Ulysses

The new version of Ulysses is out for Mac and iPad. (The Mac version is a free upgrade from Ulysses III; the iPad app is new).

Screenshot showing Ulysses for Mac with a three-paned window  editing notes from _Practice Perfect_.
A screenshot of the updated Ulysses for Mac. The theme is “Tomorrow” and the font is Inconsolata.

It’s really hard to explain what this app is. In fact, I’ve been purchasing (and not using) this application for years before I realized that it strikes the right balance for a certain set of work.

Continue reading about Ulysses after the jump

Swackett

I remember reading about this sort of site a while back, but I never realized how convenient and cool it is until I downloaded it from the AppStore.

Swackett basically gives you an idea of if you should be wearing a sweater, jacket, or coat (and sunglasses or a hat). In the drastic inconsistency of San Francisco weather, that means yesterday it was suggesting a jacket, and today, it says I should be dressed as a trekkie:

swackett® :: San Francisco :: might I need a sweater, jacket or coat?

Nothing fancy, just usable. You don’t have to even register unless you want to manage multiple locations.

This would make a great iPhone/iPad app also. Download swackett from the Mac AppStore

MacJournal meets my Kindle

While going through the MacHeist nanoBundle 2 purchase, that one of the items was MacJournal. I already own it, so I gifted it. But it caused me to take a peek again at the application—the last time I used it was back when it was freeware and had a taco.

MacJournal still has the taco

…it still does.

It occurs to me that it might make a useful reading notebook to complement my Kindle (and my iPad next month). I haven’t been keeping track of the copious clippings and notes I take with it. Here is my first attempt:

reading notebook on MacJournal

Here is the process I am trying to use:

  1. Create a journal in MacJournal called “Reading Notebook.”
  2. Import all the Kindle Clippings I’ve not clipped up as entries
  3. Create an entry for a book I am reading, tag it with some search terms in the inspector.
  4. Search and cut the related Kindle Clippings out of the various notes, and paste it to the bottom of the book entry.
  5. organize, summarize, and delete as I go.
  6. Import kindle clippings often and delete often.

We’ll see how it goes. I made out some stubs for other ideas for journals.

  1. Organizing Journal – keep a record of my failed attempts at self-help.
  2. The Woodwork – I’ve stored unfinished drafts for blog posts in a myriad of places: Things, folders with the title, TextEdit RTF documents, and drafts on the blog. I plan to consolidate them here. Note that MacJournal has a “publish to WordPress” feature, but I don’t think it’s robust enough for me. I’ll continue to use the website, and maybe ecto, if I have the wherewithal.
  3. Things to Buy – Things is getting too cluttered with a lot of stuff that I don’t plan on buying for years. Delicious is in the same state. (I’ll still use TaskPaper for last-minute organizing before a major purchase and other maintenance purchases.)

For most notetaking, I’m still happy with opening an RTF, dropping it into a folder, and using Spotlight (via Leap) to find things. This just formalizes a fraction of it.

Purchase MacJournal with 6 other applications on MacHeist (2 days left!).

Firestarter

Well the Kindle 2 came out today so I preordered it.

This morning two people IM’d me about it so I decided to give the first my Amazon referral bucks. I give Amazon bucks semi-randomly to various friends and he asked me how I do it.

I use a “Buy from Amazon” bookmarklet I wrote to make life easier.

You can drag that into your toolbar if you like. One nice thing is to remove the second prompt and just replace the href with the tag to yourself. I keep it this way so that I remember to put the associate ID of one of my friends since I put them on rotation.

Amazon.com: Kindle 2: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation): Kindle StoreAmazon.com: Kindle 2: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation): Kindle Store

Anyone else wonder why Amazon decided to call it the Kindle? Shouldn’t it be something more akin to Treehugger? I thought Green was in.

Continue reading about My take on the K2 after the jump

Senior software Engineer at CBS Interactive

Another PHP job forwarded to me from Linda Lee and Andrew Mager, this time from CBS Interactive (née CNET).

Company: CBS Interactive (formerly CNET networks)
Title: Sr. Software Engineer
Division: GameSpot.com, TV.com, MP3.com
Location: San Francisco, CA

CBS Interactive is looking for Sr. Software Engineers in their Games, Entertainment and Lifestyles division—including GameSpot.com, TV.com, MP3.com and Chow.com. These engineers will play a key role within our development team. Responsibilities will extend to any of the applications associated with division’s initiatives. Real world experience and expertise with Linux, PHP, and MySQL are an absolute must, but a deep understanding of all web technologies from a technical and product perspective is also very important.

Please check out the job description here. You can apply online or email Linda directly at linda [dot] lee [at] cnetnetworks [dot] com.