Not too long ago we was fortunate enough to have the developer for Glasshouse apps, Nick Takayama, come on the show. Glasshouse apps, of course, are the Australian duo that make The Early Edition, and just yesterday came out with their latest app, a Twitter client, Quip.

Nick was unfortunately tight lipped about their next app when we talked to them, so this app came as a pleasant surprise, especially since I have this habit of collecting Twitter clients. I’m not going to write full reviews; as always I find Mac Stories has the best. I will, however, talk about the smaller things that I saw that they didn’t.

Quip is and isn’t a power-user app. It doesn’t have the feature-rich environment of TweetBot, but like some other niche power-apps (such as Tweet Library) it does have a more robust singular feature. The singular feature, as you probably know by now, is more thought through conversations viewing. This isn’t to say that Quip is a niche app, it’s just that it can be compared to niche power-user apps. Quip actually probably has quite a wide appeal due to its overall simplicity and beauty. Its main feature likely has appeal to the countless lurkers around Twitter who only read tweets and never contribute.

There are a couple of things I would like to see changed with the app, however, and before I talk about what I like, I’ll talk about these. Firstly, changing Twitter accounts isn’t that great; there is no way, mid-Tweet (as far as I can tell) to change which Twitter account is authoring a Tweet. Additionally, and this is more of a pet-peeve (as only TweetBot seems to support it), and this is retweeting from one account into another. I know there are many others out there that like this feature, but it just never seems to get into many apps. Secondly, a thing I think needs more work is the settings — or lack there of. It’s rather [bare-bones]( http://go.yagan.me/7s1B settings ). While I understand their likely desire to keep the app clean and simple, it’s missing a lot of very basic settings and I don’t think adding this bare essentials would inhibit the simplicity of the app. And lastly, the price is far too cheap, in my eyes, for an iPad apps. No quality app, especially that has been worked upon as Quip clearly has, should be priced so dirt cheap. I understand that App Store economics are tragically fickle, but I still feel that such a price (if not an ‘opening sale’) is selling the app short somewhat.

The things I do like about the app is that its quick, it’s beautiful, we finally have Twitter-birdy mascot to rival (and possibly knock off its perch) Twitterrific’s Ollie, and most importantly, the features it has, it does very well. It certainly has a focus, it has a point, and it does beat around the bush to get to it.

It won’t be my default Twitter client, but I don’t think it means to be. When I want to peruse Twitter to read (which is something I do only infrequently) I’m more likely to do it on Quip than on TweetBot.

Several people (here’s the latest) have declared that they are quitting RSS, so I’m going on record saying that I won’t (at last for now and the foreseeable future).

Many people seem to using RSS for tech-news, tech related current affairs, normal current affairs, and normal news. I don’t use it for any of this, but I probably subscribe to many of the feeds that the ‘many people’ mentioned above would probably subscribe to also.

It’s similar to why I don’t care to read the reviews of The Verge or care for much of what they write in general; I don’t want a daily account of what happened, I don’t want a fair and balanced review of something; no, I want to read the opinions of those I trust (or enjoy) and even some of those I don’t. See, this is what empowers RSS to me, I get to read what people think about something and I find this very interesting. And it is interesting.

For actual breaking news, I agree, use Twitter or something else but that said, Fever’s Hot List of the most talked about topics in the feeds I read (and those I don’t read(!)) is a great way to find the important news too.

With Twitter, it’s far too easy to miss what someone (that I want to read) may of said on a topic. Additionally, some compained about needing the trawl through RSS feeds to find interesting articles to be wasteful of their time, but what of Twitter? At least with RSS you’ve chosen the Authors. You get to curate it (to a limited degree) yourself, with Twitter you are relying on curating curators; it’s once removed from the content compaired to RSS. There’s no garrantee that what you will read on Twitter is something you want to read, there are many Tweets that have no links at all, and furthermore, you have to actually open the linked article to see if you want to read it frequently; with RSS you can skim the Titles of articles to read, there’s no garrantee that the author of a tweet - linking to an article - will include useful information identifying the article. I have less control over what I want to read, and less information to descern whether I actually want to read it, and all the issues that RSS has but intermittedly interrupted with non-articles. Howe is this a better solution?

I don’t, however, take issue with perusing through my feeds and ignoring any articles I don’t care to read. I find it to be a relaxing pastime. If I’m having a short break, any long articles I add to Instapaper, so that app gets a bunch of use next long break.

I don’t subscribe to any über-blogs (Gizmodo, Engadget, TechCrunch, The Verge etc.), only personal blogs. Because of this I get a medium and easy passed trickle of feeds; just the right amount (most of the time) to read in a break. This does involve management, and if there is a feed that posts too much and is somewhat uninteresting, it gets killed.¹ It’s pretty easy to manage this your feeds and it doesn’t take much effort to craft the perfect, personal reading environment.

You don’t be need to quit RSS, you just need to adjust how you use RSS

As I hope many of you know, I do a weekly tech podcast with James. What we are doing now, is giving away a new 1080p Apple TV. Just go here, and do what it says.

All you have to do is ask us a question, or tell us something you want us to talk about on the show. It’s simply, and easy, and you have a pretty good chance of getting the Apple TV; it’s not like it’s a lotto jackpot that millions of people enter.

If you don’t have a Facebook account, don’t like to spam your twitter followers (though we ask that you do to promote us), or don’t use reddit, you can email us; whatever floats your boat.

We will be picking a winner next on our 40th show (as of this writing we are about to start our 39th show). You can, however send us questions or topics for the 40th show, we’ll pick the winner at the end.

What have you got to lose? If you do win, brag about it by letting people know about us. ;)

I think he’s got to show them the respect that they deserve because he’s asking them for their money.”

— Michael Pachter addressing Zuckerberg’s hoodie.

I have no experience with investment, but isn’t this somewhat the wrong way round, especially with a company such as Facebook? Isn’t Zuckerberg offering a way for investers (and he) to make a profit? Sure, startups may be ‘asking for money’ but at this point, Facebook is passed all that. Why else would you invest in Facebook (and indeed, even startups) unless you thought there would be some return on your investment at some point?

Via Dave Caolo.

Pebble, the bluetooth (4.0) iPhone and Android integrated wristwatch kickstarter project just crossed the ten-million dollar mark. That’t 10,000% funded.

And while there is still 9 days to go, the pebble team recently announced that they will be limiting the amount to eighty-five-thousand pebbles and at the time of that update there was already seventy-five-thousand sold.

I am a backer of this, and also bought one from my other half, if you want to get cheaper than retail, get in soon, the ‘9 days to go’ deadline is unlikely correct.

UPDATE: And they are now all sold out.

Today marks a year of writing for Macchiato man. I don’t have much prophetic to say about this. I don’t have any plans for it, any changes to the site will happen when they happen. It’s just another day.

I’ve written over two hundred posts in the last year. This isn’t huge by any means, but I’m happy with it, and I do plan on spending a lot more time writing. I like writing, and what I write about, I find interesting. That really all I need to take this forward.

I’ve taken an intermission from my university studies starting the second half of this year and lasting a year. Amongst other things including getting back into my music composition work and (self)study, but I do want to commit to more writing here due my extra time.

I do have some long term ideas I’ve been tossing around. Among some are a podcast, either alone or maybe with someone else; membership is definitely something I’m thinking about; and I’m always thinking about different content to post to the site (more links, more rich media etc). But these are long-term ideas, none will happen soon, and some may never happen.

I hope those who do read, continue reading. Thanks everyone.

If you are a developer, and you do this, stop. Stop it now.

Even though I disagree fundamentally with making this digital, clean, reading and writing environment skeuomorphic, it’s still a bad decision regardless.

Scrolls aren’t being used a whole lot lately, so using a gradient to symbolize some digital paper being folded around a scroll¹ roller is a rather anachronistic digital analogy. If you want paper, make it look like modern paper. Nice and white.² Or, you know, don’t make it look like paper.³

But the worst thing about it, is that it makes reading difficult. Why do I won’t to read text that is starting to fade at it upper extremities? It’s distracting at best, illegible at worst. All this to make it look like an archaic and superfluous piece of paper?

Stop it.

Sincerely, readers and writers.

I’ve been using Fever° by Shawn Inman now for months. I’ve completely forgotten about Google Reader, and good riddance to that.

The problem, however, is that there were no native apps for iOS. Sure, it has an iPhone webapp, and the desktop version works on the iPad, but it’s not perfect. No webapp can compare (at least today) to native apps.

While I’m still waiting for Reeder (initially the iPhone app will have Fever° support), in the mean time a new contender has spawned with the delightful name of Sunstroke by Gone East. Apparently version 1.1 came out April 6. Not quite sure how it’s taken me this long to find it.

It’s a solid app, and works flawlessly (in my experience) with Fever°. Its interface is reminiscent of Reeder’s, but barring any wacky UI or UX designs, most apps in this category are similar. Perhaps familiar is a better way to put it.

One tiny issue I have it is the animation between feed articles: When over-scrolling to get to the next article, the animation doesn’t continue the scrolling to bring the next article, it overlays the new article which come from bellow. You kind of need to see it. To me, it’s mildly distracting, but it is the smallest of complaints, and one that I should stress too much.

If you use Fever°, this is a must I believe.