techese 4.0

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If you checked out the site in the past 24 hours, you may have noticed that things seem a little different. It’s a subtle visual change, as the general design stayed fairly similar, but this is definitely a brand new techese.

Without further ado, welcome to techese 4.0. This is the first real visual refresh since November 2011.

But it is so much more than a visual refresh. There are plenty of functional updates as techese has been updated from Squarespace 5 to Squarespace 6.

Here are a few of the changes you’ll enjoy:

  • Responsive design for mobile devices (!!!)
  • Linked List items will now use Daring Fireball style title links. These are signified with an → to the right of the title. (I’m not updating the back catalog, so this is from now on).
  • Simple liking of a post is now available using the little heart below each post.
  • Images now use a lightbox if you want to see them larger.

And a couple things to note:

  • Permalinks are found below every post by clicking the date.
  • The RSS feed has changed to http://techese.net/articles?format=rss, which I have done a 301 redirect for. In my testing, things like the soon-to-perish Google Reader made the switch just fine, but you may want to update the address anyway.

That’s all I have for now. Enjoy the update.

Twitterrific 5.2 Gets Pushy

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Ever since Iconfactory released a long awaited rewrite to Twitterrific last year, they have been hard at work on bringing the classiest Twitter app out there to being extremely powerful.

Their previous update, 5.1, added Muffling, which is muting for users, hashtags, and links done with a spin that only Iconfactory could come up with. And when 5.1 was released, the release notes subtly teased the next update with an auspicious phrase:

Ollie will return in…OCTOPUSHY

Today’s 5.2 update to Twitterrific features Push Notifications. You can receive notifications for Direct Mentions, Replies, Mentions, Favorites, Retweets, and Follows. They even have fantastic little color symbols that show in the notification itself, which I have found handy to know the type of message at a glance.

Right now Iconfactory is launching Push as a beta, with only the first 1000 accounts gaining access today, though they will be rolling out availability over the next couple weeks. This is being done to ensure their servers are able to handle the load. If you weren’t able to activate push yet, try again the next day to see if you can. Once your account is enabled, it can be enabled on any other number of devices.

There are all sorts of other updates in 5.2. A couple other new features are profiles now show Twitter’s banner images (and look great!) and discussions can be shared via email or Storify.

Some of the improvements are that the timeline can now show 600 tweets at a time up from 400, improvements to username autocomplete, and the load more button now animates as loads, along with a laundry list of other improvements and fixes.

If you are looking for the friendliest Twitter client out there, you need Twitterrific. Everyone’s favorite blue bird costs just $2.99 in the App Store.

Innovation Through Simplicity

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Chairman Gruber:

The utter simplicity of the iOS home screen is Apple’s innovation. It’s the simplest, most obvious “system” ever designed. It is a false and foolish but widespread misconception that “innovation” goes only in the direction of additional complexity.

I use a lot of complex software and tools. I can say from experience that the ones that I most enjoy are the ones that work towards simplicity over time.

1Password 4.1 for iOS

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My company recently shipped a huge update to our new iOS app, 1Password 4 for iOS, and among many bug fixes, new password fonts, and other things, we also added URL support.

My favorite of these is that if you are on a site in Safari, you can add op before the http and that address will open in 1Password's 1Browser.

Even better, Federico Viticci concocted a little bit of JavaScript that you can add as a bookmarklet to automate the process. Just simply add a bookmark somewhere, and then edit the address and replace it with this:

javascript:window.location='op'+(window.location.href);

Then name it something clever like Send to 1Password. I hope you enjoy this neat little feature.

¶ Twenty-Thirteen

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Happy New Year. I had planned to have some grand post about what is coming up for techēse this year, but I don’t have anything concrete planned. I have an updated design on Squarespace 6 (I’m currently on Squarespace 5) that I hope to launch soon, as long as a couple components on Squarespace’s end fall into place. The new design would include responsiveness for smaller screens, and a few other goodies.

More than anything, I am conscious that most posting has dropped off quite a bit. I’ve had a lot of changes in my life the past few months, and I am still settling into new roles and routines. More so, I have felt a lot like I have been repeating what others are already saying.

I feel like my voice is not my own, and in order to find it I need to write more. I’ve known this, but I have been afraid of it.

And then I read an article today by John Acuff that was a fricken kick in the pants.

So what now?

As we face 2013 down and our fifth year of this blog, what do we do going forward?

That’s the question I’ve been wrestling with for the last three months.

And I think the answer is we get messy again.

We let go of the sanitized ideas, the safe ideas, the easily digestible ideas.

And we open the gates and seize the day. (Newsies!)

Go read John’s entire post, because it’s awesome.

While my site has not become “big”, I have the same fears. I have enough readers to where I feel the compulsion to placate by not challenging any ideas. And that is why I have been another “me too” and I am tired of it.

So, I do not how things will progress this year. But I know I’ve lost my voice (or maybe never fully found it). I need my voice. And maybe in order to find it I need to let things get a little messy.

Merry Christmas

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I hope you all have had a wonderfully merry Christmas. I have enjoyed a wonderful day with family, and it was great to witness the delight on my son’s face when he opened his presents.

As a bit of nerdy Christmas cheer, I leave you with this tweet I saw earlier today, which pretty much describes my life as the Family Geek.

P.S. Don’t forget to give the Gift of Geek.

1Password 4 for iOS

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I am a little late in posting this, as I've been busy at my day job at AgileBits. A week and a half ago we released the much anticipated 1Password 4 for iOS.

It's really fantastic and we worked a long time on it. It is on sale for $7.99 until the end of 2012, and when 2013 arrives it will go to its normal price of $17.99. If you need a last minute gift for the nerd in your life, go get it on the App Store.