Author Archive

Craig Hockenberry blogged about this excellent piece of internet lore the other day about the origin of the word “tweet” from way back in 2006

Fever + Sunstroke = A great RSS reading experience

Google Reader is “retiring” next week. Like many I have been looking for a replacement. Feedly is a service I have been using and quite like. However I also took the opportunity to experiment with a feed reader that I’ve heard about for years called Fever.

fever fluid

Developed by Shaun Inman, Fever is a web app, not a desktop app. I like it so much that its made me enjoy RSS again and relegated Feedly to my backup RSS reader.

Why Fever is awesome

Hot Links

Traditional RSS readers get crowded and overwhelming when you subscribe to a lot of feeds. With Fever, it actually reads your feeds and compiles the most frequently talked about links into a Hot Links page. So the more links you follow, the better Fever gets.

My RSS feeds in Fever

Click to embiggen

I wondered how well this would work. I’m glad to say it works great. Fever constantly shows me the top Apple and WordPress news: exactly the news I want to see. Read More »

Why I love Apple

I’ve got this relationship with Apple that is unique among all the other brands that I use.

I love Apple. At least 10x more than any other brand.

I honestly believe that they make products with the singular goal of enhancing its users lives. Apple can and usually does things in their own way. But their decisions are based on making my day more productive, my experiences more immersive and my tools more delightful. That’s why they obsess over details.

Details like how and when to show you new email in iPhone Mail. Details like formatting dates so they remain visible in varying column widths. Details like making a MacBook out of a single piece of aluminum. Details like variances measured in microns.

Apple recently unveiled their Designed by Apple campaign at WWDC 2013. In the video above that explains their reason for being, they say:

We spend a lot of time
On a few great things.
Until every idea we touch
Enhances each life it touches.

Cynics will say that it’s just marketing or hippy bullshit.

I say it’s proof that Apple makes its products for people, not “markets”. Real people like my mom, not numbers who make up sales figures. It’s proof that Apple cares.

That’s why I love Apple.

Kuala Lumpur DAY-NIGHT time-lapse

I saw this beautiful time-lapse of Kuala Lumpur by Rob Whitworth when he first premiered it but I never blogged it. I stumbled across it in my Google+ feed again today and wanted to share and remember this on my blog.

Pants_are_Overrated_– Hobbes_and_Bacon

Hobbes and Bacon is a Calvin and Hobbes tribute that takes place 26 years later when Calvin is all grown up and married (!). Calvin’s daughter, Bacon, now inherits daddy’s old toy and childhood pal, Hobbes. And it looks like Calvin married Susie Derkins! What a wonderful tribute to my favorite comic strip of all time…

Brian Clark on Marketing Land:

But the true allure of content marketing is in building an audience. Rather than the constant rat race of conventional online lead generation, an audience puts your business into an entirely different space within your industry. Instead of buying access to an audience from the media, your company becomes the media. In the process, you build an owned media asset (your content-rich website) that gets more powerful and valuable each month and each year that you continue producing content.

I’ll add a final point to Brian’s excellent article: It takes hard work

Epic troll of SMS spammer

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I absolutely *detest* spammers so I got a kick out of how this guy turned the tables on his spammer. Originally shared on Facebook by Relax, it’s just Godzilla.

wp10logoIn conjunction with WordPress’ 10th Anniversary I wrote down some reflections on my journey with WordPress on the ClickWP blog:

WordPress is one of the blessings I count every day because it is entirely free to use. It was created freely and given away freely to the world. I am where I am today because of this generosity.

Happy birthday WordPress ♥

Running your own business feels like dodging trains

Subway Surfers by Kiloo

Subway Surfers by Kiloo

I’ve been playing a game on my iPad called Subway Surfers (it’s available for Android too). In the game you control an avatar running along the train track. You have to pick up trains, jump over barriers, and dodge trains! As you progress the speed increases so you’re almost flying past the tracks and trains. Sooner or later the inevitable happens – you smash headlong into a train.

It occurred to me today that running your own business feels like a lot like playing Subway Surfers. You’re constantly chasing your paycheck, you dodge problems after problem, but inevitably you smack into one. In the game, you can simply restart but in your business you’re going to waste time, lose money or worse – your reputation.

Moral of today’s random musing: Practice running your business, not Subway Surfers 😀

[VIDEO] Wingsuit flight through a small arch in a mountain

I’ve been very impressed with wingsuit jumpers (flyers?) but this is one of the more insane ones I’ve seen. Alexander Polli threads the needle through a small arch in the Montserrat mountains in Spain.