate both of these.

I name my disk images creatively as SuperDuper 1 and SuperDuper 2. On even numbered days, I do a SuperDuper smart update to disk image #2, on odd numbered days I update disk image #2.

Doing all of this to a single physical disk isn’t ideal, but both the external backup drive and my laptop drive would have to fail simultaneously for me to lose data.

In the morning, I plug in my laptop and initiate a SuperDuper smart update. This takes about 20-30 minutes and I’m able to use the machine with only a minor performance hit during that time. Most of the time though, I might be checking in or coordinating with one of the other guys in the office, or doing things that don’t need a lot of performance like replying to e-mail.

I’m pretty satisfied with this set-up, but if you have suggestions for improvement I’d love to hear them.

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This is my first experience selling things on eBay… now I just sit back and wait for the millions to roll in, right?

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Thanks to the Squadcast team for having me on.

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Reporting

This is a big one that lots of people have been waiting for, myself included. When the ShareThis team and I first spoke about working together, this was an item we talked about quite a bit. Having a centralized service makes providing interesting reporting possible. The current reports are quite nice and are more than I’d have ever been able to offer:

There are snazzy little effects for the charts - good fun stuff that isn’t annoying.

I’m surprised that e-mail is as far down on the list for my site as it is. I wonder what would happen if I swapped the active tab to be the E-mail tab instead of the Social Web tab.

I’m also excited about what can still be done in this area, and some of the ideas I’ve heard are pretty interesting.

All of you WordPress folks that have registered and have been using the 2.x version of ShareThis now have a nice set of reports available to you when you log in to sharethis.com. I look forward to hearing about which of the stats you find most interesting.

TypePad Support

A ShareThis TypePad plugin is now available. A warm welcome to our TypePad friends, I know many of you have asked me for this and I’m thrilled it’s available now.

Blogger Support

A ShareThis Blogger plugin is now available. Same as above - many of you have asked me for this and I’m very pleased it’s available now for you.

It’s great to see ShareThis growing and thriving as it is, and a lot of fun to be a part of it.

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on your page:

http://alexking.org/articles

How do you prevent, that when a user searches in google like, say “From King Design to Crowd Favorite” on the SERP he is displayed by google the posting and not your http://alexking.org/articles page?

Like I see it, you don’t have a noindex on the http://alexking.org/articles page!

I’d never thought about this being an issue. To me, this is the same as the home page, the date and category archive pages, and links to posts in your sidebar - just another link to a post.

Any SEO folks out there want to chime in with thoughts/advice?

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