Matthew Lang

... from Michael Wade.

If you do not have a stack of unread books at home then there is no hope for you. I have known brave soldiers who are intellectuals but I'd never want a university faculty to cover my back. Every day should begin with a good look at the sky.

— Random Thoughts by Michael Wade

Many of you will know through my posts that I'm a big App.net fan. It's my goto place when I want to drop in on conversations, strike up news ones with others and also just as a place to post what I am doing. It's also the one public social network that I participate in.

I've never been interested in creating a Facebook account as I simply seeing as being too much of an overhead to maintain. I also deleted my Twitter account this year. It was coincidental that the timing of this action happened at the same time as Twitter were enforcing new rules on the use of their API. I just felt that I wasn't getting anything back from Twitter in terms of value.

Since switching to a single public social network, I've noticed a number of positive things that have occurred as a result of my limiting action.

No more drowning in micro-information

The first thing I immediately noticed was that I was no longer constantly checking my Twitter timeline. Looking back I wonder now why I even had an account there in the first place. It's a social network for micro-updates that only offers limited information in each post. I did find it interesting hearing what other people were working on, but Twitter's post limit of 140 characters seriously limits the amount of context you can put on a post.

Less apps and services to use

With just one social network to my name, I have less apps on all my devices. It's a minor thing but having less apps on my devices means less time updating them, searching for new ones and of course less time checking them. I also work with a 'one in, one out rule'. As much as possible I will try and keep the number of products and services I use down to a minimum. That means that more often than not, I will replace older apps with new apps rather than running two at the same time.

Less of a digital footprint

I like keeping a small digital footprint. Nothing to do with trying to stay under the radar in terms of the government spying on you, but more to do with my own data and it's safety. As soon as I stop using a product or service I try and delete the account I had with that product or service. I do this because I don't want my login details lying around on another companies database when it doesn't need to.

It's not for everyone

Limiting yourself isn't for everyone, but it was amazing to see how little I depended on Twitter after just a couple of weeks of deleting my account. I used to think of social networks as places to find more information on topics, but the truth is that I find everything I need in the form of blogs, newsletters and podcasts.

I now see social networks as more of a place for conversation. Fortunately App.net does this aspect of interaction very well and I'm happy to remain a paying subscriber to it.

Being a new frame builder in the UK, I just had to link to this amazing restored 1970's track bike by No Quarter.

via CycleEXIF

As an American football fan, I thought this was such a refreshing take on the game. Given that this level of football has fewer risks when adopting such a strategy, it would still be great to see this approach in the NFL.

Slow plays, always punting on the 4th down and running the clock down are making the game safer for the teams. Safer for the winning team, but a drab to watch as a fan.

via Grantland

I'm always reviewing the tools I'm using on a daily basis, and last week I wondered what tools I was using that I used the most on a daily basis. This wasn't compiled from a list of measured interactions with all my tools, but simply an informed guess at the tools that I use daily.

Safari

The web browser. Every web developers main application for running and testing their applications. For me as well though, it's a window to the Internet. Having previously ditched Chrome, I used Firefox for about six months. As web browsers go I couldn't complain about it's speed, features and developer tools.

I tried Safari for a week just as an experiment about a month ago and found that there was nothing in Safari I couldn't do in Firefox. Since then it's been Safari all the way.

One good thing to come out of it was that I also dropped my Instapaper account in favour of Safari's built in reading list that also syncs to my iPhone. Not only am I always looking for new services to use and try, I also like to keep the number of applications and services I'm using down to a minimum. By using Safari I was able to delete Firefox and also my Instapaper account.

Mail

Apple's Mail client isn't everyone's cup of tea, but the way I see it is that if it does everything for me that I need it to do then why not? It supports multiple accounts, interacts with my contacts list and works well with FastMail.

Trello

Project management tools are a rare thing for web developers that practice agile methods like stand ups. Agile methodologies like Extreme Programming and Kanban will rely on index cards and boards as the main point of interaction for a team with a project. Until Trello was launched, applications that tried to replicate this in code didn't always get it right.

Working on my own means that communicating with others on the project remotely is more important than practices such as stand ups. Every day I enjoy using Trello for the needs of my clients and for the needs of my own projects. It's flexible layout means that it can be tailored to lots of different workflows.

Evernote

I've only been using Evernote for a week now but it has become a growing part of my day to day work flow. With a tool like this I now have a place that I can put information that I might need at a later date. I've found so many uses for it in the last few days.

First there's interaction. There's just so many ways of interacting with Evernote such as the web clipper, by email and of course there are a number of other apps in the Evernote marketplace that make getting information you have from one app to Evernote easy.

Then there's accessibility. With apps for the desktop, phone and tablet, I can access my Evernote stuff from anywhere. My iPad has now become more of a day to day writing tool again thanks to the access I have to Evernote on it.

Evernote fills the gap of a knowledge management tool for me nicely now. All the information I need is now in one place and easy to access and search.

iTerm 2

iTerm2 is my terminal of choice. Having used it for a few years now, I'm familiar with most of the keyboard shortcuts and it just works.

Sublime Text

Sublime Text has worked well for me over the last few years. I'm still discovering some of the keyboard shortcuts and I'm have to admit that I am not using all of it's features on a day to day basis, but for writing code it serves me well.

Notebook

A list of daily tools wouldn't be complete without a notebook or two. I have two on the go at the moment.

The first notebook was initially used for tracking client work, but this has evolved into a task journal for all my work using the dash plus system. Where as Trello is used for mostly tracking progress on projects, my task journal is for tasks that come from features in Trello, ad-hoc client tasks or tasks from my own master list.

The second notebook is mostly for the initial capture of ideas, thoughts, posts and sketches. I use it maybe once or twice a week, but it's always sitting on my desk within easy reach. When I'm tired of sitting at my desk, I'll move to a more comfortable chair and review my capture notebook or simply do some writing straight into it.

As brilliant as technology is, sometimes you can think better with just pen and paper.

Settling for Defaults

One thing that's clear from my list is that if there's a default tool on my MacBook that is adequate for the job then I will use it. I dislike having my MacBook cluttered with different tools and applications that serve the same purpose.

The one exception here is my choice of terminal. Apple's default application Terminal still doesn't allow vertical split panes whereas iTerm2 does. A small feature, but given that I always have two panes open side by side, it makes sense to use iTerm2 over Terminal.

Skipping the Support Apps

A few of might be wondering about apps such as Alfred, PopClip or even Fantastical. Well, while I use these as well on a daily basis, I tend to view them as support applications to my seven above. They're still bloody useful tools to have but sitting in the background there's always open and frequently support the seven tools that I have listed above.

There we have it, my seven essential daily tools. I put forth the question to you now. What's your seven essential daily tools and how do they make you work better?

I'd like to order a couple of sets of these iPad stands for the different iPads in the house.

via Tools and Toys

One habit I've managed to sustain this year is my daily reading list. It grew out of the fact there I have subscribed to some good quality content in the past and I was trying to set aside time at the end of the week to read it. Due to the volume of posts I was eventually left with at the end of the week, I decided a couple of years ago to start making a habit of starting my day with reading.

It started with a collection of blogs that I read first thing every morning.

• Nicholas Bate - Unofficial mentor and guide.
• Kurt Harden - Ohio based family man.
• Michael Wade - Arizona based management consultant.
• Curtis McHale - Unofficial freelance mentor.

Now these guys might not post every single day, but every day there is at least a handful of posts from some of them. What's important here is that no two blogs are the same. They're distinctly different and that's what makes reading them every day so easy to do. There's diversity and the posts that I read are all on diffent topics.

The last thing on my daily reading list is James Shelley's Caesura Letters newsletter. Every week day you receive an email with a post on a specific topic. You won't find any techno-babble here or gimmicky productivity tips. James Shelley's newsletter is a daily call to action to make you continually think and and re-focus yourself. The Caesura Letters is deep reading but it's a great way to start the day.

The thing about the daily reading list is that it's more of a learning tool than anything else. The items on my daily reading list are there for a reason. They're a source of knowledge. Not every post has a treasure of information in it, but the amount of posts I save for myself are an indicator of how useful they are to me.

Patrick Rhone has some other suggestions for daily learning tools if you're interested.

It's been a couple of weeks now since I first presented the idea of a newsletter for App.net. A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks, so here's a recap.

Initial feedback was good

Based on poll taken by a number of App.net members, there was very positive feedback on the idea of a newsletter. A number of ideas and suggestions were sent to myself regarding content for the newsletter. A second poll asking if user's would like to see personalised content wasn't as popular.

Using the App.net API

Another thing that came out of this was the possibility of using App.net so that users could authorise their accounts so that we use the user's email address to send them the newsletter. Once this was done I had another idea to personalise the newsletter based on posts from each user's timeline. I would read the user's timeline for the week and include highlighted posts from the past week in the newsletter. There were two problems with this.

The first is that the App.net API does not include a user's email address in their profile when you ask for it. Understandable really given that this email could be used in other ways by an application that has access to the API.

Secondly the original idea was for a newsletter. At the time I hadn't considered a personalised newsletter until a few days later. Now that I've had a chance to access the API, reading user's timelines for highlighted posts is a major task that would require more time than I currently have available.

The idea of building a full application to support personalised content for the newsletter is a large undertaking and one that I wouldn't be prepared to undertake unless I had a number of sign ups already interested in this. Based on the light feedback I had it simply wasn't enough to warrant my time at the moment.

So what's the plan with the newsletter then?

Well, the plan is to still provide a premium newsletter for App.net members who can sign up with any email address they choose. I am not going to be using the App.net API in anyway for the newsletter, as I'm still essentially testing the validity of this idea. Yes people voted on it and said it was a good idea, but when it comes to getting paid subscriptions will people still be so positive about it?

In order fully test this idea, I will be moving ahead with publishing a newsletter for the App.net community but it will be limited to a number of editions in order to test whether the idea has enough subscribers to carry forward.

I've still got a number of questions about sign ups, cost of the newsletter and hopefully the possibility of making the newsletter free until the number of sign ups has reached a set limit.

This week I'll be announcing the account that will act as a contact point for the newsletter and where people can submit ideas or content for the newsletter. I'll also hopefully be releasing the sign up page for the newsletter next week. A couple of weeks after this I'll be releasing the first edition of the newsletter.