Smarterware
Just pushed a new version 0.8 of Todo.txt Touch for Android, which offers a brand spanking new homescreen widget, tappable contact info, better search results, and more. Download it to your Android device now.
In addition to the new homescreen widget pictured here, this release detects email addresses and phone numbers in task text and offers a one-tap shortcut to the dialer or your device's email handler. For example, if you have a task that reads "Email joe@example.com or call 718-555-1212," when you tap on that task, the action menu looks like this. Tap on the email address to compose a message or the phone number to pre-fill your phone's dialer.
Searching todo.txt for keywords now works better, too. If you've got two tasks that read "Process pull requests" and "Request pull on project," in earlier versions if you searched for "pull request" you'd only see the first task. Instead of only displaying exact phrase matches, version 0.8 ORs your terms, so a search for "pull request" returns both tasks.
More interface improvements: when you scroll down your todo.txt file and complete or delete a task, the app remembers your scroll position and keeps you in place. This makes processing consecutive tasks easier. The filter interface has been redesigned to match the rest of the application, in white and green. See it here. Finally, thanks to the latest version of the Dropbox SDK and Android LINT, this release is more secure, more performant, and less buggy.
Thanks to all the Todo.txt community members who make Todo.txt Touch for Android happen.
Version 0.8 has been submitted to the Amazon Appstore for approval, but you can download Todo.txt Touch from the Android Market now.
One of the most-requested features for Todo.txt Touch for Android is a homescreen widget that displays top priority tasks. Android widgets are subject to a set of even stricter visual and functional constraints than full-screen apps, so getting this feature right has been a challenge. Your smartphone's homescreen is meaningful, precious real estate, and this app's widget should treat it that way.
Visual design has never been my strength, so I decided to do this in public and learn from conversations and critiques along the way. On a late night last fall I dove into the widget's design, posting screenshots to Google+ as I went, and iterating based on the critiques and suggestions I got in the comments for each. This is a summary of the progression of that process.
First, our requirements. In priority order, the Todo.txt Android homescreen widget should:
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Why I am an atheist
6 days ago
The details differ, but the story arc of how Mark Jaquith became an atheist mirrors my own. Raised in a traditional Roman Catholic household, on the best days my religion bored me, on the worst, it made me feel like a terrible sinner. Every day, its contradictions and lack of fact-based logic troubled me. I felt no connection to or appreciation for the culture or community of the Church, especially its patriarchy, homophobia, and focus on sin and repentance. My parents were very religious, so I endured 12 years of Catholic school wearing a pleated plaid skirt and fearing the nuns who were my teachers. Dad was an usher, Mom a Communion minister, my brothers altar boys. In addition to Sundays, I daydreamed through morning Mass every weekday before school with Mom. I studied Latin (the only part I don't regret).
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I've switched to an iPhone as my primary mobile device because I'm dogfooding my new iOS app. Coming off of three straight years of Android, one of the toughest parts of the transition was losing the applications drawer. My new iPhone had so many screens of icons, all perfectly aligned in a grid, every one with rounded corners, all equal visual weight, nary a widget in site! I got dizzy swiping across the carousel of apps trying to find the one I needed. I decided to get all my apps onto 1 or 2 homescreens using folders that made it obvious what was where.
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Google going evil has become the Godwin’s Law of tech commentary: "As an online discussion tech commentary about Google grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler calling it evil approaches 1." Let's move beyond the sensationalist "evil" headlines and get clear on what's actually been going on recently.
The privacy policy consolidation was not as big a deal as everyone made it out to be. The Mocality fiasco was terrible, and Google was rightly mortified. We may all agree that Search Plus Your World smacks of AOL and/or Facebook, and that perhaps Google is having its Microsoft Moment, but please stop publishing "turning evil" headlines. It's an overused, scare-mongering hook, people. Instead, criticize what you don't like about what Google's doing using specific examples, and even better, code. If you're not a coder, then just take the time to educate readers about the specific disadvantages of what Google is doing and what the alternatives to their services are really like. We'll all be a lot smarter for it.
Related: The glut of hackneyed zingers about how Android isn't really "open."
Last January I took apart my computer desk and rebuilt it at standing height. I've been standing at my desk every workday since. Just in my 2011 travels, I've seen standing desks everywhere from the offices of San Francisco startups to the White House.
Over the past 12 months, standing desks went from popular life hacks meme to eyeroll-inducing sign of a certain type of tightly-wound techie, similar to emptying your email inbox. Several people have asked me if I'm still standing. The answer is yes. Here's what I've learned from 365 days of being a professional stander.
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The Week We Stopped SOPA
2 weeks ago
Anil sums up the history and future of web protest as we wrap up the week we stopped SOPA. I had chills on Wednesday, the day the web went black in protest of SOPA, because we were all witnessing—and more importantly, participating in—history in the making. I'm so very glad to be alive during these exciting times.
"Bloggers are famous enough to have stalkers, but not famous enough to have bodyguards." —Danny O'Brien
Everyone thinks they want a million Twitter followers and a million pageviews a day on their blog and the incredible high that it must be to walk around in the world knowing you're "internet famous." Yes, being famous among dozens has its privileges, but it also has a flip side netizens rarely discuss.
I passed 200,000 followers on Twitter this week. I'm not a celebrity. I've written books and made apps, but I've never been on primetime TV and I wasn't on Twitter's suggested user list during its heyday. I am an early adopter, a dedicated self-promoter, a daily user, and a leader in two large internet communities. All these things translated into an outsized follower count on both Twitter and Google+. Nowadays, when someone notices my follower count—and many people do, because it's a status symbol which indicates which echelon of web society you belong to—they get wide-eyed. "Wow, you're famous," they say.
Reality check: Lady Gaga is famous. Bloggers are not famous.
I'm not famous, but I have an outsized audience. I can ask a question and get hundreds of replies, reshares, and favorites in a matter of hours. If I want a lot of people to see something, I can make that happen in a few keystrokes without any help from a PR firm or media outlet. I've mentioned my follower counts and blog stats in book deal and paycheck negotiations, because people who hire me are often buying my ability to market my book or project.
But you know what else happens when you have an outsized audience?
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If you're sending Gmail messages from anywhere other than Gmail itself, they may look like they're phishing attempts. Up until today, whenever I sent messages using my Google Apps account with the From: address set to my vanilla Gmail address, my Gmail-using recipients got an alarming, bright red message at the top which said "This message may not have been sent by [who it appears to be from]. Learn more Report phishing." Make sure this doesn't happen to you.
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There's a vast difference between software you can use for free and apps you pay to use: different customers, different business model, different commitment for developer and user.
When you price your mobile app, for example, it doesn't really matter whether you make it cost $1 or $2. The majority of people who want your app and are prepared to pay something for it won't balk at two bucks versus one. But making your app cost anything at all puts up a hurdle much greater than 100 pennies, especially in new markets.
Android Market users have paid for significantly fewer apps than iOS/iTunes Store users. My own numbers confirm this. This isn't because Android users are inherently freeloaders, it's because they're not prepared to buy apps, psychologically and practically.
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After a year of starts and stops and some flailing and nail-biting, we finally shipped. The Todo.txt mobile app is now available for iOS. Get it for your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad in the iTunes Store now.
Just like the Android app, Todo.txt for iOS is open source and built by a community of contributors. It's priced at $1.99 to defray the costs of running the project and help me fund its continued development.
Making this app was a whole new experience for me across several axes. As a Java developer and full-time Android user, I was a stranger in a strange land, learning a new language and a new culture. I wasn't familiar with iOS usage conventions, not to mention its technical aspects. As such, I did more directing others who know much more than I do than I did actual coding. We modeled the UI after the existing Android app, and added in a few iOS specific features where UI conventions didn't align. (For example, iOS doesn't have an ever-present search button like Android does, so you pull down your to-do list to reveal a search box.)
The app has been live in the iTunes Store for just over 24 hours, and it's gotten 11 five-star ratings and one one-star rating, and eight reviews, all positive with one exception. But what about sales compared to the Android app's launch day?
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Codecademy's Code Year is a weekly lesson for people who want to learn how to program. Over at Slate, Farhad Manjoo explains a few good reasons why you might want to do that at all, with a quick quote from me. When Manjoo emailed, he asked, "What are some good reasons for people to be more familiar with programming?" I replied:
First and foremost, learning to code demystifies tech in a way that empowers and enlightens. When you start coding you realize that every digital tool you have ever used involved lines of code just like the ones you're writing, and that if you want to make an existing app better, you can do just that with the same foreach and if-then constructs every coder has ever used. Learning how to code also makes you respect the incredible accomplishments of all the engineers who came before you, the importance of good data, and the systems and services we all take for granted every day, even mundane things like the software that runs an elevator or processes a credit card.
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The maker makes: on design, community, and personal empowerment
January 3rd, 2012
Jeffrey Zeldman:
The first thing I got about the web was its ability to empower the maker. I say “it made me” but I made it, too. You get the power by using it. Nobody confers it on you.
I missed last Wednesday's 2011 Year in Review episode of This Week in Google because I was on an airplane somewhere over New Mexico. That doesn't mean I don't have a list of things I'd like to see Google do in 2012.
In no particular order:
Release a killer tablet. Price this tablet head-turningly less than the iPad, make it run Ice Cream Sandwich flawlessly, and offer completely sandwiched-out apps that absolutely scream for the big screen. Forget trying too hard not to offend other Android device manufacturers. Googorola should get this tablet exactly right, down to every last ever-loving detail, with the hardware and the software teams living, breathing, eating, and sleeping together on it. Get at least a few third parties who make apps that cover the major categories of things people do on tablets (news browsing, gaming, social media) to play along before launch, like the NY Times, Twitter, Angry Birds. Google has their core apps covered: Gmail, Calendar, and Maps already appear to be upgraded for ICS and therefore should look fantastic when they unfold on a tablet screen. Don't use chase scenes and explosions or even robots in the advertising. Cash in on Google's brand loyalty and recognition and market it simply as "the Google tablet." The messaging should be: If you use and love Google, this is your tablet.
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As a teenager, my biggest fear about becoming a grown-up was less that I wouldn't get a job and more that I'd get a boring job. With the notable exception of my mother, most of the adults in my life modeled my worst-case scenario. They got up before dawn, put on a suit, and trudged off to a soul-crushing, paper-pushing black hole, every day, every year. The idea of that being what you got post-graduation absolutely terrified me.
Looking back at the last 12 months, I know that 16-year-old me would be pretty psyched about the kind of stuff 36-year-old me gets to do. 2011 was mostly great, at times I-must-be-dreaming fantastic, and at others deeply difficult. One thing it sure never was: boring.
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I'm Gina Trapani: creator of ThinkUp and Todo.txt apps, co-host of This Week in Google, founding and former editor of Lifehacker. This is my personal blog.
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You are what you write.