★ You can't always get what you want
So, I spent quite a bit of time today trying to make it easier to post here.
Here's what I want: I want WordPress to work like a tumblog, with visually distinct post types, and easy posting of videos, quotes, and links. I want the links to work Daring Fireball-style, where I write a pithy comment and the post title takes you to the link in question. I also want it to be easy to post from my iPad, especially from Poster by way of Mr. Reader. And I want to be able to do this using an off-the-shelf theme, rather than spending a lot of time developing my own.
Unfortunately, I haven't found the magic formula to make all that happen seamlessly.
There are tumblog themes for WordPress, but none of them have the elegant visual style that I'm looking for. Moreover, most of them seem to use custom post types that require you to be in the WP dashboard in order to complete your post, making Poster useless for this kind of workflow.
So here's what I'm doing currently. If you read this and have any suggestions on how I can make this easier, I am all ears.
I'm currently using the Launch theme from Themezilla. I like the clean look and the distinct styles of each of the custom posts. However, I don't like the implementation of all of the custom post types, and it doesn't work for me to log into the dashboard every time I want to post a link from my iPad. So, I created a child theme and updated a couple of the custom post types more to my liking. The link and video types now let me add a comment in addition to the link.
The video post type now lets me use WordPress's native embed shortcode to add YouTube and Vimeo videos, among others. This is still a little kludgy, though, because I need to click through to the video on YouTube in order to get the link to the video. Then I need to create a new Poster blog post and enter the URL for YouTube inside the embed short code. Not as elegant as just clicking a link from Mr. Reader, but it works.
I'm using the Daring Fireball-style Linked List plugin to enable link post types. This plug-in uses a custom field for adding a link, a method that is well supported by Poster, so it's fairly easy to add a link directly from Mr. Reader on my iPad, as long as I remember to copy the link to the iPad's clipboard before I start drafting my post.
I now have an iPad posting workflow that's not as elegant and streamlined as I might like, but it's not horrible either. I'm sure I could make my life a lot easier if I just broke down and used Tumblr (as I used to do), but I don't like the fact that I can't export my posts from their service. I'm tired of silos, and I really want to host my own content. I guess in exchange, though, I have to give up a little bit of the ease that some other services provide.
Postscript: I be remiss if I didn't mention the sunsetting of Posterous. Posterous was an excellent blogging service before it was bought by Twitter, and I'm sad to see it go. If it had stayed an independent entity, I might still be using it. The way that it handled different types of input -- like letting you just paste a link to a video, image, or audio file and then publishing the linked item in the right format -- was pretty slick.
★ The (Un)Obviousness of iCloud
I have to agree wholeheartedly with this piece by Chris Bowler. I'm using iCloud a lot more than I thought I would because it's just so damn easy, and the syncing just works. And, like Chris, I was astonished by how easy it was to set up my new laptop using iCloud, Dropbox, and Evernote… and I didn't even use Migration Assistant.
The (Un)Obviousness of iCloud: "And so it has gone with iCloud overall. I never really set out to use it to its fullness, but it has become integral to my computing experience. It should have been an obvious transition, but instead it was subtle. This past year came with migrations to two new laptops. The ease of setting up each blew me away both times."
(Via Shawn Blanc.)
Term: Information radiator
So, here’s a term that’s new to me:
Alistair.Cockburn.us | Information radiator: "Coined around 2000 while standing in a Thoughtworks office looking at all the paper on the walls around me, ‘information radiator’ refers to a publicly posted display that shows people walking by what is going on. Information radiators are best when they are big, very easy to see (e.g. not online, generally), and change often enough to be worth revisiting."
(Via this GitHub project, which I found by following a link from ADN@berg, which was retweeted by ADN@dalton )
A “clickable” world
Drew Olanoff suggests that Twitter could extend the hashtag idea to make "bits and pieces of data clickable." I'm not a fan of Twitter these days, but I love the idea of incorporating data structure into online content through simple affordances. Ah, so that’s Twitter’s strategy: A “clickable” world - The Next Web:
"By structuring data, Twitter could make its network of information easier to navigate and discover upon. It would also help the company structure its API so that third-party developers wouldn’t have to dig through every single tweet for particular information. I can click or tap around Wikipedia for hours, since everything is linked by its editors. Twitter could engage users in the same way."
★ Security is Dead
Matt Honan's article for Wired on why passwords can no longer protect our information is thought-provoking and a more than a little worrying.
★ Tyrone, you know I love to watch you work...
[embed][www.youtube.com/watch](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP-RQkeXkf8[/embed])
How could I not link to this? ESPN meets The Princess Bride: Via Kottke
A Smart Bike
This is why the future is in metadata.
Phil Windley gets us thinking about what a "smart bike" might do:
Imagine the bike being connected to its manufacturer, the bike store that sold it, and its owner. From its earliest point in being, the bike would be able to keep track of data about itself, things like its specifications, when it was made, and even the provenance of the materials used in its manufacture. The bike would keep track of inventory data like when it was delivered to the bike shop, who assembled it, its price, and when it was bought and by who. And all this would be possible with a personal cloud for a bike.
While Phil's vision could be accomplished without an on-board bike computer, it's hard to imagine a truly useful fire-and-forget system without one, or without a connected infrastructure at the important points of presence: the manufacturer, the store, the bike shop, etc. But this sort of automated administration would be useful for all sorts of things, and I don't see any technical hurdles standing in the way. It's just a matter of building the supporting schemas and software.
(This post was originally published on The Machine That Goes Ping on 5/26/12)
Book: Black Jack Justice 📚
If you're a fan of old time radio, film noir, or pulp detective novels, and you don't already know about Decoder Ring Theatre and the Black Jack Justice podcast, well shame on you. Gregg Taylor's audio drama about the adventures of Jack Justice and Trixie Dixon, Girl Detective, is as entertaining as they come, full of smart, funny dialog and all the usual murder, intrigue, and action you'd expect from a hard-boiled detective series.
Taylor's new paperback, Black Jack Justice, is the story of how Jack and Trixie first met, and the book won't disappoint either fans of the podcast or the uninitiated reader looking for some good old-fashioned escapist entertainment. Justice is a cracking read; the characters are well-defined, the banter is witty, and the tension ebbs and flows at a pace that keeps the reader engaged throughout. Taylor's writing isn't just an homage to pulp fiction, it shows him as a true peer of the masters of the genre.
(This post originally appeared on The Machine That Goes Ping.)
Movie: Sherlock Holmes (2009) 🎬
This movie is a curious beast. There's much to like: It's beautiful, a gorgeous and gritty recreation of London of the late 1800s. The script is clever. It's got plenty of action. It's got Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes, and the script retains enough of the character and qualities of the Sherlock Holmes stories to satisfy the casual fan of the legendary detective.
On the other hand... it's Sherlock Holmes as an action movie. Which is just... odd. It's a little bit Batman and Robin meets James Bond with some Indiana Jones supernatural sorcery plot lines thrown in for good measure.
The movie suffers from detachment. Having knocked the stodgy and clichéd vision of Holmes off its pedestal, the film never firmly roots him in a new milieu. We know we're supposed to be affected by the fact that Dr. Watson (Jude Law) is moving out of 221B Baker Street to get married (and presumably won't be accompanying Holmes on his adventures any more), but that tension is treated almost casually; Holmes doesn't seem truly moved by that upheaval in his life (nor does Watson), so why should we care? The chemistry between Law and Downey Jr. never quite gels. Some of the situations stretch credulity, such as when we see Holmes improvise his way into a disguise and manufacture a "chance encounter" with Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) and her mysterious employer.
Yet, for all that, Sherlock Holmes is enjoyable and engaging, and I've certainly seen movies worse than this. It's a comic book movie (literally... based on a comic book treatment of Holmes), and that cuts both ways: the comic book sensibility carried out well (as it is here by director Guy Ritchie) makes for great escapism. But it also feels a bit hollow and superficial. We want more for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's great detective than to see him reduced to being just another action-adventure hero.
(This post originally appeared on The Machine That Goes Ping.)
Movie: Moneyball 🎬
So, I watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes the other night and I thought it was good. 3.5 out of 5 stars at least. Good story, decent acting, great effects. But as I watched it I was kind of thinking to myself that I'm tired of the modern action flick schtick. You know, where there's just this predictable cadence of violence and motion and effects stitched together with just enough story elements to make it appealing to a broad audience. I wanted to watch something that took its time and developed characters and situations I could genuinely invest in emotionally.
Moneyball, surprisingly, is exactly that movie.
I say surprisingly mostly because I read the first couple of chapters of Michael Lewis's book of the same name, about Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane and his attempt to change the way baseball players are recruited with the help of Peter Brand, a young economist from Yale. The book is very well written, and I'm looking forward to finishing it... but it's not a movie. What's surprising is that writers Stan Chervin (story), Steven Zaillian, and Aaron Sorkin (screenplay) turned the raw material of Lewis's non-fiction book into an engrossing, touching, and inspiring film. The best film about baseball at least since Bull Durham, but also plain and simply an excellent film.
Director Bennett Miller and Director of Photography Wally Pfister create a palpable sense of being in the back rooms of baseball, of being present with Beane as he struggles to chip away at baseball's long-held traditions. The movie's pacing is perfect, and the acting is outstanding. Jonah Hill and Brad Pitt, in particular, deliver first-rate performances.
You don't have to love baseball to like this movie. Watch it to see the craft of filmmaking at its best. And, if you need a little inspiration – if you like seeing a risk-taker, an innovator, take on the status quo and make a dent in the universe – you'll be richly rewarded by spending a couple hours watching Moneyball.
(This post originally appeared on The Machine That Goes Ping.)
Information Architecture Defined
I ran across this definition of information architecture at IBM's developerWorks site and thought I'd share it here:
Design patterns for information architecture with DITA map domains
Information architectureInformation architecture can be summarized as the design discipline that organizes information and its navigation so an audience can acquire knowledge easily and efficiently. For instance, the information architecture of a Web site often provides a hierarchy of Web pages for drilling down from general to detailed information, different types of Web pages for different purposes such as news and documentation, and so on.
An information architecture is subliminal when it works well. The lack of information architecture is glaring when it works poorly. The user cannot find information or, even worse, cannot recognize or assimilate information when by chance it is encountered. You probably have experience with Web sites that are poorly organized or uneven in their approach, so that conventions learned in one part of the Web site have no application elsewhere. Extracting knowledge from such information resources is exhausting, and users quickly abandon the effort and seek the information elsewhere.
The same issues apply with equal force to other online information systems, such as help systems. The organization and navigation of the information has a dramatic impact on the user’s ability to acquire knowledge.
Book: thinking with type, 2nd Edition 📚
Size, weight, font selection, alignment, grids, spacing, hierarchy... these are tools for conveying information through text. Each tool imparts meaning in its own way, and a basic understanding of each tool's subtleties should be part of each information manager's repertoire.
In thinking with type, 2nd Edition, Ellen Lupton has crafted an excellent introduction to typography, sketching out the history of the art form and packing in a host of practical examples, definitions, rules to embrace and "type crimes" to avoid.
Lupton divides the content of her book into three main sections: Letter, Text, and Grid. In each, she gives some historical background, followed by practical rules for applying each element of typography. For instance, in the Letter section, we learn about the development of metal typefaces and their evolution from shapes that emulated the marks that people naturally made on a page, to shapes that were more clearly machine-produced, to those that were created in response to the constraints of digital displays. Lupton then teaches us how to identify parts of a font, how to think about size and scale, how to mix typefaces and how to work with fonts on a screen.
thinking with type is a very readable book, very well written, and beautifully rendered. I highly recommend it either as an introduction to typography, or as a reference work for the casual designer.
(This post originally appeared on The Machine That Goes Ping.)
The Overhead Implications of Relationship Management
I've been invited to join Google+, but every time I try to join I get the message that Google has "temporarily exceeded our capacity." So fine. I'll be patient.
In the meantime, I've been reading up on the service. The most fascinating part of it to me is Google Circles, a kind of proto-VRM social graph management feature. Circles lets you define relationships between your contacts so that you can tune your messages and sharing appropriately. Maybe you want to share your pictures of your kids with grandma and grandpa, but not with your drinking buddies. Circles helps you keep those groups straight.
On this week's Hypercritical podcast, John Siracusa pointed out one potential problem with this feature: the interface is cute and effective for groups of 12 or less, but a bit unwieldy for the larger circles of dozens or hundreds you might want to put together for, say, professional networking.
And Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb points out another important usability issue with Circles (and, by extension, any relationship management application): administrative overhead. She points out that your relationships with people may change over time due to things like changing jobs. The group of people that yesterday you categorized as "work colleagues" are today "acquaintances", or something similar.
Or, as Perez says, virtual relationships can become real, as when we meet someone we've been following on Twitter:
But what about when one of those people becomes a real-world friend? Maybe you first run into them at a conference, putting a face to a name. They're now an "Acquaintance." Later, you spend a night out on the town with them, and realize you have a lot in common. You make plans to see each other again, at a non-work event, perhaps. This person has become a "Friend." Depending on how your Google Circles are set up, you may have had to drag-and-drop them into multiple different circles over time, as this relationship changes.
How many people do you have in your address book? Let's say your Google+ Circles include the 150 people that Dunbar says we can maintain stable social relationships with. How much time do you think it would take you to review each of them and make sure that they're organized into the right groups in Circles? And how often would you have to look at that list to make updates? And what if you were to add in people on the fringes - people you might be acquainted with, but don't interact with on a regular basis?
This administrative overhead would be a deal killer for most normal humans. Very few people will want to take the time to maintain this relationship graph on a regular basis. If you're, say, a real estate agent, keeping up with your contact list is a critical business activity. But when you're off the clock, personal contact administration is just a chore, and ignoring that chore can have consequences. If the tools you use to interact online expect you to have a continually pruned and up-to-date relationship graph, the risk of exposing information to the wrong group of people is higher when you don't meet that expectation.
The implication of this observation is that either the tools have to do a lot more to help you manage these changing relationships automatically - perhaps by analyzing where you are, who you're with, and what sort of messages you send via email, twitter, IM, etc. - or our personal relationship management tools are going to remain very simple for the foreseeable future. I suspect the latter is the case. Without having seen it myself, I suspect that Google+ Circles represents the outer edge of what people are willing to do to maintain relationships online. If that's true, then anything that depends on exploiting your social graph will have some built-in limitations that will be very hard to get around.
Dependencies
Proponents of VRM and the Personal Data Ecosystem are facing an uphill battle. In order to move the locus of power away from organizational interests and towards individual interests, the architects of this new space will need to break two very powerful dependencies: corporations' dependency on the income derived from capturing and reusing their users' data, and individuals' dependency on the free or nearly free services that they get in exchange for giving up that data. These two forces form a kind of magnetic attraction to each other, one that won't easily be broken.
This point was driven home to me by this excellent post from Ian Wilker about Sam Harrelson, who deleted his Facebook, Google, and Twitter accounts back in November and wrote this about why he did so:
I don’t blame them. Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple etc are corporations. Corporations are inherently out for themselves and their stock holders. I blame myself for falling into the trap of shiny and nifty free/freemium services in exchange for my data and my online identity. I want my children and students to grow up in an era that includes an open web that isn’t based on advertising or 3rd party cookie data mining.
There are few of us who are as committed to the idea of breaking our dependency on these services as Sam is. I can't do it. I might be able to live without Twitter at this point. I've walked up to the line of deleting my Facebook account, but can't pull the trigger. Google is just a bridge too far for me. No way can I replace the convenience of Gmail.
And the punchline is that even Sam can't completely leave Twitter. In a comment to his own post on leaving these services, he writes:
Oddly enough (or not), my 8th graders have been on my case constantly about my Twitter sojourn. So, I'm using the @GriffinScience account as my "teacher"/personal account to keep in contact with the students who rely on their Twitter stream pretty heavily (growing number and I want to encourage their exploration).
Online services like Twtter, Facebook, et al, have become so embedded in our lives that, lacking alternatives, we are left with two painful choices to make: either 1) continue to use these web services and pay the price by contributing to the erosion of our privacy and control, or 2) give up these services and cut ourselves off from a vibrant online society and a powerful set of communication tools.
We need other choices to make. Organizations need alternative ways to make a profit other than capturing and storing user data. Individuals need low-cost, high-value services that come with tools to control the movement and use of their personal data.
But new services that offer these choices will need to overcome the strong symbiotic bond that currently exists between users and the current set of services. Personal Data service providers will need to offer alternatives that look a lot like the current options and that provide similar levels of utility, while also providing the extra features that move the balance of control back towards individuals. Like Nicorette for smokers or methadone for heroin addicts, Personal Data services need to satisfy current cravings while simultaneously replacing them with something healthier. And that, while not impossible, is going to be a challenge.