I get questions like this occasionally. Sometimes they’re about a website, a video or some other webby thing I had a hand in creating. Oddly, nobody asked that question about our book or the play I wrote a couple of years ago: “I liked that comedy you wrote. What software did you use?” And I rarely hear anybody remark to a city employee, “hey, that’s a nice ditch you dug. What shovel did you use?”
I’d imagine that people who spend all their time being creative with new tools–web designers, animators and so forth–get asked this question all the time. I’m guilty of doing it myself. I remember, for example, asking Rob about his process in creating his Noise to Signal comics.
I was just curious more than anything. A lot of times, I think people are asking the “what software did you use?” question so that they can replicate your efforts. It may be subconscious, but they think “if I had that software, I could do that too”. And maybe they could.
In creative enterprises–from a pencil sketch to a feature film–the tool is the thing that matters least. What matters is that weird combination of skill, clever decisions, intuition, good fortune and the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s blessing that makes for a successful creative project. For example, Jorge Colombo drew this week’s New Yorker cover using Brushes, an iPhone app.
In thinking about this topic, I’m reminded of Arthur C. Clarke’s third law: “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”. Most of us don’t understand the in’s and out’s of how you create a website or a digitally-animated short. As such, we tend to ascribe the ‘magic’ of the creation to the tool, as opposed to the creators.
What do you think? Do you ever get asked this question?
I randomly happened upon this little technology demo from Last.fm. It’s called Boffin, and, using Last.fm’s metadata, it generates a tag cloud out of your music collection. You click a couple of tags, click play and it provides yet another way to slice and dice one’s sprawling music archives. Here’s what mine looks like:
The top half of the cloud is more accurate than the bottom half. I’m not sure how much of my music is “hair metal approved”, and I’m pretty sure it’s over-representing the fraction of my collection that is Norwegian.
But that’s not really what I want to talk about. When you install and first run Boffin, it needs to scan your music collection. I have about 10,000 songs, so that took quite a while. During this process, however, Boffin displayed this lovely visualization of my music:
The YouTube-hosted screencast video is a bit sketchy, but you get the idea. It’s a totally unnecessary feature–actually useless, as it happens. But I found the cascading images of bands kind of hypnotizing. I really appreciated that the app designer when that extra step to make a very ordinary process–scanning your hard drive for music–a little remarkable.
I was fortunate to get a bunch more recommendations for OS X apps from Twitter and my previous post. I’ve included most of them below. I skipped a few that seemed particularly specialized, or specific to a particular profession (for example, software developer, web designer, and so forth). Here they are:
AppTrap - Ensures that all files are removed when you uninstall software.
Boxee - From what I gather, a kind of free, open source media centre.
Calaboration - For syncing Google Calendar with iCal. I’ve tried three solutions, and this is the only one that’s worked without serious agony.
CrossOver Games - Apparently a ’seamless’ tool for playing PC games on OS X.
DoubleCommand - A utility for remapping your keyboard. Apparently useful for using a non-Apple keyboard with OS X. I’m going to give this a try, as I want to use my big old Windows keyboard instead of the dainty one that came with my iMac.
DropBox - Storage app and syncing service for storing and sharing files. For what it’s worth, I tried this tool on OS X 10.4 and had a difficult time uninstalling it.
Evernote - Very handy research, note-taking and forget-me-not tool. I’ve never used their software, but have lately used their Firefox add-ons for research on our book.
Freedom - Turns off your network connection for eight hours, enabling you to temporarily defeat your Internet addiction so you can do actual work.
iAlertU - A car alarm for your laptop. It uses your Mac’s built-in motion sensor to trigger an alarm and snap a photo of the apparent thief with the iSite camera.
iTunes Alarm - Predictably, turns iTunes into an alarm clock.
Jumpcut - Access your clipboard’s history, and edit the contents on the fly.
Popcorn - Another tool for extracting your DVDs to your computer.
Scrivener - Another app specifically built for the writer. Looks quite cool, though I wonder how a tool like this influences the kind of work you might create.
TextExpander - Saves you time by enabling you to create customized keyboard shortcuts for commonly-used phrases.
Transmission - A pretty terrific BitTorrent client that I’ve used on occasion.
TrueCrypt - “Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux.”
This week I got a new iMac. It’s the first machine I’ve had that’s running OS X 10.5 (that would be Leopard for all you cat-lovers), the current version of Apple’s operating system. I thought I’d ask on Twitter about the Apple desktop apps that the cool kids are using. Here’s what I heard back. I expect that Apple power users will be familiar with all of these.
UPDATE: If this post interests, you might want to check out part two as well.
1Password - A password manager and form completer.
Adium - The popular all-in-one instant messaging client.
Bento - “Personal file organization and database”. I’m a little unclear on why I’d want this. Anyone?
Boot Camp - The app that enables you to run Windows on my iMac. Assuming I can acquire a copy of Windows, I plan to install it for running Windows-only games.
Caffeine - “Caffeine is a tiny program that puts an icon in the right side of your menu bar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back.” I gather this is for when you’re watching longer web-based videos, where the screen goes dim without inputs after a while?
ClicktoFlash - A Safari plug-in that turns all Flash elements in a web page to gray boxes until you click them. I’m a Firefox user myself, so FlashBlock looks like the equivalent.
FileVault - Software for encrypting one’s files. Borisassures me that I “can ignore FileVault — it’s for encrypting your home directory. Only uber nerds use it.” I am not an uber-nerd, so I’ll take his advice.
FileZilla - An open-source FTP client. I’ve always used CyberDuck, for no particular reason. They both have incredibly goofy names.
Fluid - Make site-specific browsers for your favourite web apps. I’ve been using Google Gears to get certain web app icons in my desktop’s dock, but this will work better.
HandBrake - “An open-source, GPL-licensed, multi-platform, multithreaded, DVD to MPEG-4 converter, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.”
KeePassX - Another password manager. Yes, I’m troubled by that creative spelling of “key”.
Layers - If I understand it correctly, it enables you to build multi-window screen captures? Seems kind of like a nail in search of a hammer, but who am I to judge?
Mailplane - This is kind of a custom email browser for Gmail that makes the web-based email app act more like desktop software. I’ve used this on my laptop for a while, but lately (probably due to Gmail, not Mailplane itself) I’ve found it rather sluggish. So these days I’m giving Apple Mail a try.
PersonalBrain - A mind-mapping tool, from what I can gather.
Quicksilver - Hard to describe, so here’s Wikipedia: “allows users to use the keyboard to rapidly perform tasks such as launching applications, manipulating files and data, running scripts, or sending e-mail.” I’ve had this installed on my laptop for some time, but I barely ever think to use it.
Skitch - The very handy, exceptionally usable screen capture and quick illustration app.
Snackr - An Adobe AIR app that, I gather, turns part of your desktop into a kind of CNN news ticker, powered by the RSS feeds of your choice.
Storyist - A word processor designed for novelists and screenwriters.
TextMate - A fancier TextEdit. I used NotePad++ on my Windows desktop–I must check to see if there’s a OS X version.
Things - Task management software. Boris, if I recall correctly, described the Areas of Responsibility feature as a ‘game-changer’.
Ted - Combines RSS and BitTorrent to automagically download the TV shows you specify. I’m familiar with another app that does the same thing, TVShows.
Tinderbox - “A personal content assistant that helps you visualize, analyze, and share your notes.”
VideoLan - The workhouse, almost-never-fails video player I’ve come to know and love. Nowhere is Apple more irrational than in its ridiculously narrow native support of video formats.
We’re spending the weekend putting the final touches on our ebook, and planning our marketing push. I’m doing the final layout work on the book, and one of the last things on my list is adding cross references. You know, sentences like “for more information on Facebook, see page 46″. We’re using Pages 2.0, part of Apple’s iWork ‘08 suite. I started clicking around the menus to finding the cross reference functionality, and couldn’t. You know why?
Pages doesn’t offer cross references.
I am seriously underwhelmed. Cross references are a pretty basic feature for word processor software. After all, Microsoft Word has had them for about 15 years. Apple wants me to use Pages to make “newsletters, reports, proposals”, but they want me to hard code the frickin’ page numbers?
It’s not an enormous pain now, but it will cause serious angst every time we update the book. Once we introduce a few paragraphs of new content, every cross reference will be wrong.
I’m extra disappointed because Pages has otherwise proved an excellent, reliable tool with few bugs, and a real improvement on alternatives MS Word (on reliability) and Framemaker (on usability).
This is a review for ReviewMe, first discussed around here last year. The subject of the review pays me to review their product or service, though I’m under no obligation to provide a positive review. Let me know if you think this sort of thing is arse–I’m definitely seeking feedback.
One other note: I’m using the rel=”nofollow” tag for ReviewMe subjects, so that they’re not buying my link juice along with their review.
Of the five or so ReviewMe products and services I’ve reviewed, iPlagiarismCheck is the one that’s intrigued me the most. I really don’t know anything about plagiarism checking services, but I’d like to.
I asked a relative who’s a university professor, and she told me that they do, in fact, use such a service at her school. However, she also told me that googling suspicious phrases works pretty effectively.
Here’s their spiel:
Plagiarism-Checkers is a privately-held company specializing in collaborative e-learning and assessment solutions for academic, publishing and corporate clients. Various online applications produced by Plagiarism-Checkers are in use by hundreds of institutions and companies worldwide, serving an overall user population of over 2 million.
Blatant SEO Tricks
UPDATE: The keyword stuffing I referred to is gone from the website, but it was definitely there last night. Peculiar.
A brief comment on their website. At first glance I liked it well enough–charming line-drawing and so forth. It’s a bit text-heavy, but that’s a common enough mistake. Scroll down to the bottom of the page, however, and see why they lost all credibility with me. They’re keyword stuffing using a bunch of unformatted paragraphs of descriptive text. That feels pretty spammy to me, and isn’t really legitimate tactic. Such blatant SEO tricks (which probably don’t work) don’t reflect well on the company.
Tacky website aside, does the service work? I cut and pasted together a short essay on the Rose Theatre, an Elizabethan theatre in which Shakspeare acted. I built the essay from various sources. I also submitted a very short, completely original essay as a control. You can see my longer, cobbled-together essay after the jump, with added labels indicating the origin of each paragraph.
They correctly didn’t find anything wrong with my completely original essay. Here’s what I got back from iPlagiarismCheck on the heavily-copied one (click for larger version):
Two for Five Ain’t Good Enough
They only spotted the Wikipedia content. They did also find a sentence in the last paragraph, but didn’t assign it to the right source. I presume a student from Panther Valley High (do you suppose their football team is named ‘The Panthers’?) copied it from the same book that I did.
If I’m a university professor, that’s unsatisfactory. The service claims that they “check your documents against hard and soft copy publications of all kinds”, but they missed both books I copied out of, as well as the stuff from this website. In the time it took me to submit the essay, I could have googled sentences from each paragraph and had a better success rate.
There’s no nice way to put this: based on my anecdotal test, iPlagiarismCheck doesn’t work well enough.
Mark Evans recently articulated an issue that’s been in the back of my mind for a while. What happens to the web if ad-blocking software becomes commonplace?
Anyone using Adblock wants to eat their cake (access free content and services) and have it too (no advertising). Sorry, but you can’t have it both ways. You can’t gorge yourself at the Web buffet without paying for it in some way such as seeing advertising.
Mark wields some fairly alarmist and provocative language, but he’s generated some interesting discussion in the comments associated with that post.
Hobbyists, Beware
If things online advertising revenue goes south (and we’re talking Patagonia here) as Mark suggests they might, that would be a disaster. I’m wouldn’t be overly worried about web companies who rely on advertising revenue. I’ve talked with plenty of Web 2.0 entrepreneurs who have creative plans to make money that don’t rely on serving ads.
I’d be more concerned about the hobbyists and site owners who have enjoyed (usually small) rewards for their work through Google AdSense and the like. They’ve experienced a significant paradigm shift in recent years, and that’s probably inspired them to keep doing the often excellent work they do online. Here’s a commenter from Mark’s post:
I have provided free content on improvisational theatre [ed: wow, thorough site] for more than a decade, and Google Adwords is the first remuneration I have ever received for this labour of love. It actually helps out with the endlessly thankless task of giving your stuff away ;).
Remove the ad revenue, and you might end up back at GeoCities? Not really, but you get the idea.
Even more problematic than that, however, is the amount of commerce that web advertising enables. Surely there are far more companies using Google AdWords (et al) to generate leads than there are companies depending on advertising for revenue. We’ve had technology companies who get 90% of their leads (and therefore revenue) through their AdWords campaign.
TiVo or Newspaper?
In thinking about this potential problem, we first need to think about how the average person conceives of web advertising. Is it like ads in the newspaper or ads on television? TiVo and the mute button enable people to ignore TV ads, so the ad skipping genie is out of the bottle.
How come readers tolerate ads in newspapers? I don’t think many of them regularly think about how the ads subsidize the price of the paper. By the same token, once they discover the power of ad-blocking software, you’re never going to convince people that they should just turn it off.
If Microsoft ever decides to add (and turn on by default) ad-blocking in Internet Explorer, beware. It will have a huge impact on the economics and, therefore, the landscape of the web.
Bonus links: While looking for an appropriate photo for this post, I encountered two otheramusing billboards.
